Page 28 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

LYSITHEA

After dinner, where I barely ate anything, I stalk back to my room, breaking free from the guys to prod the grimoire with my finger while glaring at it in fury. “You’re giving him spells that will hurt him?”

It blinks once.

“You are a bastard,” I growl.

It doesn’t blink. But then after a few seconds, it closes its eye, which is basically its way of saying, ‘Fuck you.’

I jab my finger at its stupid, unblinking eye again. “Don’t you ignore me, you sentient piece of shit.”

“Having a go at the homicidal library again, Thea?” Dathan’s voice is laced with amusement.

“It gave Evren a death sentence,” I snap, whirling around to face them. “It’s trying to make us choose which one of us gets to die so the others can win.”

The book cracks open on the desk, the sound like a breaking bone. The pages flip violently, stopping on a new, blank page. Ink bleeds across the parchment, forming an elegant, looping script.

You don’t die.

“I don’t die,” I hiss. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re immortal?” Verik says slowly. “Goddesses tend to be.”

“No!” I roar. “I am not a goddess!”

“Demi then. You were created from a god,” Dathan adds.

“Okay, then, tell me why I feel like I’m dying every time this corruption spreads? Hmm? Can you tell me that, you fucking arsehole?”

“Hey,” Dathan snaps. “Don’t kill the messenger.”

I inhale sharply and turn to the book. “I was talking to this arsehole. Not you.”

“Oh,” he says, appeased. “Okay.”

“We are fighting,” Evren says quietly.

“No, we aren’t,” I say, not taking my eyes from the book. “We are loudly discussing.”

Verik snorts. “Nicely done, hellcat. But Evren is right. We are fighting with the grimoire. We need to be working with it.” He pushes me out of the way with his shoulder so he can stand in front of the grimoire, leaning over it.

“She can’t die? So this corruption won’t kill her? If that’s the case, what is it for?”

“It’s draining her magic.”

The voice makes me jump. It was like a boom from the sky, all around us, yet contained to this room.

“Did the book just speak to us?”

“Yeah,” Verik says. “Guess it deems you all worthy.”

“I was talking to you,” the book says dryly.

“Oh, right,” Dathan drawls. “Because we are all pieces of shit on the bottom of your shoe.”

“I have no feet.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I groan. “This is ridiculous! You will talk to me now, got it? What happens to me when it drains all my magic? And if that is actually the case, why does it retreat when I use my power?”

“You will become mortal. It retreats because you are stronger than you realise.”

“Mortal?” I gasp. The thought of it chills me to my soul.

Verik stares at me like I’ve grown another head before turning back to the book. “How do we stop it?”

“By using her power.”

“That’s ambiguous. How much? For how long? On something specific? The Warden?” he growls.

The book’s voice booms again, echoing in my skull. “The power must be used to rewrite a falsehood.”

“What fucking falsehood?” Dathan snaps. “This entire realm is built on them.”

“The greatest lie of all,” the book intones, its voice dripping with cryptic bullshit.

I stare at the pages, my mind racing. Mortal. Stripped of my magic, my voice, my shadows. Just… me. A small, breakable thing. The thought is more terrifying than any monster, any trial.

“Stop talking in riddles, you fucking glorified dictionary,” I snarl, my fear twisting into rage. “Tell us what to do.”

“You need to get past the Warden to reach the Sovereign Forge,” the book snaps, suddenly as pissed off as we are. Good. It has emotions we can use to make it talk more. “Kill the Warden, kill the corruption.” It goes silent, assessing our response.

“What is in the Forge?” I ask quietly. “What is so important that we need to reach it?”

“Your future.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is all the answer you need.”

“Evren said we could use the Soul Scar to cure this corruption. Is that how we get past the Warden?”

“You already have the answers, child.” The book slams shut and vanishes.

“That’s right, go off in a temper tantrum,” I mutter. I turn back to the guys. “Right. We have two more trials. Three sacrifices. A fight to the death against the Warden,” I count them off on my fingers and sigh. “And a mission to reach the Sovereign Forge.”

