Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
I project myself inside that space. I think of my father, about seeing him again. I think of reaching out for him, grabbing him and pulling him into a hug. Of long nights spent by the fire, him reading from a book to me, feeling so much love.
But try as I might, he doesn’t materialize.
So then I try to think about Brom. I don’t know if Brom is dead or alive, but if he is dead, I want to see him again. I want to ask why he left. I want to know if he ever thought of me. I want to know what happened to him.
I picture him, the last night I saw him. His face in the moonlight. How troubled he was. How handsome. How good his hands felt on my body, how much pain he caused, but how that pain turned bittersweet. How it changed me forever. How much power I gleaned from us, from our union. How much I craved that connection again.
If you’re out there, Brom, let me find you, I think. Let me find you, please.
Crane’s grip on my shoulders tightens. “What are you doing?” he whispers.
But I can’t answer. All I can do is keep repeating those words and thinking of Brom and hoping he’ll lead me to him. Even if he’s still alive, maybe I can reach him this way.
Come home to me, Brom, I think.
“Kat,” Crane hisses. “What are you doing? What do you see? Don’t you feel that?”
It takes me a moment to process what Crane is saying. To realize that beyond this void, there is the real world.
But then I feel it too.
A dark, sinister power seeping into the void. Slowly, slowly, coming on hoofbeats that get louder and louder. Coming for us, coming for me.
And then it appears. A black horse leaps across the void, on its back a horseman with no head. It smells of decay and brimstone, and it’s coming to me, bringing with it a world of evil. A world where souls are trapped and screaming to die.
The horse gallops right up to me, and though the horseman has no head, I still feel its eyes. I feel it looking into my heart and soul.
It’s looking for something.
Someone.
But it isn’t me.
Then it abruptly turns, rears up, and gallops away, disappearing into the darkness.
And I’m falling backward into Crane’s arms, the blindfold ripped off my face as I’m placed on the cold ground, his hands tapping at my cheek.
“Kat! Kat, Katrina, Kat!”
My eyes fly open, and I stare up at Crane’s anguished face peering down at me.
“I don’t know what happened,” I manage to say. For some reason, it hurts to talk.
He puts his arms around my shoulders and helps me sit up, crouching beside me. “What did you see?”
I try and think, but it feels like moving through a swamp. “I don’t know. Something big and…bad. It was very bad. It was evil.”
A violent shiver rocks through me.
“I knew it! I had sensed it around us,” Crane says, talking fast, that excitable look in his eyes, like a mad scientist.
A mad mage, I think.
“I sensed it, and I knew it was being drawn to you. What happened? Did it get you, touch you?” He runs his hand over my cheek. It feels warm and full of life, and I close my eyes to it for a moment until he takes his hand away.
“It just stared at me. I can’t even tell you what it looked like anymore, but it looked at me, inside and out. Inside my soul. It looked at me, and it moved on.”
“You don’t feel it…hitched a ride somewhere inside you?”
I shake my head, though that gives me a splitting headache. “No. No, it left. Can’t you feel it did?”
He looks around for a moment, at the stars, at the dark lake, and nods. “Yes. It’s gone. Come on. Let’s get you up and get you home.”
“Get me home?” I ask as he lifts me to my feet.
“Mmhmm,” he says, brushing a strand of hair off my face, my skin singing at his touch. “I’m going with you.”
Chapter 14
Crane
I expected Kat to protest when I told her I was going with her back to her house in Sleepy Hollow. But to my surprise, she not only welcomed the idea, but she was insistent I don’t just walk beside her but ride on her horse with her.
A perfect gentleman would have told her that he’d prefer to walk, to keep space between them.
But I am not a perfect gentleman.
Truth be told, I’m not a gentleman at all.
I’m a deviant.
And she knows that, too. She knows it and yet invited me to be as close to her as I’ve ever been. As soon as we walked back from the lake and tacked up her horse, I was swinging onto Snowdrop’s back and pulling her up along with me.