Her 20-Year Silence Ended When Her Daughter Came Back for Revenge novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Terms

"I'm here to clean," I said.

"At one in the morning, with that look on your face."

He took my arm above the elbow, not roughly, and steered me down the hall to the library.

The room smelled of old paper and cold ash.

He shut the door and turned the key.

"She'll check the halls at two," he said. "She likes to see who's out of bed. We have an hour. Sit."

I did not sit.

"You said the heron is on the gate of the hall that burned. Why are you telling me?"

"Because you're wearing it around your neck." He pulled the desk lamp's chain, and the room went gold. "And because I've lived in this house twenty-two years and I've never seen her make a mistake. Tonight she made one. She didn't know the girl would talk back."

"I didn't think she would either."

"You held up Gareth Wincott's card in front of the staff." He nearly smiled. "That was either the bravest or the stupidest thing I've seen anyone do in that hall."

"It was both."

"Your hand is bleeding."

I looked down.

My nails had cut four small crescents into my right palm when I'd squeezed Gareth's card.

I put the hand behind me.

"Give it here," Rhys said.

"It's nothing."

"Nesta."

He had a first-aid tin in the desk, the old kind, with a red cross worn pale.

He poured whiskey from a decanter onto a handkerchief, and I held my hand out because I wanted to get it over with.

His fingers were warm and not careful.

He turned my palm to the light and wiped each cut, and it stung enough that I hissed.

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