Page 21 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

I will not be caged. Not again. Not even by Blackgrove.

I’d always thought of him as a saviour of sorts.

If he hadn’t accepted me into the Academy, who knows where I would be now.

Probably slaving away for Clara with my magic still bound.

My temper flares when I think of her, and my throat vibrates.

I let out a low hum, and the plates on the table tremble.

Evren grips my hand, and it calms me. I breathe in and push thoughts of that bitch aside. This is about Blackgrove and the betrayal I feel, which is ridiculous because he never claimed to be my friend.

“I want to find that Blood Court and this grimoire,” I say quietly. “Where do we start?”

Evren wiggles the fingers of his other hand as the guys pull back, leaving only me and Evren holding hands.

It feels natural, and it soothes the burning of the brand even when he isn’t touching it directly.

He constructs the skeletal raven and places his hand over its head: Beneath the foundations.

Beneath the forge. Justice is buried there. It is hungry.

Verik frowns. “What is that?”

The ghosts told me .

“That’s all they said?” asks Dathan.

Evren nods.

“The forge,” I repeat. “What is that?”

The guys shrug, as in the dark as I am.

“Okay, well, we need to find out. Where can we get the blueprints of DarkHallow?”

Verik chuckles. “Blueprints? It’s alive. It has moods, not maps.”

“So it’s impossible,” I say, the word flat. Hopeless.

“Nothing is impossible,” he corrects, a dangerous glint in his hellfire eyes. “Just architecturally challenging.”

“So you can lead us there?” I ask, my voice tight.

“ Beneath the foundations. I can lead us down,” he clarifies. “Deep down. Where the oldest parts of this place sleep.”

The word ‘sleep’ hangs in the air, heavy with unspoken menace. Things that sleep can be woken.

Evren squeezes my hand once. A silent agreement. It’s the only thing keeping me anchored to this table, to this insane plan.

“Tonight,” Dathan says, his voice a low command that brooks no argument. “The shadows are strongest after dinner. We’ll start in the crypts.”

Evren nods. Of course, it’s his home turf.

I stand, pulling my hand from Evren’s grasp before the comfort becomes a weakness. “Fine.”

I don’t wait for them. I walk away, and I can feel their plan settling over me like a shroud. A mythical court, a hungry justice, and a forge at the heart of a living prison. But first, I have lectures. Advanced Vocal Magic awaits.

The lecture hall for Advanced Vocal Magic is a tomb. The silence is absolute as I walk to my usual seat at the front. No one sits near me anymore. The banshee from yesterday is gone, replaced by an empty chair that feels like a memorial.

Professor Morgan beams at me, his eyes gleaming with a disturbing hunger. “Ah, Miss Lysithea. Given yesterday’s lecture, we have a new exercise.”

He gestures, and two older students wheel in a large, black cube of obsidian, its surface etched with containment runes that writhe like trapped serpents. They make quick tracks back out of the room, and to be honest, I don’t blame them.

“This is a resonance dampener,” he explains. “Designed to absorb and nullify magical sound. Your task is simple. Break it.”

The other students look at me with something akin to fear. Many of them duck, lowering themselves to the ground behind their desks.

Rising slowly, I cross over the room to stand in front of the cube.

It’s a cage for a voice like mine. A challenge.

I take a breath, but as I draw in the air, I feel a flicker of something that isn’t mine.

The sharp, architectural precision of hellfire.

The deep, patient cold of the grave. The electric crackle of pure fear.

Their power bleeds into mine through the Scar.

It doesn’t make me stronger. It makes me focused.

I don’t scream. I don’t even hum. I exhale a single, perfect note, a needle of pure, focused sound woven with fire and ice and terror.

The obsidian cube doesn’t shatter. It implodes, collapsing in on itself with a silent shriek of annihilated magic before turning to a fine, glittering dust that settles on the stone floor.

Professor Morgan is speechless.

I feel the echo of the note through the brand on my back. A shared jolt of power. They felt that. I know they did.

The silence that follows is more profound than the sound ever was.

It’s a vacuum. A void. Professor Morgan is scribbling furiously in his notebook, his pen practically tearing the paper.

He doesn’t look at me; he looks at the glittering dust on the floor like it’s a religious relic.

The other students are still hiding behind their desks.

“Impressive, Miss Lysithea. You are defying the laws of magic.”

That is not a statement to take lightly. That is an incitement to instil fear in the other students. More fear. If they believe I am above magic, it will make me even more of an outcast, even more of a target.

“Maybe you don’t know the laws as well as you should,” I say quietly.

Professor Morgan’s smile widens. It’s not a friendly expression.

It’s the look of a predator who has just identified a new, fascinating species of prey.

“An excellent hypothesis, Miss Lysithea,” he says, his voice dangerously smooth.

“Perhaps you would care to demonstrate your revised legal framework for us.” He gestures to the glittering dust on the floor.

An invitation. “What can you do with this?”

“Good question,” I say blandly. “I have no idea.”

“Why don’t you work on figuring that out while the rest of the class and I continue with our lesson.” It’s not a question.

He turns from me, and I’m left standing like a dickhead with nothing to do. He knows I won’t figure anything out. The dust is dust. I can’t make it vanish. I can’t rebuild it.

Or can I?

I stare at the glittering black powder on the floor. It’s a taunt. A public humiliation designed to prove I’m just a destructive force, not a creator.

But the Scar on my back is a low, humming heat. A connection.

I close my eyes, ignoring the rest of the class, ignoring the professor’s smug, watchful gaze as he teaches the other students. I don’t reach for my voice. I reach for the echo of hellfire in my blood, the phantom feeling of architectural power that isn’t mine. Verik’s power.

The dust stirs. I open my eyes.

It doesn’t rise in a chaotic cloud. It moves with intent, individual specks lifting from the stone and arranging themselves in the air. A low hum builds in my throat, a blueprint whispered on a single, sustained note.

The glittering particles coalesce, weaving together into a single, perfect obsidian rose.

Its petals are razor-sharp, its thorns are intricate barbs of solid night.

It hangs in the air, a beautiful, impossible thing born from my voice and his power.

I’ve never been more aroused than I am in this moment.

My clit twitches, aching for his hands on me, his power meshing with mine.

It’s a startling thought that makes me shudder, gone as quickly as it rose.

A collective gasp ripples through the lecture hall.

The rose turns slowly, absorbing the light from the floating candles, a perfect black hole in the shape of a flower.

Professor Morgan glides forward. His academic curiosity is at odds with a primal fear I can sense in the air.

“Remarkable,” he breathes, the word sounding like a prayer.

I look at the rose, a symbol of their violation made manifest through my will. It shivers, and a layer of frost forms on it before it deepens into the darkest shadows and vanishes.

I blink. That wasn’t me.

It was them.