The floor dropped out from beneath Jack’s feet. “Fired?”
“Creative differences.” The chancellor sneered. “I should sue him for promising something he couldn’t deliver.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My autobiography.”
“Is it finished?”
“Finished?” He barked out a laugh. “The little Cambridge shit never started it. Years of dictation and taking notes, and for what?”
“But—”
“He’s gone now.”
“Gone where?”
None of this made any sense.
Mr. Carrow had been working on the book for years. Jack saw the pages amass, witnessed him make endless revisions.
“Not my concern. I had the servants pack up his garbage. Books, papers, all of it.” He waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll find you a new tutor. Someone who won’t fill your head with useless drivel.”
Jack couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.
Gone.
Mr. Carrow was gone.
The one person in the world who saw him, who truly cared about him.
He hadn’t even been given the chance to say goodbye.
Where would he go? Jack didn’t know where he lived. He only knew he could count on his showing up.
“Why?”
The chancellor frowned, only then realizing how much this upset him. He sat back and eyed him critically. “Careful, boy.”
Jack swallowed back his rage, but it only pushed further up his throat. A lump that refused to go down.
He never wanted to hurt someone as much as he did in that moment. He imagined lunging at the chancellor and strangling his saggy neck until his beady eyes popped out of his hog-headed skull. But he knew how that would end.
He was the devil incarnate, and there was no winning in hell. Only losing. And layers upon layers beneath rock bottom, that the chancellor’s opposers eventually met.
So he turned and left, hardly able to make it back to his bedroom before dissolving into tears.
Golden fixtures blurred around him as he fell onto his bed and screamed into the pillows. His fist pounded on the mattress, but it wasn’t enough.
He wanted to hit the wall hard enough to break the world into a million pieces and then carve the chancellor’s eyes out with the shards.
The painted cherubs watched from above, silent witnesses to another death. Mocking him with their bright eyes and unwavering grins.
A pain unlike anything he’d ever felt crushed his chest. He rubbed the spot, but it wouldn’t ease.
Mr. Carrow was gone.
His teacher. His friend.
