by Kathryn Moon
“He shouldn’t be out,” I said looking at Isaac and his slow approach.
Callum looked back over his shoulder. “Tell him that. I tried. Joanna, why?” he asked stepping closer.
I stepped back, keeping the space between us. “Because it’s true.”
He pulled his hand free from his pocket, the note I had written and left under my pillow folded in his fingers. “Tear it up.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Of course you can. I could. I’m asking you to do it,” he said.
I folded my hands under my arms to keep them from reaching out and smoothing away the furrow in his brow and the frown over his mouth.
“Why are you here?” I asked, heart hammering in my chest. “I…I was never going to belong. This should be- it should be easy. Just go home-”
Callum stormed to me and I didn’t have a chance to skirt away. “Easy?” he growled. “Joanna, tear it up, please.”
“It’s my fault,” I said, almost shouted, breaths ragged as the tears filled up in my throat. “I let the Hollow out. I wrote it in the book. I should never have come here. I shouldn’t have magic in the first place. I’m just a stupid little nobody from the country. And now everything has gone wrong.”
“It can be fixed, love,” Isaac said. He and Aiden joined us at Callum’s side.
“Cecil Pincombe can’t,” I said, voice cracking. “I know- I know you wanted someone. You wanted me to be right. But I’m not and I can’t be.”
“If you weren’t meant for us then you wouldn’t need to write a spell to change it, Joanna,” Aiden said and he sounded angry but I could barely see for all the crying.
“Tear it up,” Callum whispered.
“I won’t,” I said.
“Then you wrote the wrong thing,” he said, and he pulled my arms free and stuffed the note into my hand before taking my face up in his hold. His face was blurry and close but I could make out the blue of his eyes. “If I have to love you without you belonging in our coven then you’ve cursed me.”
The sob tore out of my chest and the pain of it was more relief than wound. I folded forward with the force of it and Callum dragged me against his chest. The note, I don’t belong in your coven printed inside, crumpled wetly in my fist as I struck it against him. I had told myself it would be enough. To erase whatever fleeting attraction that had fooled them in the first place. To make reality set in and break up all my romantic fantasies. Instead every word had felt crooked and wrong to write.
“We knew something was broken today,” Isaac said, and his voice was faint. “That you’d pulled away.”
I wanted to get him somewhere warm and dry as much as I wanted to push them all away. Thought I wanted to.
“Callum was getting ready to find you at the library when I found the note,” he said. “You can tear it up or leave it but it won’t stop me from wanting you with us.”
“Tear it up,” Callum repeated, a little sullenly. I could feel him nudging at the top of my head and I wiped my cheeks against his damp shirt before looking up. “Did you ever want it to be true?” he asked.
It was such a stupid question! I blurted without thinking, “Of course I did! From the start. But all of this was my mistake and I have to fix it!” Aiden was closing in at my side and I rushed to add, “And I can’t stand that one of you might be hurt or worse again if I make another one.”
“Trying to do this alone is a mistake,” Aiden said. He was angry. I could hear it now. It didn’t seem like a good time to mention my plan.
Callum’s eyes narrowed on my face. “You can’t stop us from fighting for the campus or for you. We’re already involved. Is that enough now?”
“Or did you think we wouldn’t fight for you?” Isaac whispered. His hair was down, soaked like inky streaks running down the sides of his face, and his skin was almost as pale and gray as his eyes. But his gaze was sharp on me, pinpricks of heat that burned in my chest.
“Please, Joanna. No more,” Callum begged. “If you meant it, if you really want us…tear up the note and come home.”
I felt trapped under a weight of emotion I didn’t understand and dizzy with confusion. Isaac was right. I didn’t think they would come. I thought I could write the words and that would be the end. The only one left hurting would be me. But if what Callum said was true…I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to write away those feelings. Not if they were real and I could have them, keep them and wallow in them. I couldn’t carve them out of myself either.
The ink had all but washed away on the note, now soggy. But I lifted it between us and ripped through the middle of the words, and then again and again until it was pulp in my fingers. Callum took my wrists in his hands and kissed me, lips and teeth hard against mine, holding me close and still for a long stretch. I cried into the kiss and there were hands at my back until I was sheltered between the three of them.
“Say it,” Callum said, drawing back.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Not that,” he said, pecking at my lips. “Say you belong in the coven.”
