Page 44 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

EVREN

The snake, slightly gobsmacked, disappears as it has nothing left to do or say.

“We need to try again,” Lysithea says, getting off her throne. “That was epically bad timing, but we have to press the advantage.”

“Agreed,” Dathan says. “That wasn’t us, it was the Court in session.”

“Good to know,” Verik murmurs, but flicks his fingers and his magic splutters and dies. “But can Evren muster enough power to freeze the dampener again?”

“Try,” I rasp, hauling myself out of the throne.

“We’ll help. Well, Dathan and I. Verik needs his strength to bring that fucking doorway to us.” Lysithea moves closer, determined. She is fierce, and she isn’t going to stop until we reach the end of this shitshow.

I brace myself, planting my feet on the cold stone.

Lysithea places her hand over the mark on my arm.

Dathan places his hand on my shoulder. The Soul Scars flare.

Her power is a torrent of song and shadow, warm and wild.

His is a freezing burn of pure nightmare.

The combination is a violent, chaotic symphony that floods my depleted reserves.

My magic, the cold, quiet river of death, rises to meet it.

I exhale, and the breath is a blizzard.

Frost explodes from me, a shockwave of absolute zero. The dampening spell fights back harder this time. The air grows thick, heavy, resisting the freeze. The tiny, suspended raindrops of its magic vibrate with defiance.

I channel their raw power through me, letting it scour my veins.

It hurts. A resurrected body isn’t meant to be a conduit for this much life.

The ice spreads, a spiderweb of crystal across the air.

The raindrops shudder, then freeze solid, locking the spell in place.

The oppressive weight on our magic vanishes.

I stumble, the power transfer ceasing. The borrowed strength recedes, leaving me to keep the freeze in place for as long as it takes Verik to form this fucking doorway.

Luckily for me, he doesn’t waste a second. His hands hit the floor, and the lines of hellfire roar back to life, angrier and more determined than before.

“Here we go again,” he snarls. The floor melts away again.

The molten lines scorch the stone, a furious scar on the face of the Court. The pain of holding the freeze is a constant, grinding agony.

Lysithea goes to Verik and kneels beside him, a hand on his back, her face pale with concentration.

Her shadows whip up around them, a living storm of power being funnelled directly into his architectural assault on reality.

Dathan stands guard, a nightmare given form, his eyes scanning the chamber for any sign of retaliation from the Court. He’s a coiled viper, waiting.

The pressure is immense, a physical weight I have to push against. The frost on the air is my only focus, a delicate lattice holding back a flood. Every crackle of Verik’s hellfire sends a tremor through me. The stone floor becomes a canvas of molten gold, a circuit board of pure destruction.

The centre of Verik’s pattern dissolves into a smear of greasy, rainbow light, like oil on water. The air warps around it, bending light and sound into a nauseating spiral. It smells of static and broken promises.

Verik grunts, a sound of pure creation and rage, and shoves one final, brutal wave of power into the floor. The oily smear solidifies, snapping into the shape of an ornate, impossible archway. It’s made of nothing I can name. Not stone, not metal. It’s made of deception itself.

And from its depths, something ancient and vast looks back at us. A single, unblinking eye opens in the centre of the gate.

The Warden.

“There you are, you absolute fucker,” Verik growls, rising to meet the eye head-on. Something about it looks familiar. It doesn’t take me long to make the connection. It’s the exact same colour and shape as the eye which adorns, scorns and judges from the cover of the Tenebris Vinculum.

“Wait,” I rasp, moving forward, my concentration dropping. The frost-cicles waver, shaking in the air.

Lysithea looks over as I stand next to her and point at my eye and then at that of the Warden.

She frowns at me, but glances over to the gate. She stares at the unblinking eye and gulps. She sees it as well.

“Err, guys, that is the same eye as on the grimoire.”

I nod frantically. I don’t know what the connection is yet, but something isn’t adding up.

Until it does.

I clap my hands to get their attention. When the three of them look at me, I press my palms together and then yank them apart to indicate separation.

This Warden and Tenny were once one. The omen that flashes through my mind is a harbinger of absolute doom.

These two parts together will bring about a chaos that no one in their right mind would want to unleash.

Verik’s face hardens. “You’re telling me the book and the gate are two halves of the same fucking problem?”

Lysithea grimaces. “The grimoire wants to be whole.”

The Warden’s unblinking eye narrows. A wave of psychic static washes over us, a feeling of nails scraping down the inside of my skull. It’s a lie made manifest, trying to rewrite our perception, to make us forget what we just figured out.

My concentration falters. The frost drops shake. The dampening magic presses in, a heavy, suffocating blanket.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Dathan snarls, shaking his head to clear the static. “It’s in our way.”

The gate ripples. The lie lashes out with insidious whispers that slither directly into our minds.

I grit my teeth, shoving more power into the freeze. The ice holds, but it costs me. Blood trickles from my nose, and I wipe it away.

Dathan sees the toll it takes and moves towards Verik and Lysithea. “Whatever we need to do, let’s do it fast. Ev is barely holding on.”

“What do we do?” Lysithea murmurs, suddenly unsure.

“Annihilate,” I growl, stumbling under the crush of the power it’s taking to hold the freeze without freezing everyone else.

“Now you’re talking my language,” Verik says.

“But if it’s part of the book…” Lysithea trails off, chewing her lip.

Her hesitation is a crack in our defence. The Warden exploits it instantly. The psychic static sharpens into a focused needle of doubt, aimed right at me.

My knees give way. The pressure in my head is unbearable. Black spots swim in my vision. The lattice of ice holding back the Court’s magic fractures, sending splinters of light across the chamber.

“Now,” I choke out, the word tearing through my throat. Blood, hot and metallic, fills my mouth.

The lie is a cold, insidious whisper that sounds like my own voice before I died. You’re too weak. You failed to live. You even failed to die.

Lysithea sees my struggle. The conflict in her eyes vanishes, replaced by a fury so absolute it’s beautiful. “Only truth can destroy it,” she says, turning to face the gate.

“Are we sure we want to risk this?” Dathan murmurs but moves to her side anyway.

“If we don’t, we have failed,” Lysithea snaps. “Tell it your truth. All of you.”

“We’ve already done this,” Dathan mutters. “I don’t think I have any truth left in me.”

“Anything!” she roars. “Just start speaking, for fuck’s sake.”

I gather my strength, hauling myself to my feet. I stagger forward and open my mouth to tell the biggest truth of all. “I don’t want to live anymore. Not like this.”

The explosion of light that bursts from the gate blinds me, and all of us are flung backwards, landing with a crash against the far wall, making me see ice birdies floating around my head as it hits the solid stone.