Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 122(@200wpm)___ 97(@250wpm)___ 81(@300wpm)
“But—”
I cut her off with a kiss. Feeling a sense of purpose. This cottage will be nothing but ash.
The only thing I’ve ever been more sure of than my new quest is Gretel. Something changed in me when I laid eyes on her for the first time. Now I know what that was.
Gretel hesitates for a second, like she might argue with me about what I said, but then she melts into the kiss, parting her lips to let me in.
We fit together. That’s the only way I can explain it. There’s no awkwardness when I kiss her. There’s no fumbling around, wondering what to do. I slide my hands down to her waist, holding the blanket close around her gorgeous body, and pull her close.
She’s warm against me. The blanket brushes against my waist, and her breasts brush against my skin, and God—if I didn’t have to finish this, I’d take her straight back to bed. If I didn’t have family waiting for me in the village, I might never get out again.
Maybe someday, I’ll have a bed of my own to give her. A house. A ring and life she deserves. Something other than all my bitterness and the old wounds from the witch.
Someday, when this cottage isn’t here anymore. When it’s scattered in the wind.
I break the kiss and pull her close, just holding her. I hate letting go so much I almost can’t do it.
But then Gretel moves against me, taking a nervous little breath, and this can’t wait. I should have done this the first time I came back here. I’d spent so many nights awake and sweating in my bed, wondering if the witch was really dead, and finally I came to find out.
Maybe she was waiting for the two of us. Maybe she really did lure Gretel here.
I press a kiss to Gretel’s forehead, then let go. It’s time to end this.
In here makes it feel like the chains might still be touching me. Those damned things are nowhere to be seen, so I can’t drag them outside and melt them down.
But the rest?
The rest of this cottage is weak. It’s just wood. It’s made of things that can be destroyed if a man puts his mind to it, and I’m putting my mind to it.
I let myself loose.
I start by the sink in the kitchen, tearing dried herbs off the walls along with the boards the hooks were nailed into. I rip off a set of indoor shutters, then make a loop around the cottage, pulling off the rest. Shutters on the inside and the outside. The witch wanted to be able to hide. She never wanted anyone to find out what kind of things she did in here.
It’s too bad for her that I found out. It’s even worse that Gretel and I survived, because now I’m going to wipe this place out of existence.
Gretel watches me intently, staying close as I tip the wood into the fire. It leaps up around the boards like it’s delighted to have something to blaze through.
I break down the chairs at the kitchen table. They go into the fire as well. The oven is roaring now, pouring heat into the house, but I don’t want to feed that thing. The bedroom grate is better.
“This is what you should have burned,” I say to the flames, though I know it wasn’t this fucking fire that wiped out the crops and sent people to early graves from starvation. “This hellhole.” She joins me in destruction, grabbing everything she can. The pillows and cushions. The drapes and the rugs.
Gretel comes with me when I head back for more pieces of the house. She grabs my arm as the fire catches and slips through the grate.
“Hansel,” she says, her voice gentle. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”
“We’re going,” I snap, then take a deep breath and look her in the eyes. “We’re going, Gretel. I’m burning this place to the ground, and then we’re leaving.”
“That’s not going to be enough.”
I stop dead in the middle of the rug, my arms full of panels from the walls. The cottage is old enough, and it’s been sitting here long enough, that pieces are coming away in my hands almost as easily as the shutters.
“What do you mean, it’s not going to be enough? This place won’t exist. We—we replaced her. We replaced what happened with what we did. There’s nothing left but to get rid of it. The memories though… what she did to you… what she did to you was—”
“Me?” Gretel has tears in her eyes. Her chin, which she’d stuck out so bravely, wobbles. “I can’t stand to see what she did to you.”
“Gretel.” I bend down and kiss her temple, then her cheek. “The worst part about that night was seeing you cry. I would have survived anything she threw at me to be able to take you home, and it was—God. You screaming for me like that—nothing could be worse. Do you understand? Nothing. I can’t let her do that to you again.”