A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cellar Room

Davren gives her the room under the kitchen to break her, and she asks for the door propped open; when he grabs her left shoulder she strikes him.

She spoke only once on the carriage ride home.

I had been ready for a plea, or a curse, or a lie about how sorry she was.

Lenore sat across from me with her hands folded and watched the river go by.

Her coat stayed buttoned to the chin.

"You can take that off," I said. "It's a summer afternoon."

"I'm comfortable."

That was all she gave me, and the silence lasted until the carriage stopped.

Ashkarr House stood at the top of Tanner's Hill, four floors of grey stone that I had paid for in full.

My captain was waiting on the steps with my housekeeper beside him.

Gerrick Holt had been guarding my doors for twelve years, and Ysmay had been feeding me for fifteen.

"This is Lenore Rooke," I said. "She's pledged to me until Midwinter. She'll keep my books."

Gerrick nodded to her, which was more than I had done.

Ysmay looked at Lenore for a long moment and said nothing at all.

"Where do you want her put, my lord?" Gerrick asked.

"The room under the kitchen."

Gerrick's face did not change, but his eyes slid to me and stayed there a second too long.

"The cellar room," he said.

"Yes."

"With the bolt."

"With the bolt."

Ysmay turned and walked into the house with her back very straight.

The room was down a flight of stone steps from the kitchen, and the air at the bottom was cold.

It had a cot, a washstand and a stone floor.

It had no window.

The door was oak, and the bolt on it was on the outside.

I stood in the doorway and watched her walk in and look around.

I had thought about this moment more times than I could count.

In the Rooke house there had been a cellar just like it, and I had spent six years of nights in the dark there.

She looked at the bolt, and then she looked at me.

"Prop the door open," Lenore said.

"No."

"Then take the bolt off. I signed your contract in front of four hundred people. I'm not going anywhere."

"You'll sleep with the door shut, Rooke."

She walked past me and set one hand on the oak and gave it a push, and the hinges groaned.

"The dark never frightened me, Dav," she said. "It frightened you. I know, because I'm the one who taught it to."

She said it in a flat, plain voice, with no pity in it and no apology.

My hands wanted to close around something.

"Captain Holt," I said, without turning.

"My lord."

"Bolt it at nine."

"Yes, my lord," Gerrick said, in the voice of a man who would not be doing it.

I went upstairs and I did not eat.

At midnight I stood on the cellar steps with a lamp in my hand.

The door was open.

Somebody had propped it with a boot, and I knew whose boot it was without asking.

She was sitting on the cot with her back against the wall and her coat still on, and she was wide awake.

"Did you come to see me cry?" she asked. "I'm sorry to waste your evening."

"You start at dawn. The ledgers are in my study."

"I'll be there."

She stood and turned toward the washstand, and I took one step down and caught her by the left shoulder to turn her back around.

I had not even finished the move.

Her elbow went into my ribs, and the flat of her other hand cracked across my face.

The lamp swung and the light jumped across the walls.

She was backed into the corner of the cot with her fists up, and her face had gone completely white.

It was not the face of someone playing a part.

It was a fright I had never seen on her, not once in six years.

"Not that shoulder," Lenore said. Her voice shook, and she hated that it shook. "Never that one."

My cheek burned.

I lowered the lamp and stood very still.

Her shoulder had felt thin and hard under the wool, and warm, and I could still feel it in my hand.

Something in my mouth had gone sharp.

"Dawn," I said.

I climbed the steps with her fear following me up, and I did not know what to do with it.

I had wanted her afraid for ten years.

I had not wanted it to look like that.

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