Page 89 of Coal Hearts

None of this is right!

I swayed toward Peter, desperate to help him.

Henri muttered something and pulled me even faster.

The rest of the journey was a blur of stone as we marched down chilly corridors, heading deeper into the citadel.

I couldn’t stop tears streaming down my cheeks. Barely aware I cried. Panicking but numb. Hyperventilating but anaesthetised.

I stopped paying attention.

I dropped my stare to my bare legs and did my best to leave. To meditate my way out of this. To imagine a different existence—

“Fucking finally.” Henri shoved me into a musty, circular space. Letting me go as if my skin still electrified him, he raked both hands through his hair and paced the intimate library.

I tripped to a stop in the centre of the William Morris carpet. My brain latched onto something familiar. The heavily detailed pattern of swirling vines, acorns, and oak leaves. One of Morris’s popular carpet designs—no doubt stolen by Victor just like he’d stolen every inch of this castle from others.

I focused on the carpet.

I clung to that one shred of normality.

I willed it to be any other Sunday where I’d head out, armed with my National Trust pass, and visit any number of magnificent properties. I’d linger in dayrooms and marvel over armouries, only to find myself—like always—before cabinets full of fossils and antique jewelry, peering at precious stones and gems that begowned women used to wear.

Henri kept pacing like a caged beast, throwing a look at the open stone archway.

No doors.

Nothing to slam closed or grant us privacy.

Doing my best to ignore him and whatever internal battle he waged, I lifted my gaze and drank in the sky-soaring shelves. The skylight above held stained glass full of skewered flying horses and bleeding angels. White feathers stained with blood. Cream clouds dripping crimson.

Morbid.

Morose.

Beautiful.

My heart ached as I forced my eyes away from the slaughter of heaven, following the orderly rows of leather-bound texts, gold-gilded spines, and on and on toward more contemporary literature with bright colours and bold font.

There must be hundreds of thousands of books here.

A million tomes full of heartache, greed, and war.

Heavier tears rolled down my cheeks.

I didn’t know why this library made me so sad. Why standing in a room full of the written word and pages with the ability to whisk me away from this lifetime filled me with aching despair.

When I was a little girl, my favourite Walt Disney was Beauty and the Beast—not because Belle captured the heart of an enchanted monster, but because she was so smart. A bookworm in a village of simpletons. A woman hungry for knowledge, all while trapped in a town where doting on an oaf of a husband was her future.

I’d related to her because it seemed her life mirrored those of other women in history. All the manors and strongholds I’d visited had portraits of barely smiling women all subservient to their men. Sitting beneath them with a masculine hand planted on their fragile shoulders—a horde of children playing in their skirts all while the lord of the estate puffed on a pipe with importance.

They were nothing more than property.

Chattel.

A belonging with an expiration date.

My breathing turned shallow.