Chapter 19
Nineteen
Rooke
Rooke haunted his own home, but there was no reprieve. Corabeth had permeated the manor. Had permeated him. She was in the walls, the floors, her presence everywhere. Her blood was a living thing inside him now—scalding, stirring.
There was a constant pull towards her. Rooke would be on the other side of the manor, busying himself with this or that, blink, and all at once find himself outside Corabeth’s door, listening to her steady breaths as she slept.
He allowed himself a single daydream that he often lost himself to. In this daydream, he holds Corabeth’s wrist to his lips. Imagines away the nightdress that separated them. Corabeth’s eyes are sure, inviting, not a trace of the fear he had seen after feeding on her.
A groan wanted to escape his chest, but he kept it in.
He didn’t remember all from the past centuries, even less from his life before the curse.
But he remembered this feeling now. It was accompanied by flashes of him at fifteen.
A pretty servant girl. Shy looks. The jolt of excitement when a look was returned.
The feeling was something tender, delicate, but brought with it an ugliness. His father’s steely eyes when he caught them. The girl’s back, whipped bloody. Eyes that never met his again.
Now, there was no father to punish them.
But this feeling, like everything else, was tainted by the curse.
Already, it twisted it, turned it into something grotesque, something to be ashamed of.
Rooke wanted to crawl out of his own skin to get away from it.
He would not let it taint Corabeth as well.
If he had been a stronger man, he would have stuffed her pockets with gold and sent her away. She could still have a life, live out her days in comfort. She needn’t be tied to his misery.
But her blood clawed at him from the inside. Like a bramble spreading through his veins, pushing its thorns into him. It clung to him just as much as Rooke clung to Corabeth.
Lost in thought, Rooke’s hands moved almost as if by themselves as he prepared a breakfast. Two slices of toasted bread—one with a fried egg, one with the raspberry preserve Corabeth loved so much. It was all she smelled of in the past weeks.
He set the plate on a tray next to the pot of freshly brewed chamomile tea. In the corner of the tray was a small vase with a single pale rose, long wilted.
Corabeth would need her strength to recover from the blood loss. She had fallen into a deep sleep after the feeding. Rooke knew because he had again listened behind her door, half-expecting to hear her weeping, so great had the shock on her face been afterwards.
Rooke carried the tray upstairs and into Corabeth’s room, where she still slept. He moved so silently, she did not even stir when he placed the tray on her bedside table. As he turned, his eyes snagged on the rose. Disgust reared in him, and he swiped it from the tray.
A pathetic attempt to show himself as something else. Look, it screamed, I am more than a monster who would feed on you. I care, and I nurse, and I protect.
Rooke told himself he would leave immediately, that he would not linger. But then his eyes caught on Corabeth’s peaceful face and her hair splayed on the sheets like black lightning against a white sky. There was no trace of the terror he had instilled in her.
All over again, the loathing rose. At himself, at his weakness. He never should have surrendered and allowed himself to drink from Corabeth. She was supposed to remain untouched by the curse. He would not allow it again. Even if it meant separating himself from her.
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.