Page 37 of Darkness and Deceit (Obsidian Academy #2)

Thirty-Four

LILITH

I wake up with a jolt, mouth open in a silent scream, but the sound is trapped inside me. My throat feels scraped raw. My chest heaves like I’ve been running for miles.

A constant, disorienting buzz fills my ears, a mix of static and distant sobs that blurs the line between reality and the chaos inside my mind.

Everything feels off-kilter, as if the world has been tilted on its axis. The cold beneath me seeps into my bones. It's not just freezing; it's a numbing chill, creeping into every crevice of my being.

This isn’t where I collapsed. The stone is wrong. The air too still, too heavy.

I scramble to sit upright, a ragged sob snagging in my throat. My hands slam onto the slick surface beneath me—stone, slippery and damp. My fingers tremble uncontrollably. I reach for my magic, but it remains elusive, like a distant echo shrouded by a heavy, wet blanket.

Then I sense it—or rather, I sense the absence of it. The tether, the invisible thread that always pulls taut behind my ribs, the one that vibrates with the pulse of my Shadows—it’s missing.

The ache comes so fast it guts me. I double over, a scream finally ripping free, curling through the space like something feral.

Memories surge over me like a relentless tide.

My deer. My fox. Torn from me. Ripped out and devoured while I stood there and watched.

And Tony?—

My head jerks up, eyes darting around frantically. It’s empty, just cold, unyielding stone walls and an oppressive silence that presses down on me.

I’m not in the corridor anymore. Somehow, the shadows brought me here.

Then, in the dimness of the far corner, something catches my eye. A pair of glasses sits abandoned on the stone floor. The lenses are cracked, one missing entirely, and the frame is twisted, as if someone stepped on them.

My heart seizes in my chest, then stutters back to life with a painful jolt.

“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no?—”

I lunge forward, fingers scrabbling to gather up the broken pieces, as if somehow I can reverse what happened. As if holding them will conjure Tony back to life. But the glasses are just a shattered remnant of someone I failed to save.

He was the first person who treated me like I wasn’t dangerous. Just… Lilith.

I curl around the glasses like they’re a lifeline. Press them to my chest like they’ll still carry some part of him.

I can still hear his bright and weird and too loud laugh echoing through the library until we were shushed. I can still see him slipping me shitty snacks between classes and pretending they were “gifts from the gods.” He believed in me. Trusted me.

And I didn’t save him.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

There’s no answer. Only the cold stone. Only silence.

I failed him.

Like I failed my Shadows.

Like I failed everyone.

Tony is gone. My Shadows are gone. And I don’t even know how I’m still breathing.

A shudder courses through my body, and a brief flicker of violet energy sparks at my fingertips before it fizzles into nothing. Drained. Weak. Useless.

I don’t know where I am. Only that I’m not alone.

The hair on the back of my neck stands. Something, or someone , is watching me. My breath catches, every instinct in my body screaming to move, to run, to do something —but I stay frozen, hands clenched around Tony’s broken glasses.

The shadows in the corner begin to stir. They recede in slow, deliberate ribbons, like a curtain drawing open on a play. The darkness parts, layer by layer, until I see him.

Magnus.

Seated on a throne of writhing shadows, high-backed and twisting, more suggestion than structure. The tendrils curl around his shoulders like they’re alive, like they’re adoring him. Worshiping him.

His face is bathed in silver light, like a fucked up spotlight pouring down from above.

He looks younger than I expected. Maybe around my father’s age, but it’s hard to tell.

Sharp jaw. Raven-dark hair swept back like he stepped out of some forgotten portrait.

He’s handsome in the way a predator might be—built to lure you in before he tears you apart.

His violet eyes gleam from within the recess of darkness, catching mine.

And he’s smiling.

Like he’s been here all along.

Like he’s been waiting for me to wake up.

My pulse spikes. Rage and terror crackle down my spine in equal measure.

“You,” I breathe.

His smile tilts up. “Me.”

He rises from the throne, not like a man, but like the night itself straightening to its full height. Shadows cling to him. They don’t move independently. They move with him. Like a cloak. Like limbs. Like a crown he never had to earn.

I stumble backward, heart hammering in my throat. “How long have you been watching me?”

“Long enough,” he says, his voice smooth and low. “Long enough to know your grief is real. And your power—” his gaze flicks to the flickering magic at my fingertips “—is still becoming.”

Still becoming.

Like I’m not finished.

Magic stirs in my chest. It’s barely a spark. But enough to burn. I don’t care how weak I am. I will tear him apart if he brought me here, if he hurt Tony, if he?—

“That won’t be necessary,” he says, with the ease of someone commenting on the weather. “If I meant you harm, you’d know it already.”

I want to scream at him. But the grief is choking me. So instead, I spit, “Then why the hell am I here?”

His eyes flick to the broken glasses in my hands. He doesn’t say anything, but his silence cuts deeper than any answer.

I shake, both fury and grief warring inside me. I want to hit him. Burn him. Destroy something.

“You dragged me here for what?” I snap. “A performance review? To gloat? To tell me how I broke everything, again?”

The shadows part for him, they bow for him, curling around his ankles, licking up his arms, reverently.

“I brought you here,” he says, voice low, “because the academy is dying. The Balance is already broken. And you… you are the only thing left worth saving.”

I laugh bitterly. “Bullshit.”

“I don’t lie,” he says simply. “Your father taught me that.”

The words hit like a slap.

I freeze. My heart flatlines for a beat. “My father? You’re lying.”

But he’s not smiling now. He looks at me like I’m something he’s been waiting to unfold.

“He said you’d fight it at first. That you’d be reckless. Emotional.” His eyes scan me, not unkindly. “But you’d come around.”

“Don’t you fucking dare talk about him—” My voice breaks on the last word.

Magnus steps closer. “He said you’d be the key to everything.”

I flinch.

He reaches for me, his fingers gently brushing a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I don’t move. I can’t. My whole body is stone.

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” he murmurs. “And now you’re here. Stronger than they ever meant you to be.”

His violet gaze pins me in place. “And I’m going to show you exactly what they tried to keep from you.”

He lifts his hand—and the world shifts.

Behind him, the shadows split open like a wound.

And there—suspended in the dark like a marionette—is Tony.

His body hangs limp. His eyes are open.

Empty.

“He’s not dead,” Magnus says gently, almost fondly. “Not yet.”

Magnus watches me reel, unblinking. “Hard to face, isn’t it?” he says softly. “But that’s the truth, Lilith. This is what the Balance was built on. Darkness. And deceit. And now you get to decide whether to uphold it… or tear it down.”

I lunge for him, magic flaring?—

But the shadows slam shut.

Magnus doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move.

“Choose carefully, Lilith,” he says. “The next step doesn’t just change everything—it decides who survives it.”