“Where your future awaits,” Verik adds.

“I’m starting to think the sacrifices aren’t us,” I mutter as the thought enters my head. “Nowhere did it say three of us had to sacrifice our lives.”

“True,” Dathan says. “So, it could be anything, including death.”

“I wish the third trial would happen already,” Verik mutters. “I hate waiting.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that already,” I snap.

He holds his hands up. “So, what now?”

The words hang in the air between us, heavy with frustration. Verik’s wish for the third trial echoes my own restless energy. The waiting feels worse than the actual danger, like standing on the edge of a cliff knowing you’ll have to jump eventually.

“Maybe we should—” I start to say, but my Soul Scar flares with sudden, searing heat.

All four of us gasp simultaneously as the marks ignite with brilliant light. The familiar tug of trial magic wraps around us, but this feels different from before. Stronger. More urgent. The magic demands our presence.

The room around us dissolves like smoke, walls and furniture bleeding away into nothingness. The sensation of displacement washes over me, that stomach-dropping feeling of being pulled through space and time by forces beyond our control.

When the world solidifies again, we’re standing on a narrow stone bridge suspended over an abyss that stretches down into infinite darkness. The bridge is maybe three metres wide, built from black stone that gleams with an oily sheen. No railings protect us from the drop. No safety nets wait below.

Wind howls around us, carrying the scent of blood and magic. In the distance, barely visible through swirling mist, I can make out our destination. It’s a massive fortress carved from red stone, its towers twisting skyward like accusing fingers.

The bridge beneath our feet shudders, and cracks appear in the stone. The cracks glow with malevolent red light, and through them, I can hear whispers. Seductive voices promising power, safety, survival. All I have to do is push my friends into the abyss.

“Move,” Dathan snarls, his nightmare magic coiling around him like protective armour. “Standing still won’t make this easier.”

We form a line, single file across the narrow bridge.

I take point, my shadows reaching ahead to test the path.

Behind me, Verik’s hellfire casts dancing light across the stone.

Dathan follows him, nightmare magic probing for threats.

Evren brings up the rear, ice magic crystallising in the air around us.

The first attack comes when we’re barely ten metres from our starting point.

The bridge lurches sideways, tilting at a forty-five-degree angle. I slide toward the edge, my fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth stone. Behind me, I hear Verik curse as his hellfire flares out of control.

“Grab my hand!” Dathan shouts, lunging forward.

I reach for him, but the whispers flood my mind as our fingers touch. Images flash before my eyes of Dathan standing over my corpse, his nightmare magic draining the last of my life. His face twisted with satisfaction as he claims my power for himself.

The vision feels real. More than real. I can taste the copper of blood in my mouth, feel the cold creep of death stealing through my veins. For a moment, I believe it completely.

I jerk my hand away from his, choosing to fall rather than trust.

“Thea!” His voice carries genuine panic, but the whispers insist it’s an act. They show me more images of Dathan discussing my death with shadowy figures, planning my murder, laughing as my body hits the stones below.

Verik’s hellfire erupts beneath me, creating a platform of solid flame. I land hard on the burning surface, but the fire doesn’t hurt me. It feels warm, protective. Safe.

“The visions are lies,” Verik says, his hand extended to pull me back onto the bridge. “Whatever you saw, it isn’t real.”

But the whispers show me Verik, too. Images of him holding my heart in his burning hands, tearing me apart piece by piece. The hellfire platform wavers as doubt creeps through me.

“Trust me,” he says, and something in his voice cuts through the illusions. Not his words, but the raw emotion behind them. Fear. Not for himself, but for me.

I grab his hand and let him pull me up. The whispers shriek in frustrated rage as their hold on my mind breaks.

The bridge continues to shift beneath us, trying to throw us off balance. Sections of stone crumble away without warning, forcing us to leap across gaps that appear suddenly in our path. The whispers never stop, pouring poison into our minds with every step.

