Page 17 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
“I don’t… I don’t enjoyanyof it. I eat until I’m full and then I don’t see the point.”
Adeline remembered feeling that, more than once in her life, when more than food had lost its flavour.
“Read to me,” he asked, and despite the words, his tone was soft.
She went to his bedside, to the small stack beside it. “As you command.”
“You don’t… you don’t have to.”
“It is my job.”
She cracked open the book they had been working through before the incident. He’d read a few more chapters in her absence, by the look of the ribbon. It couldn’t have been much fun, these past few days alone in his room. At least she had the company of the others in the morning and evening.
But he’d done it to himself. He didn’t have to sit in the dark. He didn’t have to be alone.
She tried to dispel her mood with her reading, but she wasn’t sure it worked. She couldn’t quite summon the energy of the first time, the words stopping somewhere between her eyes and her mouth. She felt more like a parrot than a reader.
She struggled through two chapters before she noticed his eyes had glazed over, unfollowing, like they had before when he’d lost his temper. But this time… this time she’d said nothing at all. She was reading. He couldn’t possibly be angry at her.
Then she noticed something else, something behind the tension in his jaw, the droop of his eyes, like a woman disguising the signs of an early contraction.
Pain.
She stopped reading. “Young Lord—” she said, going towards him.
He jerked out of the way, yanking the bell on the wall.
“Get away from me!”
He held up his good hand, grabbing the other the moment she stumbled away from him and slamming his shoulder against the wall. It groaned under the pressure. Dimitri snarled, his monstrous arm seeming to pulsate, its muscles tightening. He crashed his fist down on the dresser, and a chunk of it dropped clean away, exploding in a flurry of splinters.
Adeline flinched, staring at the shredded wood like one might stare at wounded flesh. A human should not be able to do that.
Dimitri dropped to the floor, snarling, panting. A moment, a few minutes ticked by, Adeline’s nerves knitting back to their former shape.
“Are you... are you all right?” she asked, breathing carefully.
“Leave.”
“But—”
“Go!”
The door opened. Mrs Minton marched in, together with Thomas. Another servant lurked in the background, but Adie couldn’t remember his name. Mrs Minton took one look at the dresser and sighed. She clicked at the men. “Remove the furniture,” she told them, before turning her attention to Adeline. “Are you hurt at all?”
“Me? I’m fine.”
“Do you need a moment?”
“No, but the Young Lord—"
Dimitri had remained silent on the floor all this time.
Mrs Minton hovered over him, steel gaze wavering. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Very well. I shall depart.”
