“What did they do to you?” he finally asked.
Corabeth’s head pulled back, the question hitting her so suddenly. It wasn’t lost on her how Rooke had skirted almost every question since the moment they met.
“You question me without answering anything yourself,” Corabeth said and took another sip of the wine, hoping to embolden herself. Thoughts of what she had heard of the brutality, the bloodthirst of the Beast, were at the periphery of her mind, but she was keeping them at bay.
Rooke regarded her for a long time with the same gaze she felt being picked apart by when she was kneeling in front of her burning home, asking for death. A gaze that was determining her worth.
“Very well,” he finally said, leaning forward on his elbows, “Shall we be honest with each other?”
“Why not?” Corabeth replied with a shrug. She had nothing to lose anymore. It was a cold but strangely freeing feeling.
“A question for a question? An answer for an answer?” Rooke offered, a strange glint in his eyes.
Corabeth nodded. “Who are you?” she asked before Rooke could go first.
“Once, I was called Rooke Ashford. Who areyou?”
That last name was strangely familiar to her, though she couldn’t quite place it.
“Corabeth Arlay.Whatare you?”
At this, Rooke paused for a moment, a cold smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I am what they say in your village. A Beast.”
“They say you are the curse upon the village,” she retorted.
“What if I told you I’m the cursed one?” Rooke asked, leaning forward even further. There was a feverish glint to his beady eyes.
Corabeth tried to find some convictions in herself. To believe the words she had heard during her life from the villagers. That the Beast was a curse upon the village of Gravebrook for some crime long forgotten, a punishment none of them deserved. But she came up empty. She couldn’t find a single reason to trust or believe the people who had all but killed her. She had no loyalty to them.
“I would believe you,” Corabeth replied with a shrug.
It was Rooke’s turn to pull back in surprise. He searched Corabeth’s face for any sign of deceit. When he didn’t find any, his tight features relaxed a fracture.
“What’s the curse?” she asked and placed her hand on the table, fingers around the stem of the wine glass, to keep it from trembling. Her heart was suddenly beating very fast.
“My turn, wasn’t it?” Rooke asked instead.
Corabeth had lost track already. She nodded, giving him the go-ahead.
Rooke leaned back in his chair and blended deeper into the shadows where the candlelight didn’t reach.
“You said you’d strike the match to burn down your village. Why?” he asked, his tone colder now.
When Corabeth agreed to this honesty between them, she knew she would have to talk about it. Still, now that the time came, she found that her throat locked up, thick with emotion. She swallowed hard several times before she could speak.
Corabeth straightened, pushed her shoulders back, and looked into the shadows where Rooke’s eyes were hidden.
“They pushed my mother into poverty, leaving her no other option than to steal. They didn’t even mean to kill her, but they did. They simply forgot her in the pillory on a particularly cold night. They despised, used, and abused me. They burned my home and left me to die,” she said, feeling the embers of rage come to life inside of her. After the lengthy numbness of sleep, it was good to feel something so strongly.
Corabeth swallowed again. “What’s the curse?” she repeated her question before Rooke could offer any sympathies. Although, she questioned if he could feel sympathy at all.
“I’m bound by the forest, I’m unable to die, I feel an everlasting hunger that only blood can alleviate,” he said, his words chilling Corabeth to the bone.
“That’s why you come to the village. Looking for blood,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry.
Rooke nodded. “Why did you follow me?”
Another log snapped in the fireplace, and it took everything in Corabeth to keep herself from jumping.
