Taming the Thorny Rose novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Crypt

I stood outside the crypt door for the length of one candle.

Astrid found me there with a plate of bread I did not touch.

"You're going in," she said.

"Yes."

"He said not to."

"He says a lot of things."

I took the candle out of her hand.

"Keep the gate.

"Keep the gorge prisoner in the cells and awake."

The door was oak and iron, and he had not locked it from the inside.

He had left the key in the lock, and I pulled it out and pushed it into my boot.

I went down the stone steps into the cold.

The crypt was low and long, with the dead kings of the Night Court lying in stone niches along both walls.

At the far end stood a bier of black rock.

Four iron cuffs were bolted into it, and Aldric lay stretched between them with his wrists and ankles locked.

His coat was torn open.

His chest rose and fell too fast for a man who had no need of breath.

His eyes found me, and they were red from rim to pupil.

"Go," he said.

It came out as a growl.

"Go, Kestrel."

"No."

"You do not know what I want to do to you."

"Then tell me."

"I want your throat."

"All right."

I set the candle on a tomb and sat down on the floor, an arm's length from the bier.

He stared at me.

"I'm not leaving," I said.

"I'll sit here and I'll talk, and you can snarl at me.

"I've been snarled at by better."

"By whom?"

"My guardian, when I was nine.

"Hunters get a lot of practice."

He made a sound that could have been a laugh.

It broke in the middle.

The chains rang.

His back arched off the stone, and every muscle in his arms stood out.

I did not flinch.

I watched the cuffs, and the bolts held.

"It hurts," he said, in a voice that was almost his.

"It hurts like being turned inside out."

"I know."

"You don't."

"No," I said.

"But I'm here."

It went on for a long time.

I told him about the first vampire I had killed, and how I'd been sick in the snow after.

I told him about Astrid's terrible cooking.

I told him that his guards were fools with a staff, and that I would fix it.

Somewhere in there, the arching stopped.

He lay panting, wet with sweat, with his head turned toward me.

The red was a ring now, not a flood.

"The hunger," he said.

"It will not go."

"What does it want?"

"Blood.

"Yours.

"Warm and living."

His eyes closed.

"I'd rather burn."

I looked at him for a long moment.

I thought about the bite I had refused him in his bed on our first night, and the reason I had.

I stood up and walked to the bier, close enough that the cold came off the stone.

"Look at me, Aldric."

He opened his eyes.

"I'm saying this once, and I mean it.

"I'm not saying it because you're suffering."

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