All Chapters of HIS BEAST ANSWERED MY HEART: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter 12 Something was running behind me.I couldn't see it. The trees were too thick and the ground was too soft and every time I looked back there was nothing there but the dark catching up. My feet were bare. I could feel roots and wet leaves and something sharp that went into my heel and stayed.Then the trees stopped.The pit was in front of me. The clean stone floor, the iron railings, the crowd packed into three tiers like they'd been waiting the whole time, and every single face up there was turned toward me and none of them had eyes.Don't run, a woman's voice said. He only kills the ones that run.So I didn't run.I walked out onto that stone floor and my bare feet made a sound, and the floor was wet, and I looked down and the wet was red.I was standing in it. Up to the ankles.And then the thing in the shadow stood up, and this time it didn't charge. This time it walked. Slow. Easy. Like it already knew how this ended.I couldn't move.It got close. Close enough that I

Chapter 14 "Letter came for you," Doreen said, and dropped it on the breakfast tray like it was a dead bug.I stopped chewing."For me.""Your name's on it." She stood there with her hands on her hips. "Came up with the milk cart. Driver said a girl at the Silver Creek post office handed it to him personal and gave him a coin to bring it straight here."I picked it up.The envelope was cream-colored. Good paper. The kind that costs more than the postage.I knew the handwriting before I turned it over."Something wrong?" Doreen said."No.""You've gone white as a sheet.""I said no."She looked at me for a second, then went to the window and started pulling the curtains like she had business over there.I opened it.Ella,I know you hate me. I know you probably burned this before you read it. But I had to try.Dad's been drinking. He won't say what happened that night but he hasn't slept and he keeps asking if anybody's heard from you. Mom's ring is gone off the shelf and he noticed.

Chapter 16 I didn't go to the tower.I went to the store room.The dry store was off the kitchen, down three steps and through a door that was supposed to be locked and wasn't. Flour sacks stacked eight high against the wall. Barrels of salt. A ledger on a nail with a pencil on a string.I took the ledger down and opened it.D. Ash was on every Thursday for six months. Every Thursday, in pencil, in the same neat hand that was on the list Mrs. Crane had handed me.I knew that hand. I'd been looking at it all day.---Doreen was on the east stair at seven, carrying a basket of sheets."Hey," I said.She stopped. Shifted the basket to her hip."You're not supposed to be up here.""Neither are you. It's not Thursday."She looked at me."What?""The flour list. Thursdays. It's not Thursday and you're not on the kitchen roster today and you're carrying sheets up the east stair where the guard goes off for a smoke at midnight and comes back at twelve-twenty."She didn't move. Her face didn'

Chapter 18 "A rogue got past the guards," he said. "I handled it."It was the third time he'd said it, and this time he said it in front of four other men.We were in the small study and there was a map on the desk with pins in it. Two of the men were older, Councilmen, gray and stiff and wearing the kind of coat that costs more than a horse. One of them was the man with the clipboard. The fourth was the doctor."Forgive me, my King," the older Councilman said, "but three men is not a rogue. Three men is a plan.""Three men and a lot of blood in the road," Lucifer said. "That's one rogue and some very brave castle guards."I was standing by the window because nobody had told me to sit. I was supposed to be the maid. I was supposed to be invisible."When did it happen?" the Councilman asked."Eleven-forty. I caught the scent on the wall and went down myself.""Alone?""Alone."The Councilman looked at the doctor. The doctor looked at his shoes."And the woman?" the Councilman said."W

Chapter 20 We didn't make it to the kitchen.We made it as far as the bottom of the east stair before the front doors banged open and a guard came through them at a dead run, boots skidding on the stone."My King—""Not now.""My King, there's a car at the gate."Lucifer stopped. The jar was still in his hand."Whose car.""Calloway's."The whole hallway changed temperature."Beau Calloway," Lucifer said."Him and four men and his son. He says he's here about the fourteenth. He says he's got a vote on the Council and he'd like to hear your side of the rogue business before he casts it.""That's not how the Council works.""That's what he said, my King."Lucifer stood there with a jar of preserves in his hand and his jaw working.Then he looked at me."Go to the kitchen," he said. "Find Doreen. Ask her about the dusting and don't ask her anything else. Not with him in the house.""You're gonna let him in?""I'm gonna let him in, I'm gonna pour him a drink, and I'm gonna smile at him f