“Should I disappear,” he said, “Everything I have is yours. The books, clothes, gold, jewelry. The house itself. Burn it down if you like, I do not care. Just know, it’s yours.”
Desperation wrapped its gnarled hand around Corabeth’s heart and squeezed. Squeezed so hard, for a moment, she couldn’t get a breath in. But she didn’t allow herself to crumble.
Rooke had endured centuries of unimaginable hunger. The curse had changed him to his core, forced him to kill. She knew it would be unfair to ask him to stay, even if it was for her. Because she knew that for her, he might do it.
So Corabeth buried herself a little deeper into Rooke’s arms and pushed the thought from her mind.
Twenty-six
Rooke
Rooke stayed awake long after Corabeth fell asleep, watching her slumbering form. Breaths slow and steady, she was perfectly at ease. There was a serenity that was echoed in the chamber of his own soul.
Corabeth—the woman who saw all of his ugliness and did not look away. The woman who stayed despite it.Becauseof it. The curse had not corrupted her at all. Instead, she had woven it into something lovely, something purposeful.
There wasn’t a trace of the usual hideousness he felt after killing a person. In the early days, he would drive himself mad during his brief spells of clarity, imagining the families he took from. Over time, it dulled into an irritating chafe of his surviving conscience.
Flashes of a memory rained upon him like an autumn shower—sudden and sharp. They were out of order and undecipherable at first.
The terrible scream of an animal. Its hide, crimson with blood where its leg had got caught in a foothold trap. Rooke’s bare feet sprinting across the garden, his voice boyishly high as he called for his father. In the end, Rooke’s father had forced a gun into the boy’s hand and told him to shoot the deer, to put it out of its misery. Roared at him when he hesitated.
With shaky hands and tears clouding his vision, young Rooke took the shot. It was the fifth bullet that finally killed the animal.His father simply sighed, disappointment written all over his features as he snatched the gun from his hands and left him there.
Rooke had crumpled to the ground and vomited as soon as his father was gone, face to face with the horridness of death.
None of that came now. The blood he had spilled for Corabeth was beautiful. Crimson pearls tumbling in snow. Dying breaths like sighs of a lover. It wasn’t ugly at all.
It ached only when he thought about the end. Of course, he had imagined delaying it. Pictured the last Fabel in the dungeon under the manor, kept alive only as a means. But Corabeth wanted revenge, and she would have it. He would deliver it to her.
Then, there was the promise of peace. The idea that he would never again feel the ravaging hunger or lose himself to it filled him with such relief he wanted to weep. His sorry existence finally at an end.
Killing the last Fabel was as much about ending the curse as it was about setting Corabeth free. Rooke could bear the ache, knowing that Corabeth would stay behind to live out her days. Do all the things people were supposed to do—travel, experience delectable tastes, develop wrinkles from laughing too much, grow old. She would fall in love. Live.
Rooke squeezed his eyes shut and resisted the urge to wrap himself around Corabeth like a cocoon and keep her there. The twisted part of him wanted to possess her entirely.Mine, it hissed. But Rooke no longer listened to it. He had a new mistress.
Instead, he wrapped his arms around Corabeth in a tender embrace. She stirred enough to bury herself deeper as if attempting to crawl in between his ribs and make a nest in his chest. He would open himself up if she asked him to. Crack every rib from the sternum and smile while doing it.
The wind howled outside. Branches, brittle and barren from winter, tangled and snapped. Somewhere in the distance, the village of Gravebrook was in chaos. But here, in a manor shrouded by mist, two bodies lay in bed, and there was peace.
Twenty-seven
Corabeth
The shouts rising from the village after Turner’s disappearance echoed through the forest for days. Angry cries meant to mask the fear and panic they were really feeling. Someone was picking them off one by one.
For two weeks, no one walked alone. There were armed villagers on the main road at every hour of the day. And although Corabeth didn’t voice it, she was glad of it. Each day that the village was guarded and protected meant she could have another day with Rooke.
Eventually, the vigilance of the villagers dissolved. There were murmurs that perhaps Turner walked into the forest himself. That he went looking for his brother and got himself lost or killed by the Beast. They were safe inside their village, after all. Were they not?
Corabeth and Rooke stood amongst the mist, blending in with the shadowy contours of the barren, gnarled trees. Ahead of them in the village was a dark, wooden church, its measly cross-bearing tower rising towards the sky. Next to it, an unassuming single-story building. A school.
“You didn’t tell me he’s a child,” Rooke said, his voice low.
“Does it matter?” Corabeth replied.
Rooke remained silent. They both knew it didn’t make a difference. It couldn’t.
Corabeth looked up at Rooke. “We’ll need the help of your ravens.”
