Page 70 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
In a flash, Adeline spotted Hughes’ neck, the one usually kept hidden by high, stiff collars.
It was slashed through.
Something scraped along the stone, and Adeline’s face snapped back to Dimitri. He was on all fours, arms elongating, great, monstrous talons spouting from his fingers. Spikes twisted out of his elbows, along his spine, his tail...
It was hard to tell what was louder; the snapping of his bones or the sound of his screams, the violent thrashing of his body against the stone.
It was unbearable. Agony to go through, agony to watch. The noise cleaved down to her bones, like someone had fashioned a weapon of his screams and smashed it against her ribcage.
His nose stretched, twisting into a long, hideous muzzle, and finally the spark in his single blue eye was dwarfed by red.
The screaming stopped, then. Because Dimitri was no longer there. Nothing but an animal remained, a snapping, snarling monster, lunging at the walls, some twisted, wolf-like fiend.
Dimitri.
Adeline slumped to the floor, his name quivering on her lips.
“Get her out of here!” Hughes hissed.
Adeline didn’t try to stop Thomas as he put an arm around her waist and half dragged, half carried her up the stairs, the howling reverberating through the stone. She could still hear an echo of it when she was safely installed back in her room, and Thomas was pressing a glass of whiskey into her hands. She didn’t remember him leaving. She didn’t remember getting here. She certainly didn’t give any thoughts as to how improper it was to have a man in her bedroom. Who cared? Who cared aboutanyof that?
“Drink,” Thomas instructed.
“Who does that?” she said numbly, eyes glazing over. “Who does that toanyone? Let alone a child—No one deserves that. No one. Especially not…” The tears sloshed against her glass.
Thomas was quiet as he gave her his handkerchief, but she barely felt it being pressed into her palm. She barely feltanything.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “I asked Minty about it, once. She said he didn’t do anything, that the curse wasn’t even meant for him—”
“Then who—”
“She wouldn’t say.” He lifted the glass to her lips. “Drink,” he reminded her.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I was, the first time I witnessed it.” He grabbed her vase, emptying out the flowers, and swapped it out for the wine glass. Adeline heaved, but nothing came up. There was nothing in her.
She took back the whiskey. “How can… how can anyone stand to watch that...”
“Well, most don’t,” said Thomas, sighing. “Why do you think there’s so few staff? Most leave. And the rest of us…”
“What?”
“We have to be careful not to like him too much.”
Adeline froze all over again, trying to imagine what that was like, the frostiness of it, the isolation, the pain. It was too much. It was all too much.
She sobbed into her handkerchief.
“Can I get you something else?” Thomas asked as she pushed the empty glass aside. “Orsomeoneelse, maybe? One of the other maids, perhaps? A family member?”
But there was no one, no one she would call to witness her like this. No one she wanted to see her in such a state. Ironically, the only person she could imagine herself going to was currently locked in a dungeon, trapped in some frightful, twisted form.
“I’ll… I’ll be all right,” she told Thomas. “I think I just need to… to lie down…”
Her head felt heavy, already drifting towards the pillow. This wasn’t sleep, this was something else.
There was a pressure at her ankles; Thomas was removing her boots. A few moments later, she felt a blanket drape over her, and a few seconds after that, he was gone.
