Page 24 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Evren

M y blood is boiling. I didn’t even know it was possible to get this hot, this angry. As Dathan walks out of the Nightmare Gardens, I grab him and shove him up against the wall, my hand gripping his tee. A layer of frost spreads from my fingers, creeping across the black cotton.

Dathan’s eyes widen in surprise before he shakes his head knowingly.

I don’t need words. I shove him harder, the ancient stone groaning under the impact. The blood-red icicles of the willow above us shatter, raining down like sharp, crimson tears. I saw the entire thing. He can’t tell me it isn’t what it looks like. He seduced her.

His eyes narrow as the cold seeps deeper, a true grave-chill that leaches the strength from his limbs. “Fuck, Evren. Calm down.”

My skeletal raven forms on my shoulder, its empty sockets boring into him. It lets out a silent, rattling screech. A promise of what I will do to his bones if he ever touches her like that again.

“It wasn’t a violation,” he grits out, his breath pluming in the sudden cold. “She took my hand. She wanted me to touch her.”

I know technically he’s right, but he doesn’t get it. Not like I do. Her body betrayed her, seeking the comfort of his touch. Her mind was against it. I know how she thinks, how she feels like no one else can.

“Don’t,” I rasp, the word hurting my disused throat.

Dathan inhales sharply and holds his hands up. “I don’t want to hurt her. I want to be with her. I want her to trust me enough to let me touch her.”

I search his eyes for deception, but I see only the truth. The truth doesn’t make it right. It just makes it more complicated. I release him. The frost recedes from his shirt, leaving a damp, cold patch over his heart. My hand drops to my side.

“We are on the same side,” he says. “ Her side.”

I nod. I’m still angry with him, but it’s a ‘me’ issue.

I want to touch her. I want her to touch me.

I want to curl up and be held by her, and I want to feel warm and alive.

I can’t ask her to do that, and yet Dathan takes what was freely given to him, and that hurts.

I can’t help that. I step back and move around him into the gardens.

I want to see her, to make sure she is okay.

I find her standing by the bench, her back to me. Her hands are fumbling with the zip of her dress, her shoulders rigid. The air is thick with the lingering scent of Dathan’s power, a cloying mix of arousal and terror. It makes the cold in my veins feel colder.

She must sense me.

She freezes, then slowly turns. Her face is a storm. Shame, fury, and a terrifying flicker of self-loathing war in her violet eyes. She looks like she wants to scream the world into dust, starting with herself.

I stop a few feet away, giving her space. The Gloom Petals weep their crimson tears around us.

I hold out my hand. Palm up. An echo of the night before. An offer of cold, silent stillness in the heart of her fire. A choice.

She stares at my hand, then at my face. Her jaw is tight, her breathing shallow. She is a fortress under siege from within. I see the exact moment a wall inside her crumbles.

She takes a hesitant step forward and places her trembling hand in mine. Her skin is fever-hot against my cold flesh.

I don’t pull her anywhere. I just stand there, a silent anchor in her storm, and let the grave-chill of my touch bleed the fire from her veins.

When she rises on her tiptoes and brushes a ghost of a touch over my lips, I panic and stumble backwards. She gasps and falls forward, my hand still in hers, drawing her with me.

“I’m sorry!” she cries, yanking her hand back. “I don’t know why I did that!”

I shake my head, steadying us both before we fall in a tangled heap.

It’s not you. It’s me. The thought is a silent scream in the void of my mind.

I shake my head again, more forcefully this time, trying to communicate the hurricane of self-loathing and panic that her simple, beautiful gesture unleashed. I point to my chest, to the sluggish heart beneath my ribs.

Her expression shifts from mortified shame to a hesitant, searching confusion. She sees the desperation in my eyes.

I take a slow step closer, my hand rising again. Not to touch her, but to trace the outline of my lips with a single, freezing fingertip. A boundary. A warning. A lament.

She understands. I see the knowledge dawn in her violet eyes, a sad, quiet acceptance.

The fight drains out of her, leaving her looking small and fragile amongst the weeping trees, and something inside me breaks open.

A rush of warmth floods my veins, and I move closer, cupping the back of her neck.

We are a mess, the two of us, but we get each other in ways that no one else can.

I stare down into her eyes. She gazes up at me, her lips parted.

If I don’t give her this, if I don’t take this leap of faith, I might as well walk out of her life and back to the grave that spat me out.

I close the distance. My lips, cold as winter stone, meet hers.

The world shatters into a million glittering pieces.

It’s not a gentle warmth. It’s a fucking supernova. A blast of pure, unadulterated life that scours the chill from my bones. For the first time in two years, I taste something other than ash. She tastes of rebellion and starlight and a sweetness so profound it could bring empires to their knees.

The Scar on my arm flashes with a blinding white light, a current of her power arcing directly into me.

I feel her shock, her pleasure, her fear, all of it a chaotic symphony that is more beautiful than any silence.

In return, I feel the endless quiet of my soul bleed into her, a calming counterpoint to her storm.

She doesn’t pull away. Her fingers dig into the fabric of my shirt, anchoring herself to me as she kisses me back.

A soft, broken sound escapes her, a note of pure need that fills every hollow space inside me.

It makes my insides tremble dangerously, and I understand why she isolates herself.

She is scared of hurting someone she lets this close.

But I’m not scared of death. I deepen the kiss with a low groan that tears through my vocal cords like acid.

The sound is a violation, ripping through the silence I’ve worn as a shroud.

It’s the noise of a tomb cracking open. The life that pours from her mouth into mine is an inferno, burning away the cold, the dust, the endless quiet.

For a single, shattering second, I’m not a resurrected corpse. I’m alive.

It’s too much.

The cold snaps back, a panicked reflex of self-preservation. A delicate filigree of frost blooms on her jaw where my hand cups her face. A brand. A warning. My warning.

I tear myself away, stumbling back. The connection breaks, and the silence that crashes back in is heavier and more hollow than before.

Lysithea stares at me, her lips swollen and red, her violet eyes wide and dazed. A single, perfect tear traces a path through the frost I left on her cheek before it melts.

I’ve marked her. I’ve hurt her.

She shakes her head, her hand on her jaw. “I’m okay. Are you?”

I nod slowly.

“Is there a reason you two are not in class?” Professor Narcissus’ voice breaks the silence.

“We’re going now,” Lysithea says, picking up her bag.

“See that you do,” Narcissus says, watching as we hurry out of the garden, an awkward silence descending between us.

When we get back to the main building, Lysithea stops. “Thank you,” she whispers.

I frown at her in confusion.

“For kissing me,” she whispers, her gaze lowered.

A faint, shy smile touches her lips, the same lips that just set my dead world on fire.

It’s a devastatingly beautiful sight. My fingers twitch with the urge to reach out, to touch the spot on her jaw where the frost bloomed, to see if it’s still cold.

I clench my hand into a fist instead. Control.

I need to maintain control, or the life she pours into me will shatter this fragile, borrowed existence.

She hesitates for a second longer before her violet eyes meet mine, searching for something I don’t know how to give.

Then she turns and walks away, leaving me alone with the ghost of her taste on my lips and a war raging in the silent tomb of my soul.

For the first time since my resurrection, I don’t feel like an ending.

I feel like a beginning. It terrifies me more than death ever did.