Mar 11
"There is a foul stench in the air," Pupils dilate. "You would do well to tell me its source." // From Iona to Arthur!
The room smells exhausted since he'd sacked the staff. Heavy curtains seal the stale air in and the light out, dead lavender sagging along the pillars, the ash in the hearth laid up in a soft gray drift where the fire had lived. Spilled brandy. Stale tobacco. The yellowing collars stacked carelessly at the foot of the wardrobe.
Rot. Or old blood, buried beneath the layers of unchanged bandages. Stiffened in places and darkened.
Arthur's gaze drifts away from his view of death toward the dark beams of the ceiling. "Three generations in this room," he tells it. "My father died here. His father before him."
