Page 15 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DATHAN

The fear hits me like a punch to the gut.

Turning in a circle, I see I’m standing in what looks like my old nightmare realm, but it isn’t. It’s a fabrication. I’m surrounded by the twisted creatures that used to serve me before I was cast out. No, this fear is coming from somewhere else. Hundreds of sources, all screaming in terror.

I breathe it in, let it fill my lungs like smoke. The power floods through me, more intoxicating than any drug. This is what I was made for. This is what I am.

But something’s wrong.

The fear isn’t random. It’s focused. Directed. Underneath it all, I can taste something that makes my blood run cold.

Lysithea’s terror.

“No,” I snarl, my nightmare magic flaring to life around me. The trial can go fuck itself. Whatever test this is supposed to be, it just became secondary.

The creatures around me are feeding on the fear as well. Growing stronger. Their forms shift and writhe, becoming more solid, more real.

“Welcome home, master,” one of them hisses through too many teeth. “We’ve missed you.”

I can feel the pull. The old power, the old ways. All I have to do is admit I was wrong, and it could all be mine again. I’d have my family back, my full power, my status.

All I have to do is leave DarkHallow and come home.

But Lysithea’s fear is a cold knife in my chest, cutting through every temptation. Her terror tastes different from the others. It’s broken. Shattered. Like someone is systematically destroying her from the inside out.

“Fuck that,” I growl, turning my back on the creatures. “And fuck all of you.”

The nightmare realm warps around me as I reject its offer. The creatures shriek in outrage, their forms becoming more monstrous. But I don’t care. I push through them, following the thread of her fear like a bloodhound.

My magic tears through the fabricated landscape, ripping holes in reality itself. The trial wants me to choose between power and her? Not much of a choice. “You’re going to have to do better than that, arseholes.”

The creatures give chase, their claws raking at my back. One of them catches my arm. “You could rule again,” it hisses. “All you have to do is abandon the broken little siren.”

I grab it by the throat, my power flooding into its form. It screams as I tear it apart from the inside out, feeding its fear back into itself until it dissolves into shadow and regret.

“She’s mine,” I snarl at the remaining creatures. “Touch her and I’ll show you what real nightmares look like.”

They fall back, recognising the promise of violence in my voice. Good. Let them remember why they feared me in the first place.

I tear through the fabricated nightmare realm, following the scent of her terror. It leads me to a wall of absolute darkness, a barrier that shouldn’t exist. The fear on the other side is suffocating, drowning in memories that taste like old blood and despair.

The orphanage. They’re making her relive the orphanage.

Her worst nightmare is now mine.

My pitch-black magic slams into the barrier, but it holds.

“Let me through!” I roar, pouring everything I have into breaking down the wall. My power crashes against it like waves against stone, but it doesn’t crack an inch.

The creatures behind me grow bolder, sensing my distraction. “She’s already broken. Why waste your power on damaged goods?”

I whirl around, my magic exploding outward in a wave of pure terror.

The creatures shriek as their own worst fears manifest around them, turning them inside out.

“Because she’s mine,” I snarl. “Because she sees me, she doesn’t try to change me.

Because she is family . You hear that, fuckers? She is the family I chose.”

The barrier shimmers but doesn’t crack. Her terror is a living thing, clawing at my chest, begging for help I can’t give. The trial wants me to choose. My power, my old life, or her.

“Wrong fucking question,” I growl, turning back to the creatures still lurking in the shadows. “How much pain are you willing to endure before you let me through?”

I reach into the deepest part of my power, the part I’ve kept locked away since I came to DarkHallow.

The part that made my father proud. Nightmare magic isn’t just about feeding on terror.

It’s about creating it. Perfecting it. Making it so pure, so absolute, that reality bends away from it in revulsion.

The creatures sense the shift. They try to flee, but it’s too late. I wrap them in their own worst fears, amplified beyond endurance. One by one, they tear themselves apart, screaming apologies that mean nothing to me.

But the barrier still holds.

I press my palms against the darkness, feeling the trial’s smug satisfaction. It thinks it’s won. It thinks I’ll give up, choose the easy path, abandon her like everyone else has.

“You don’t know me at all,” I whisper to whatever cosmic force is watching.

I pour everything into the barrier. My power, my rage, my loyalty, my absolute fucking refusal to let her face this alone.

The barrier cracks. A hairline fracture of light in the absolute darkness.

