Bend Her novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Last Night

Bess took me down through the kitchens.

We passed a jailer asleep over a jug of her best wine.

She left me at the foot of the last stair.

"I'll watch the top," she said. "Take till the bells."

The cell was the last one on the passage.

I turned the black key.

The door opened on a stone room with one lamp, a pallet and a chain bolted to the wall.

Ansel sat on the pallet with his back to the stone.

The collar was still on his throat.

The iron had taken the amber out of his eyes and left them a plain, tired brown.

"No," he said.

"Yes."

"Go back upstairs."

"I came to see you."

"You gave your word to the court. You should have let them hang me."

I crossed the cell and knelt in front of him.

"Do you want me to?"

He did not answer.

"Ansel."

"No," he said, and his voice broke on it. "No. I do not."

I took the key and opened the collar.

It came away in my hands, and some of the color came back into his face.

I opened the cuffs next.

He rubbed his wrists.

"They will see," he said.

"I'll put them back before dawn."

He lifted his hand and touched my cheek.

He had touched me in the dark, in snow and in a cellar.

Never before in lamplight, with no seal to burn him.

I turned my face into his palm and kissed it.

"Gisborne thinks he has tomorrow wrapped up," I said. "I mean to let him think it."

I told him what I would do instead.

He listened without moving.

"Then you must not stand a yard from me," he said.

"I'm going to stand next to you."

"Linnet."

"Ansel, listen." I took his face in both hands. "Whatever happens tomorrow, I'm not going to stop learning."

"Linnet..."

"I need all of it."

"It will kill me."

"We'll find another way."

"There is no other way. It is in my body, and it can only come out through you."

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