My breath was shaky and nervous in my chest. But his eyes were fixed to mine and Isaac and Aiden were holding their breath on either side. “I belong with you,” I said. “In the coven.”
“We need to get somewhere dry before we have to swim home,” Aiden said as Isaac pulled me from Callum, peppering kisses over both my cheeks.
“My house,” I said, sniffling and wiping uselessly at my eyes. “I never got rid of the doorway into your room.”
We were a cluster on the sidewalk together, walking as quick as we could without having to be out of each other’s reach. The street was desolate and I wondered how many staff were even still staying in their houses after what had happened on the weekend. There was a second, smaller wave of guilt and then Aiden’s warm hand was at my back, leading me up the steps. I dug in my pocket for my key and let us inside.
The house felt abandoned, as if I’d needed further proof at how much more quickly I had settled into living with them than here by myself.
“Do you need anything?” Callum asked, glancing around.
I shook my head. “I left my case at the library and…and I never had much.”
Isaac squeezed my hand and Aiden led us all to the pantry door in the kitchen and then back into their home.
23. Aiden
Joanna’s steps squished in her shoes as she walked into my bedroom and she stopped abruptly before reaching the carpet. We were all dripping onto the floorboard and Joanna had a puddle around her from her boots alone.
“Get a bath going?” I asked Callum.
He looked between us, at Joanna fidgeting by herself, and Isaac shivering by the door. “Come in when you’re ready,” he said.
I knelt at Joanna’s feet as they left, her hands landing at my shoulders as I untied her boots and lifted her feet free. They were like icicles and I resisted the urge to lift them to my lips to press some heat back into them. I looked up and she was already peeling herself out of her clothes, that flimsy, awful little slip of hers sticking to her skin and distracting me. I stood, stroking up her side as I went and she leaned into the touch. I took the clothes out of her hands and stepped back.
“Find something warm for yourself,” I said, crossing past her to dump her clothes into the hamper and get out of my own.
“Aiden,” she said, the sweet mellow syrup of her voice burrowing into my chest.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be angry—that she had tried to leave, tried to shatter the possibility of being a part of our coven. Or to be grateful she had torn her note, her spell, up into dozens of little pieces. To prove to her once again that I could offer her something worth keeping. That I was worth keeping.
I turned back and she was waiting, holding out my robe and wearing my red sweater, the collar dipping low between her breasts. My lips quirked against my will. I didn’t stand a chance. Not against her. She helped me into the sleeves and her arms followed mine around my
waist as I tied the belt.
“I’m sorry,” she said into my back, words mumbled into the fabric.
I squeezed her hands over my stomach and took a long breath before pulling myself free. She was anxious, wounded looking, eyes red and hair still running wet rivulets down her neck.
“Come sit with me,” I said, keeping her hands in mine to lead her to the bed. She climbed up to the coverlet, knees disappearing under the hem of the sweater as she folded them under her. I faced her and kept our hands clasped, resisting the urge to pull her into my lap, to hold her face and kiss her beyond any thought of leaving again. “Tell me your plan,” I said. She frowned and I added, “What were you going to do after you had successfully…kept us safe by leaving?”
Her fingers fidgeted in mine and she looked down at her lap, cheeks coloring. “Bryce Gast said they would help me. They…I went to ask Tatsuo about trance writing to find true names,” she said.
“Is that possible?” I asked, feeling a panicked kind of temper rising up in my chest. “Wouldn’t you need-”
“A connection?” she asked, looking up. “I have one. I’m the one that let it out, it’s eating my dreams at night from across the woods.”
“And Gast was going to help,” I spat.
“They offered, yes,” she said and her words began to harden, shoulders straightening. “For their own reasons.”
I released one of her hands to scrub at my face. “True names aren’t just words,” I said, breathing through my nose.
“I know, but-”
“While you’ve been hiding from us, Callum and I have been scouring for information. The Hollow’s true name is made up of music, color, and… a word. We haven’t found them yet but don’t you think that gives us the right to help you?”
“Yes.”
I pulled my hand off my eyes to stare at her and almost immediately regretted it. She looked so fragile and aching still and it made me want to pull her up in my arms.