It’s not enough, but it’s something. I can feel her on the other side, drowning in memories that taste like metal and despair. The branks. They’re forcing her to relive the branks.

“Hold on, Thea!” I roar, pressing harder against the barrier.

The crack widens. Enough for me to slip a tendril of my power through, a thread of nightmare magic that seeks her in the darkness beyond.

I find her. She’s small, terrified, trapped in a memory that’s been weaponised against her. But she’s fighting. Even drowning in her worst trauma, she’s still fighting.

“That’s my girl,” I breathe, pouring more power through the crack.

The trial shudders around me, reality warping as I force my way through its rules.

The barrier shatters.

I fall through into her nightmare, landing hard on cold stone.

The orphanage stretches around me, grey and oppressive, reeking of bleach and cruelty.

I find her tied to a bed in a grey, windowless room, her small form trembling as an invisible force presses the magical branks over her face.

Four men, three times her size, hold her down by her shoulders and ankles. She is trapped, wholly and completely.

“Thea,” I shout, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s lost in the memory, trapped in a past that’s been made real again.

The woman materialises from the shadows. Clara. Even in this fabricated nightmare, she’s exactly as I imagined her. Huge, cruel, with eyes like chips of flint.

Lysithea’s body shakes, but no sound emerges. The branks holds her voice prisoner, just as it did for years. I can feel her terror, her helplessness, her desperate need to make noise, any noise, to prove she exists.

“You won’t break her. Not on my fucking watch,” I snarl.

Neither of them can hear me, and that’s when I realise, this isn’t Lysithea’s nightmare that I broke into. It’s still mine.

My heart thuds knowing she is still out there, enduring past pain while I’m stuck in here facing my fears. “Fuck this,” I growl and blast out a stream of black magic that knocks Clara off her feet.

I charge at her while she’s down, but my fist passes straight through her like she’s made of smoke. The realisation hits me like a kick to the chest. This isn’t about fighting her. It’s about watching. About experiencing Lysithea’s helplessness second hand, feeling the terror that shaped her.

“Sick, twisted fuckers,” I mutter, backing away as Clara reforms like mist coalescing.

The trial isn’t testing my willingness to save her. It’s testing whether I can endure her pain without breaking. Whether I can witness her worst trauma and still want her. Still choose her.

I watch Lysithea’s body convulse against the restraints as the branks tighten. Even in this fabricated memory, I can feel her desperation radiating like heat from a forge. The need to scream, to make any sound at all, trapped behind magic and malice.

My nightmare magic flares, wanting to tear Clara and the men apart molecule by molecule. But I force it down. This isn’t about my rage. It’s about understanding hers. About seeing the source of her walls, her fear of being touched, her terror of being silenced.

And it fucking breaks my heart.

The guilt of choosing her, of playing with her, of branding her, nearly cripples me. I drop to my knees, tears pricking my eyes. Nausea rises, and I force myself not to throw up all over the nightmare.

This is what she carries. This is what she survived.

And we fucking marked her. We branded her with pain just like they did.

The realisation is a knife twisting in my gut. We’re no better than them. We used her pain to get what we wanted.

My magic explodes outward, shattering the fabricated walls even though I know it’s useless. I can’t change this. Can’t fix it. Can only witness the systematic destruction of everything that made her who she is.

But she survived it. She survived and became a queen anyway.

The trial shudders around me, reality bending as my understanding shifts.

This isn’t about testing whether I can handle her trauma.

It’s about showing me why she’s stronger than all of us combined.

We think we have suffered, but we don’t know the half of it.

Wrong. Evren can, and that’s why I don’t resent their stronger connection. She needs him. They need each other.

“I see her,” I whisper. I see her strength.

I see the source of her power. And I see why she chose us despite everything we’ve done to her.

The orphanage dissolves around me like smoke.

The trial releases its hold, satisfied with whatever lesson it was trying to teach. But I’m not satisfied. Not even close.

I’m standing back in the nightmare realm, but it’s different now. The creatures that served me before are gone, replaced by something else. Something that looks suspiciously like respect.

“You chose her,” one of them observes, its voice lacking the mocking tone from before.

“Every fucking time,” I snarl back. “And I’ll keep choosing her until the universe gets the message.”

“Then let’s try again, shall we?”

The realm shimmers, and I’m standing back where I started, only this time, her terror brings me to my knees.