Chapter 29 Corabeth
Twenty-nine
Corabeth
Corabeth’s fingers found Rooke’s cloak, and she let him guide her one final time. Ahead of them, Hyram walked in silent resignation.
The familiar contours of the mansion rose from the fog, almost black against the dawn light. Although Corabeth no longer saw the spires as claws or the windows as hollow eyes. Instead, she saw the rooms where she had been reborn, where she and Rooke had nursed each other back to life.
Rooke gave Hyram one final shove, sending him several steps forward, and under a gnarled tree, they came to a stop. Hyram turned to face them then.
“Is he safe?” he asked, throat bobbing. Much like Turner, there was a silent rage bubbling under the surface there, but Hyram was much better at controlling it.
“Your sons are dead,” Rooke informed him with no particular emotion. Corabeth guessed he had to distance himself from the situation as much as she did.
Hyram’s face twisted in anger. “You bastard!” he cried, launching himself at Rooke, who stood taller and broader than him. He was no match for the Shadowbeast. Rooke simply caught his arms, twisted inhumanly fast, and pinned them behind the older man’s back.
“Are you enjoying your little revenge?” Hyram roared, spit flying as he raged. He tried to fling himself at Corabeth, but Rooke held him in place.
“This isn’t about revenge. At least, not only about that,” Corabeth said. Her voice was almost clinical as she spoke. “What do you know about the curse?”
Hyram finally stopped struggling, his chest heaving heavily. “The Beast is the curse upon our village!”
“Wrong,” Corabeth immediately interjected. “So eager to take on the role of the victim. It’s he who bears the curse,” she said, making eye contact with Rooke for a brief moment. “And it’s your bloodline that inflicted it.”
Genuine confusion spread across Hyram’s features. For a moment, he even stopped straining against Rooke’s hold.
“Your bloodline will end with you and so will the curse,” Corabeth said. She looked at Rooke then in a desperate attempt to memorize his features. She knew that the end of the curse was just a snap of the neck away.
They had already said their goodbyes before going to the village. They’d kissed each other’s hands and eyes and lips, tasting the salt from their tears. Whispered their farewells, and what could not be expressed with words was felt in the embrace as they clung to each other for a small eternity.
Hyram lowered his head, and his shoulders started shaking. Silently. But only at first. The sound that started trickling from him wasn’t crying or pleading.
He was laughing.
It was so eerie, so unexpected, that Corabeth resisted the urge to take a step back.
“You’re ending my bloodline?” Hyram asked and lifted his head. The grin on his face was savage, his eyes bloodshot.
“Yes,” Corabeth said and shifted uncomfortably. “To end the curse.”
Another roar of laughter came from Hyram, although there was no humor in it. The tears that spilled down his face added to the strange sight.
“Well, then, dear Corabeth. You will have to end your own life along with mine,” Hyram said, savoring the moment the words landed.
Corabeth did take a step back then. “What?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“Your mother never told you?” Hyram asked in a mocking tone.
Corabeth shook her head, barely finding the energy for the movements. Her hand lifted to her stomach as she struggled to catch a breath. Her dress suddenly felt like a cage around her.
“Corabeth,” Rooke called, and when she met his eyes, she saw something there she’d never seen before—panic.
She shook her head sharply and refocused her rage on Hyram.
“You’re lying!” she accused him.
“I wish I were,” Hyram spat, jerking towards Corabeth, “No one would wish for a daughter like you.”
Corabeth gasped as something fell into place in her mind. “That’s why you were so outraged that night. You found your sons assaulting their own sister!” she cried, unable to hold back the tears that spilled down her cheeks. She hated that he saw the way he had finally managed to break her.
Hyram glowered at her, hate burning in his eyes. “Your mother…”
“No!” Corabeth screamed. “Shut him up!”
She could not let him finish. Could not bear to hear of another way her mother had suffered. Whether Hyram had seduced her or taken her by force—she did not wish to know.
Rooke took Hyram’s head and slammed it against the rough bark of the tree. Once, twice, three times, before he fell unconscious. He let him slump to the ground, and in a matter of seconds, he was before Corabeth.
“I’m a part of it,” she cried, looking up into Rooke’s eyes. “I’m a part of your curse.”
Rooke, ever steadfast and sure, was frantic as he searched her face. His hands landed on either side of her face in an attempt to steady them both.
“It will be alright,” Rooke said, but there was no conviction in his voice. Only foolish hope.
Already, Hyram was starting to stir. But Corabeth—Corabeth couldn’t breathe. Her vision was starting to swim.
“Look at me,” Rooke said, pulling her attention back to him. “Don’t fall apart now.”
A command.
A command was good. Something to follow. Something to cling to.
