Page 6 of Blood Court (Cursed Darkness #2)

CHAPTER FIVE

VERIK

The silence on the way down is a structural flaw. It’s heavy, unstable, threatening to collapse and crush us all. I walk behind Lysithea, watching the rigid line of her back. Every step is a controlled movement, a refusal to shatter. I’ve seen buildings with more give.

My hands clench. The image of her on the floor, forced to yield, is a blueprint for murder in my mind. The grimoire is a sentient piece of shit, but it made a design error. It showed us its primary tool for control: her pain. And it showed us how far it would go. It gave us an enemy.

Whatever energy Lysithea and Evren conducted, brought forth the creature from the depths.

The good guy. Whatever the fuck that means.

Where I come from, there is evil and eviler.

Good doesn’t factor into hell dimensions.

It gets eaten. I believe this is the same, that this creature on the side of good, isn’t good at all, simply less evil than the god-book.

We step out of the tower into the cold, dead air of the grounds. The normal sights and sounds of DarkHallow feel like an insult. Evren melts away towards his room, a ghost escaping a haunting. Dathan lingers, his silver eyes fixed on Lysithea, a storm of violence waiting for a target.

“I’m going to the library,” I say. “I need to understand what it’s saying.”

Lysithea finally looks at me. Her eyes are violet voids, but there’s a flicker of something in their depths. “Do you need help?”

I consider her offer for a moment but then shake my head. “No, you get some rest. You’ve been through an ordeal.”

She nods.

I hesitate but then ask, “Are you okay?”

She snorts. “Define okay? Forced into sex to ease my pain by a perverted book with delusions of grandeur kind of messes with one’s level of okay .”

“There’s nothing delusional about that book,” Dathan says. “It is more powerful than we are.”

“For now,” I say. Every structure has a breaking point. Every system has a design flaw. This grimoire is no different.

Lysithea gives a tired, empty nod and turns toward the residence building. Dathan follows a step behind, a shadow in her wake. A guard dog waiting for a threat.

I watch them go, the book a malevolent weight in my hand. Then I head for the library. The grimoire is arming us. It’s escalating its offence. I push open the heavy library doors. Time to learn the language of Armageddon.

The silence of the stacks is a relief. I find a table in the deepest, most forgotten corner and lay the grimoire open.

The spell is a thing of brutal, elegant engineering.

The Demonic text, which the book knew I’d know how to read, is complex, weaving hellfire with geothermal forces in a way that should be impossible.

My fingers trace the bloody script. The volcanic eruption spell is a masterpiece of destructive engineering.

I can see the formula in my head, the elegant lines of force, the beautiful, catastrophic application of hellfire to geological pressure points.

It’s not just a weapon. It’s a fucking statement.

I find an alcove that smells of dust and neglect.

Perfect. I lay the book on the stone table, its single eye watching my every move.

The spell isn’t just a series of incantations; it’s a structural diagram of reality’s weak points.

I see the ley lines, the tectonic plates of this realm, the molten core that churns beneath the academy.

The grimoire is showing me how to turn the world itself into a weapon.

It’s beautiful. Fucking terrifying, but beautiful. This is something far more powerful than magic. This is creation in reverse. Deconstruction on a planetary scale. My fingers itch with the need to build, but the blueprint in front of me is for annihilation.

What the fuck are we up against that requires this? The ‘opposition’ Evren mentioned. A single word that now feels like an understatement. You don’t need a volcano to kill a creature. You need one to kill an army. Or a god.

This spell is to be used on whatever lurks under the trap door, but there is so much more to it than that. This spell could win me back my kingdom.

“Do you know that?” I murmur to the book. “And do you have a fucking name, or do I need to call you TV?”

The book just stares back at me, its single eye a void of ancient, silent arrogance. It doesn’t need a name. It is what it is. An absolute.

“Right,” I mutter, leaning back in the chair. “Pretentious prick.”

I trace the lines of the spell again. This is an offer. The power to level our enemies. The power to reclaim a lost kingdom. The book knows my ambitions. It’s dangling the ultimate bribe in front of me, and it doesn’t even have the decency to be subtle.

