Page 29 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

VERIK

Lysithea’s scream rips across the abyss, a sound that shreds the howling wind.

I whip around, my heart trying to punch its way out of my chest. Across the chasm, I see her duck just as a fucking claw the size of a carriage tears through the air where her head was.

My hellfire roars, a useless inferno from this distance. All I can do is watch.

“Focus,” Dathan growls beside me, his voice a low vibration of contained violence.

I tear my gaze away from her and face our own personal nightmare. It’s a perfect, shimmering copy of Evren. Its ice-blue eyes are dead, its expression a mask of cold judgement.

“She chose me,” it says in Evren’s voice, each word a shard of glass. “You’re just the architect. The muscle. She’ll discard you when she no longer needs you to build her throne.”

The whispers in my head agree instantly, showing me a future where Lysithea turns her back on me, laughing as I’m cast aside for the leader of the rebel forces who stole my throne.

“Fuck you,” I snarl, lunging. My fist passes right through the illusion. It’s like punching smoke.

“She pities you,” the thing says, its gaze shifting to Dathan. “A broken nightmare who feeds on scraps of fear. She could never love a parasite.”

Dathan doesn’t even flinch. He just looks at me, his silver eyes hard as diamonds. “He’s not real.”

“I know,” I grit out, my own doubt a bitter taste in my mouth.

It smiles cruelly. “But the doubt is.” It raises a hand, and the stone beneath my feet cracks, a web of glowing red fissures that threaten to plunge me into the void.

It’s testing our faith in each other. Dathan doesn’t hesitate.

He grabs my arm, his grip a solid anchor of nightmare and loyalty.

He yanks me away from the crumbling edge just as the stone gives way, falling into the endless dark.

The illusion hisses, its form flickering. Our trust is poison to it.

“He might be a serious pain in my arse, but we’ve been best friends for three years. You think you can just waltz in here and take that?” Dathan says in a bored tone. “Try another one.”

“Dathan,” I hiss, wanting this nightmare over.

The illusion turns its dead-eyed gaze on Dathan. “He is a prince, Dathan. You are a sovereign without a kingdom. He sees you as a means to an end. A weapon to be wielded.”

The whispers agree, flooding my mind with visions of me on my throne, Dathan a forgotten shadow in my court. My ambition, twisted into a tool of betrayal.

“Shut up,” I snarl, but the words feel hollow. The logic is there. The doubt is a hook in my gut.

“He doesn’t need you,” it continues, its voice a calm, cutting poison. “Not really. He just needs your power.”

I look at Dathan. His face is a storm cloud. He’s listening. Believing. The fear of being nothing but a weapon is his oldest wound.

Fuck this. I’m not losing him to a fucking mirage.

I step between them, turning my back on the illusion completely. It’s the only move that matters. “It’s a lie,” I say, my voice a low rumble aimed only at him. “And you know it.”

The illusion shrieks behind me, a sound of pure malice as it lunges.

I don’t flinch. I just hold Dathan’s gaze, a silent dare.

A wave of pure, unadulterated nightmare slams into the creature from my side, tearing it to shreds. Dathan’s arm is outstretched, his magic a vicious, protective whip.

The illusion dissolves into dust.

The path beneath our feet solidifies. The red cracks fade.

“Took you long enough,” I grunt, turning to face the abyss between us and Lysithea and Evren.

“Had to be sure you weren’t going to stab me in the back,” he retorts, but there’s no heat in it.

Across the chasm, Lysithea and Evren are in a world of shit.

A hulking beast made of shifting shadow and razor-sharp ice shards looms over them.

It has Lysithea’s face. It swipes a clawed hand, and Evren throws up a wall of ice.

The barrier shatters, sending a spray of frozen fragments across their path.

“We have to get over there,” Dathan states, his voice tight.

“No shit.” The gap is twenty-five metres now. An impossible jump. The whispers in my head start again, a low murmur telling me it’s too far, that my power isn’t enough.

