Page 54 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

I pressed my hands to his chest, his skin hot against my palms, magic pulsing unrestrained, confounding my senses.

“There are bones. There’s never been bones,” I said, shaking my eyes wide, pleading with him to understand what I couldn’t say. He didn’t release me.

“You were adamant that people with no curses shouldn’t be afraid. So why were you running?”

“I took one from Auntie when she attacked Jack! I…”. My breath stuck. The Fiend would devour a curse carrier with no discrimination or pity. All Fiona had to do was feed her victims the curse and introduce them to Dark Hall.

“The clothes.” I twisted to look at the array of items scattered on the floor, hanging upon the lip of the wicker chest. “They belonged to the people my sister murdered.”

Fury over this new blow, over still being restrained, drove me to pound a fist against the Inspector’s chest, “Let me go, I need to think!”

He pulled me closer, his heady, faunish magic merging with my adrenaline, turning my body into a pyre.

“Was it really Fiona?” he asked.

“What?”

“Your sister’s dead, but people keep disappearing, and here I am finding you in Dark Hall. All of this chaos coincides with your arrival in town. ”

“Think what you want, Victor.” I snarled, ready to bite, embracing my volatile emotions, tired of being stalked and accused by someone who’d done things as terrible as I had.

“How did it feel to kill that man?” He lowered his head, and I turned my face away, not trusting myself, emotions fluctuating too rapidly to identify. “Did it excite you? Make you feel powerful?”

“Don’t.” I didn’t want to disturb this truth, the piece of my soul scorched black.

“How many people have you murdered with your magic? Go on, tell me every dirty secret. What’s it matter now? Get it off your chest before we both die with lies hanging between us.”

“No more than you.” I aimed a sharp stab of energy toward the familiar connection already forming, our power churning together, the same terrible magic of two broken monstrous people colliding in a struggle for the upper hand.

I dug deep, the sensation exhilarating, like diving naked into cold water, and when I found the dark ruins of his Drudge, I took hold.

He sucked in a breath, then exhaled, the vibration turning to a lurid groan.

“That’s the way. Do you feel safe when you hold someone’s life in your hands? Call the curses up, devour me, leave my husk behind in this rotting house.”

My power retreated as though it had been scalded, anger losing its harsh shape and turning to shame. The sound the Inspector made was a mingling of relief and disappointment, and he finally loosened his hold on me.

“I don’t do that,” I said, wresting away, creating space enough to notice the blackberry vines had stirred closer, growing toward the maelstrom of power we’d created.

They strangled their host plants, snapping the stems and branches supporting them, gorged with our anger and resentment, the suppressed desire to consume each other, no matter how depraved the need was.

“Your mother did. Your sister.”

“My mother never hurt anyone.” My head pounded.

“A child was murdered. Right downstairs in your parlor.”

I wanted to refute it as a lie, but it wasn’t. My hesitation was all he needed.

“The Blackwickets are murderers.” The accusation boomed through the tower, the thundering of a gavel. “You’re a killer, Eleanora.”

“I know!”

I screamed the confession, the edges of my magic decaying, building a curse. Inspector Harrow had finally broken me open, spilling out the most depraved parts of me for his amusement.

“I didn’t mean for him to die,” I shouted. There were no secrets worth defending anymore. “But I’m glad he did, and I would give that disgusting pig those cufflinks again!”

I laughed, hot tears on my cheeks, hoping the Inspector was getting everything he wanted out of me.

“I’m only sorry I didn’t get to watch him choke.” The admission was poisoned honey, and I savored every drop. “When I heard he’d died, I raised a glass and toasted the bastard’s departure.”

I had nothing to grab onto, to break, or throw to expend the remaining anger beating behind my sternum.

So I bent double and screamed, and from my mouth boiled the red tinges of the curse I’d been plaiting with my fury.

The house quaked as though beset by vicious winds, vines snapped, and Blackberry fruit burst, adding their tainted magic to the rest. Victor stood in the chaos, a creature carved in stone, having done the job he set out to do, no longer needing to provoke and manipulate me with magic, fear, or lust .

When the hungry, haunted flora had devoured the last echoes of my wail, I pressed a palm to my breast.

“Something else you should know, Inspector. My mother didn’t kill Thomas Nightglass. I did.”

“You?” Harrow narrowed his eyes.

“You wanted all my dirty secrets,” I said. “I murdered him.”

