Page 1 of Infernal Crown (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #3)

CHAPTER ONE

VERIK

The Armageddon spell isn’t a choice. It’s a reflex.

The only logical response to her pain. Power floods my veins, a fire that burns hotter than any hell.

The bloodstone, the starlight, the rage that she’s bleeding, and I couldn’t protect her.

I’m pulling it all apart, atom by atom. Reality frays at the edges, the air screaming as I unmake it.

Dathan and Evren form a wall around her body, a desperate last stand of nightmare and ice.

They know. They can feel the world dying.

The opposition forces are incinerated where they stand, their armour melting, their screams swallowed by the roar of uncreation.

The lava rises. The walls crack. Let it all burn.

If she doesn’t survive, nothing will. If she doesn’t survive, I don’t want to.

The hellfire erupts from the ground. It answers me.

It pours from my hands, my eyes, my fucking soul.

The stone of the cathedral melts, screaming as it’s unmade.

The opposition forces dissolve. The air itself ignites.

My gaze is locked on Lysithea. She’s watching me, her life bleeding out onto the floor, her eyes going lifeless.

The only thing in this burning, dying world that matters.

This isn’t destruction. This is a reset.

A renovation on a cosmic scale. I will burn it all down and build a throne for her from the cinders.

“Lysithea!” I roar over the blast of the inferno. Hellfire rains down around us, burning everything except me and her. Dathan and Evren are trying to deflect the assault, but this spell is designed to obliterate.

A willingness to use it . And these are the consequences.

I hesitate, locking gazes with Dathan. He stands down, and so does Evren. They stop trying to deflect the spell and let it happen. They know. We all know.

He gulps and looks down at Lysithea. Her eyes close as her blood pumps out of her torn throat. Then he faces me again, standing tall. Evren places his hand on Dathan’s shoulder, and together they give one final nod.

Sacrifice. Are you willing, exiled prince?

“You can shut the fuck up, you absolute cock,” I growl, pulling the spell back.

Oh, ouch. That’s going to hurt.

It does.

It’s like trying to swallow a star. The Armageddon spell, denied its release, turns inward.

It rips through my veins, a supernova contained in flesh and bone.

I collapse, my knees hitting the molten stone with a hiss.

Every nerve ending is a live wire. My magic screams, trying to tear itself out of me.

I grit my teeth, forcing it down, shoving the end of the world back into its box. The light in the chamber dies, the rising lava cools and hardens into jagged black glass. Silence crashes down, broken only by my ragged breaths.

I get my legs under me. My vision is a blur of black spots, but I find her.

Lysithea is still on the ground. Still bleeding. Still dying.

Dathan drops again to his knees and presses his hands to her throat, a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. Evren’s face is a mask of cold, absolute despair I’ve never seen before. He tries to freeze the wound, but magic isn’t touching it.

“You fucking dick,” Dathan growls as I fall next to him. “Why did you stop it?”

“Not killing you two idiots,” I grunt and push Dathan’s hand out of the way. I place my palm flat over Lysithea’s throat, feeling the blood pumping out. It makes my stomach churn, but I blast it with hellfire, enough to cauterise a fucking house-sized hole in a dragon.

Her eyes fly open as the stench of singed flesh hits my senses, and I gag. Dathan skitters back, looking like he’s going to lose the last thing he ate.

“You’re hurting her,” he snarls.

“Better than her dying.”

Her gaze finds mine. She doesn’t scream.

She can’t. The stench of her burning flesh fills the air, a violation that makes my stomach heave.

My magic, the power I use to build, is nothing more than a crude tool of butchery.

I pull my hand away. The wound is a blackened, weeping horror, but the bleeding has stopped.

Her breath hitches, a raw, painful gasp.

It’s the most beautiful fucking sound I’ve ever heard.

I stumble back, the dregs of the Armageddon spell making my muscles twitch uncontrollably.

Evren places his hand over the burn. A fine mist of frost settles on her skin, cooling the wound, easing the pain. His touch is delicate. Precise. The opposite of my savage violence.

Lysithea’s gaze shifts to the grimoire, still hovering above us. Its two eyes burn with a cold, possessive light.

She pushes herself up, wincing. Her hand goes to her throat, fingers tracing the edge of the brutal burn. She opens her mouth, but she can’t speak. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Shh,” I mumble, crawling to her, and stroking her hair.

She shakes her head and draws in a deep breath. “The grimoire. It was the grimoire. It wanted me to bleed for it.”

“What?” I snap and glare up at the book. It senses my intent to rip it to shreds, or at least attempt to, and it flies higher out of reach. It flutters its pages, a mockery of innocence. It knows I can’t touch it. Not yet.

Lysithea struggles to her feet, Evren and Dathan flanking her, a wall of ice and nightmare. Her hand stays at her throat, a constant reminder of how close we came to losing everything. Her voice is raw, torn. “It needed it to complete the pact.”

“A pact?” Dathan asks, his silver eyes fixed on the book. “What fucking pact?”

The grimoire descends slightly. Its pages flip open, stopping on the bloody contract she just signed. The script glows.

“It needed her blood to open the Forge.”

Lysithea nods, her eyes hard. “It’s open now.”

We look over to where the entrance stands. The massive, ornate gate to the Sovereign Forge grinds open. A wave of ancient, raw power washes over us.

The grimoire floats towards the entrance, a silent invitation.

I turn back to Lysithea. She is covered in blood. Her dress is stuck to her, her hair is matted with dark red liquid. But she is alive.

