Page 17 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Evren

R esisting the urge to roll my eyes at Verik’s grand declaration, I move closer to Lysithea.

Her scream nearly tore me apart, but somehow, I managed to withstand the full force of it.

The thing that answered her call, though?

That was not something we should be messing with.

It was older than the grave, and that is saying more than my brain can feasibly comprehend right now.

Lysithea flinches when I step into her space, her chin going up as she glares at me.

I hold my hand up, but don’t touch her. We are the same this way.

I understand it more than she can know, and I will not violate her rules.

Her trust. Trust. That has been shattered completely. If she had any to begin with.

The Scar on my arm is a cold fire, a phantom limb that connects my dead flesh to her living heat.

I can feel the furious thrum of her heart through it, a frantic, beautiful rhythm of life I haven’t felt in two years.

I focus on the brand, on the intricate web of black and silver that now marks me as hers as much as it marks her as ours.

Moving my hand around to her back, she flinches, pulling away from me.

I implore her with my gaze. I know I can help her.

My hand hovers, and her glare softens, replaced by a flicker of stunned confusion. She feels it. She understands.

“What are you doing?” Verik’s voice is sharp, suspicious. He feels the shift in the power dynamic, the subtle change in the current.

I don’t look at him. My gaze is fixed on Lysithea. She nods and turns her back to me. The heat of the brand is burning through the fabric of her dress, creating a hole to expose the singed flesh.

I place my hand on it, and she gasps. The chill of the grave seeps from my fingers, soothing her. I draw the searing agony out of her, absorbing it into the cold stillness that is my soul. The brand on my arm pulses in sympathy, the burn lessening to a dull, manageable ache.

Her shoulders, which were rigid with tension, slump slightly. A quiet sigh escapes her lips. It’s not forgiveness. It’s a ceasefire.

“What is this?” Dathan’s voice is a low growl of suspicion.

“Cold,” she breathes.

The black and silver lines of the Scar on her back cool under my touch. She leans into my palm, a small, almost imperceptible movement. But I feel it. A flicker of trust in the heart of the inferno we created.

I am a tomb, but for the first time in two years, something is growing inside me. It feels dangerously like life. Her life. And I will not let anyone break it.

“How?” she whispers, her voice raw. I can’t answer.

I can only show her. The silent cold, the endless quiet of the grave, the memory of my own ending.

A shared piece of oblivion she can register through my touch.

Her breath hitches. She understands. We are two sides of the same final coin.

A tremor shakes the room, stronger this time.

The orchids on her windowsill wither before they settle again, their beautiful glow lighting up the room.

“It’s gone,” Verik mutters.

“Thank fuck for that,” Dathan says.

I pull my hand from Lysithea and step back. She spins around. “It was you. Calming this Scar made it go away.”

Quite likely. My touch mimics the dead. She was probably cloaked.

It will be back.

She nods, hearing me even though I haven’t spoken.

The brand on my arm is a dull ache. For two years, I have been a hollow thing. A quiet echo. Now, there is a rhythm inside me that is not mine. Her life force, channelled through this brand, is a poison that feels like a cure.

She is staring at me, her violet eyes wide with questions I cannot answer with words. She doesn’t need them. She felt the truth in my touch. The cold. The finality. The only thing that can hide from a god of endings is an ending itself.

I am her shield. A tomb protects what is placed inside it.

Lysithea takes a cautious step back from me, her violet eyes wide and searching.

She’s not looking at me like I’m a monster anymore.

She’s looking at me like a puzzle she doesn’t know how to solve.

The hatred is still there, a banked fire, but now it’s laced with a confusion that is directed at herself as much as at us. “What happens now?” she asks quietly.

“Now we have to figure out exactly how to channel our powers to get what we came for, with you as our queen,” Verik states.

Now, I do roll my eyes at him. He is a brute. There is more to this, and I’m starting to wonder if that Tenebris Vinculum grimoire has something to do with it. I step back as the whispers start, pushing me to return to the library.

“Where are you going?” Verik’s voice is a low growl.

I don’t turn. The whispers are insistent, a cold wind only I can feel. They are pulling me towards an answer, and it is not in this room.

