Chapter 9 Abandon All Hope
Daphne
Abandon all hope
Crossing my arms over my chest, I stepped into the hall.
Refectory, the grimy black letters above the door announced. My stomach twisted and growled. The last thing I had eaten was a watery broth at home before sneaking out through my bedroom window.
The air was thick, smelling of boiled cabbage, damp stone, and something sour that curdled in the back of my throat. I stepped into a vast, cavernous hall, its walls streaked with soot and damp as if the very bones of the building were rotting from within.
Rows of long wooden tables stretched from end to end, scarred and warped by years of careless use, their surfaces etched with deep gouges and scratches—marks of restless hands, of cutlery scraping against splintering wood, of unseen frustrations carved into the grain.
High, narrow windows let in only the palest excuse for daylight, their glass stained with grime, turning the outside world into a sickly haze of gray. A single gas lantern hung overhead, casting shadows that made the hunched figures seated at the tables look like wraiths.
The patients—silent, hollow-eyed men and women wrapped in colorless nightgowns—ate in slow, mechanical movements, their gazes empty, their hands lifting spoons with weary obedience. The room did not hum with conversation. Only silence, punctuated by the dull scrape of metal against wood.
A thin, greasy broth sloshed in wooden bowls before them, accompanied by crusts of blackened bread that looked hard enough to chip a tooth.
The nurses, standing in stiff-backed vigilance along the walls, clutched canes with casual authority.
I recognized one of them—she had helped Becky after I stabbed her.
Her gaze flickered over me, her lips curling slightly as if already imagining how she’d break me.
A bowl was shoved into my hands, the heat barely seeping through my freezing fingers. My stomach clenched in protest—not with hunger, but with dread.
This wasn’t a dining hall.
This was a feeding trough.
Would I end up like them? Bent over a bowl, a vacant shell, my spirit crushed beneath endless days of cold baths, beatings, and torment? How long until they destroyed me?
A brittle sound cracked through the quiet. I turned my head in time to see a frail old woman drop her spoon onto the stone floor. It clattered, far too loud in the oppressive silence.
A nurse stepped forward, boots clicking.
When the screaming started, the room did not stir. Did not breathe.
I lifted my bowl and forced the lukewarm, oily broth past my lips.
To keep my name, to remain Daphne, I needed all my strength. And if it meant eating this slop, I’d do it.
A tall, middle-aged woman strolled in, talking to Alice. They giggled. It surprised me that the nurse was capable of such warmth.
“Be careful with that dark-eyed boy, Alice!” the tall woman said, slipping something into the pocket of her surprisingly clean dress.
“You bet I will,” Alice said, handing her a bowl.
The thick scent reached me. Whatever she was eating, it was not the watery broth that stood before me.
The dark eyes of the woman wandered the hall and landed on me, flashing briefly with curiosity. I quickly looked down at the murky water in the wooden bowl, pretending to be interested in the oily spots floating on the surface.
“Was it your brother?” she asked, and I froze. “The one who locked you up here?”
I looked up at her. Dark hair with silver strands, cut short but not unkempt. Warm bronze skin, intelligent eyes framed by long dark lashes. She was a patient but didn’t look like the wandering corpses in this purgatory.
I fished out a piece of carrot with the bent spoon.
“Old bruises on your arms, delicate hands that never worked a day, the way you hold that spoon like a duchess. You’re not like the rest of us.”
I immediately slouched.
“The nurses hate you, as you’re putting up a fight. You’re not like those broken people around. So, was it your brother? Your husband? A powerful man you crossed?”
I pretended to be busy with my dinner.
“It was my husband who locked me up here. I married above my... station. A lord marrying a gypsy—can you imagine the scandal?” She cackled, and for a moment, she did sound mad.
“Sent me here because I couldn’t turn a blind eye to the young doll he bought a house for and fathered a child with. Fancy a reading?” She put a worn-out tarot deck on the table.
I kept my face impassive, all my attention on the broth. Was this some trick by the nurses?
“Why would you do that? I have nothing to trade with,” I said, putting the spoon into the bowl and flushing the foul taste down with some water. It only made it worse.
She shrugged, setting the cards in even lines on the table.
“Let’s say I’d do it for free. We have to kill the time here somehow. Also, I’m dying to hear some news from the world beyond these walls.”
“Well, it’s not for free then.”
Someone behind me started screaming. I resisted the urge to press my hands to my ears.
Her dark eyes flashed with something wild, untamed.
“Nothing is free here, darling. How do you think I get decent food and clean clothes around here? And warm bath water, hmm?”
I leaned forward. “You’re reading for the nurses?” I whispered.
She nodded. “It’s their game, girl. Their rules. All we can do is adapt and take advantage.”
