Page 23 of Infernal Crown (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

LYSITHEA

Dathan’s consciousness dissolves through the Soul Scar like smoke through my fingers, and something inside me breaks that was never meant to be broken.

The scream that tears from my throat carries power that makes reality convulse.

Not the measured authority I’ve been wielding through the Crown’s influence, but raw grief.

Every star that ever burned, every world that ever dreamed, every love that ever transcended the boundaries of flesh and time—all of it pours through me in a torrent of fury that rewrites the fundamental laws governing existence.

The grimoire staggers under the assault, ancient composure cracking for the first time since this began.

I snarl and launch myself at the bastard book with everything I have left.

The collision between us splits the dying realm down its foundation.

Where my grief-fuelled power meets the grimoire’s absolute certainty, space itself tears apart to reveal the hungry void that lurks between dimensions.

Verik’s carefully constructed paradise dissolves faster around us like a painting left in the rain, the perfection unable to withstand the chaos of genuine emotion.

I don’t fight like a goddess. I fight like a woman who’s just watched the man she loves sacrifice himself to save everyone else.

Claws of silver fire rake across the grimoire’s cover, each strike carrying the weight of every moment Dathan and I shared.

The first time we sat on the bench. The first time he touched me. The first time we fucked.

“You killed him,” I whisper, but the words emerge with enough force to crack dimensional barriers. “You killed him, and for what? Your perfect fucking truth?”

The grimoire’s power lashes out in response, trying to restore order to a conflict that operates entirely outside rational parameters. Ancient energy that has shaped the birth and death of galaxies crashes into my defences, but grief makes me stronger than any Crown ever could.

Where the grimoire’s attacks hit me, they burn away pieces of the goddess I’ve become. Celestial power bleeds from my transformed body, each wound reducing my ability to channel forces beyond supernatural comprehension. But every loss just feeds the rage that keeps me fighting.

I pour everything into the next attack, grief and love and fury combining into something that transcends every limitation the universe tried to impose on emotion. The blast tears through the grimoire’s defences.

For the first time ever, the grimoire feels pain.

I press my advantage even as my body burns from the inside out.

The realm collapses further around us, Verik’s hidden flaws cascading through structures that were designed to collapse under a domino effect. We have minutes before this thing is going to blow us all to hell and back and probably rinse and repeat until there is nothing left of us.

But something has changed. The grimoire’s power wavers, ancient certainty undermined by the introduction of variables it was never designed to process.

“You’re weakening,” I observe, tasting blood that glows with silver fire. “Turns out absolute certainty isn’t so absolute when you have to account for things that don’t make logical sense.”

The grimoire gathers its strength for another attack, but I sense its uncertainty.

It’s never faced anything like this before—a love that shouldn’t exist but does anyway.

I push harder, my grief becoming something new and powerful.

My magic doesn’t destroy the grimoire when it hits—it changes it, adding disorder to its perfect system that has never changed until now.

We clash again, the universe shrieking as our powers rip through reality. But something’s wrong. The energy inside me burns hotter by the second, eating me alive from within.

I’m dying.

The truth hits me hard and cold. The Crown was never built for this much raw emotion. Gods rule through cold logic, not grief and rage. Every time I attack with my feelings instead of divine power, I burn away more of what’s keeping me alive.

Every attack costs me more of my power. The silver marks fade from my skin like disappearing tattoos, leaking divine light that bleeds away forever.

But I’m hurting the grimoire too. My raw emotions confuse it. Its perfect system can’t handle feelings that don’t make sense.

The next exchange nearly finishes us both. Power that operates on universal scales crashes together in a cascade of mutual destruction, reality fracturing along lines that reveal the hungry void lurking beneath the foundation of existence itself.

When the dust settles, we’re both on our knees in the wreckage of Verik’s false paradise.

The grimoire’s ancient form flickers between states of matter, damaged beyond easy repair.

My own god-like nature gutters like a candle in a hurricane, godhood burning away to reveal the supernatural woman underneath.

But then I remember Dathan’s sacrifice, the way he threw himself at the book without hesitation because he saw the people he loved in danger. The choice he made to give everything for the chance that we might find a way to save what matters most.

And I understand what I have to do.

I reach for the Crown that’s been the source of my transformed nature. The artefact that turned me into something capable of channelling godly power, of standing toe-to-toe with ancient powers that predate the concept of time itself.

My fingers close around metal that burns with the authority of creation, and I feel the weight of the choice before me.

Keep the Crown and retain the power to continue this fight, but burn out completely within minutes as godhood consumes what’s left of my mortal nature.

Or surrender the celestial authority that’s kept me functional, return to being merely me, and trust that love is stronger than the forces trying to tear everything apart.

The power drains from my body in torrents that make the air around me shimmer with released energy, godhood dissolving to reveal the Nox Siren who chose to love three deeply flawed men rather than have the power of the universe at my fingertips.

The choice is easy, really.

In fact, there never was a choice.

The transformation hits me like falling from a great height.

The enhanced perception that allowed me to see across multiple realities narrows back to normal sight.

Power that could reshape continents shrinks down to the simple magic I had before the Crown changed everything.

But I don’t disappear. I don’t die. I don’t collapse into pieces that the grimoire can remake.

I remain stubbornly, magnificently, impossibly myself.

The Soul Scar flares to life around me, connections that bind me to Evren and Verik and even Dathan’s fading consciousness, creating a network that transcends normal magical theory.

Not the cold authority of godhood, but the messy, complicated bonds that form when people choose to love each other despite every rational reason to walk away.

“This is what you’re trying to destroy,” I tell the fading grimoire. “Connection that exists because it chooses to, not because universal law demands it. Love that survives despite logic, despite pain, despite every force that tries to tear it apart.”

The grimoire flips open, and its pages are erased, one by one.

It believed that truth must be absolute, that existence can only be perfected by eliminating beautiful lies and comfortable fictions.

But here I stand, ordinary and flawed and absolutely refusing to fit its perfect vision.

Living proof that some things are worth keeping precisely because they don’t make sense.