MHHC Chapter 137

Kook

The moment she confirmed it was Valentin, a strange relief washed through her like a tide going out.

A vague hope—that they would all be alright now—resonated quietly through her chest.

When had he arrived? Was he hurt anywhere? From what point had he been watching?... She had so many questions, but she couldn't move so much as a single finger. Perhaps because the tension had finally, completely released.

"Rest a little. Leave the rest to me."

Adelheid reached out and placed her hand against Valentin's gaunt cheek.

The thought that she must comfort him seized her with sudden force. And yet he was not crying at all.

Valentin buried his face in that slender hand. His long, slow exhale was the last thing she remembered.

'Not a scrap of use to anyone.'

Her father's voice.

Adelheid jerked upright as though she had been struck with a whip.

The Count despised hesitation. If she moved even slightly too slowly, the torrent of abuse would follow without fail—idle, worthless, sluggish. And yesterday... she had failed even to sense the sacred power within herself.

'What I had to do, just to bring something like you into the world...'

He caught himself and snapped his mouth shut, as though it had been merely a slip of heat, a careless outburst.

Adelheid held her neck and spine rigid and received the Count's cold, flat stare. At last he exhaled something that might have been a sigh and threw a short-bladed knife at her feet.

'Try once more. Don't disappoint me again.'

She was trembling as she picked up the blade he had thrown. When she rolled back the sleeve of her left arm, the ruined skin was revealed—dried blood crusted over and peeling, flesh ragged and raw beneath.

Adelheid breathed deeply, and drew the blade down across her arm. Mercifully, it appeared to have been deep enough on the first attempt.

Because the sound of a drop of blood falling to the stone floor—drip—rang enormously in her ears.

'Don't be dramatic!'

Adelheid swallowed her gasping breaths and her groans as she pressed her hand over the wound.

She prayed desperately to feel power surging from her body the way it surged from Charlotte's.

She prayed that some magnificent magic would answer as the Count wished—that it would come and cleanse this body mottled and smeared with wounds, make it whole and clean.

But no matter how desperately she pleaded, it seemed God had no intention of answering her prayer today, as on every day before this one.

Perhaps His silence had been His answer, arranged from the very beginning.

'...I thought this time would be different.'

The disappointment threading through the Count's voice sent her heart plummeting.

Adelheid dropped to her knees in haste and reached toward him in supplication. She managed, barely, to pull her twisting lips back into some semblance of composure.

'Again—I'll try again. This time... I can do it.'

'What a waste. The time and money spent educating something like you. Don't smile at me. The very sight of you disgusts me.'

She bowed her head at once, her heart hammering beneath the sharp, relentless edges of his contempt.

Shielding herself from that condemning gaze, from his reproach—it had never been easy. Not once.

All the more so when she had been trained from her earliest years to believe, with every repetition, that she must become useful. That worth was the only currency she possessed.

Adelheid threw herself at his feet. 'I'll do better. I can do better. This time will be different. I won't disappoint you..'

"...Your Grace? Your Grace!"

Adelheid surfaced through the hands shaking her awake and gathered herself with a slow, sluggish effort.

She tried to rise immediately and sank back onto the bed with a groan.

Her entire body was cold—as though she had been pulled half-drowned from icy water—and her arms and legs had no strength in them at all.

Someone had walked over her, thoroughly. Every inch of her skin ached the way it ached in the worst kind of fever.

Lena wrapped a thick blanket around her and helped her sit up.

"You mustn't move about so suddenly as that. You were unconscious for two full days."

"Where is...?"

Adelheid moistened her dry lips with her tongue and looked around with uneasy eyes.

The dimly lit room was old and dilapidated. Had she been locked in a cellar? Until a moment ago—until her last memory—she had been in Reichenau Castle.

She reflexively clutched the blanket. Lena took both of her hands in a firm grip, her face tight with worry.

"It seems you drew far too much healing power at once. This is Nassau Castle. Everyone arrived safely, thanks to Your Grace."

Nassau Castle. The wounded soldiers. Adelheid slowly drew herself free from the old nightmare and pulled her memories back into order.

"Everyone? Then the wounded—"

"Don't worry about them anymore."

"But—"

"If you want to hear anything more from me, you'll need to empty this soup first. After that, I'll answer anything you ask, and I'll call His Grace for you as well."

Lena spoke with firm finality and transferred the tray from the side table onto Adelheid's lap.

Soup, warmth rising from it in gentle curls of steam. Bread spread lightly with jam. A glass of wine.

Even yesterday she had been desperate for warm food. Now she had no appetite at all.

