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“Are you alright?” he asks, peering at me curiously. He places a strong hand at the back of my neck, holding me in place, making me feel grounded.
I nod, unable to put into words exactly what I’m feeling. My knees still feel like they’re going to buckle.
“Good,” he says quietly, then he pulls me close and plants a kiss on my head. The tender action causes some place deep inside me to ache. How can this man be so damn devious and yet feel so safe at the same time?
“Why don’t you go run a warm bath?” he asks me in a low voice. “I think we all need it.”
“Sure thing,” I tell him. I glance at Brom quickly before I go into the adjacent washroom and close the door behind me, assuming the two of them need privacy. Crane’s fortunate that he has his own bathroom. When I move into the dorms here I won’t have that luxury anymore—I’ll have to share with the other girls on my floor.
And I’ll have to do so tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m supposed to officially move to the institute. It seems like a lifetime ago that I had been at the bonfire with Mary, but that had only been tonight. My entire world feels like it’s changed in an evening and I have no idea what to expect next. I just know whatever is coming my way isn’t going to be easy.
I try not to think about that as I light a couple of candles along the basin, the flames coming much easier now to my fingertips than it did earlier, perhaps because of the energy I still feel swirling inside me like a windstorm. I plug the large copper bathtub and turn the tap. The pipes groan from somewhere above me, the cistern probably in the dorm’s attic, and lukewarm water spurts out from the faucet. I wait a bit, letting the water run over my fingers, but when it’s not hot enough for my liking, I decide to do a little experiment.
I place my hand in the water and take the energy inside me and direct it out through my fingertips, focusing on heat and flame like I would usually do. Of course the flames don’t appear under water but the heat does, streams of it wafting out and turning the temperature from lukewarm to hot.
I can’t help but grin, feeling pride burst in my chest. Seems like I’ve ensured an endless amount of hot baths in my future. I never thought I’d be able to take my magic and improve upon it and yet here I’ve been able to do just that. Whether it’s my classes with Crane or, well, my other dealings with Crane, it seems he’s done a lot to bring my magic to the forefront.
I’m just about to tell him this when suddenly I hear a roar from the other room. It sounds like Brom and yet like a monster at the same time. Then all the candles in the bathroom go out at once, plunging me into near darkness, with only faint light coming from a cloud-strewn moon outside the window.
“Crane!” I yell, running for the door.
Only to find it locked.
Chapter 5
Crane
I should have seen it coming.
The jealousy. The rage.
I’d rattled the cage that held the devil. I shouldn’t have been surprised when the devil lashed out.
But I was.
One minute I was hearing Kat running the tap in the bathroom, wondering if Brom would allow me to clean him up with a warm washcloth, the same way I used to take care of him after I’d been particularly rough or cruel.
The next Brom had burst up to his feet in one powerful jump, the reins around the desk snapping. He lunged at me with a roar, biting through the tie, and tackled me to the floor.
The wind is knocked out of me and with the faintest twinge of irony, I recall how our positions were reversed earlier. And Brom doesn’t hold back.
Because it isn’t Brom.
I stare up into his eyes, watching as the pupils start to bleed out into the dark brown, like black ink, until it’s taking over the whites too. He looks inhuman, a monster, and he bares his teeth at me, strangely sharp. Is this what the Hessian soldier looked like before he lost his head? If so, perhaps the world was doing him a favor.
Brom leans in, jaws snapping, trying to take a bite out of my neck and I can only hold him back, my thumb finding the half-healed wound on his shoulder. I drive it in and he screeches with his neck arched, a terrible noise, and I’m wondering how much longer I can hold him off. Brom has always been a little stronger than me but when he’s possessed, he’s something else entirely.
