Chapter 9
Nine
Corabeth
“Please, dig in,” Rooke said, “I hope you excuse the simple meal. It’s been a long time since I’ve hosted.”
Corabeth hesitated for a moment. Then nodded and lifted the silver dome from the plate, revealing what she guessed was a piece of seared steak with oven-roasted potatoes and carrots. The scent had her mouth watering in moments.
The silverware scraped against the plate with a shrill screech that made her teeth clench as she cut into the meat. There were no sounds coming from the other side of the table. Corabeth could only feel the weight of his gaze.
“Are you not eating?” she asked when she had swallowed the first piece of the succulent steak.
“No, I’m still full from my previous meal,” Rooke replied.
A log snapped in two in the jaws of the fire.
Corabeth continued to eat in silence under Rooke’s scrutinizing gaze, but she managed barely half the portion, her stomach not used to large, rich meals. She dabbed her lips with the napkin, placed it on the table next to her, and reached for the wine instead.
The silence dragged on.
“So,” she said, finally growing weary of the tension, “Why are you doing this?”
“What exactly?” Rooke asked, his brow ticking upwards slightly.
“Keeping me here,” Corabeth specified.
An amused smile spread on Rooke’s pale face. “I’m not keeping you here. You’re free to leave whenever.”
“I suppose I expressed myself incorrectly. Why are you letting me stay here? You must have some intentions? You must want something?” she questioned.
Rooke peered at her curiously, tilting his head slightly.
“Is that your experience with people? They show kindness because they want something from you?” he asked, his tone genuinely curious.
Corabeth swallowed. “That would require people showing kindness at all.”
Rooke’s head tilted further, his brow furrowed, as if he was trying to solve some puzzle.
“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 are you?”
That last name was strangely familiar to her, though she couldn’t quite place it.
“Corabeth Arlay. What are 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.
“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.
“And are you 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.