“People consider death a punishment. That night, living felt like a punishment to me,” she admitted.
“Does it still feel like a punishment?”
Corabeth opened her mouth to answer but snapped it shut. “My turn,” she said instead.
Rooke’s mouth drew into a slight smirk. He enjoyed this game they were playing.
“Do you kill people?” Corabeth asked and forced herself still.
“I do,” Rooke answered without hesitation. “Is life still a punishment?”
Corabeth barely had a moment to draw breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “Mostly, I just feel numb now.”
Rooke nodded slightly in the shadows as Corabeth took large gulps of the rich red wine.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked, placing the empty glass on the table.
“I already told you, I didn’t think you deserved to die. Besides,” Rooke said, tilting his head, “My ravens would have been terribly upset with me.”
“Your ravens?” Corabeth asked with a frown.
Rooke nodded. “They’ve told me about you. That you were kind to them.”
Corabeth thought back to the ravens she fed with her own scraps, to the chain of birds that guided her through the mist to this manor. A slightly manic laughter bubbled up from inside of her.
“You know, I considered them my friends. I told myself they protected me when I ventured deeper into the woods in search of firewood,” she told Rooke.
“You were right,” he confirmed to her surprise. “I saw you in my woods several times. Without the ravens, I would have drained you as soon as you stepped foot past the first line of trees.”
Corabeth’s body grew cold at this admission. She had felt eyes on her in the woods, but she always told herself it was the birds watching her.
“I’ll be sure to thank them,” she said and swallowed.
“Are you satisfied?” Rooke asked, seemingly done with the game.
Far from it, Corabeth wanted to say, but she didn’t want to push her luck. Instead, she nodded.
Rooke pushed to his feet, the chair scraping across the floor, and headed for the door, his movements so smooth, he could have been floating.
“Am I safe?” Corabeth called after him one last question.
Rooke halted just feet from her, the candlelight illuminating his severe features from below.
“As long as I’m fed,” he replied.
“Andareyou fed?”
Slowly, Rooke turned his head towards Corabeth, and a smile spread across his face. “For now.”
He was gone in the next breath.
When Corabeth went to bed that night, she thought,I can die some other day.
Ten
Rooke
Rooke roamed the woods. Not because he was hunting. He was still full and satiated from his feast in the village. There was a buzz under his skin for a completely different reason. One that had stolen his rest. That reason currently lay in her bed, dark, unbound hair in stark contrast with the white of the sheets. He could imagine it so vividly against the black of his closed eyes.
