Page 43 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

DATHAN

I let my power flood the chamber. Not the cheap stuff, not the jump-scares for first years. I reach for the real, existential dread. I pull on the fear of obsolescence, the terror of being forgotten. The snake is a concept, a law. So, I show it a world where it doesn’t exist.

The golden scales of the serpent flicker, turning a dull, rusted brown.

It recoils, its hiss turning into a panicked wheeze.

Illusions of a crumbling court rise around it.

Thrones turned to dust. Laws erased. Anarchy reigns in a realm where its authority means nothing.

It’s the snake’s own personal apocalypse.

I tighten the psychic leash.

The snake thrashes, its form wavering as it tries to fight a nightmare it can’t comprehend. It’s trying to find a law against what I’m doing and coming up empty.

“Oh, you’re pissing it off,” Verik murmurs.

“That’s the plan,” Dathan grits out. “The fear, the anger… just watch…”

I inhale deeply, and when I exhale slowly, I use the Soul Scar to pull on Thea’s power.

She gasps and crushes my fingers. Her song flows into me, a current of pure, absolute truth that I twist into the ultimate nightmare.

My magic explodes. The illusions solidify.

Dust from the crumbling thrones chokes the air.

The snake screams, a sound of grinding stone and shattered law, as the ground cracks open, revealing a void of absolute nothingness.

Its greatest fear. Irrelevance. The simple, brutal fact that it is no longer relevant. We are the new law.

“You are nothing,” I snarl, the words laced with her power. “A forgotten rule in a book no one reads.”

The snake implodes, its essence collapsing into a screaming vortex of light that sucks the air from the chamber—a vacuum where a law used to be.

The floor of the Blood Court shakes violently.

“Verik! You’re up!” Lysithea calls out.

He is already way ahead of her. He slams his hands onto the floor of the Court.

Hellfire erupts in a precise, architectural line.

He’s rewriting the Court’s fucking blueprints.

The stone groans. Ancient runes flare and die as he carves a new path through the ancient magic.

The lines of hellfire are building. A glowing, molten blueprint scorches itself across the floor.

It’s a fucking masterpiece of impossible geometry.

I can feel the strain on him from here, the sheer force of will it takes to bend the Court’s reality.

Lysithea pulls her hand from mine and moves to his side, placing a hand on his back. An anchor in the inferno. Evren’s ability to keep the water magic frozen is taking its toll.

“Hurry,” I murmur, moving closer. “Evren is about to have an apoplexy.”

Lysithea glances over at him and gives him an encouraging nod. He grimaces. He’s got this, but not for much longer.

The hellfire lines converge, flaring with a blinding intensity. The stone in the centre of the pattern dissolves. It melts into a shimmering, oily falsehood that ripples like a heat haze.

Stone warriors rise from the rubble, their forms unstable, glitching in and out of existence.

Verik glances up and swears.

“You keep doing that, I’ll deal with these fuckers,” I tell him and whip out a stream of nightmares that make the stone statues howl in agony as it hits the magic animating them.

I pause, momentarily surprised, but then grin.

“Oh, yeah. Your magic has a master, and he is very much a being I can terrorise.”

I pour my magic into the connection, aiming the will that commands the warriors. They stagger, their movements jerky, uncoordinated. Somewhere, deep in the foundations of this place, a consciousness shrieks in pure, undiluted terror. I feed on it, a savage, satisfying feast.

The stone warriors crumble, their animating magic severed at the source. They fall into piles of inert rubble.

“Verik… How are we doing?”

His face is pale, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. Lysithea leans heavily against him, her face a mask of concentration. The power pouring from her is a visible shimmer in the air.

“Nowhere near,” he grunts.

Evren collapses to one knee, the intricate web of frost holding back the dampening magic shatters into a million glittering fragments. The full, oppressive weight of the Blood Court slams back down on us. My magic gutters like a candle in a hurricane.

We’re fucked.

“Oh, shit,” Lysithea mutters as she pulls her hand from Verik’s back and shakes it out, as if it’s going to kickstart her magic.

“Sorry,” Evren rasps. “Too much.”

“No,” Lysithea says, going to him as Verik growls curses in a language that sounds demonic. “This isn’t your fault. We didn’t know what we were walking into. These creatures were sent to slow us down, and they did.”

The molten lines of hellfire fade back into cold, dead stone. Fucking fantastic. Verik lets out another stream of curses, kicking a chunk of rubble that skitters across the floor. He’s pissed. We all are.

The rubble from the warriors I destroyed trembles, but it doesn’t reform. It liquefies, flowing back into the floor like spilt ink, sealing the cracks and leaving the stone smooth and unmarked. The Court is healing itself. Erasing our pathetic attempt.

“It’s resetting,” Lysithea says.

Our four thrones rise from the floor, gliding back to their original positions with a grating sound of stone on stone. An invitation. An order.

“It appears your little rebellion is over,” a voice booms through the chamber. The snake is back, and it is pissed. “Take your seats, Arbiters. Your next case awaits.”

We failed. We went in with brute force and got our arses handed to us.

Now we’re back to being its fucking puppets.

I catch Verik’s eye. His face is a mask of pure, murderous rage.

He’s not beaten. He’s just getting started.

And so am I. This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

I offer the snake a slow, mocking smile.

I walk towards my throne of polished darkness, my steps deliberate, echoing in the vast chamber.

It’s not a walk of submission. It’s a claiming of territory.

“Fine,” I say, my voice dripping with false compliance. “Let’s hear this case. But make it interesting. I get bored easily.”

Verik catches my meaning instantly. A feral grin flashes across his face. He saunters over to his molten seat, lounging in it like a king returning to his court. Evren helps Lysithea to her throne before taking his own, his silence more threatening than any shout.

The snake hesitates, thrown by our lack of fear, by our sudden acceptance.

It expected us to fight, to struggle. It doesn’t understand.

But I do. A case was brought to the Blood Court.

It’s why it reformed. It’s why it shoved Evren’s power away.

We aren’t failures, we are simply unfortunate. We need better timing.

The air shimmers. A new accused is brought before us. A hulking Fomorian, its single eye swivelling with rage.

“The accused has collapsed the Sunken Mines of Sorrow,” the snake hisses. “Three hundred goblin workers were buried alive.”

The Fomorian grunts. “They were trespassing.”

Trespassing. A crime. The Court’s favourite kind of bullshit.

Fuck the script.

“So?” I ask, leaning back in my throne and resting an ankle on my knee. “Goblins are a renewable resource. Did they have a claim to the mines?”

The Fomorian shakes its massive head. “Mine.”

“Well, there you go.” I make a show of examining my nails. “Trespassers got what they deserved. Case dismissed. Next.”

Verik snorts, a sound of pure appreciation. Lysithea’s lips twitch. Even Evren looks faintly amused.

The snake sputters, its form coiling and uncoiling with fury. “You cannot simply?—”

“I am an Arbiter of this Court,” I cut it off, my voice dropping into a low, dangerous register that makes the shadows in the chamber deepen. “And I just did. Now, are you going to waste my time with goblin squabbles, or are you going to bring me a real case? I’m getting hungry.”

The Fomorian vanishes in a shimmer of light. The snake seethes, its golden scales practically vibrating with rage, but it has no comeback. It can’t say shit. We are the Arbiters, and we ruled. End of story.