Page 102 of Speak No Claim

“I thought we already established that I was an asshole too.”

She stepped back with nothing but hurt in her face. “I thought… I just…”

“Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’re feeling, whatever you want to ask me, the answer is yes to everything, Hennessy.”

She frowned, thinking about all the questions she wanted to ask me, beginning and ending with, do I love her? Just as quick as those questions popped in my head, so did, is she just a job to me?

Unsure of where we went from there, she simply confessed, “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Onyx—”

She searched my face, looking for something I couldn’t ever give her.

Love…

I just wasn’t made like that, but that didn’t change the fact that…

* * *

I’d fallen for her.

Chapter

Thirty-Two

Onyx: If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future.

The clock struck midnight. The sound echoed through the Graves Academy, vibrating through the grass beneath my boots. Thanksgiving was a few days ago, and it was the disaster I knew it’d be, which was why I didn’t bother showing up.

The last thing I wanted to do was to pretend that Hennessy wasn’t mine in front of my family and the Brotherhood.

I wouldn’t be able to fake it, and they knew that.

I was done with their fucking tests. I wouldn’t willingly participate in any of their traps that were obviously meant for me to fail. I hadn’t seen Hennessy since the holiday a couple of days ago. She was avoiding me. That much was also obvious.

The clock ticked by, faster and faster. Time was running by. With the thirteenth chime, every candle in the circle was lit, and no one spoke. The Brotherhood stood beneath the night sky, the full moon looming over the horizon, making it a perfect night for a ritual.

Each of us was dressed in our cloaks, our faces hidden behind masks passed down through generations. These woods were used for worship for decades. The candles flickered through the darkness, illuminating the trees all around us, along with the stones that had B.O.B. carved into them.

Some were so old the edges were now smooth, while others were recently engraved with fresh initials or crests. It just depended on the ritual.

However, the blood in the center was fresh.

Hennessy and I had a lot in common when it came to believing in hocus pocus. She wasn’t aware of the knowledge I held when she’d share all about occult magic. I knew a thing or two about that too.

The universe worked in mysterious ways. When I was younger, I used to wonder how I’d explain the Brotherhood to anyone, let alone a woman. With Hennessy there’d be no need. She already believed in mystic things, knowing that the unexplainable was real.

I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, listening for nothing in particular as we started reciting the oath into the fog of the night. The words might have been familiar, but I wasn’t feeling them. Not that I ever did.

Loyalty, silence, power = family.

The things we were taught here mattered more than anything we’d ever learn in class or the real world. This was the only universe that mattered. It was the only thing that existed.

When the blade was brought forward by one of the councils, a brother stepped into the center of the circle, waiting…

The blade was sliced into his palm, it was the more blood, the better. A few drops fell onto the stone, and the flame of the candles trembled as if they were possessed by the evil radiating from our pores.