Corabeth forced her breaths to slow.
“You kill him,” she said with determination. “If he’s lying, we’ll know, and all of this will be over. You’ll be free. If he’s telling the truth…”
Rooke hesitated. But this was how it was supposed to play out anyway. Hyram was supposed to die. The curse was supposed to be lifted.
Rooke’s eyes were those of an animal that had accepted its fate in the jaws of a predator. And fate was the cruelest predator of them all.
He pressed one last kiss on Corabeth’s lips.
A bitter goodbye.
Hyram groaned behind him, but that was the last sound he would ever make. Rooke stepped up, took his head between his hands, and twisted with such ferocity that when Hyram’s body fell to the ground, his features faced backwards. He deserved no last words, no grandiose death.
For a moment, everything went still.
The mists lingered. The manor stood silent. Rooke remained.
The worst kind of confirmation that Hyram had been telling the truth.
Corabeth stood, numb to it all. Rooke’s chest heaved as he towered over Hyram’s body. Like perhaps there was a possibility that he was not dead enough.
She walked over to Rooke and took his hand. “Come,” she said, pulling him towards the manor.
“No!” Rooke cried out, raging against the stars, eyes on the unmoving Hyram. Like he could still somehow bargain with him.
Corabeth pressed her warm lips against the back of Rooke’s hand, and at this, he finally looked at her. Tears streaked his face as his wild eyes searched hers, and then dimmed. He relented, allowing Corabeth to pull him through the quiet garden.
Not even a raven called.
When they came upon the wide snow-covered stone staircase that led to the house, Corabeth simply slumped, sitting on the steps. Her hand slipped from Rooke’s grasp as he remained standing, still refusing to bend to the fates.
“I’m the last remaining Fabel,” she said, feeling detached from it all. “The plan doesn’t change. You kill me. You end this.”
“No!” Rooke argued once more. He fell to his knees before Corabeth, taking her hands into his. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his forehead against hers.
“One last strike, my weapon,” Corabeth whispered, “Then—no more.”
Hot tears tumbled down her cheeks, their trails cooling quickly in the bitter cold.
"I came here to die, after all," she said and almost laughed. On that night, she had begged for death. Now, when all she wanted was to live alongside Rooke, she would get it.
“I will not kill you,” Rooke answered, shaking his head.
“If you can’t do it, I’ll do it myself,” she said, but Rooke’s grip on her hands only tightened.
“No, Corabeth, we stay,” Rooke said and opened his eyes. “For each other, we stay.”
Corabeth pulled back slightly, brows furrowed. “I can’t ask that of you. I won’t.”
“You’re not. I’m asking you. For the first time in an age, I have something to live for, and I will not give it up.
I love you, Corabeth, with the entirety of my cursed soul.
With such fierceness, it has already carved your name into my bones.
Without you, I will not find peace even in death,” Rooke said, any signs of doubt evaporating.
A million emotions swam in his eyes, but hesitation was not one of them.
“But you suffer,” Corabeth said, her voice breaking. She lifted a hand to Rooke’s cheek and cupped it gently, drying his tears with her thumb.
“Not when I’m with you,” he said and leaned into her touch. “Never with you.”
For a long while, neither of them spoke.
They simply stared into each other’s eyes.
Corabeth hoped, feared, that Rooke might take it all back.
For him, she hoped. For herself, she feared.
He deserved to be free of this curse, to finally rest, but she did not want to die.
Not when they’d barely had a taste of their happiness.
“You want to stay like this?” she finally asked. “Truly?”
“Yes,” Rooke replied, barely letting her finish.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Corabeth,” Rooke assured. “If anything, it is I who would be asking too much of you. I cannot leave here. We’d have to stay.”
Corabeth sniffled as light laughter bubbled out of her despite everything. “Oh no,” she said, words dripping with sarcasm, “Life in a mansion. However will I cope with that?”
Rooke grinned through his own tears. “Others cannot find this place. You will be cut off from the rest of the world.”
“If you’re trying to give me reasons to leave,” Corabeth said, “you’re doing a terrible job. I tried living in the outside world. Look how that turned out.”
Now, Rooke’s smile dimmed. “You wouldn’t be able to have children. The Fabel bloodline cannot continue.”
But even at this, Corabeth wasn’t deterred. “I never liked children anyway,” she said with a shrug and scrunched her nose.
Rooke took her hands and kissed them over and over again, each brush of his lips like a seal on their fate, each one dampening Corabeth’s trepidation, each one feeding the bud of emotion that had sprouted in her own chest.
“I love you too,” Corabeth said, unable to stop the ghost of a smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth, though her eyes were still wet with unshed tears.
“Then we stay,” Rooke said finally.
And for each other, they did.