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And so the coven used him, used his tortured spirit and made him their puppet to do their bidding. He’s been used to retrieve wayward souls such as myself, he’s been used to murder and enact revenge. All has been done for the cruelty of the coven, never for his own gains.
When you’ve been controlled by someone for so long, you forget what freedom even looks like.
When the horseman found himself bound to me, he saw something in me, similar to how I found something in him. He was attached to my humanity. I was attached to his monstrous side. I liked the power he gave me. He liked the love I received.
We saw freedom in each other.
We gave each other what the other needed.
And with Kat and Crane’s energy inside me, the bond between us unbreakable, I had the upper edge in our symbiotic relationship. Three is more powerful than one.
So I told the Hessian that if he came into my body and gave me strength, that I would go into his and control the both of us. I would ensure a sacrifice would be made so that I would be free of him and he would be free of me.
I would give him the noble, final death he so desperately craved.
Still, I wasn’t sure it would work. Even when I was operating the horseman and myself at the same time, I wasn’t sure if I would lose myself to his strength and power. Swinging that ax and that sword with ease was the closest I’d ever felt to being a god.
But then when I saw Kat taken by Goruun and saw Crane pierced by the spider’s leg, and I already started to feel the Hessian’s power slip away as he sank toward death, I realized that it didn’t matter if I felt like a god or felt like the devil; none of that compared to the love that I felt for them.
They were everything to me.
My true power.
And worth every sacrifice.
I was going to do all I could to live, because I wasn’t about to leave them behind.
Ironically, the Hessian ended up saving my life as his final sacrifice.
When I fell from the rafters, I ended up landing directly on top of his body. He broke my fall, and I would have walked away had I not inhaled so much smoke.
But after Josephine, the student healer, helped heal my burns with her hands and some of Crane’s poultice, I ended up walking away from Sleepy Hollow Institute feeling better than when I had walked in.
Of course, Crane is a little worse off than I am. I joke that it’s what he deserves for shooting me, since it’s in the same spot as the bullet wound, but I think in a few days he’ll be fine. Doesn’t stop him from complaining for the last several hours, though, as the three of us ride toward New York City, following the Hudson.
“Do you think we’ll make it all the way into Manhattan by nightfall?” Kat asks with an awed smile. She’s on top of Snowdrop, having stopped by her house where she left Famke—for now—and picked up her horse.
“If not, we’ll find a nice inn close by,” Crane says, sitting on the buggy that had belonged to Sarah, with Gunpowder pulling it. We needed some place to store all of our belongings, though we didn’t grab much when we left the school. All of us were too eager to get out of there, especially as more police showed up from Tarrytown and Pleasantville and started poking around. I was certain that they would soon be suspicious of us and want to talk about all the occult paraphernalia, let alone all the dead bodies, so we left before they could.
“With a big bed,” Kat notes.
“The biggest bed,” I confirm.
“Oh, by the way, Brom,” Crane speaks up. “Did I tell you I’m getting married?”
My heart lurches in my chest and I swivel on Daredevil to look at him. Of course he’s grinning like a fool.
“To Kat,” he goes on. “In case that wasn’t clear. Don’t worry pretty boy, you’re invited to the wedding.”
My fists automatically clench and I glare at him. “I could kill you.”
It’s not even that I’m mad he asked her—I knew he would. It’s that he did it when I wasn’t there. I would have liked to have seen that moment.
“Boys,” Kat says loudly. “Let’s not fight over me, we still have a long ways to go.”
“Who says we’re fighting over you?” I tell her, trying not to smile. “Perhaps I wanted Crane to marry me.”
Crane laughs. “Be careful what you wish for, Brom. If you ever find yourself married to me, just know that I’ll never let you go.”
Despite the smile on my face, my heart pinches for a moment, because in some other world, some other lifetime, I would hope to marry Crane. I would hope a marriage between us would be as legally binding as the one he’ll have with Kat.
