Chapter 16
Sixteen
Rooke
Rooke felt it again. The involuntary twitching in his muscles. The inability to focus. The painful twisting in his stomach.
Each day, he spent hours tracking animals in the forest. Every now and then, he would come across hoof prints—a sign that a deer had crossed through, but they never ventured deep into his woods anymore. His woods were all but dead.
The few mouthfuls of blood he got from a hare did barely anything at all. But it did appease the pain momentarily and buy him some precious time—time he could spend in Corabeth’s company without the dread he might hurt her.
A quiet crunching pricked Rooke’s ears, and his head whipped to the right. Through the mist, he could see a scrawny deer, barely grown, hungrily chewing on the bark of a tree.
Rooke’s head lowered, gaze forward, as he stalked closer to his prey. He moved with a deadly elegance—every step calculated, precise, and quiet. The deer was too close to the road to allow any mistakes. Eyes locked on the deer, he made no unnecessary motions. Breathing shallow, controlled.
Then, just before he was about to strike, the deer lifted its head, suddenly aware it was being watched. It made a leap forward just a fraction of a second before Rooke struck. Three more leaps and it was on the road, beyond the bounds of Rooke’s forest.
Rooke let out a frustrated growl as he watched it dart into the woods across the road, where it joined two more deer. They would have kept him fed for a whole month.
The sun was starting to rise, the night dissolving into day. Still, Rooke kept hunting despite knowing that nothing would venture into his woods in the daytime.
At last, desperation drove him back to his own manor, to the basement level where the dungeon with a single cell and several storage rooms sat. There, at least he knew he would find rats.
Shoulders sagged, head lowered, he stood in the middle of the floor. The rats basically ran to him, sensing no fear. They were almost eager to sacrifice themselves—filth drawn to filth.
One after the other, he tore open the rats, each of them containing barely a mouthful. The taste nearly had him hurling. But he would do this. For her, he would.
When he managed no more, the pile of rat corpses next to him was considerable.
The blood sat heavy in his stomach, threatening to roil up any moment, but Rooke steeled himself against it.
His cursed body was capable of great things.
He would not let himself be defeated by rat blood.
Not when it bought him at least another day.
Limbs heavy with exhaustion, Rooke dragged himself upstairs. The pale light of an overcast day slanted into the entrance hall, doing a poor job of fighting off the gloom of his manor. But he did not need light to know her.
Rooke had started to recognize Corabeth by her movements.
Her quiet steps, as if she were trying to remain unnoticed.
The wringing of her hands when she was nervous, the knuckles cracking so noiselessly a normal person would have missed it.
Her loose hair whispering against the fabric of her dress.
Even if there were a hundred other people there, he would have recognized her by her little sounds alone.
“Rooke!” Corabeth delighted, surprise washing over her features. He wondered if she herself had noticed how much she had changed. The brown of her eyes shone as if lit from within. The shadows underneath her eyes had retreated, and her cheeks were fuller. She was brimming with life.
“Corabeth,” Rooke said in greeting with a slight nod.
There was a pause. Corabeth shifted on her feet, tucking her hands behind her.
A slight crack. She was wringing her hands again.
Some words wanted to tumble out that she bit back, teeth sinking into her lower lip, which was a darker pink from the raspberry jam she had just eaten. Rooke could smell it on her breath.
“Are you well?” Rooke asked.
“Yes, very well,” Corabeth nodded. At last finding her courage, she continued, “I have been wondering… The house is so terribly big, and I’ve only seen a handful of rooms. That is… If it’s not too much, would you show me some more of it?”
Rooke almost smiled, feeling his exhaustion dissipate. She had grown curious. “Of course. What would you like to see?”
“Whatever you’re willing to show me,” she said with a shrug, peering up at him with her big, round eyes. “It’s just that… I don’t know much about you. And I can’t help but feel like the rooms would be like little glimpses into your life.”
Rooke’s breath almost caught in his throat. She had grown curious about him.
“This was your family home, correct?” she continued.
“Yes,” Rooke said with a nod and motioned for them to go up the stairs.
He was not prepared for this. He had not visited most of these rooms himself in many decades.
They were an unpleasant reminder of a life he would never get back.
But perhaps this was exactly what he needed.
Perhaps there he might find the remnants of his humanity that he could cling to.
Corabeth trailed behind him as he led them down the hall to the manor’s right wing. Until they came to a closed door that was no different from the others. Rooke prepared himself for just a moment before he pushed it open.
“This was my playroom,” Rooke said as he walked across the dust-covered floor.
One side of the room still had toys strewn across it—wooden blocks, a faded rocking horse, a roly-poly, a spinning top—as if a child just got up from playing with them.