“Aiden, I’m sorry,” she said, every word heavy with sincerity. She scooted closer and my arms twitched for her. “I do think it would have worked. Bryce wouldn’t have agreed if they didn’t think so too but- but,” she said, raising her hand to stop my words and continuing quickly, “That doesn’t matter. It was the wrong decision and I regret it. I…Aiden, I really didn’t think you would all…” her breath hitched, eyes filling up, and my will broke.
I took her face in my hands and held it to mine, foreheads touching. “Haven’t we told you? All we’ve wanted is for you to be a part of us, of this home.”
“You have and I heard it and I just…I kept waiting for it to turn out to be a…cosmic trick on me,” she whispered, tracing a kiss over my mouth. “I can still barely believe it.”
“We need you to,” I said, feeling the grip of panic at the back of my throat.
“I know,” she said, hands soft on my back as she settled herself in my hold. “I know. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
The panic shuddered out of me and I took her lips in mine, drawing deeply, holding her tight to my chest. Her hands squeezed at my shoulders before sliding between us to push away slightly, nipping at my lips in quick affectionate nibbles before leaning back.
“That doesn’t change the fact that I am responsible for what’s happening,” she said softly.
“You cannot blame yourself for being manipulated into letting that thing out,” I said.
“And you can’t deny that I should be the one to put it back in its cage,” she said, face steely. “I don’t want to be guarded in the tower by three knights when it was my mistake that’s led to this.”
I huffed. For once, I needed Callum here to deal with the problem. If there was anyone who could talk Joanna out of self-punishment it would be him, and it might actually do them both good. In the meantime there was something I could say.
“Joanna, we have waited for you for a long time. I know- I know you know that. And I’m not saying that gives us the right to try and shield you. Although it’s probably been a motivation for us, you’re right,” I said. I kissed her mouth before she could argue and then continued, “I’m just saying, we all try to shield each other. We’ve just already had the arguments over it, and you’re playing catch-up. If it’s any consolation Callum was walking Isaac home every night I escorted you back from the library.”
She blinked at that, a faint smile appearing on her lips. “It helps a little.”
“We won’t let you try to fix this on your own,” I said. “That’s off the table as of right now. And Bryce Gast isn’t enough help either, and if you argue that I’ll tell Woollard and the rest of their coven about the plan and then the pair of you will both be in trouble. But I promise that we aren’t trying to tuck you safely away. We’re a coven and we’re doing this together.”
“Are you going to tell Callum that?” she asked, smirking.
“I am,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “If you’re lucky, I won’t even mention that you went to Tatsuo for help.”
She was turning soft in my arms. I knew we should be finding the others but there wasn’t a cell in my body interested in moving. Not if she wasn’t moving.
“I’m sorry, Aiden,” she said again, simple and earnest.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.
“Never,” she said, easily.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you need at your house? You may be in for a long stay here,” I said, wanting to ask it. Stay, stay, stay.
“I like it better here, anyway,” she said.
“Right here?” I asked, grinning and looking down at where she was sprawled over my lap. I stroked my palms down her back to her waist and she rose up to her knees, inching closer.
“Maybe…here,” she said, pressing our chests together with, a small smile growing in the corners of her lips. Her hands were between us, shaking with cold and untying the knot in the waist of my robe.
I teased my fingers down to the hem of my sweater, skimming them over the skin at the tops of her thighs.
“Are you eager for the bath?” she asked, voice tilting and teasing.
“Not especially,” I said, trying to keep the growl out of my throat.
“And will Callum and Isaac come looking for us?”
“Would it matter if they did?” I asked.
Her eyes darkened at that and there was a needy clench in my belly. She liked the idea. I smoothed my hands up her skin and found her hips naked, my thumbs stroking over her bare mound. She hummed and closed her eyes, her hips leaning into the touch.
“My Joanna,” I murmured, lifting the sweater to see a glimpse of the pink skin of her pussy before she was squirming down to nuzzle at my cheek.
“My King,” she whispered in my ear and my cock jumped, stirring and aching, even as I laughed at her joke.
She kissed a wet trail over my jaw, rocking and twisting herself in my lap, drawing out a groan as I hardened against her. She pushed the loose robe off my shoulders, her hands roaming greedily over my skin as I pulled my arms free. We had both stripped down to nothing and I could feel her growing wet, sliding it over my length and working herself up in the process.
Her breasts were bouncing lightly with her movement, nipples turning to little points. I stroked my thumbs over them, grunting as she ground down against me. But there was something soft building in my chest watching her.