But the price is Lysithea. Her pain is the fuel for this whole fucked-up engine. The grimoire uses her like a focusing lens, burning her to get what it wants from us. A fatal design flaw.

“You think I’m being cruel, but I’m doing what is necessary.”

I freeze, look up, and then glance over my shoulder. I’m still alone. The voice came from all around me.

I stare back at the grimoire. “That you? You speak?”

“To those I deem worthy.”

“Oh, high fucking praise,” I gloat, sitting back and propping my feet up on the table. “Tell me, TV. What makes me worthy?”

“You aren’t tiptoeing around her.”

“And you think the others are?”

“I know they are.”

“So you forced Evren, the biggest tiptoer, into action.”

“Without intimacy, there is no trust. Without trust, you will fail. That is not an option I find acceptable.”

“You call that intimacy?” I sneer, my voice a low growl. “That was a fucking violation, and you know it. You used her pain to break him.”

“A necessary catalyst. The Harbinger’s walls were too high. Her pain was the only force sufficient to breach them. You are all flawed components. I am simply recalibrating you for the task ahead.”

“Recalibrating,” I repeat, the word tasting like ash. “You’re a sadist with a god complex.”

“And you are an exiled prince with an ambition that could burn realms. I offer you the means to reclaim your throne. Do not pretend your motives are pure, and it’s not a complex.”

The truth of its words is a punch to the gut. It knows. It knows everything. It’s not just using our weaknesses; it’s feeding our darkest desires.

“So that’s the deal,” I say, weighing the ‘not a complex’ words carefully. “You give us the power to win our wars, and in return, we let you torture her into submission.”

“Her submission is the key that unlocks your combined potential. Without it, you are four disparate, powerful beings destined for failure. Together, with her as the fulcrum, you are unstoppable.”

The logic is flawless, brutal, and utterly fucked up. I stare at the spell, at the blueprint for Armageddon. A tool to defeat our enemies. A tool to reclaim my birthright.

“You want to talk architecture? Fine. Lysithea is the keystone. You keep chipping away at her, and this whole fucked-up arch comes down on all of us. Including you.”

The voice echoes in the quiet of the library, cold and devoid of anything but logic. “Pain forges the strongest bonds. Fear reveals true loyalty. What you witnessed was a necessary stress test.”

“It was a fucking violation,” I snarl, my voice low. “And it gave your opposition a target. You made her vulnerable.”

“On the contrary. It made you all more dangerous. It gave you a reason to fight. It gave you a reason to master the power I now offer.” The pages flip back to the volcano spell, the script glowing with a faint, malevolent light.

“Learn it, Hellfire Architect. The first trial will test your willingness to use it.”

The book goes silent again. It gave me a direct line of communication, only to use it to plant the seed of a victory over my family’s enemies.

“You are such a prick,” I mutter and smooth down the page of the spell. Spell. I internally scoff. It’s not a spell, it’s a fucking annihilation in one fell swoop. No wonder Blackgrove didn’t want us fucking about with this thing. “What else have you got hidden in these pages?”

Of course, it doesn’t reply or show me. But maybe I’m not asking the right questions. “You say it’s not a complex, that you are a god. A god of what?”

The script bleeds onto the page, elegant and final.

Absolute Truth.

I laugh, a harsh, humourless sound that gets swallowed by the stacks.

You think on too small a scale. I am the final state. The completed design. The end of all argument.

I’m finally starting to understand something about this grimoire. It’s about a fundamental law of the universe being written.

“You said Lysithea was created by a scream from the void. Who screamed?”

Me.

I nod, having already deduced that in the seconds before it answered. “Your creation. One last question. Will you answer?”

Depends.

I smile and shake my head. “You have power beyond imagination. And yet you are incomplete. How is this possible?”

I was erased.

Erased. “But not completely.”

No god cannot be completely erased.

“So we are giving you back your power, piece by bloody piece.” The book slams shut and closes its eye.

It’s done with me for now. That’s fine. I’m done with it.

There is a lot to unpack here, but the first thing I need to do is tell Lysithea where she came from.

She deserves to know who screamed her into existence, even if we don’t have all the answers yet. It’s a start.