When we’re halfway across, the bridge splits down the middle, creating two parallel paths separated by a chasm three metres wide. On one side, a path of ice that calls to Evren’s magic. On the other, a path of shadow that resonates with mine.

“We have to split up,” Dathan says, studying the gap. “Two and two. There’s no other way across.”

“No,” I say immediately. “We stay together.”

“Look at the architecture,” Verik argues, his professional eye studying the structure. “The bridge won’t support all four of us on one side. It’s designed to separate us.”

The whispers seize on our disagreement, amplifying every doubt. They show me Evren on the ice path, his death magic turning against us. They show me Verik and Dathan plotting together, using the separation to abandon me.

“The trial wants us to split up,” I say through gritted teeth. “That means we shouldn’t.”

“Sometimes the obvious choice is the right choice,” Dathan counters. “We’re wasting time arguing while the bridge falls apart around us.”

Another section of stone crumbles away behind us. The path back disappears into the abyss, leaving us with no choice but forward.

“Fine,” I snap. “But I’m not letting any of you out of my sight.”

I leap across the gap, my shadows forming a bridge of solid darkness. The effort costs me, draining power I can’t afford to lose, but I land safely next to Evren, who appears on the ice path.

Verik follows, his hellfire carrying him across the chasm in a burst of flame. He lands beside Dathan on the shadow path, his magic immediately clashing with the dark stone beneath his feet.

Now we’re separated by metres of empty air and the whispers of betrayal. But we can still see each other, still speak across the gap. Still work together.

The paths are alive, trying to carry us in different directions. My shadow path veers left while their ice path curves right. The gap between us widens to five metres, then ten.

“Jump back!” I shout to Verik and Dathan. “Before it’s too late!”

“Can’t!” Verik calls back. “The path won’t hold us both!”

He’s right. I can see the stress fractures spreading beneath their feet. The bridge is engineered to fail if we try to reunite.

The whispers grow stronger as the distance between us increases. They show me Verik and Dathan reaching the fortress without us, claiming victory for themselves. They show me Evren’s ice magic freezing my blood in my veins, killing me with no remorse.

Fifteen metres. Twenty. The gap becomes a chasm, and I can barely make out their figures in the distance.

The monsters attack suddenly. They rise from the abyss on wings of shadow and bone, creatures of pure malice given physical form. Not the opposition’s assassins, but something worse. Manifestations of our own fears and doubts, given teeth and claws and burning red eyes.

One lands on our path directly in front of me. It has Dathan’s face but twisted with hate and hunger. Its mouth opens to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth.

“I never cared about you,” it hisses in Dathan’s voice. “You’re just a tool to be used and discarded.” It lunges at me, claws extended. I dodge sideways, my shadows lashing out to strike back. But the creature dissipates like smoke, reforming behind me.

“You can’t fight us with magic. We’re made from your own doubts.”

My shadows pass through the creature harmlessly, unable to find purchase on something made from pure emotion. Physical attacks won’t work here.

But trust might.

I turn my back on it, deliberately making myself vulnerable. The monster roars, a sound of pure betrayal, and lunges for my exposed back.

I don’t move. I don’t flinch. I just stand there, my heart hammering against my ribs, trusting.

A wall of ice erupts between me and the creature, freezing the air enough for me to turn. Evren is there, his gaze fixed on the monster. He isn’t trying to kill it. He’s protecting me.

The monster’s claws scrape against the ice, the sound like nails on a blackboard. The ice cracks, but it holds. The creature shrieks, its form wavering as the raw power of Evren’s trust contradicts the lie it embodies. It dissolves into a cloud of black dust that the wind snatches away.

Evren turns to me with a smile. Whatever he was fighting, he got rid of it and came to my rescue. Now, it’s up to us to get to the other guys.

“How did you reach me?” I ask him.

He taps his head and closes his eyes. He grips my fingers tightly. I close my eyes as well and think of the guys. When I open them again, I shriek and duck, cracking the bridge underfoot as a massive claw swipes over the top of me where my head was seconds ago.