Alive. That’s the only word that matters.

I push myself to my feet, every muscle screaming a protest that I ignore.

The Forge waits. The air it breathes out is thick with raw potential, a symphony of creation that resonates with my soul.

My hellfire hums wanting to build. Evren helps her straighten.

She is shaky from blood loss. Her eyes roll back in her head, and Evren catches her as she falls.

“Fuck,” I breathe. The word is swallowed by the vast, silent chamber.

Evren gathers her into his arms, his movements impossibly gentle. Her head lolls against his shoulder, a cascade of white-blonde hair stained with her own blood.

“Heal her,” I snarl. The command is useless. None of us can do that.

He shakes his head, a single, devastating motion. His ice magic can soothe, but it can’t knit flesh that I’ve brutalised with fire. It can’t replace the life she’s bleeding out. My fix was just a temporary, ugly patch.

Dathan paces, his hands clenched into fists. “There has to be a way.”

“Blackgrove,” I mutter. “We have to go back up.”

Dathan nods. “She is the most important thing. The grimoire can wait for eternity for all I care.”

I turn my back on the gaping doorway, on the grimoire that hovers there like a patient vulture.

It can wait. We’ll be back for it. My gaze sweeps the chamber, seeking somewhere I can create a pathway directly into Blackgrove’s office, if I have my way.

The place is a complete mess. Everything is melted around us.

I close my eyes and focus, which is harder than it sounds right now.

My head is banging from the Armageddon spell, and my senses are skewed.

The worry about Lysithea keeps prodding at me, but I push it aside.

I need to focus to help her. I force the pain down, channelling it.

The raw power of this place answers my call, a clean surge that cuts through the static in my head.

I find a patch of floor that isn’t completely burned away and slam my hands down.

“Get ready,” I grunt.

Hellfire erupts in a fine, surgical line. I’m not tearing a hole this time. I’m folding space. A doorway shimmers into existence, the view on the other side a wavering heat haze of Blackgrove’s office.

It’s unstable. The edges crackle, spitting sparks of raw reality.

“Go!” I roar.

Evren is already moving, carrying Lysithea through the shimmering portal without hesitation. Dathan is a shadow at his heels.

I hold the doorway open, my muscles screaming in protest. The portal collapses the second I step through, the sound like a thunderclap ripping the world in two.

We land in a heap on Blackgrove’s expensive rug.

He looks up from his paperwork, not a flicker of surprise on his face. Just a deep, profound weariness.

“Honestly,” he says, setting down his pen with deliberate care. “Can’t you four go five minutes without getting into shit up to your necks?”

“Save the fucking lecture,” Dathan snarls, his voice a low vibration of contained violence. “She’s dying.”

Blackgrove’s gaze slides past him to where Evren has lain her down. He rises from his desk, his movements slow, deliberate. Infuriating. He crouches beside her, his long fingers hovering over the blackened ruin of her throat. There’s no pity in his eyes. Just a cold, academic interest.

“A wound inflicted by a divine artefact,” he murmurs, more to himself than to us. “And cauterised with hellfire. A crude but effective stopgap.”

“Stop admiring the fucking problem and solve it,” I grit out, forcing myself to stand. Every muscle feels like it’s been torn to shreds and badly stitched back together.

He looks up at me, his expression unreadable. “There is no ‘solving’ this, Mr Verik. A wound like this cannot be healed. It can only be… repurposed.”

He stands, turning his back on her, and walks over to a locked cabinet. He pulls out a vial of shimmering, black liquid.

“This will stabilise her,” he says, holding it up. “But it comes at a price. It will bind her life force to DarkHallow itself. She will never be able to leave.”

A cage. He’s offering to save her by putting her in another fucking cage. The dregs of the Armageddon spell roar in my blood. I take a step forward, my hands clenching, hellfire licking at my fingertips.

“No,” Dathan says, his voice flat and absolute.

Blackgrove turns the vial over in his fingers. “Then she will die. The choice is yours.”

Evren looks up from Lysithea’s side, his eyes burning with a cold, desperate light. He gives a single, sharp nod.

I hesitate. She will fucking kill us for imprisoning her. But it’s this or her death. It’s a fucking sacrifice, and I’m not sure she will agree with the price. “She will hate us,” I mutter.

“But she will be alive to forgive us eventually,” Dathan argues.

“You hope,” Evren adds his first words in hours.

I look down at her. Her skin is pale, almost translucent. The burn on her throat is brutal, ugly. My handiwork. My failure. Dathan’s right. Her hating us is better than her being dead.

I give a single, sharp nod. The decision is a stone in my gut.

Blackgrove doesn’t wait for a verbal answer. He moves back to Lysithea, uncorking the vial. The black liquid is noxious and sinister, and I have the sinking feeling we are making a huge mistake. But what choice do we have?

Blackgrove tilts her head back gently and lets a single drop fall onto her lips.

It doesn’t absorb. It sinks into her skin, a bead of living mercury that traces a path down to the wound. The black spreads, consuming the burn. It leaves behind a scar. A shimmering, black latticework of a collar that glitters under the office lights. It’s beautiful. It’s a fucking leash.

Her breathing evens out. Colour returns to her cheeks.

She’s alive. She’s a prisoner. She’s going to hate us.

Blackgrove stands, dusting off his hands.

I look from the black mark on her throat to the smug look on his face.

We saved her. We sold her. When she wakes up, she is going to kill us.