Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Silence didn’t smile. She regarded me not hesitantly but openly.
“Do you think you’ll be able to come to some accord?” she asked with concern.
“I like him,” I declared.
Both women stared at me, Farah with wide eyes, Silence was blinking.
And Severus was not far away, and I had no doubt he was listening.
So be it.
I spoke truth, and if that got into Cassius’s ear, maybe he’d be less of a lout.
“You…like him?” Farah asked.
“He’s easy to look at,” Jasmine called.
“There’s that,” I muttered.
“There is that,” Farah muttered too, but now she was also regarding me openly.
I stepped closer to their huddle and said my next in a way Severus would not hear.
“There is something between us that cannot be denied.” I reached out and caught Farah’s hand. “Something, Farah, I see now I never had with True. He was but a friend, a kind one, a good one, but we’d never even kissed.”
Farah looked shocked.
“Cassius pinned her to the wall the second time he laid eyes on her,” Jasmine yelled helpfully.
I sighed.
Silence giggled.
Farah smiled at me.
“He did?” she asked.
I tipped my head to the side. “As he says, we cannot keep our hands off each other, when we aren’t fighting that is. He is not wrong. Alas, we fight a great deal.”
That was when Farah laughed.
And I was relieved to hear it.
I brought our huddle even closer.
But my eyes were only for Farah.
“What I wish to say is, it is not True. It never really was, Farah. And the way I see him with you, he’s realized this too.”
Farah looked away.
“You do not see this?” Silence asked her.
Farah looked to Silence. “He is a kind man. He understands this situation is not optimal, but he wishes to make the most of it. And he helps me grieve. That is all.”
“He helps you grieve while panting to get into your knickers,” Jasmine hollered.
Farah’s eyes grew round again.
“She has very good hearing,” Silence whispered.
“She’s a witch and she’s using magic to eavesdrop because she’s also a pain in the arse,” I told her.
“I heard that!” Jasmine shouted.
I looked to my friend. “Stop listening!”
It was then I sensed movement, turned to Hera and saw she had an arm lifted. From her hand, a streak of silver and orchid sparks shot Jasmine’s way.
Jasmine grunted when they hit her.
Hera looked to me and called, “Carry on.”
I smiled at my friend and turned back to my Sisters of the Beast.
“You are very lucky,” Farah said wistfully, eyeing both Hera and Jasmine.
My heart hurt at these words.
She might have had friends at some point in her life, but I’d noted not a one of them attended her at Catrame Palace. Therefore, it was clear she lost them due to what her father did.
She lost nearly everything because of what her father did.
The only thing she held onto was her mother.
And now she was lost too.
I squeezed her hand, reached to Silence’s and took hers as well.
Silence took Farah’s.
“You have lost much,” I said to Farah and turned to Silence. “And you never had much.” I held tight to both their hands. “And now we have each other. So we will part, but we’ll always be as one. We will always have each other. And if you’ll allow me to, I shall bind us together as sisters in a way that no matter where we are, if we need the others, we can call out and join together.”
“How would we do that?” Silence asked.
“I would tie us to each other so we can meet through the astral plane,” I told her. “We would not be together in physical form, but we would be there in mind and in heart. And that is always all that’s needed.”
“It is,” Silence whispered.
“Let us do that,” Farah said.
“Yes, let’s,” Silence agreed.
I nodded.
“Bring your hands up between us, all together,” I instructed.
They did so, I did as well, and we pressed all our clenched fingers together.
“Now, to bind our minds. Bring in your foreheads.”
We joined in that way, pressing our foreheads together over our hands, Silence needing to get up on her toes and Farah and I needing to bend to her, she was so petite, but we did it.
I held tighter.
They did too.
All we could see was our hands and the leaves and dirt beyond them.
And each other.
“I wish Ha-Lah was here,” Silence murmured.
“Me too,” I said. “I will reach out to her. I cannot say it will work, but hopefully it will, and it will bind her to us as well.”
I felt nodding against my head.
“Let us begin,” I urged. “Repeat after me. We are strong.”
“We are strong,” they said in unison.
The sensation gathered in my back and I sent it down my legs, to the earth.
“We are minds,” I chanted.
“We are minds.”
“We are hearts.”
“We are hearts.”
I looked between Farah and Silence, their eyes so close, topaz and silver, as I felt the swirling around our ankles.