Bend Her novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: What Ashfield Cost

Ansel's POV

I woke human, on straw, with a woman's weight on my chest.

For a moment I did not move, because I thought I was still dreaming.

Then I smelled her hair, and I felt the chains on my wrists, and I knew I was not.

Linnet slept with her cheek on my ribs and my coat pulled over her.

The bar lay on the floor where she had thrown it, and the cellar door stood wide open.

Only I had ever lifted that bar, and only from the inside.

She had lifted it from the outside, with her hands.

I lay there with the cold coming up through the stone and counted what I had done.

I could not count it all.

I remembered claws, her voice saying my name and a taste of copper in my mouth.

I did not remember stopping.

She stirred and lifted her head.

There was a bruise on her throat and dried blood on her lip.

Her grey-green eyes were perfectly clear.

"You're awake," she said.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Linnet."

"I'm not hurt." She sat up, holding the coat to her chest. "You didn't hurt me. Look at me. You were careful the whole time."

"I was not."

"You were. Even then."

I shut my eyes.

I had wanted her to hate me this morning, because hating me would have been safe for her.

"You said something to me last night," she said.

"I remember very little."

"You said Linny."

I opened my eyes.

She was watching my face, and I could not stop it from changing.

"Nobody has called me that since I was ten," she said. "Only my nurse did. She died that winter. You could not have known it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bend Her from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.