Adelheid stirred the soup several times with a spoon, then set it back down and asked, "Is Valentin safe? And... is he very angry with me?"

"Mm. Mm."

Lena made a short warning sound and shook her head firmly from side to side.

A clear signal: not a word until the soup was empty, just as she had promised. When she was being this stubborn, there was nothing to be done.

Adelheid's throat was rough and the food did not go down easily at first, but once she started eating, her appetite caught.

For some time she focused on tearing bread into the savory soup and drinking the wine.

She had nearly set down the spoon after emptying the last mouthful when a strange sound reached her ears.

Uhaa... ahuaaa...

A screaming sound, as though echoing from somewhere very far away.

Faint enough to be mistaken for fierce wind boring through stone walls—but unmistakably the sound a human being made.

Adelheid startled and looked up. Lena, who had been straightening the bedding, opened her eyes wide.

"What is it?"

"I must have heard wrong. For no reason—I thought I heard something like a scream..."

"A scream?"

At that moment, the exact same sound came again.

Lena tilted her head and listened, then struck one open palm with her closed fist as though she had recognized something.

"Ah. That—it's that. Yesterday, while searching, they caught a madman wandering near the castle."

"A madman?"

"At first they nearly killed him, thinking he was a monster, but apparently he's human—speaks perfectly well, even if the words are all nonsense. Very old. An ancient old man. Since the monster subjugation is about to begin in earnest, they couldn't simply drive him away, so they put him in the dungeon."

Lena worked a finger into her ear with a grimace of distaste.

"Since the moment they locked him in, he's been making that racket at all hours, demanding to be released. Some of the higher-ups seem to be thinking about finding some use for him, though."

"But you said he was mad. How would they use him?"

"He claimed to have once worked at Nassau Castle. Which is quite a laugh. Thirty years ago, at that."

A madman who had once worked at Nassau Castle. It was a combination that felt as though she had heard it somewhere before.

Not so long ago—or not so long ago if one counted only in time. Adelheid was held by a peculiar premonition as she asked, "Someone who... worked at Nassau Castle? What did they say his name was?"

"What was it now. Koshatt? Koett?"

Lena tilted her head and tried over several sounds beneath her breath, reaching back for it. At last she raised her head with a sharp jerk.

"Ah. That's right. Kook! That was the name."

"...Your Grace. I don't think this is a good idea."

Lena, having passed a coin-filled purse to the guard, muttered darkly as she hurried to keep pace behind Adelheid.

They stood before the dark, steep staircase that descended into the dungeon. The wailing that had made the spine crawl was growing sharper with every step—and with that clarity, all the more ominous.

Adelheid clasped her hands tightly together and shook her head.

"But there's no other way. You may wait here, Lena."

"Take a maidservant, at least."

The guard who had pocketed the coin handed Lena the torch and offered his blunt counsel.

"There are no soldiers posted down there. They all despise the old man. Are you truly... certain you'll be all right alone?"

Lena looked back and forth between the dark staircase below and Adelheid with conflicted eyes, then gave a decisive nod as though she had made up her mind.

"I'll follow you as far as the bottom of the stairs."

Adelheid gripped the rope fixed to the wall and made her careful way down, step by step. When at last she reached the floor of the underground passage, Lena caught her arm with a final urgent appeal.

"Go carefully. If anything happens, cry out."

"I will."

Adelheid took the torch from Lena and walked cautiously in the direction from which a human presence could be sensed.

The underground passage was dark and damp. The sound of water falling, drop by drop, echoed at intervals in the stillness.

Mercifully, the screaming that had been raising the hairs on the back of her neck had quieted just moments before.

Adelheid stopped before one iron-barred door, from behind which the sound of a wet, rattling cough repeated itself.

Even with the torch held close, in such deep darkness, nothing could be seen clearly.

From beyond those dim bars came only a sound like phlegm churning in a chest—the low, wounded grumble of an injured animal, enduring.

"Kook?"

When she called the name with care, the sound cut off abruptly.

Adelheid had leaned closer to the bars, trying to see better, when a pale hand shot suddenly out of the darkness. She lurched back with a sharp breath.

The old man's skeletal fingers clamped around the iron, and then a face followed out of the shadow.

The old, deeply lined face was twisted even in repose, as though years of suffering had carved that expression into the bone itself. Both eyes were milky and faded, the color of something that had lost its sight long ago.

"Who's there? Who has called for this Kook?"

And yet he clearly perceived the light; his filthy eyelids twitched and flickered toward it.

He blinked several times. Then his eyes went suddenly wide—sharp with a recognition that had no right to be there.

"...Lady Laura?"