I tapped my fingers on the stained, sticky wood. So, they were not driven by pure malevolence. Perhaps I could bargain with them. But what could I offer that might be of interest?
“Pick a card, darling,” the woman urged me.
“My name is—”
“Shhh. Names don’t matter here. Pick a card.”
Alice was watching us from the door. Maybe getting along with the nurses’ favorite could give me some privilege, too.
I shrugged and pulled a card.
A cloaked figure stood by a river, five chalices at their feet.
Looking over my shoulder, I handed it to the woman.
A movement caught the side of my eye.
A young man pushed himself up from the rough bench, tipping over his bowl. He started pacing behind us, wringing his hands. The skin on his temples was blackened and covered in blisters, oozing blood and some clear liquid.
My heart sank.
He looked so young despite his powerful frame, and there was no madness in his eyes—just raw pain and despair.
“The Five of Cups. Your past is full of loss and sadness. You lost someone dear to you—in a river? The grief still stains your heart, darling. Don’t let it eat you up,” she said, putting the card aside.
How could she know this? Reminding myself that this was a game I played to get on the good side of the nurses, I looked around.
“Who is he?” I asked, following the frantic pacing of the young man with a tight chest. I was sure the nurses would punish him for that.
“Someone who stood up against his father and rejected an arranged marriage. His father sent him here to be ‘fixed’—as he prefers the company of gentlemen. You cannot help him, darling. Pick your next card.”
I stared at her, wondering if I’d become so calloused if I stayed here long enough.
When the next card was turned, I felt it before she even saw it.
A deep, twisting dread in my gut.
The Hanged Man dangled upside down, bound by one ankle, his arms limp at his sides. His face was serene, unbothered by his own entrapment as if he had accepted his suffering as something inevitable. Waiting. Enduring. Caught between past and future, neither alive nor dead.
Like me.
The older woman exhaled through her teeth, a long, rattling sound.
“Ah! You are trapped, aren’t you?”
My mouth was dry. I should scoff, dismiss it, but something in me refused to move, refused to deny the truth of what lay before her.
I clenched my fists.
“How do I escape?”
The woman’s fingers hovered over the last card.
“Escape? There is no escape, darling. Adapting is your only chance for survival. Befriend the nurses. Do as you’re told.”
The patients had finished their meager dinner and were wandering around like lost souls.
The young man was still murmuring, clenching his fists.
“Or do you think you can just declare yourself healed and walk back to your life of ball gowns and music tutors? That you’d find someone to choose you after—” she gestured around, “all this? Now, pick your next card.”
Hopelessness crushed into me like a tidal wave.
With shaking fingers, I reached for the card that would show my future.
And I laughed loud and bitterly as it was Death.
“What do you say about my future, eh?” I asked. The laugh caught in my throat.
But the woman didn’t answer. Like everyone in the refectory, she was looking at the door.
“And there he is, our very own angel of death,” she muttered through clenched teeth. She slouched and quickly collected her cards.
I glanced up. It was the stranger I had seen arriving earlier who strode into the refectory, followed by Vexley. Vexley stood a little straighter, smoothing his coat with trembling fingers.
The gas lantern light made the visitor’s hair and the buttons of his cutaway coat shimmer like molten gold.
That close, the visitor looked impossibly attractive.
The tarot reader’s grip tightened on my wrist.
“Don’t stare.” Her voice had lost its edge, gone quiet with fear. “Whoever leaves with him never returns.”
Too late.
Like a bird, mesmerized by the snake, I glanced at the haughty curl of his lips, at the straight line of his nose and quickly looked away.
The angel of death, she had called him.
As if to make his moniker justice, he moved along the patients with the lethal elegance of a predator.
The hush fell over the room like a noose tightening.
I knew he had seen me.
The soft clicking of his boots on the stained tiles approached me, and I caught his scent—of midnight boat rides and incense, of museum artifacts and sea breeze.
Chills ran down my spine when two gloved fingers traced my jawline and forced me to look up.
His eyes were blue, but not the dreamy blue of lazy summer afternoons.
They were cold and traitorous, like arctic waters.
They held my gaze, pulling my soul in like some cursed vortex.
Coldness thinned the air between us.
“This one will do nicely. I’ll take her,” he declared in a tone not used to objections.
Did he mean—
Dr. Vexley shook his head.
“A woman? Are you sure about that? I’ve been preparing Jeremiah for weeks!” He gestured at the young man with the bleeding wounds.
“I’m absolutely sure, Vexley. We’ll do it tonight,” the blond stranger said.
His fingers closed around his cane, its handle made of ivory.
A high-pitched whine filled my head, like the scraping of claws against metal.
I recognized the symbol carved into the ivory handle.
That dark Ouroboros, the serpent, biting its tail.
“Very well then. Alice, get her ready!” Vexley ordered. The room spun around me.