Angel’s POV
I stopped pacing and stood in the middle of the room and looked at the window, where the sky had gone from black to the deep grey-blue of approaching dawn, the first sign of light pressing against the dark from sowhere beneath the horizon.
Nearly dawn.
Agnes had been gone a long ti.
I sat back down. Stood back up. Sat down.
She’s fine. But what if she’d found a way out? What if she was already beyond the gates, already on the road, already...
No. She wouldn’t leave without . I knew that. Agnes had spent the entire evening announcing her intention to protect . She would not leave behind.
Unless she couldn’t co back. Unless sothing had happened, unless she was lost sowhere, unless she had run into the wrong hands, unless...
I was already at the door before I had consciously decided to move.
I needed to see rrick. He will help find my sister. For so reason, rrick was the safest choice right now. Not Terrell.
rrick will understand better.
His room was empty.
The bed had clearly been slept in - the covers pushed back, the indentation still present - but the room was empty and cool.
I stood in the middle of it and turned around once, as though he might appear from a corner I had missed.
He didn’t.
I turned to leave.
"Did you sleep in here last night?"
I spun.
Terrell was in the doorway.
He stood there - in his familiar posture - leaning against the fra, with the expression of soone who has asked a question and is prepared to wait for the answer. His eyes moved over the room, over , with the assessnt that seed to be simply the way he occupied space.
"No," I said.
He looked at , like he was trying to decide if I was telling the truth.
"What are you doing in here then?" he said.
"Looking for rrick." I kept my voice even. "He isn’t here."
Terrell pushed off the doorfra and ca in, one slow look around the room taking in the pushed-back covers and everything, then stepped back out into the corridor.
"He’s around sowhere," he said.
He started walking.
I followed him.
I wasn’t entirely sure why. There was probably a sensible argunt for going back to my room and waiting, or for asking a guard, or for any number of things that did not involve walking the corridors of Black Wolf at dawn beside the man who was my husband and who I had not yet managed to look at directly for a while now.
But my mind was occupied - entirely, uselessly occupied - with Agnes, with the empty hours, with the grey light growing at the windows, and my feet were simply going where the most likely solution to the problem was going.
Terrell glanced back at at so point.
"You care that much about finding rrick?" he said. Not pointed. Curious, maybe. Or sothing that resembled it.
I nodded.
He looked at a mont longer.
Then he turned back to the corridor ahead and kept walking, and I kept pace beside him, and neither of us said anything, and sohow that was fine. Not easy, but fine.
We went down the stairs.
And that was when we heard it.
A banging.
A determined sound of soone communicating urgency through a surface.
I stopped.
Terrell stopped, and kept a focused expression.
Then;
"Kitchen," Terrell said, already moving.
I was right behind him.
The kitchen was dim and empty, the banging louder now, clearly coming from behind the storeroom door at the far end. Terrell crossed the kitchen in a few strides, grabbed the handle, and pulled.
The door swung open.
I looked inside.
I stared.
rrick was sitting on the storeroom floor with his back against a sack of sothing, his hair dishevelled and his robe - which had clearly started the evening as a fine garnt - now hosting a substantial quantity of white flour across one shoulder and down the left side. He had a piece of cured at in one hand and the expression of a man who had made peace with his circumstances out of pure necessity.
Agnes was standing three feet away from him, her arms crossed, her own hair and the front of her shirt dramatically dusted in flour.
They were both looking at the door.
They were both looking at Terrell.
They were both very, very white.
The silence lasted approximately three seconds.
Then I made a sound that started as a gasp and ended as sothing I could not have stopped if I had tried - a laugh. A full, loud laugh beyond my control.
Agnes turned the full force of her gaze on . "Don’t."
"I’m not..." I was absolutely. "Agnes, what..."
"The door locked," she said, with dignity. "From the outside. It was an accident."
"And the flour?"
A pause.
"That," said rrick, from the floor, in the voice of a man choosing his words carefully, "was a separate incident."
"He started it," Agnes said.
"I did not start..."
"You knocked it off the shelf..."
"I was reaching past you..."
"I told you to reach the other way..."
"There was nothing on the other way..."
"There was bread on the other way, I saw the bread..."
"That wasn’t bread, that was a..."
"It was bread," Agnes said, with the finality of soone closing a courtroom.
rrick looked at her.
Then he looked at Terrell.
"I ca down for food," rrick said, to his brother. Very clearly. "That is all I ca down for. I want that understood."
Terrell said nothing.
"Food," rrick repeated.
Terrell reached down and offered his brother a hand.
rrick took it. He stood, brushing flour from his robe with the attention of soone trying to recover sothing that was probably unrecoverable. A small cloud of white rose from the fabric and drifted peacefully in the morning light coming through the kitchen window.
I looked at my sister - flour in her hair, arms still crossed, chin still up.
"Don’t you dare," she said.
"I’m not," I said, and covered my mouth with both hands.
Agnes looked at the ceiling.
"I want breakfast, Angel. Please."
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