Bend Her novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Last Apprentice

The king left at dawn with Gisborne and an escort, and I watched the white horse cross the bridge until it vanished into the fog.

Aldous did not look back.

I found Ansel in the kitchen, pouring tea he was not drinking.

Bess took one look at my face and carried the bread outside.

"Ask," Ansel said, without turning around.

"You heard."

"I hear most things. It is one of the useful parts of the horns." He set the cup down. "Your brother told you about the apprentice."

"Yes."

"Then ask me."

"What happened to her?"

He looked at his burned hand for a long moment.

"Seven years ago the crown sent me a girl of nineteen," he said. "Gisborne sent her, with a letter. He said she had a gift and no one to train it, and I was the only mage in Tarnmere who could."

"What was her name?"

"I will not say it. She is dead, and she was not mine to turn into a story."

I nodded.

"She was quick," he said. "Quicker than you. She laughed at my rules and broke them. I liked her."

"Did you..."

"No. She was a student, and she was a girl, and I was already what you see." The corner of his mouth moved. "She liked to sit in the kitchen with a knife and an apple, and tell me I was a very large cat."

I thought of Bess and said nothing.

"One night in the autumn, the beast came up in me," Ansel said. "I had not warned her what it was. I thought I could keep it down. I went to the cellar, as I do, and I forgot to bar the stair door."

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