A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Register
The register house opened at eight, and I was on its steps at seven with Gerrick behind me.
Lenore was still asleep.
I had left her warm in my bed with the lamp turned low, and I told myself it was a kindness.
The clerk who took my name was a thin man with ink to the wrist, and he listened without once looking up.
"I wish to make an entry," I said. "Against the Rooke household register, fifteen years ago, in the matter of Lenore Rooke."
"That record is sealed by the head of the house."
"This is not an amendment. It is a declaration, and it is mine."
I laid my hand flat on the counter.
"On the night of my fourteenth birthday, in the cellar of the Rooke house, I woke into the hunger. I bit the daughter of the house on the left shoulder. She did not steal from me. I took from her, and I do not remember it."
The clerk's pen stopped.
"My lord," he said carefully. "A waking bite entered by the biter himself is a wake-right claim."
"I know."
"The bitten may claim half the biter's holdings for life, if she wishes it. And the entry is read aloud at noon in the register court."
"I know that too."
Gerrick, behind me, made a low noise.
"Strike the blood-theft entry," I said. "Write mine in its place. And put it all under my name."
The clerk looked at me for the first time.
He wrote.
I signed, and I walked out into the morning with my hand steady and my stomach sick.
By noon the crier in the register court had read it aloud to four hundred people.
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