Dying to Marry Him novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: No

Rook's POV

I left her asleep in the bell tower with my coat over her again.

I did not go down the stairs. I went to the library door, and I put my hand on the brass lock.

It was warm, and nothing moved my fingers away.

I stepped over the line.

The green lamp burned on the desk. The binders stood in their rows, black and gold, and the room smelled of paper and old rain.

I had stood on that threshold for thirty years, and I did not know what to do now that I was inside.

I took down the first binder. It said SEASON ONE, NIGHT ONE.

The pages were neat and in a hand that was not Kerensa's.

The first bride's name was there, and what she said to me in the dark chapel, and what I answered.

I answered Make your vow, and then So be it, and nothing else.

At the bottom of the page, in the margin, someone had written a note.

She asked: Are you frightened too? No answer recorded.

I turned the page. Then I turned a hundred.

Every bride had asked me something, and the house had written down only my answer to the vow.

Are you cold. Do you remember being a person. Is there anyone in there.

Sixty-one women had looked at a face of mist and asked whether I wanted something, and I had never once been allowed to say.

I put the binder down very carefully.

I opened the second drawer of the desk, because Gilt had taken page forty from it.

There was no outline in it now. At the back lay a cheap black pen with its cap chewed flat.

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