Page 43 of The Witch's Heart
Dr. Livingstone frowns.
“She is, after all, my ward,” the man adds.
“We were just finishing up,” the doctor says grudgingly.
“Perfect.” The man beams. “I’ll escort her from here.”
Dr. Livingstone hesitates, and the man’s smile dims.
“Is there a problem, doctor?”
“No, Sir, I’m merely surprised you’ve already met. I wasn’t aware you participated in patient treatment.”
“Ah. Well, we all play our parts.”
Dr. Livingstone murmurs an agreement, and the man gestures for me to accompany him. “Shall we, Miss D’LeLune?”
Behind him, the spirits of the dead watch me with grim expressions. But there’s no refusing, and even attempting it will only result in pain.
As I walk past him to the door, the spirits bow their head in silent acceptance and then, as one, they vanish.
I feel a hollowness in my chest as they do, a cold loss as their collective pain washes over me.
My skin itches and my nerves feel raw being so close to Dr. Cutter as I follow him back to my prison. From this angle, I am finally afforded a view ofLe Rêve.
On the outside, the structure looks like nothing more than the ruins of a castle sitting atop a mountain surrounded by the ocean. The lower hospital must have been built within the mountain itself, a secret underground holding.
At the entrance, I hesitate, but even if I tried to resist, there’s nowhere to run. Nothing but a cliff’s edge and a fatal drop to a rocky beach. Resigned, I follow Dr. Cutter back inside my prison.
The moment we walk through the door and it locks shut behind us, the air becomes stifling, full of dust, death, and lost dreams.
I glance back longingly at the exit, wishing I could have had a few more minutes with Dr. Livingstone, a few more minutes under the stars with the smell of the ocean filling me.
Instead, I am escorted up yet another flight of drab stairs and down a series of halls I honestly can’t say if I saw five minutes ago or never.
The genius of this place is that every corridor looks exactly the same.
By the time we reach our destination, I’m past fear and well into irritation. This man—whoever he is—interrupted my only moment of freedom in days. Maybe weeks. Or even months.
Time is the real dream in this place of nightmares.
I don’t want to sit in his creepy office with his creepy snake and talk about my feelings. And I’m just about to snap and tell him so when I step through the door he’s opened.
But I stop short.
My eyes are wide as I take in the space.
The room, a library of sorts, is a combination of sterile and stately. Not a speck of dust mars the luxury that has been packed into this small space. Dr. Cutter waves me forward, and I step onto a plush rug laid over hardwood that gleams in the soft light. A fire crackles cheerily from a fireplace cut from stone in the center of the far wall, and the man gestures towards it.
“Please have a seat,” he says, pointing at the set of cushioned chairs positioned before the fireplace.
I sit stiffly, trying not to show how dreamy the warmth feels against my constantly chilled skin. Or the velvety softness of the cushions against my backside.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Corbin Cutter. I am the founder and CEO ofLe Rêve, a hospital for the supernaturally unwell.”
I roll my eyes. A hospital my ass.