“Evren,” Lysithea says my name. It’s the first time. The word is a crack of warmth in the frozen landscape of my existence. It almost makes me stop.

Almost.

I shake my head, a single, final gesture, and dissolve into the shadows pooling in the corner of her room. The transition is seamless, a quiet slip between the folds of reality.

I reappear in the cold, silent corridors of the library. The ghosts are a frantic, invisible current around me, urging me on.

The book is waiting. It doesn’t fly off the shelf this time. It sits there, silent and knowing. The key.

I reach for it, my fingers brushing the leather. It doesn’t demand blood. Not this time. It already has a taste of me. It opens willingly.

The pages are no longer blank.

Only the Tenebris Vinculum can help her now.

I blink. Where is it?

The thought does nothing. I huff and squeeze the edges of the book. Where?

Still nothing.

Sacrifice.

I frown at the new word scrawled underneath the text. Sacrifice.

The whispers confirm my worst fear. I have to make a sacrifice in order to get the answers I’m looking for. It has already taken my blood, so the one thing left that it can use, can feed from is the one thing I can’t give it.

Then I remember the word that came out in Blackgrove’s office. I can do it, it’s not that I’m incapable, it’s just not something I want to do.

But for her, I have to. The thought is as simple as that.

I close my eyes. The silence is a part of me, a shield I built from the ashes of my first life.

To break it feels like breaking a bone, a deliberate act of self-mutilation.

But her face, etched with pain and fury, is burned behind my eyelids.

The memory of her life force, a frantic, beautiful rhythm against my dead hand, is a more powerful anchor than any silence.

For her.

I inhale slowly. The air tastes of dust and ancient, forgotten magic. I force the word out.

“Where?”

The sound is a horror. A dry, rasping crackle, like a gravestone splitting in a frost. It rips through me, a physical cost that leaves me feeling hollower than before.

A sliver of the cold energy that holds me together flakes away, absorbed by the book.

This was different to Blackgrove’s office.

That was unconscious. This took an effort I’m not sure I have the energy to deal with again.

The letters on the page shimmer, rearranging themselves into a new, chilling prophecy.

Blood Court.

I mouth the words. Blood Court. I’ve heard of it, the dead whisper about it sometimes.

I don’t know what it is or where it is situated, but apparently, we need to find this to help Lysithea.

Help her to do what? I guess we’ll find that out when we find the grimoire.

Closing the book, I pick it up and tentatively step out of the alcove.

The book allows me to carry it down the aisle, out of the restricted section and out of the library.

I cross the courtyard, covered in a layer of snow and head down into the crypts to find answers.

The air in the crypts is thick with a new kind of dread.

The resident spirits, usually content in their dusty silence, now stir with a frantic energy.

They feel the shift in the world above, the echo of her scream, the arrival of something ancient and hungry.

I walk to the central chamber, the book a cold, heavy weight in my hand.

The throne of bones waits, a familiar comfort.

I don’t sit. I place the book on the seat, a sacrifice on an altar.

The ghosts swarm, their forms indistinct wisps of memory and regret.

They are drawn to the book, to the power it holds, to the piece of me it consumed.

I don’t speak again. The cost is too high.

Instead, I project the words into the cold air.

Blood Court. A collective hiss answers me.

They know. They felt the shift. The scream that was not Lysithea’s. The ancient thing that answered.

The spirits churn, a vortex of phantom limbs and terrified, silent mouths. They know the name. They fear it.

One form solidifies from the maelstrom. An old soul, his form still sharp with the memory of power. A former professor, perhaps. His spectral eyes are wide with a terror that has survived death itself.

“It is not a place for the living,” he rasps, the words like grinding ice. Or the not-quite-dead.

I don’t have a choice. I gesture to the book. The key.

The ghost flinches from the tome’s presence. “Beneath the foundations. Beneath the forge. Justice is buried there. It is hungry.”

He dissolves back into the swirling chaos, his warning a final, chilling echo.

Beneath the forge. What, or where, is that?

The book on the altar is still; the ghosts seep into the stones. I am left alone with more questions than answers.