Page 35 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

VERIK

That catches my attention. Anything to do with hell or fire is of interest to me. The Infernal Crown sounds like something I should know about. Especially if it’s being forged at the Sovereign Forge.

Evren releases his death grip on the desk and steps back. He clicks his fingers and nods. He knows something.

Blackgrove observes him with interest but then shifts his gaze to me. “The Crown is the key to everything. It is a legendary artefact capable of creating immense magical power.”

“And let me guess. We’re the ones who have to forge it.”

“Precisely, Mr Verik. Your architectural abilities, combined with the others’ powers and Miss Lysithea’s voice, should be sufficient to create something the realm hasn’t seen in millennia.”

“Since your pal Tenny was erased?”

His smile is all wrong. “Right.”

I pace to the window, my mind already working through this latest development. “What’s it made from?” I ask.

“Hellfire, nightmare, death, and song,” Blackgrove replies. “Forged in the crucible of absolute truth. Each of you contributes an essential element.”

“What do you know about this?” I ask Evren.

“It’s Lysithea’s,” he whispers. “It was stolen from her bloodline.”

“Scream-line, you mean,” she grumbles.

“Not exactly,” Blackgrove corrects. “No Nox Siren has ever forged it.”

“But they’re supposed to?”

“Yes.”

“If you knew the grimoire screamed Lysithea into existence, why didn’t you know it was hers?”

“Such a claim is bold, Mr Verik. Just because it created her, doesn’t mean it’s hers.”

“Oh, it’s mine,” Lysithea grits out. “Don’t worry about that.”

“How do we get to the Sovereign Forge? We know we have to get past the Blood Court, but how if we are stuck as its Arbiters?” I ask, drawing the matter back to the more immediate problem.

Blackgrove’s gaze is like chips of ice. “You misunderstand your new position, Mr Verik. The Blood Court is not a barrier. It is a key.”

“A key to what?” I snap. “Eternal servitude?”

“To the Sovereign Forge,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “The path lies through the Court’s authority, not around its walls. You now hold the power to summon and judge.”

It’s a nexus. A hub.

“So we can summon anyone?” Dathan asks, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. “Anyone at all?”

Blackgrove’s smile is thin and dangerous. “The Court’s reach is… extensive. But its power comes with rules. You cannot simply use it for personal vengeance.”

“Shame,” Dathan mutters.

“You are the gatekeepers.”

A gate. “And this gate would be?”

“Wherever you choose to put it.”

“I see.”

“Is the Warden on the other side of this yet-to-be-created gate?” Dathan asks.

“The Warden is not on the other side of the gate,” Blackgrove says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “The Warden is the gate.”

Of course it is. A living lock. A sentient barrier designed to keep everyone out. The ultimate architectural challenge. My fingers itch with the need to build something so I can break it.

“Okay, I create this gate, kill it, and walk through to the Forge?” I ask, simplifying the bullshit down to its core components.

Blackgrove gives a single, sharp nod. “In essence.”

“And how does Verik create something that already exists?” Lysithea asks, her voice tight but steady.

“You are the Arbiters. You summon the accused,” Blackgrove says, a flicker of something that might be pride in his cold eyes. “The Warden has a crime to answer for.”

“What crime?” Dathan demands.

“The greatest one of all,” Blackgrove says. “It guards a lie.” He waves a hand, and the heavy oak door to his office swings open, and we are thrown out of his office to stand under the leering gargoyles once again, feeling more than a little disconcerted.

The words hang in the air, a perfect, beautiful equation of impossibility. A living gate. A sentient lock. The ultimate architectural challenge. It’s not just stone and mortar; it’s will and magic. I want to take it apart, piece by fucking piece.

“We summon a gate to stand trial for being a gate?” Dathan’s voice is dripping with sarcasm. “Makes perfect sense.”

“It’s not being tried for being a gate,” Lysithea says, her voice low and irritated. “It’s being tried for what it’s guarding. The lie. But how do we get back?”

“We don’t. Not yet,” I say. “We are wholly unprepared for that. We need to find out whatever we can on everything Blackgrove told us.”

“So a trip to the library and the forbidden alcoves,” Lysithea says. “What about classes?”

“We’ll take it in turns. I’ll go now, you three go about your normal day.”

“As normal as can possibly be achieved at this point,” Dathan grunts.

I leave them to it, heading for the library.

The place is a fucking cathedral of forgotten knowledge, all vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows depicting various apocalypses.

I ignore the main reading room, the hushed whispers of students pretending to study, and head down the aisle with the alcoves.

I run my hand along the spines, tracing titles written in languages that burn the tongue.

“So much information, yet none of it understood,” I murmur.

“Show me the way. Show me the Infernal Crown.” This is the crux of everything.

It is the whole reason we are doing this, apart from finishing the grimoire.

We need the grimoire to forge the crown.

I’m pulled off my course, heading for an alcove near the back. “Right,” I mutter, stepping into the darkness. The air is thick, tasting of dust and ozone. No floating lights illuminate this space. It’s a dead end, a forgotten corner where knowledge comes to die.

Except it isn’t.

A low hum vibrates through the stone floor, a hum of contained power. I trace the cold stone of the back wall. There’s a seam, almost invisible to the naked eye, but to me, it’s a fucking doorway.

I press my palm against it, feeding a trickle of hellfire into the stone. The seam glows, creating a doorway no other creature in this realm can create. Grinning, I step through, revealing a smaller chamber beyond.

A book sits on a pedestal in the centre of the room. It’s bound in black leather, shot through with veins of solidified lava.

I pick it up. The cover is warm to the touch. The title is seared into the cover in fiery runes: Architectura Mendacium . The Architecture of Lies.

I flip it open. The pages are diagrams. Schematics.

Not of buildings, but of concepts. I see the Blood Court, the Sovereign Forge, and between them, a living, breathing structure of pure deception.

The Warden. Built to enforce a reality that was never meant to be.

Killing it will shatter the foundations of this entire fucking realm.

“Interesting, but not what I’m here for,” I mutter. “Infernal Crown. What do you know about that?”

The fiery runes on the page swirl like molten gold. They bleed together, erasing the schematics for the Warden and forming something new. The Infernal Crown. It is a simple, yet complex thing of pure, terrifying beauty.

The diagram isn’t static. It moves. A blueprint of elemental forces warring for dominance, held in perfect, brutal balance.

My hellfire forms the core, a contained inferno of creation.

Dathan’s nightmare magic is a lattice of pure terror woven around it, a defence mechanism that feeds on fear.

Evren’s death magic provides the cold, unbreakable framework, the finality that gives it structure.

Binding the impossible together, is Lysithea’s song.

A thread of pure, violent, absolute truth.

“You show me a pretty picture, but what is it meant to do?” I ask quietly.

The runes wriggle across the page, forming words that burn with cold fire. It makes. It rewrites. It imposes will upon reality. A new law. A new world. Whatever the wearer desires. This isn’t just an artefact. It’s a god-maker. The ultimate construction tool.

But it all becomes perfectly clear in that moment. We always said she was a goddess, and that is now the objective.

The opposition is trying to stop us from finishing the grimoire for one very specific reason. They’re trying to stop us from building a new god.