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)
He’s the thread that we share, the common denominator that has always bound us. I thought it was a shared experience from our past, perhaps grief or something else, but all this time, it was Brom.
“Alright,” I concede. I get up and move around the desk, glad that my desires are under control. I walk right up to Brom and make myself stop before I get too close and inside his personal space. I have to remind myself that he doesn’t know me the way I know him.
But did I really know you at all? I think. Who are you?
I hold out my hand, palm up, my eyes flickering over his face.
“Give me your hand,” I tell him.
He meets my eyes and holds them there, and for just a moment, he frowns, not out of confusion by what I’m asking, but in a searching way, like he just had a glimmer of his past.
Brom places his hand in mine, and I wrap my fingers around it.
Do you remember this feeling? This feeling of your hand in mine, in my fingers wrapping around your dick and bringing you to a finish?
He blinks, perhaps a little unnerved at how intensely I’m staring at him.
I close my eyes. I picture my energy welling up inside me like a bubbling pot, heat pouring through my arm and hand and onto him. I’m in the void and see a door in front of me, but it’s closed. This is his mind. This is what I want to see.
But try as I might, I can’t open the door. I can’t get any feelings from him either, not in the way they once rushed through me or in the way it happened with Kat. Instead, I feel like there’s something else behind this door. But whatever it is, it isn’t him.
I press to the door and listen.
“I will do your bidding,” a low, sinister voice says from the other side.
Then I hear other sounds. Cannon-fire. Horses whinnying. Cries and shouts and the drawing of swords. People begging for mercy, pleading for their life. The sounds of death. Blades slicing.
I hear war.
There is nothing else beyond this door except war.
And then the door opens, swinging out toward me so that I’m knocked backward into the void, and hot wind smelling of brimstone and rot comes flowing toward me.
“There is no room in here for you, teacher,” the voice says.
Then the door slams shut, and suddenly, I’m being pushed backward, enough that I’m stumbling back into the classroom until my back hits the wall.
“What happened?” Kat exclaims.
Brom’s eyes are wide, still holding out his hand. “What did you see?”
I gasp for air, my heart thundering against my ribs. I feel the sulfurous smell sticking to me like a cloak.
“I saw war,” I tell him, catching my breath. “I heard it. There is a war inside you, Brom Bones.”
He frowns and quickly exchanges a confused look with Kat before coming back to me. “A metaphorical war?”
I have to pause, rubbing my lips together as I think. “I’m not sure. I didn’t see it. I didn’t see anything, but it’s what I felt and what I heard. It was almost as if it didn’t belong to you.”
There is no room in here for you, teacher.
That voice hadn’t been Brom’s.
But right now, something is telling me to keep that close to my chest.
Because this man isn’t the same man that I had once been intimate with.
That man had been on the run because he’d been hunted.
This man is one who has finally been caught.
Chapter 19
Kat
“That’s a lovely horse, Brom,” my mother says to him as we’re tacking up at the school stable, the strange stableboy running around and trying to help us all.
I absently stroke down Snowdrop’s neck, peering over at Brom, who is leading his fully saddled horse out of the stall. It’s a magnificent stallion, completely black and shiny like the polished obsidian arrowhead I have in my desk drawer. Its size and strong, arched neck make it look like a Dutch warmblood crossed with a Friesian rather than the thoroughbreds and cobs that frequent these parts. It’s not lost on me that it looks exactly like the black horse the horseman was riding last night. The only difference was the horseman’s horse seemed like it was crafted in the bowels of Hell, and this horse is calm and gentle.
“It is a nice horse,” I say, leading Snowdrop out. “Where did you get him?”
He swings up on the horse in an effortless display of horsemanship and gives me a loaded look, the one that says: I don’t remember.
“I picked him up on my travels,” Brom says with forced confidence, fiddling with the reins.
“And what’s his name?” I ask, though I know he doesn’t know that either.
He’s nearly glaring at me now.