Page 14 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER TWELVE

VERIK

“Oh, you’re going to get your arses kicked so fucking hard,” I growl, facing off with my family’s enemies, with the rebels who have overthrown our monarchy.

I know this is part of the trial, I know it isn’t real, but being back in familiar surroundings of my realm, the fire, the heat, the lava rushing through my veins, is a wild feeling.

I’m more powerful than I was when I left here three years ago.

Three years at DarkHallow have honed my skills, grown my power.

I’m looking forward to this more than I can say.

The leader of the rebels, a brute named Kaelen whose face I want to kick into nothing, growls. His armour is pitted obsidian, his smile a scar in his ugly face. “Look what the hells spat back out. The little prince.”

I don’t answer. Words are a waste of energy. My hellfire coils around my fists, hungry. This isn’t my realm. It’s a stage. But the actors are perfect copies, and the hate I feel is absolutely real.

Kaelen laughs, a sound like grinding rock. “Come to beg for your throne?”

“No,” I say, my voice a low rumble of promise. “I’ve come to build your tomb.”

I lunge. The floor of this illusory landscape is my canvas.

I pull at its foundations, twisting the architecture.

Pillars of molten rock erupt from the ground, spearing two of the rebel guards before they can even draw their weapons.

They scream as they’re incinerated, their ashes raining down like black snow.

Kaelen’s smile falters. He roars and charges, his warhammer wreathed in corrupted energy.

I could end this now. I feel the volcano spell in the back of my mind, a beautiful, perfect equation for annihilation.

One spell, and this entire fabricated landscape would be reduced to a crater.

But the book said the trial was to test my willingness.

It didn’t say I had to use it, and quite frankly, blind as I am to what is going on at DarkHallow, using this spell could be catastrophic for the academy, for Lysithea and the guys.

I meet Kaelen’s charge with a wall of shifting stone.

The ground rises like angry teeth, but he smashes through them, his momentum barely slowed.

He’s a brute, but a powerful one. His warhammer swings, and the air cracks where my head just was.

I don’t need a volcano. I am the architect of this place.

I clap my hands, and the sky groans. Stone stalactites, sharp as daggers, rain down on the rebels. Their screams are satisfyingly real. Kaelen roars in fury as his men are impaled, but he doesn’t stop. He’s focused only on me.

“Coward!” he bellows. “Fight me like a true son of hell!”

I grin, a flash of fire in the gloom. “I’m not my father.”

I stomp my foot, and the ground beneath him turns to quicksand made of molten rock. He sinks, bellowing, struggling against the pull. This is my game. My design. The grimoire wants to test my willingness to unleash chaos. It doesn’t understand. I don’t unleash it. I build with it.

Kaelen sinks to his waist, hellfire licking at his armour. His eyes are wide with rage. I walk towards him, my hellfire burning cold and controlled in my hand.

The volcano spell whispers in my mind, a seductive promise of absolute power. But the repercussions are a real block on being able to use it.

Kaelen roars and breaks free. If I thought this was going to be easy, I was dead wrong. More of his army appears surrounding me. The trials are in full swing now, and it’s me against a hundred men. It’s testing me, pushing me.

But still, I won’t use the spell.

I duck as three men rush towards me, axes and spears aimed at me. They’re quick. I’m quicker.

I roll sideways, hellfire erupting from my palms in twin streams. The nearest attacker screams as my flames melt through his armour like butter. I don’t give him time to fall. I’m already moving, reshaping the ground beneath the second one’s feet.

Stone spikes burst upward, catching him in the chest. His blood spatters across my face, hot and real. The third swings his axe in a vicious arc. I catch the handle with a construct of pure hellfire, the metal hissing as it warps.

“My turn,” I snarl, twisting the molten axe back into his skull.

More rebels charge. I lose count after twenty. My architectural magic ignites, turning the battlefield into my personal killing ground. Walls rise and fall at my command. The earth opens to swallow my enemies whole. But for every one I kill, two more appear.

The volcano spell pounds in my skull like a migraine made of magma. Use it. End this. One word, and every rebel in this realm dies screaming.

But I won’t. Not when I don’t know what it’ll do to Lysithea.

A spear punches through my shoulder, the point emerging from my chest in a spray of blood. I roar, grabbing the shaft and melting it with my bare hands.

I stagger, but I don’t fall. I can’t. Not when the test is this transparent.

More rebels pour from the twisted architecture, their faces painted with bloodlust. I reshape reality around me, turning stone into lava, air into blades of superheated glass. My hellfire burns through their ranks like a scythe through wheat.

But they keep coming.

A mace catches me across the ribs, cracking bone. I taste copper and rage. The volcano spell screams in my mind, promising obliteration. One spell, and this entire fabricated hell becomes a crater of glass and ash.

My shoulder throbs where the spear went through. Blood runs down my arm, pooling at my fingertips. I’m not healing in this fucked-up reality. The rebels sense weakness. They press closer, a closing fist of hate and violence.

Kaelen roars. “Getting tired, little prince?”

I laugh, the sound cracked and breathless. “Just getting started.”

The ground beneath the entire army liquefies into pure, molten rock. They scream as they sink, their armour becoming their funeral pyres. But it’s not enough. The trial keeps spawning them, an endless tide of everything I hate.

The volcano spell pulses. One spell. Just one spell, and I win.

But winning isn’t the point. The test is whether I’ll sacrifice everything for power. Whether I’ll sacrifice Lysithea’s safety for my own vengeance.

I won’t.

A blade slides between my ribs. I grunt, grabbing the rebel by the throat and crushing his windpipe with my bare hands. My hellfire sputters, weakening. Blood loss is catching up with me.

The spell whispers promises of easy victory. All I have to do is speak the words, and this nightmare ends. But the cost... if it tears through the academy, if it hurts her...

“Fuck you,” I spit at the trial, at the grimoire, at whatever cosmic force thinks it can break me this easily.

I drop to one knee, pressing my palms to the molten ground. Instead of the volcano spell, I pour everything I have into something else. Something precise. Something that won’t level half a realm and kill the only people I actually give a shit about.

The only way you will win this is with the spell I gave you.

“No,” I grit out. “You’re wrong. Not this time. Make no fucking mistake, I will use it, but not when I know it could kill her. Kill them.”

Then you will die here.

“So fucking be it.”

The army triples in an instant, and they are on me, kicking me, stabbing me, making me bleed, killing me.

I laugh. What a way to go out. “I’m calling your bluff, fuckers!” I roar before a boot hits my mouth. I spit out a mouthful of blood. “Your move.”