House of Hunger

by Alexis Henderson

It’s impossible not to take from you when you make yourselves so … prone.”

“We’re broken into submission, by grief and poverty, long before we ever set foot in this House.

A darkness yawned open before them, the esophagus of the House, spiraling down to its belly, where Marion—like the other girls who’d come before her—would be digested. Consumed.

“You mutinous little cunt,” said Lisavet, clutching her side, spitting blood with each word. But she was smiling, smiling wide like she was … proud of her.

Only one of them could leave that House. If this was to end, it had to be with Lisavet’s death.

Desire is a kind of madness. —CLEO, BLOODMAID OF THE HOUSE OF UMBER

“You know, Thiago was right. I did love you.” Lisavet’s disembodied voice moved like a wraith through the hothouse. “Perhaps I still do.”

“Take it,” she said in a blood-garbled whisper. “You’ve won.”

In the end there are only those who eat and those who bleed. —LISAVET, COUNTESS OF THE HOUSE OF HUNGER