Corabeth’s hand rested on the edge of the bed, palm down, fingers slender and relaxed. Rooke turned to leave and, for a brief moment, allowed his fingers to linger against hers. It was a ghost of a touch, so slight it could have been considered an accident, so striking that it sent a shock through Rooke’s body.
Rooke fled her room, determined anew to take to the woods. Never again would he hurt Corabeth. He would rage against the curse that bound him and find a way.
Even still, a part of him knew he was simply delaying the inevitable.
Twenty
Corabeth
If Corabeth thought she saw little of Rooke in the days leading up to the feeding incident, as she had started to call it in her mind, she saw even less of him afterward. He disappeared for days, neglecting even his one constant—preparing Corabeth’s dinner. Some nights, Corabeth heard his bedroom door shut somewhere down the hall. The next day, the house was bathed in silence once more, and it was as if he was never even there.
In the mornings, Corabeth went on walks where she was always accompanied by two or three ravens who flew along and watched her from the branches high up. She wondered if they were there of their own accord or if Rooke had instructed them to keep close. But each morning, she noticed fresh tracks leading to and from the forest in different directions. She recognized them as signs of an ongoing search.
It was close to a week later when Corabeth found herself wandering the halls of the manor in a darkness that she had become accustomed to. What she did not seem to grow accustomed to, however, was the silence.
The nearly full moon bathed the halls with a cold, silver light that was enough for Corabeth to navigate the house. Her first thought was to head to the library, where the space wasn’t so yawning, where the emptiness wasn’t threatening to swallow her alive. Where the silence didn’t echo so sharply.
As she walked down the grand stairs, her eyes instead caught on double doors she had never seen open before. They led to a room next to the dining room, and stood now wide open. Corabeth’s silent steps took her towards them.
It was a grand ballroom where one entire wall was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the gardens. The white marble floor was almost glowing in the silver moonlight, and it reflected the cold light back towards the glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. And in front of one of the windows stood a familiar figure clad in black. Always in black. Despite the gleam of the rest of the room, his form seemed to swallow the light.
Corabeth was sure Rooke was aware of her presence as she approached, although he did not turn. He simply stood, hands clasped behind his back.
“Where have you been?” she asked, unable to keep some of the hurt from leaking into her tone. The intimacy of the feeding had brought them closer, or so Corabeth had thought. And yet, Rooke pulled further away than ever.
“I have doubled my hunting efforts,” Rooke replied, still facing the window.
“And have you been successful?”
The following silence was answer enough. For a moment, it seemed like Rooke’s figure might dissolve into shadows completely. His contours blurred and rippled before he became solid again.
Corabeth came to a stop some steps away from Rooke, feeling a distance between them that had not been there since her first days in the mansion.
“You left me alone,” she whispered so quietly a normal person might not have heard her at all. However, Rooke was anything but normal.
He half-turned but stopped himself, not allowing himself the sight of Corabeth.
“It was better this way,” he said curtly.
“For whom?” Corabeth demanded, taking a step closer to him. She had to fight to keep her voice from breaking.
Rooke was silent for a long moment, his figure unmoving in the darkness. Then he lowered his head in resignation. “You’re right. I have been selfish.”
“How, Rooke?” Corabeth asked, throwing up her hands in frustration before letting them fall again. Whatever was going on in Rooke’s thoughts, whatever connections he had drawn, Corabeth could barely understand half of them.
Rooke finally turned and looked at her then, an infinite sadness swimming in his eyes.
“In many ways. In bringing you here. In keeping you,” he said before adding in a much lower tone, “In feeding on you.”
“Do you really think you’ve done any of that against my will?” Corabeth asked incredulously.
“There are many ways to bend someone’s will. To trap someone, not with violence but with honey,” Rooke said and turned again, his gaze fixed on something outside.
The words sent chills through Corabeth, and for a moment, she considered if she was simply a moth, too dazed by the glow to see the flame. But they had shared genuine moments; she knew this in her soul. She had come to consider him her friend. She wasn’t there just because Rooke had finessed her. The question was if Rooke himself saw it.
“What was your plot, Rooke? What were your evil plans?” Corabeth asked and came to stand next to Rooke.
Rooke scoffed at this without much amusement. “You must have figured it out by now, Corabeth. I am nothing but a lonely man stuck in time, unable to move forward,” he said with much disdain. He paused for a moment before continuing. “No onehad followed me before. That night, at first, I was toying with you, pulling you deeper into the woods. But when I finally decided to leave you to find your way back to your village, the ravens intervened and led you here. And after all that… you still asked for death. In spite of myself, I found myself trying to keep you alive instead. Before long, I was terrified you’d want to leave. And I have never felt that fear more sharply than after I fed on you, when I saw that fear in your eyes that I promised myself I’d never put there.”
