Page 2 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

“Safe?” Dathan spits the word like poison. “We were caged. There’s a difference.”

“A difference you are not yet equipped to appreciate,” Blackgrove says, his gaze sweeping over the four of us. It lingers on the dormant Tenebris Vinculum against Evren’s chest. “You have been to the Court. You have met the Arbiters.”

It’s not a question.

“And you know what they want,” I say. The guys flank me, a united front of barely contained violence. “You know what the trials are. You failed them, didn’t you, Thane?”

The name hangs in the air, a stone thrown into a still, dark lake. For the first time, a flicker of something raw and unguarded crosses Blackgrove’s face. It’s not surprising. It’s the weary pain of an old, unhealed wound.

He straightens up, pushing away from the statue.

The casual lean is gone, replaced by the rigid posture of a king who has lost his throne.

Only there is a glint in his eyes that says the opposite.

What don’t we know? He couldn’t have passed because the grimoire isn’t completed.

There was a second group after him. His group must’ve failed…

and yet… “What I failed to do is irrelevant. What matters now is that you have been marked. The game has begun, and the academy itself is the board.”

His words are a warning. He isn’t just our headmaster anymore.

“The trials will find you in the mundane, in your classrooms, in your rooms. They will use your attachments, your weaknesses. You cannot prepare. You can only endure.” He turns to leave, his long coat swirling around him like a shadow. “Dismissed.”

“You didn’t fail, did you?” I blurt out, earning confused glances from the guys.

“Fail what?” he replies and waves his hand, shooing us on our way like a swarm of annoying flies.

His dismissive wave is an insult, a deliberate act of condescension. He walks away, swallowed by the shadows of his own academy, leaving his non-answer hanging in the air like poison gas.

Fail what? A question.

“What was that?” Verik asks, his gaze sharp on my face. “What do you mean, he didn’t fail?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, the certainty I felt moments ago already dissolving into doubt. “It’s just a feeling. The way he looked. It wasn’t failure.”

We walk back to the residence in silence, the four of us moving as a single, tense unit. The normal sounds of DarkHallow feel like they’re happening in another world. The Blood Court is the only reality now. This is just the waiting room.

My room isn’t a sanctuary anymore. It’s a stage. A potential arena for a trial we can’t see coming.

I turn to face them, the enclosed space feeling more like a cage than ever. “He’s hiding something. If he didn’t fail, how is the grimoire still incomplete? It doesn’t make sense.”

Dathan shrugs.

I snatch the grimoire from Evren. He relinquishes it with a relieved expression. I place it carefully on the desk, and it opens its eye. “Did Thane Blackgrove fail?”

The eye waits a beat but then blinks twice.

“Twice for no,” Verik murmurs.

“Then what are we missing?” I ask in frustration.

The grimoire blinks three times.

“Uhm, what does three blinks mean?”

“I don’t know,” Dathan says.

“Yeah, none of us do.”

“No, I mean it means I don’t know.”

“Oh.” The eye and I stare at each other for a long moment.

Then it flips open to reveal some pages that have text scrawled on them somewhere near the middle.

I lean over. It’s in Latin, and I can’t really read it, the ink is so faded.

But that’s not what the grimoire wants to show me.

It flips the page over and then again and again to show me pages that have been filled.

“You’re not blank. The other groups filled some of your pages. So, does that mean we are stacking? Only certain groups can complete certain parts?” I slam it shut, and it blinks at me. Once.

“Fuck. So, they didn’t fail. They did their part, and now we have to do ours. Does our contribution complete you in your entirety?”

The book blinks once.

A slow, deliberate confirmation that lands like a death sentence. We’re not just another attempt. We are the final act.

The air in the room thickens, heavy with the weight of centuries of partial successes. We’re the last piece of a puzzle so old its creators are probably dust.

“If Thane Blackgrove is alive and well because his group completed their part, where are the others? And the second group? I know two Nox Sirens were part of those groups. Where are they?” I demand.

The grimoire stares back at me, its single eye unblinking.

It offers no answers. No text, no blinks, just a profound, ancient silence that is more chilling than any prophecy.

The question of the other Nox Sirens hangs in the room, a ghost of extinction that I’m now forced to confront.

“Dead,” Verik says, his voice flat. “They have to be. Otherwise, your species wouldn’t be extinct.”

“Not extinct,” I growl. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, how?” Dathan says, latching onto Verik’s statement. “You don’t know who your parents are or why you were abandoned?—”

The book opens with a thud, cutting him off and also my roar to shut his face and not talk about my past. I stare at the blank page before writing appears, not written as I’m looking at it, but appearing as if it were already there but invisible.

Scream from the void.

“What does that mean?” Dathan asks, his voice low, all his previous aggression gone. He looks from the book to me.

“It means she wasn’t born,” Verik says, his tone flat and final. “She was made.”

A scream given form.

The thought slams into me, explaining everything and nothing. The emptiness of my past isn’t a missing memory. It’s a void. An origin story written in nothingness. I wasn’t abandoned. I was created. A creature forged for a purpose I’m only now beginning to understand.

“The being that screamed back when we branded you… was that the scream that made you?” Dathan asks quietly.

I look from the book to Dathan’s silver eyes, searching for a joke, a trick, anything but the horrifying sincerity I find there.

A scream from the void.

The words are a perfect, terrible fit. The emptiness of my past isn’t a series of forgotten memories. It’s an abyss. A scream given form until it learned to be a girl.

My legs tremble. I sink onto the edge of my bed, my gaze fixed on the grimoire. It has nothing more to say on the subject. It has delivered its devastating truth and now it waits, its single eye watching me unravel.

“Lysithea?” Verik’s voice is rough, laced with a concern that feels alien coming from him.

I shake my head, unable to form words. I am an echo.

Evren moves, silent in the tense room. He kneels in front of me, his eyes searching mine. He doesn’t offer comfort. He offers reality. His hand hovers over mine, a silent question.

I let him take it. His touch is cold, real. An anchor in the storm of my non-existence.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Dathan says, his voice a low growl. “Born or made, you’re still you.”

But am I? Or am I just the sum of a purpose I never chose? The Blood Court, the trials, my entire life at DarkHallow… it’s all a calibration.