Page 56 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

He loosened his grip, allowing me down, and I turned to find myself eye level with the chest of a Drudge, long-bodied and arboreal, his torso as thick as oak core, burled limbs and skin knotted by brawny muscle.

Unlike Drudge I knew, this creature possessed no spectral quality, no ghostly lack of substance; only a monstrous presence, with cursed magic rising from it like spindrift.

I lifted my gaze to meet a face both hardened and fiendish, marked by a brutish jaw and an enduring scar, stark against the charred tone of its skin.

I clutched my shirt closed, shielding my naked chest, as I looked up into his face, ochre eyes burning, alight with chaotic magic.

“Victor?”

The creature leaned toward me, the skeletal points of its fingers scraping the wall above my head. “Regretting your lust, Eleanora?”

“You’re a Drudge.”

“Drudge, human, a profane version of both welded together by a man’s hunger for power.” A clicking growl emanated from him as he breathed.

“Someone did this to you?” The implication was chilling. To hear of the horrors of human made monsters during the War was one thing, but seeing the result of it, curses made flesh and blood, was another .

“Grigori Nightglass,” he breathed. “When I was a boy.”

Victor was a few years older than I. We would have been children at the same time, living in Nightglass together.

A wraithlike hand rose to my cheek, the touch cold as he traced trails countless tears had followed.

“That merger should have ended my life, but a little girl in the house on the cliffs took pity on me and fed me the magic that kept me alive.”

The asphyxiating pressure of memories crowded the air from my lungs, recollections of events that had ruined everything and buried me in fear.

“You’re frightened,” the Drudge rumbled. “I’m not ashamed to admit I like it.”

“Stop.” The words were too quiet.

“This part of me enjoyed the terror you radiated across that table in Devin, as though you expected me to cross it and devour you whole.”

His abominable power yawned wide, and my magic responded to it intuitively. It took effort to pull my guard into place as tightly as I was able.

“No longer eager to have a Nightglass man between your legs?” The laugh was primordial, like nature forming in fire. “Shame.”

“You’re not Thomas.”

“You’re right, Curse Eater. Thomas is dead, consumed by vile magic. Victor is the monster who replaced him, the one you tremble against now, who has tasted you, made you keen in the dark. This soul is rooted in blood and stolen magic.”

He paused, shifting, standing to his full height.

“But you had nothing to do with that.” The burr of his voice couldn’t sound gentle, but the threat had lessened.

“When your mother received me she knew what Grigori had done, believed it was better that I die. She walked away to let me, not to find your sister. She saw my future, what Nightglass had planned for me, and thought death would be a mercy.”

Tired of fighting tears, I let them come. The memory of my mother, gentle and caring, giving and sacrificing everything for everyone, was forever altered. Just like Fiona, Isolde carried a darkness in her that I’d never seen, because she’d protected me from it.

“You took nothing from me when you stepped in to do your mother’s work. You severed a piece of yourself, offered it, and it’s lived in me always, tormenting me as the Drudge torments me.”

My memories rearranged themselves as I exhaled, reshaping into a past where I hadn’t killed Thomas, my mother was capable of cruelty disguised as mercy, and Victor and I were inexorably linked by a decision I’d made so many years ago, in the desperation of saving a friend I’d loved.

“Are you behind the recent disappearances?” I asked.

“Some of them,” he responded, unaffected by the admission, standing like an infernal god answering to the feeble moral questioning of mortals who were incapable of following their own principles.

“Darren?” I asked

“No.”

I was surprised by how much relief this denial offered me.

“Are you the reason there are no other Drudges here in Nightglass?” I thought back on the small Drudge that had attacked me in the morgue, the utter lack of them at the Vapors, and throughout the rest of the town, despite the vast amount of magic available to seize.

I’d believed William had been using Jack, but this explanation was more likely.

“Someone like me. It seems Grigori made more.” The possibility was nauseating, cruel. “It lurks in the skin of someone you may already know. I’ve been trying to lure it out. ”

“You shouldn’t have kept this from me,” I said, though instead of my heart hardening towards this man, condemned to live in damnation alongside a monster forced upon him, it softened, a burden lifting.

“And why not?” He asked, his voice a thunderclap.

“It was my right to know I didn’t kill you!” I replied, matching his intensity, rising to meet him with anger of my own. I took a step closer, less timid. “That you weren’t just Authority stalking me to my grave. What good did it do to hide it?”

My aggressive approach provoked the curses comprising this grisly component of Victor Harrow.

He loomed, seething, reaching to take hold of me, possessive.

I raised a hand to stop him, but his gnarled, tapered fingers encircled mine, pulling me in.

He pressed my palm to his chest, and the insistent prodding of tainted energy retreated slightly at my touch.

Though the Drudge remained, its energy settled into something less primeval.

“Until I saw you with your sister in Devin, I knew you as the woman who’d killed Brock Moftan.

Even after I’d discovered you to be Eleanora, I assumed you’d chosen the path of the Brom.

I felt betrayed. I wanted to punish you.

” These truths were yielded with an earnestness I’d never expected from Inspector Harrow, delivered from the mouth of a curse, blurring the lines between the two.

“But you ignite me, soothe the ache of this affliction. Being near you is like feeling spring after endless winter.”

I was a weak woman—weak and foolish. Inspired by the urge to preserve the infuriating, essential bond we’d created, I tentatively lowered my guard, allowing my power to rise to him, giving in. There was no greed, no unrestrained indulgence, only the caress of his magic.

“Can the Drudge be unraveled?” I asked.

“Neither aspect of me can exist without the other.” He drew closer. “It’s for this reason I should be destroyed, Eleanora, and William Nightglass must fall with me. ”

“That’s absurd, Victor,” I said, and his name sounded right.

