Page 19 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EVREN

I roll her over and spread her legs. Cum is pooling out of her pussy, and it’s a gorgeous sight. She has been thoroughly used by the others, a canvas of their lust. I dip my fingers into the slick mess of them and bring them to my lips. She tastes of hellfire and terror. Our gorgeous queen.

I lean down and clean her with my tongue, lapping up their remnants until she is purely mine.

She gasps, her hips lifting off the bed.

My cold washes over her, an arctic tide against the lingering heat.

Her eyes flutter open, finding mine in the gloom.

There’s a deep, aching trust that steals my breath.

I part her legs wider and slide inside. The friction is a shock of heat against my cold flesh. A collision of life and death, of beginnings and endings, all happening at once inside her. I move slowly, deliberately, after the other two ravaged her. Each thrust is a vow. I am yours.

The Soul Scar on my arm pulses, a steady, rhythmic beat. I feel the connection between us solidify into something eternal. Looming over her, I murmur, “Let me see you come.”

She pants and her pussy clenches around me.

Her back arches off the bed. A delicious tremor runs through her body as I move faster. Her pussy grips my cock, squeezing every ounce of pleasure from me.

“Evren,” she moans, my name a whispered plea on her lips. “Fuck me harder.”

My hands slide under her thighs, lifting her off the bed. I slam into her, driving deeper, giving her exactly what she needs. The bed creaks under the assault, the sound of her wet, slick pussy taking every inch of me filling the room.

“More,” she moans.

I give her more. I give her everything, slamming into her with a force that makes her scream.

The room shakes, the air vibrating with the raw, primal energy of our fucking.

Her pussy clamps down on my cock, her orgasm ripping through her.

I feel it, every wave, every pulse, every tremor.

I ride the aftershocks with her, chasing them down, forcing the last tremor out of her with a hard, deep thrust. I empty myself inside her with a raw groan, forehead pressed to hers, breath mingling. Mine.

Silence folds over us. Heavy. Sacred.

I ease out of her and collapse beside her, a dead weight of bone and shadow. The room is a wreck. Torn curtains, shattered windows, and the mingled scents of our sex. An unholy mess.

Dathan rolls onto his side to face her. He doesn’t touch her. He just watches, his gaze possessive, protective. Verik lies on her other side, a slumbering volcano, his hellfire a low, banking heat in the cold air I bring. We are a trinity of destruction guarding our epicentre.

The brand on my arm burns. A clean, white heat that has no pain. I look at theirs. The scars glow with the same light, connected by an invisible thread. The ritual is complete. The bond is forged.

Lysithea falls into a deep, exhausted sleep. She is not broken. She is complete. She is ours.

The grimoire materialises at the foot of the bed, its eye wide and unblinking. It flips open, the pages turning with a sound like cracking stone.

A single phrase bleeds onto the page.

The key is forged.

Now, unlock the cage.

The shriek of metal and magic pierces the silence of the room.

I look up to see the bars of a cage slam down around us as the bed disappears and we land on a cold, unforgiving stone floor, somewhere deep, deep underground. The book has vanished, and the other guys are already on their feet, sorting out their clothes.

Lysithea is the only one who got fully unclothed, and she is naked and shivering as she wakes up, blinking sleepily until she realises we are no longer in her bedroom.

“What the fuck?” she mutters.

I strip off my shirt and place it over her shoulders. She accepts it and pulls it closer around her, a barrier against the damp, subterranean air. She pulls it tight, her violet eyes scanning our prison, the fear quickly replaced by a familiar, simmering rage.

The cage is forged from a dark, pitted metal I don’t recognise. It hums with a magic that feels ancient and hungry, leeching the warmth from the air.

“Well, this is cosy,” Dathan snarls, running a hand over one of the bars. He recoils, hissing as the metal glows a faint, yet threatening, red. “Drains magic.”

Verik glares at it, his hellfire eyes narrowed. “So brute force is out.” He inspects the lock on the gate. It’s a complex mechanism with no keyhole, just four smooth, circular indentations arranged in a cross.

“Trust is the key,” I whisper, the grimoire’s words echoing in the sudden silence.

“We have to trust each other to get out of here,” Lysithea whispers.

“Well, that should be easy then,” Verik says as he turns towards her, but then his mouth drops open.

I scoot back as Lysithea, or whatever has possessed her, snaps her head to the side, her mouth wide open as her teeth elongate into fangs.

She tries to take a bite out of me before she coils into the snake that is her familiar.

Her golden scales shimmer in the dark as she slithers towards me, venom dripping from her fangs.

“Trust her,” Dathan shouts from across the cell.

I shoot him an exasperated glare. I wasn’t exactly going to try to kill her. Even though she is trying to kill me.

Lysithea’s snake form rears up, her golden head level with mine. Her eyes are Lysithea’s. Violet, but ancient, and filled with a cold, predatory light that has nothing to do with her.

I hold my ground. She hisses, a sound that vibrates through the stone floor. She strikes, a blur of gold and death.

I don’t flinch. I offer my arm, my hand clenched into a fist at my side. Her fangs, long and sharp as daggers, sink into my flesh. Pain, white-hot and immediate, lances up my arm. The venom is a freezing fire, an agony that feels disturbingly familiar.

It feels like dying all over again. Flashes of fear that feed Dathan, making him snarl, hits me in the chest and squeezes my lungs. Every instinct is screaming at me to protect myself, to use my magic to get her away from me. But that is precisely what it wants me to do.

The snake’s jaw works, pumping more of its poison into my veins. My vision blurs at the edges.

With every ounce of strength I possess, I look into the snake’s violet eyes. “I trust you,” I rasp, the words tasting of my own blood.

The snake releases me, and with a flash of darkness that gives me a chill, Lysithea is back in her human form, clutching her head and swaying. Dathan catches her before she hits the stone. She leans against him, my shirt hanging off one shoulder, her eyes unfocused.

“What happened?” she murmurs.

“You turned into a snake and bit me,” I say. I look down. The two puncture wounds are black, necrotising at the edges. The venom is a crawling ice spreading through my veins, a familiar cold that my magic fights to contain, but just as suddenly, it withdraws.

A sharp click echoes through the cell. One of the indentations on the lock glows with a soft, white light.

“Test passed,” Verik murmurs.

“One down, three to go.”