He had played with them; he knew this, but they seemed strange to him now. As if someone else’s.
“And later, I was schooled here,” Rooke said, pointing to the other side of the room where a single desk and chair sat. On the wall before it was a chalkboard that still bore some faded markings from its last lesson.
Corabeth walked in, a small smile playing on her lips as she viewed the items, her skirt stirring up the dust. Her gaze jumped from toy to toy before it landed on Rooke.
“How come it’s all still here?” she asked.
Rooke strained to remember. It was strange, wasn’t it, to keep the toys when the only son was already a grownup?
“My mother,” he said, remembering, “She was hoping for another child. But my father considered her marital duties fulfilled when she gave him a son. She still hoped, though.”
Corabeth’s features turned somber. “What happened to her?”
This, Rooke did not need to strain to remember.
“Her husband had just died, and her son had turned into a monster. She took her own life, and I’m glad of it.
That way, I didn’t have to bear the guilt of tearing her apart as well.
The servants weren’t so lucky,” he said, watching Corabeth’s face for a reaction.
Her lips parted to draw in a silent breath before she clamped her mouth shut again and swallowed. But she did not look away.
Rooke derived some sick, unexplained pleasure from frightening Corabeth.
From baring these horrid parts of himself, half-expecting, half-fearing that he will go too far.
That one more ugliness, and Corabeth will finally leave.
What Rooke kept forgetting, so drowned in his own misery, was that Corabeth had seen her fair share of ugliness.
She did not offer words of sympathy, just as Rooke had not offered them to her. They both knew they made no difference.
“Was she nice?” she asked instead.
“Yes,” Rooke answered, an unexpected warmth spreading through him. He had not thought of his mother like this in so long. There was something in the familiar smell of these rooms that allowed the memories to come easier now.
“What was her name?” Corabeth continued, walking over to the desk. Her fingers ran over its dusty surface, leaving behind streaks.
“Evangeline.”
Corabeth smiled. “A beautiful name.”
Her feet carried her over to the celestial globe that sat before the window, one half of it bleached to the point that the lines were no longer visible.
“Did you travel?” Corabeth asked and spun the globe slowly.
“Yes,” Rooke said as he joined her. He stood so close to her he could feel her warmth reaching out towards him. The smell of her bittersweet bath oils and the tartness of the raspberries almost made him dizzy.
“Where? Show me,” she asked. Corabeth’s fingers walked across the surface of the world, spinning it according to her whims. Rooke could imagine himself succumbing to her wishes just as easily.
Rooke placed his hand on the globe, searching for the places he had traveled to. A semester abroad for college, some errand for his father, later, accompanying his father on his travels in preparation for taking over the estate. But time had erased those parts of the globe.
Rooke’s hand came to a rest atop the smooth surface, Corabeth’s right next to his. So close, their pinky fingers touched, but neither of them moved. They let the touch linger.
“They cannot be seen anymore,” Rooke said, the entirety of his being focused on that single point of contact. His own heart thumped so loudly in his ears that he could not separate it from Corabeth’s.
“A pity,” Corabeth sighed, and shattered the moment by pulling her hand away. She walked backwards towards the door. “Shall we keep going?”
Rooke took her from room to room, giving her little glimpses of himself just like she had asked for.
His childhood bedroom with a bed so small it would have left his legs dangling from his knees now.
The room on the corner with particularly good lighting where he had painting lessons.
The music room downstairs where he learned to play the piano, much to his own dismay, as it wasn’t something he was very gifted at.
“Satisfied?” Rooke asked, walking Corabeth back upstairs.
She hesitated for a moment. “What about after the curse? It’s been so long. What did you do… after?”
Rooke’s features hardened. There were still parts of himself he wished to keep hidden.
She did not need to know that at one point, the corpses became so many, he did not know what to do with them.
Or that below the manor was a room filled with his failed attempts to take up taxidermy, his experiments at playing God when he stitched up the body parts of different animals to create new creatures.
He was sure some of those creatures had human limbs or skin stretched over them.
He had all but forgotten the pleasantness of his life, and yet, there were stretches of time he did not wish to remember that lingered, sticking to him like tar.
They came to a stop on the landing.
“I would prefer,” he said, his hardened gaze glued to the floor, “if you knew the person I was before the curse.”
Corabeth simply nodded, not pressing further. “Thank you for showing me around,” she said.
Rooke watched the sway of her skirts as she retreated to her room. Fingers on the handle, she halted.
“Rooke?” she said, looking back at him.
“Yes?” Rooke asked.
“Just so you know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with who you are now,” Corabeth said. A beat more, and then she was gone.