Thomas was someone he’d once been, lost forever, the moment etched into this house and our joined histories.

“William deserves whatever’s coming to him, and I understand wanting to be the harbinger of that justice, but it doesn’t require sacrificing yourself.

I’ll help you. We’ll figure out a better way of freeing Jack and other children like him from the Brom. ”

I recalled the way he’d cared for Jack, how he’d offered protection and security, enough to allow the boy’s magic to believe in its chances. He’d known exactly what to say, how to hold on to hope for the child that couldn’t.

“They need people like you on their side,” I said.

His touch was light on my cheek.

“Idealism doesn’t suit you, Curse Eater.”

When the Drudge lifted my chin, lowering its face to mine, I didn’t recoil.

Its broad mouth was rough, electric against my lips, but it was meant to be.

As he’d done in the moments before the tide of desire had swept us from our senses, he drew magic from me, but this time, there was simply the pleasing warmth of mutual connection.

In the catastrophic storm we’d unexpectedly found ourselves navigating together, we’d become each other’s mooring. I accepted my role gladly, closing my eyes to savor it.

His mouth softened, skin and cartilage rippling beneath my hand, as his form slowly yielded to its human side, bringing Victor’s scarred body back to me.

The discomfort of the transformation remained clear in the tension of his muscles, the way his breath hitched.

I touched his face, running the pads of my fingers along the scar on his cheek, brushing the hair from his forehead as he’d once done for me, seeing him anew.

For the first time since I’d known him as Victor, his expression was unguarded, revealing a tenderness that might have been the death of me on its own .

“William’s High Tide is tonight. We should make a plan,” he said, taking my hand to place a kiss on my palm. “But I’d rather be dressed for that discussion.”

Relieved, I managed a breathy laugh, and we descended from the tower together, Victor assisting me down the broken stairs.

There would never be a reason to return.

My sister’s crimes had been uncovered, but she was dead, the garden she’d grown to deliver her justice drained of life.

The Narthex to Dark Hall was closed and was better off staying that way.

A renewed sense of purpose had unfurled, and I was prepared to work with Victor on a plan to rescue Jack.

He placed a hand, painfully gentle, at the back of my neck and pulled me close to press a kiss on my forehead.

“Stay here, Ellie,” he said, and there was something strange in his voice, a thickness as his throat constricted with sorrow.

Pinpricks of warning traveled across my skin, but my reaction was too slow.

He seized me, lifting me from my feet and taking three swift steps to the door of the suite I’d shared with my family.

I resisted his manhandling, but I was in no position, physically or magically, to counter his will.

He tossed me into the anteroom with enough force that I stumbled nearly into the bathroom.

I couldn’t make it to the door in time to stop him from closing it.

“Let me out!” I shouted, clutching the handle, rattling it. Enraged and helpless, I watched as the door melded to its frame, soldered shut by magic.

I pounded frantically, calling his name, cursing him. But there was no answer.

I lost track of the time I spent channeling my magic into fused wood, fracturing it bit by bit, never enough to breach it.

Even when I summoned all my strength for a fierce strike, the door only cracked in the middle without giving way.

Unlike with Victor, my magic didn’t replenish itself easily, and I wasn’t accustomed to this level of psychic exertion. Fatigue was setting in.

My last option was the dormered window. At three stories, it was an unlikely escape, but I marched to it, flinging open the shutters to gaze at a darksome landscape, illuminated by the waning moon.

From the third floor, the mansard roof slanted below the window, with its decorative cornice edge running along the incline, encircling the entire house.

I tore off my tattered blouse and wrestled out of my skirt, charging to Fiona’s wrecked room to rummage through her clothes again.

I was determined to get to High Tide, to stop Victor from enacting whatever self-destructive plan he’d engineered, even if I had to jump out of the damn window to make it there.

Hurriedly, I put on the remaining formal dress in the wardrobe, its A-line shape softened by the gold chiffon pooling around the skirt, pleated sleeves draping loose over my shoulders, then spared an impatient moment to arrange my hair.

I swept it into a severe chignon and swiped my lips with a violent red lipstick I found on the vanity.

I could see why Thea wore this color so often. It was like wearing armor.

I tossed the gold tube onto the vanity counter, where it clattered and dropped to the floor, then stared at my reflection in the mirror. Anger suited me.

Soon, I was leaning precariously into the night, enduring the biting cold with no coat. I climbed over the windowsill and sat, adrenaline rocketing through my veins. If I fell, magic would cushion my landing, but it wouldn’t prevent broken bones.

As I was about to slide to the ledge, the roar of a car engine approached.

I waited, watching as the headlights climbed the hill.

Ramsey, come to retrieve me. Taking a chance, I stood on the ledge, gripping the window frame, leaning further so he could spot me.

The sedan disappeared, parking in front of the house where I would remain hidden. I shouted .

“Ramsey!” My cry was high and loud, but the crash of the waves swallowed it. “Ramsey!”

With luck, the driver heard me and appeared around the corner, but he had company. Thea was next to him, wrapped in fur.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled.

“I’m trapped,” I called. “Third floor. You’ll know which door.”

I had no concerns about the house refusing them entry; it had been eerily silent as of late. I searched for curses, but encountered emptiness.

Minutes later, Ramsey’s voice called through the door.

“Ms. Blackwicket!”

“Please get the door open!”

A bone-jarring crack echoed, shaking the door. Ramsey was striking it with something. With one final crash, the casing splintered and the door gave way, allowing Ramsey to open it with a harsh shove of his shoulder.

I stalked past the chauffer, who stood grouchy and red-faced, a tire iron in hand.

“You look full of angry bees,” he gruffed. “How’d this happen?”

“Victor,” I growled, storming to the stairs.