Page 7 of Infernal Crown (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #3)

CHAPTER SEVEN

LYSITHEA

The nightmare magic around his feet dies, leaving him standing vulnerable in the pale moonlight. No walls. No defences. Just raw honesty that cuts deeper than any blade.

I stare at him, this monster who feeds on fear, who’s spent weeks possessing every inch of my attention. The same monster who just offered to let me walk away.

“You’re serious,” I say, and it’s not a question.

“Dead serious.” His silver eyes hold mine without flinching. “I was wrong. We were all wrong. Not once but twice. We took your choices away because we wanted power, and then we were terrified of losing you.”

I want to tell him to stop being ridiculous, but then I open my mouth to utter the words, different ones come out. “So go, then.”

The flash of pain in his eyes hurts, but I’m tired. Tired of living for them and not for me. That wasn’t how this year was supposed to go. I was supposed to blend into the shadows, go to classes, live with my pain and anger until I eventually got spat back out into the world.

He gulps but then nods slowly. He turns and walks away, leaving the grimoire on the ground, its eyes narrowed in an emotion I can’t even begin to understand. And I don’t want to.

“We are done here,” I say to it. “Go.”

I don’t wait for it to respond. I turn my back on it and walk back to my room, feeling numb.

The Soul Scar on my back aches with longing, but I ignore it.

He didn’t even fight. He simply left without a look back.

Rationally, I know he said he wouldn’t stop me if I told him to go, but the pain of that hurts. Why won’t he fight for me?

I fall on my bed and close my eyes as hot tears sting them.

The tears come anyway. Hot, angry tears that I hate myself for crying.

I press my face into my pillow, muffling the broken sounds that escape my throat.

The collar around my neck pulses with warmth, DarkHallow’s magic trying to soothe me like I’m some wounded animal.

I struggle to get my boots off, and when I do, I curl up into a ball and pray for sleep.

We all need distance right now. We need to take a step back from a relationship that is toxic as fuck and never should’ve happened in the first place.

But it was fate, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

It was always going to happen, but right now it hurts to think like that. It hurts to breathe, to cry. It hurts to just be.

Sleep finally drags me under, and I let myself fall into the abyss, a part of me hoping I never wake up.

I wake up, unfortunately, after what seems like only minutes. I’m floating in absolute darkness.

“Hello, little Siren.”

The voice is a whisper that bypasses my ears and speaks directly to my bones. I try to move, but my body feels distant, disconnected. Like I’m wearing someone else’s skin.

“Who’s there?” My voice echoes strangely in the void.

“You know who I am.” The darkness shifts, coalescing into a shape that looks like me. “I am the god you serve. The power you carry. The truth you deny.”

The Tenebris Vinculum. The thing that screamed me into existence.

“I don’t serve any god,” I snarl, finding my voice even in this strange, weightless space. “Especially not some wannabe me.”

Its laughter is like glass breaking in reverse. “You serve me whether you choose to or not. You are my creation. My weapon. My voice in this realm.”

“Fuck you.”

“Such language from my greatest work.” The entity moves closer, and I can feel its attention like acid on my skin. “You’re angry with them. With the choices they made for you.”

I don’t answer. I won’t give it the satisfaction.

“They caged you,” it continues, its voice a poisonous honey. “Bound you to them without your consent. Just as I screamed you into existence without asking if you wanted to live.”

I was never asked if I wanted to be created. Never asked if I wanted to be the last of my kind, carrying the weight of an entire species on my shoulders. But that’s a ridiculous notion. “No one can be asked if they want to be created. That makes zero sense.”

“Precisely. Every creation is a choice that others make.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that.”

“I am the god of Absolute Truth. Honesty is all I have.” The entity circles me in the darkness. “But unlike them, I offer you a choice now.”

“What choice?”

“Complete me. Forge the Crown. Or I can unmake you. Return you to the void from whence you came. No more pain. No more betrayal. No more being used as a weapon by those who claim to love you.”

The offer hangs in the darkness like a blade as sharp as the paper one that killed me. Oblivion. An end to all of this. Part of me, the part that’s so fucking tired of fighting, whispers that it sounds peaceful.

“You won’t get finished if I do.”

“I’ll start again.”

“You don’t sound very pissed about that.”

“Why would I be? I have waited millennia for the right being. If you aren’t it, you vanish and I start over.”

Vanish. “You unmade the previous Nox Sirens.”

“Only one can live.”

“Blackgrove saved one.”

“Ah, yes, Aeliana. His love. I nearly had her the other day before he took her away from me. Her presence created a rift that is making it difficult for you to proceed as you were meant to.”

“Are you saying Aeliana did something to us?”

“Her presence interfered with your bond. It doesn’t know which Nox Siren it belongs to.”

“WHAT?” I thunder, moving closer. My hands twitch in anger as my blood spikes. “Are you saying the bond wants the guys to be with her ?” That fucking bitch!

The entity’s laugh cuts through my rage. “Not wants, little Siren. Recognises. The bond was forged for a Nox Siren. Only one is meant to exist. If two are sensed, the older, more powerful one wins.”

My stomach drops into an abyss. “Wins? So the bond could just transfer to her?” Fury explodes through me, hot and absolute. “That manipulative bitch knew this when she came to see me.”

“Of course she did. Why do you think she risked Blackgrove’s wrath to visit you? She wants what you have. The bond. The power. The Crown.”

My hands clench into fists in the darkness. “She can’t have them.”

