A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Road Back

Cora's POV

The village with one road lay a day's walk below Dunmarrow.

Nine years ago I had hidden there because it was the last place I thought he would look.

He had looked.

I slept in a haystack that night with my bag under my head and my left hand aching.

I reached the end of the road by midmorning.

The cottage had been rebuilt in plain gray stone, with a patched slate roof.

Smoke came out of the chimney.

A woman was sweeping the step with a hard straw broom.

She was small and bent, with white hair under a scarf, and she had a limp I had never seen before.

She looked up, and the broom stopped.

"Nell," she said.

"That wasn't my name."

"I know it wasn't," the widow said. "You weren't hard to read, girl.

"Nobody sleeps with a chair under the door by choice."

I stood in the road and could not make my feet go any farther.

"A rider came two days ago with a letter from the Alpha," she said. "It's on my table.

"I haven't decided yet whether to burn it."

"You should."

"I know what I should." She leaned the broom against the wall. "Come in. You're blue."

"I came to tell you I'm sorry."

"Then you can say it sitting down."

I followed her into the cottage.

It was one room, with a bed in the corner and a table and two chairs.

There was a hearth against the north wall, and a fire in it, and a pot hanging over the fire.

I stopped in the doorway.

The widow watched me.

"I thought as much," she said.

"Sit on the stool. You can look at the wall if you can't look at that."

"I want to look at it."

I crossed the room and sat on the stool.

The fire popped.

It was a small and ordinary fire, with a black pot, and the smell was barley and onion.

Keep reading free with an account. Start A Hatred Most Pure from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.