Page 45 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)
CHAPTER FORTY
LYSITHEA
I replay the blinding flash as my back hits the ground. I groan loudly as something heavy lands on my chest. My eyes flutter open, but all I can see are multicoloured lights dancing in front of me. I slam them shut again and shove at the thing crushing me.
Dathan grunts, and the weight lifts off. “Sorry,” he mutters.
“What. The. Fuck?” Veril growls. “Ev? Care to explain?”
Silence.
Not surprisingly.
I struggle to sit up, my head ringing like a fucking bell.
The multicoloured lights fade, replaced by the sight of the wrecked chamber.
The Warden’s gate is still there, its surface fractured, with hairline cracks of pure white light spreading across it like a shattered mirror.
Evren’s truth was a sledgehammer, but it didn’t break through completely.
I look for him. He’s slumped against the wall. The words he spoke hang in the air, a ghost of pain and despair.
“Evren,” I whisper, crawling towards him over the rubble. My body aches from the impact.
“What the hell was that?” Dathan demands.
I reach Evren, my hand hovering over his cheek.
“It worked,” I say, my voice aimed at Verik, but my eyes fixed on Evren. “His truth hurt it. It’s the only thing that will.”
The Warden’s massive eye flickers, the light within it dimming. It’s weakened. Vulnerable.
Dathan groans and hauls himself to his feet. “That was heavy, but not enough.”
I cup Evren’s face, and he looks up at me. I am surprised I don’t see pain. Only relief.
“You don’t want to die,” I say. “You want to live. Really live.”
He nods.
“If I get this Crown, I can make that happen,” I say, regretting the words as they tumble out of my mouth.
Verik hisses, and Dathan clears his throat.
“I know it sounds crazy and will break every single fucking law of the universe, but who gives a shit? What is the point in being a god if I can’t create life?”
“Okay, well, you have a point,” Dathan mutters under his breath. “But, Thea. What you’re talking about?—”
“… is what I want,” Evren says. It’s the first thing he has said since he started talking again that isn’t a whisper or a croak. His voice rings out clear and true, and I know I will move worlds, I will break and remake realms to give him back what he lost.
The Warden’s eye convulses. The cracks across its surface deepen, leaking pure white light. Evren’s truth is poison to it. A beautiful, world-breaking poison. Verik stares at the gate, then at Evren, a slow, dawning understanding on his face.
“Right,” he says, his voice rough. “Truth.” He faces the fractured gate.
The hellfire in his eyes is a low, controlled burn.
“I wanted a throne,” he says, the words torn from him.
“I wanted to burn my enemies and reclaim what was stolen. That was my truth.” He looks over his shoulder at me.
“Now, the only thing I want to burn is anything that tries to touch you.”
The gate screams, a sound of static and grinding reality.
A new web of cracks spreads from the centre, the light pouring out in a blinding torrent.
It’s working. Dathan moves up beside him, his silver eyes hard.
“I feed on fear,” he says, his voice flat.
“I’m a parasite. A nightmare. I thought that’s all I was.
A weapon to be aimed.” He turns his gaze on me, and the look in his eyes guts me.
“The truth is, I was more afraid than any of my victims. Afraid of being alone. You took that away.”
The gate shudders on the verge of collapse.
It’s my turn. I step between them, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.
I face the dying eye of the Warden. “I survived,” I say, my voice quiet but clear.
“I was abused and tortured and made to think I was worth less than nothing.” I look at the three monsters who own my soul.
“The truth is, I was never alive until I met you. I love you.”
The Warden screeches, a high-pitched note, worthy of any Nox Siren.
It shatters into a million pieces that go splintering off in all directions. I don’t know if I ruined the grimoire by ruining the eye or what will happen, but I don’t care. We have beaten the one thing that was keeping us out of the place we need to be.
The Blood Court spins in a nauseating circle.
The guys move closer, and we hold each other up as the ground opens up at our feet in a churning vortex of shadow and screaming stone.
There’s no floor. Just a drop into an abyss that reeks of despair.
Dathan’s arm wraps around my waist, an anchor as reality dissolves around us.
We fall. The sensation is like being flayed, our magic dragged from us as we pass through some ancient, violent barrier.
We crash land, jarring our bones that are still sore from the force of Evren’s truth. We are a heap of limbs and clothing under a moonlit sky that makes my heart thump with anger.
“No!” I roar, shoving the guys off me so I can get up. “We beat you! You can’t throw us out!”
The buildings of DarkHallow loom around us as we stand in the courtyard facing the main building.
The moon stares back, a cold, indifferent witness.
I want to scream again, to shatter the night itself, but the sound dies in my throat.
We won. We poured out our ugliest truths and shattered a lie that held this realm captive.
And for what? To be dumped back on the fucking front lawn like unruly students.
“It didn’t work,” Dathan says, his voice a low growl of contained violence.
“It worked,” Verik counters, his gaze sweeping over the familiar gothic spires of the academy. “It just didn’t do what we expected.”
“We need the grimoire,” I say, the realisation hitting me with the force of our ejection from the Blood Court. “How fucking stupid are we?”
“Uhm, is that rhetorical?” Dathan asks carefully.
“No,” I growl and march towards the residence building. “Why did we think we could get through to the Spire without it?”
“The eye… it needed to reunite with the one on the grimoire. We fucked up,” Verik snarls.
“Not necessarily,” I say, picking up my pace.
“If we find Tenny, it might have the second eye.” I don’t wait for them to agree.
I’m already moving, a woman on a mission, fuelled by adrenaline and the desperate hope that we haven’t just royally fucked everything up.
The guys fall into step behind me, a familiar formation of shadow and violence.
We don’t speak. The air is thick enough with our failure.
My room is a wreck. The door hangs off its hinges, a monument to Dathan’s lack of impulse control. I ignore it, striding straight to my desk. My heart hammers against my ribs. Please be there. Please.
It’s not.
“Dammit!” I shove my hands into my hair, and the scream builds.
I can’t stop it. The frustration, the anger, boils up and rips from my throat.
It isn’t a song. It’s a raw, jagged thing of pure hopelessness.
The windows in my room explode outwards, showering the courtyard below with glittering shards of glass.
The wood of the desk splinters under the force of my voice.
The broken door is blasted clean off its last hinge, skittering down the corridor with a deafening clatter, the bed is ripped into shreds.
The guys don’t flinch. They stand in the epicentre of my fury, weathering the storm.
Over the scream, I hear the panic and agony coming from the students as my power blasts them all.
I know I should stop. I know some won’t survive.
But I can’t. The sound tears from me, ripping the world apart.
I feel the vibrations in my bones, the raw, uncontrolled power of a collapsing star. My own despair made manifest.
The destruction is absolute. My room is gone. The corridor is a wasteland of splintered wood and shattered stone. Trees have been uprooted outside, students are bleeding and dead, some driven insane. My guys are the only thing left standing in the wake of such a destructive use of my power.
Blackgrove appears in the ruined doorway, stepping over the rubble like it’s nothing. His face is a thundercloud.
“Miss Lysithea,” he says, his voice dangerously calm, which brings my scream to a dead halt. “Do shut up, will you?”