This confession affected the Inspector strangely, and he was suddenly annoyed, vexation plain in his tone.

“What did you have to do with it?”

“I showed him Dark Hall.” I stood straight, facing history as much as Inspector Harrow.

“For what purpose?”

“Because I was lonely, Inspector,” I said, impatient.

“I ran around Dark Hall like it was a carnival ground, but I was alone. Thomas was my friend. He wanted to go, and I wanted to share it. The Fiend had never bothered me, I’d only encountered it once.

It ignored me because I didn’t have any curses to feed it.

But it noticed Thomas. We’d nearly gotten through the Narthex when it got hold of him, but I closed the portal, severed a portion of the Fiend in the process.

I didn’t see him again until Grigori brought him. ”

Do something, Isolde. Look at the boy. He’s dying!

“I knew what had happened. The Fiend had infected him with its curses. I panicked. I was afraid for him and ashamed of myself, so when my mother left to get help from Fiona, I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong.

I tried to take the curses off him myself, to fix my mistakes. I was ignorant and egotistical.”

I pulled my hair in frustration, driven by all the regret still lodged in my heart.

“There were too many curses, and they were stronger than me and started to hoard my magic. I couldn’t handle them all.

When they started picking pieces of me apart, I reacted.

I tried to curse eat, but I’d never consumed curses directly from another person, and I did something worse than take his curses, Inspector. I took his magic.”

“You annulled him?” Disbelief replaced annoyance, as though he’d never imagined such depravity to be executed by a child.

“He was dead when my mother came back, and she told everyone it had been her mistake, her wrongdoing to bear. She was protecting me, but we all carried the weight of my stupidity.”

“You were a child.” The Inspector’s statement was terse, rejecting my confession.

“I was, am, and will always be a Curse Eater, Victor Harrow,” I bit off each word, punctuating them with a step forward, the foul misery of loss garroting me.

Loss of family, of my identity, dignity, and home—even though it was one I hadn’t wanted.

There was no way to continue from here alone.

“So, annul me.. Deliver your justice. Do what you’ve been burning to since you arrested me in Devin.

I’ve nothing left to guard, and maybe when I’m gone, the plague of this house and my family will die with me. ”

My new proximity was intentional, allowing him to sense the curses I’d forged, and as I expected, tempted the Drudge in him to answer, and ensnare my power in its claws.

He regarded me with the interest of a hunter whose game has laid itself down at their feet.

“It’s all there, Victor,” I whispered. “My magic, my curses, take them.”

“Given the freedom, Ms. Blackwicket,” he intoned, leaning in with the promising menace I’d hoped to excite, “there are numerous things I’d like to do to you. Killing isn’t one of them.”

He took me by the throat, long fingers squeezing enough that my shocked intake of breath was cut short .

“You’ve told me the truth. I think it’s fair that I return the favor. But in case this is the last time I get to take you up on such a tempting offer, I’ll indulge.”

He nipped my bottom lip, then kissed me, the pain vivid and rousing, and I met his intensity with my own as his tongue delved into my mouth. I remembered his taste from the night he’d laid me across the piano, and when lust ignited, I let it blaze, my despair burning away.

But this was more than a kiss. The Inspector was taking from me exactly what I’d offered him, teasing the curses that sullied my magic free, urging them to rise.

I anticipated the torturous tearing of a curse extracted, but it never came.

It slid from me like velvet gliding across delicate skin.

If Victor had caressed me between my thighs, it wouldn’t have induced such euphoria. I arched into him.

I didn’t need to wonder if he’d experienced the same stab of ecstasy, as he turned rigid against my belly. When he inhaled, the remaining curse ascended along with a thread of my magic, which he imbibed with the reverberation of a moan in his throat.

Instead of emptiness where magic had once been, my power replenished, no less like a handful of water being taken from the ocean. I’d never encountered this kind of Curse Eating. An exchange that elicited longing, not pain, fulfilling instead of taking. I exhaled a shaky breath.

“I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I could take it all,” he replied, running kisses along my jaw, digging his fingers into the soft flesh of my backside. “I’ve been aching to feed from you, feel your magic in my veins. You’ve become a vice of mine, and I’m finding it hard to let go.”

“Then don’t.”

He breathed me in, his roaming magic discovering a part of me that had never been stirred, and I almost whimpered.

“Are you asking me to fuck you, Curse Eater? ”