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She licks her lips. “Actually,” she says. “I do want that.”
I close my eyes in pain and she presses her palm to my cheek. “And I want that from you, too. I want you both. And I don’t know how I can have you both. If Crane asks me to marry him, I will say yes.”
“And if I ask you first?” I open my eyes.
She stares at me and exhales.
“You’ll have to say no,” I answer my own question.
“You know why, Brom,” she says imploringly.
Because of the horseman, the coven, the bargain.
“I know why,” I tell her.
And it doesn’t matter in the end anyway.
She belongs to us both, but in the end, there will only be Crane.
“Oh, look,” Kat says gazing past me at the roof.
I glance over my shoulder to see a swarm of blue and black butterflies flying just above the hole in the barn and watch as they slowly start to fly down inside toward us.
To my surprise they start landing on Kat’s limbs, her hair, her face, then they do the same to me. She laughs, pure joy, and I join in too.
I make a promise to myself to never forget this.
We took a little more time in the barn then we should have, so once we got on our horses, we galloped the rest of the way back to the school. It was a freeing sort of ride, cool wind in my hair, the scent of fresh earth and bonfires and fallen leaves, the thunder of Daredevil’s hooves underneath me, trying to beat the setting sun.
But I wasn’t worried for a moment. With each day I was learning how to barter with the horseman more and more. Kat would be safe after sundown. Crane would be too. The horseman knows how important they are to me. He knows they are off-limits.
I drop Kat off at her dorm room, and then I hurry over through the mist to Crane’s. At this point I don’t care if anyone finds it suspicious how I head into the faculty dorm every night, then again, I feel everything about the school is in a slow collapse. Perhaps we’re the least of its problems.
I get to his floor and Crane opens his door, stares at me in horror. “What happened?”
I frown and walk in his room. “Nothing. Sorry if I’m a few minutes late.”
“No,” he says, slamming the door shut and then grabbing me by the neck. “You have blood on your face.” His eyes drift down. “On your clothes too. What did you do?” he growls, squeezing my neck tighter.
I have to try and think.
Oh.
Then I grin at him. “Nothing for you to worry about, Crane.”
“Nothing for me to worry about? Whose blood is that?”
I’m smirking now. “Whose do you think?”
He narrows his eyes at me, and then it dawns on him.
“Fuck you,” he snarls, pushing me over. “Can’t keep your damn dick in your pants, can you?”
“You should talk.”
“You’re the one who knows how dangerous this is,” he snaps.
“I may not have the same background as you Crane, I didn’t go to medical school, but even I know that a woman isn’t getting pregnant while she’s menstruating.”
He grumbles at that because he knows I’m right.
I go on. “And the fact that you’re still mad tells me this has nothing to do with some sacrifice or me knocking her up on behalf of a demon. You just don’t want me inside her when you’re not around.”
“And so what of it?” he asks, throwing his arms out. “I told you I’d remain jealous and possessive through it all. The fact that you got to fuck her, lick her bloody cunt when she’s at her most primal and powerful, yes, I’m damn jealous that it wasn’t me.”
I walk over to him and put my hands on his shoulders. “You want to kiss me now? You can probably still taste the blood.”
“Fuck off,” he sneers. But then that indignation in his eyes burns away to lust, just like I knew it would.
His eyes fall closed, and he leans in and captures my mouth in his, moaning slightly as his tongue licks the rim of my lips, slips past my tongue, and my toes are already bunching up in my boots.
Before we can get too carried away, he breaks the kiss and pulls back.
“I’m mad at you,” he scowls.
But I know he can never stay mad for long.
Chapter 28
Crane
“One week until the full moon,” Kat says quietly as she places a stack of books on the desk that Brom and I have taken over in the library.
Brom grunts as his eyes flick over her, pausing at her chest and her lips. “Is this your way of saying you want to practice beforehand?”
I kick Brom under the desk, but he ignores it.
“Actually,” she says, sitting down across from us, “as much as I enjoyed what we, uh, did in the woods during the dark moon, I think I would rather save myself for the next ritual. There’s something about it, about the way the energy gathers, that I feel will be more powerful if we let it build up for a while. Like filling a reservoir.”
