A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The First Morning

I woke the next morning to find her awake beside me, propped on one elbow, looking at my face.

There was no page between us now and no term.

Grey light came through the curtain, and the lamp had burned down to a blue bead.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm checking my property."

I laughed, and it hurt, because I had never laughed in my own bed.

She lay down again with her bare back against my chest, and I felt how warm she was.

"I'm not your property," Lenore said into the pillow. "I'm free. That's what you paid forty thousand crowns for, so I'm going to enjoy it."

"What does it feel like?"

"Strange. Nobody is telling me when to get up."

"Nobody is telling me either," I said.

She went quiet.

The scar was an inch from my mouth.

She had slept in the shift with the left side pulled down, and I had noticed it even asleep.

"Lenore."

"Yes."

"I want to ask you something."

"Then ask."

"I'm going to touch your shoulder."

She did not answer for so long that I thought I had spoiled it.

Then she took my hand from where it lay on her hip, and she lifted it, and she laid my palm over the crescent of small marks.

I felt the raised ridge of it under my hand, and the warmth of the skin around it.

My own teeth had made this.

I had been fourteen years old and I had no idea.

"It doesn't hurt now," she said. "It only aches in the cold."

I bent my head and put my mouth to it.

I kissed each mark, one by one, along the curve.

She made a small sound, and her back arched into my chest.

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