“Then you must complete me. Only as a god can you secure what is yours. Only with the Crown can you ensure the bond remains bound to you alone.”

Complete the grimoire and become something I’m not sure I want to be. Or risk losing everything that matters to an ancient bitch who thinks she can waltz in and steal my life.

“Fine,” I spit into the darkness. “I’ll complete you. But not for you. For them. To keep what’s mine.”

“The reason matters not. Only the result.” The entity begins to fade, but its voice lingers. “Wake now, little Siren. Your monsters are breaking without you.”

I jolt awake, gasping. Moonlight filters through the window, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. The Soul Scar burns against my skin, a sharp reminder of what I could lose.

I try to move, but I just cannot lift my head from the pillow.

The exhaustion that has set in has claimed me, and as much as I want to move, I can’t.

Aeliana can’t have what’s mine. Not the guys, not the Crown, not my supposed destiny.

I force myself to sit up, the room spinning slightly as the blood rushes to my head.

I slide out of bed, my bare feet hitting the soft carpet. The connection to DarkHallow hums through me, every stone and shadow responding to my presence.

The guys are hurting. The Soul Scar tells me that much, even if they’re too stubborn to admit it.

But first, I need answers. I need to know exactly what Aeliana is capable of, what threat she poses to everything I’ve claimed as mine.

I shove my feet into my boots and head out the door, casting a glance down the hallway as I hear something scratching behind one of the doors. But I don’t have time to be curious.

The corridors of DarkHallow bend to my will now, shortening distances, opening passages that shouldn’t exist. I find myself outside Blackgrove’s office in minutes rather than the usual trek across the academy.

I don’t knock. The door swings open at my approach, recognising its new sovereign.

Blackgrove looks up from his desk, unsurprised. “Miss Lysithea.”

“We need to talk about Aeliana,” I say without preamble, settling into the chair across from his desk.

His eyebrows rise a fraction. “Straight to the point. I appreciate that.” He sets down his pen with deliberate care. “What would you like to know?”

“Everything. What she’s capable of. Why you keep her locked away. And whether she can steal my bond.” The last words come out sharp, but I don’t care. The fury from my dream conversation still burns in my veins.

Blackgrove leans back in his chair, studying me with those unsettling blue eyes. “Ah. You’ve spoken with the grimoire.”

“It came to me in a dream. Said some very interesting things about your love.” I cross my arms, letting him see exactly how pissed off I am. “Care to elaborate on her motives?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, his fingers steepled. When he finally speaks, his voice carries centuries of regret. “Aeliana was magnificent. Powerful beyond measure. And completely consumed by the grimoire’s original vision.”

“The utopia of truth.”

“She believed in it with every fibre of her being. She hated liars. She killed anyone she caught telling lies, even small comforting ones. She was Tenny’s first Nox Siren. Screamed into existence, and a perfect image of the grimoire.”

“Okay, that makes sense, in a way,” I mutter, more to myself, but then ask, “So why don’t I feel that way?

” He blinks and then narrows his eyes, but before he can open his mouth to formulate a response, it clicks.

“I’m weaker. Not in a power sense, but my connection to the grimoire is weaker.

Each screamed version of itself draws them further away. ”

“It would appear so, yes.”

“Where is she?”

“In the ancestral pathways. It was the only place strong enough to contain her.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want me walking those,” I murmur. “But she got out.”

“You really do need to stay away from those pathways,” he chides.

“I wasn’t…” Okay, maybe I was. Who knows. “I don’t really know how seeing as I don’t know where they are. But that is besides the point. She wants my guys, my Crown. She. Can’t. Have. Them.”

“She wants what her purpose put her here for. I doubt she is looking to steal your men from you,” he says dryly.

“Oh, jealous?” I growl.

“Hardly, but watch your mouth, Miss Lysithea. I am still your superior, in fact, I would even go so far as to say you are even more under my control now, what with being part of DarkHallow, and all.” The threat lingers, and I take it very seriously because Blackgrove doesn’t fuck about making idle threats.

“I apologise. That was uncalled for,” I say stiffly. “But the fact remains, she wants the bond, which means my men. I can’t let her get out of that pathway again to try.”

“She is already trying, Miss Lysithea. And she is winning. Don’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?” I croak, not willing to admit that Dathan walking away was Aeliana’s influence.

“The fracturing of the bond,” he says quietly. “The way your men are pulling away from each other, from you. That’s not natural progression of anger, Miss Lysithea. That’s interference.”

My blood runs cold. The way Dathan just walked away without a fight was unexpected and unusual.

“She’s doing something to them.”

“Not directly. But her presence creates confusion. The Soul Scar doesn’t know which Nox Siren it should serve. So, it weakens. Fractures. Eventually, it will choose.”

“And it will choose her because she’s older.”

“More powerfully connected to the grimoire,” he corrects. “Unless you complete the grimoire first. Become what you were meant to be. Only then will the bond be unbreakably yours.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, you fight for what’s yours. You complete what was started. And you pray that you’re strong enough to hold onto them when she makes her final move.”

“How long do I have until that happens?”

“Who knows? This hasn’t exactly happened before.”

Helpful. I rise and turn toward the door, but his voice stops me.

“Miss Lysithea.” I pause, looking back. “Aeliana was consumed by what she was meant to be. Don’t let the same happen to you.”

The warning follows me out into the hallway, where the shadows seem deeper and more alive than before.

I need to find the guys. I need to fix what’s breaking between us before Aeliana tears us apart completely and finishes Tenebris Vinculum, plunging this realm into a hell-like utopia.