Fuck that.

I plant my feet on the edge of the crumbling stone. “Get ready to run.”

I pour my hellfire into the abyss. A bridge of pure, solid flame stretches across the void, a defiant orange line against the endless black. The strain is immense, my muscles screaming in protest. The whispers hiss that it will collapse, that I’ll send us both into the darkness.

“Go!” I roar at Dathan.

He sprints across the bridge of fire without a second’s hesitation. I follow, my focus narrowed to a single point: keeping the structure solid. Keeping us alive.

We hit their path just as the beast shatters Evren’s last defence. Lysithea turns, her eyes widening in relief. That’s all the fuel I need.

Four of us. United. The monster roars, its voice a symphony of all our deepest fears.

“You can’t save me,” the beast hisses, its voice a perfect, venomous copy of Lysithea’s. “I will break you all.”

My hellfire lashes out, a whip of pure rage.

It passes through the creature, doing nothing.

Dathan’s nightmare magic meets the same fate, absorbed by the shifting shadow.

Evren’s ice spikes shatter against its form without leaving a scratch.

It feeds on our attacks, on our fear for her.

It grows larger, its claws elongating, its violet eyes burning with a hunger that mirrors the abyss below.

“Stop,” Lysithea says, her voice a quiet command.

She steps in front of us, a fragile shield against a monster wearing her own face. Every instinct I have screams at me to drag her back, to build a fortress of fire and stone around her. But Dathan’s hand clamps onto my shoulder, a silent order to hold.

The creature leans down, its monstrous face inches from hers. “You are weak,” it whispers. “Broken. They will leave you the second you are no longer useful.”

Lysithea doesn’t flinch. She just meets its gaze, her expression unreadable. This isn’t our fight. It’s hers. The final piece of the test. Trusting herself.

She opens her mouth and sings. A single, pure note.

It’s a statement. A truth. The sound weaves through the air, and the beast of shadow and doubt shudders.

It cannot exist in the face of her certainty.

It screams, a sound of dissolving lies, and collapses into a cloud of dust that the wind whips away into the darkness.

The bridge beneath our feet solidifies, the red cracks vanishing. The fortress waits. We won.

The bridge is stone again. Solid. No tricks.

No bullshit. Lysithea stands there, breathing hard, but she’s a fucking mountain.

She just faced the worst parts of herself and sang them into oblivion.

I want to grab her, to feel that she’s solid and real, but the others are already closing ranks around her.

A wall of nightmare, ice, and fire. Her wall.

“Let’s go,” I say, my voice rough.

We walk. The fortress grows with every step, a monstrous thing of red stone and impossible angles. It’s built to intimidate. To crush your will before you even reach the door. A masterpiece of psychological warfare. I almost respect it.

The entrance is a massive door of black iron, twenty metres high, forged into a tapestry of screaming, agonised faces. There are no handles, no hinges, no visible lock. A sheer wall of torment made of metal.

“Right,” Dathan mutters. “How the fuck do we open this?”

I step forward, cracking my knuckles. “We knock.”

As my fist gets close, the iron faces on the gate twist. Their mouths crack open in a silent, collective scream. A wave of heat washes over us. Something ancient and hungry that smells of forgotten souls.

The bridge was the third trial, and we are about to walk directly into the fourth, assuming it doesn’t transport us back to DarkHallow. But something tells me this is different.

My fist connects with the iron. A punch, not a knock.

The metal doesn’t dent, but the sound is a dull, final thud that echoes into the abyss.

The screaming faces on the gate turn their hollow eyes towards me.

A low groan echoes from the gate, a chorus of a thousand tormented souls.

Words of fire bleed across the iron surface, searing themselves into the metal.

The judgement waits beyond this gate.

“Looks like we’re back at the Blood Court,” I mutter and give the door a shove. It creaks open, but none of us moves. We are all expecting to walk through and end up back on the surface. Instead, we peer inside and wait.