Page 27 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

T he bell rings, a jarring intrusion on the quiet peace of the greenhouse. I leave the scent of Midnight Orchids and sweet decay behind, walking back into a world of monsters and bad decisions. My decisions. My body feels like a traitor, a foreign country that has declared war on my mind.

The walk to the dining hall is a familiar march towards a fate I don’t want. They’re waiting, of course. A three-headed Cerberus guarding the gates to my personal hell.

I get food. They get food. I sit. They sit. I eat. They eat.

The unspoken events of the afternoon hang between us like a thick, suffocating fog. No one speaks of the garden. No one mentions the kiss. We just eat. A final meal before we descend into whatever madness waits for us below.

“Will someone say something?” I mutter after five minutes of this ridiculousness.

Dathan grins, a slow, infuriating curve of his lips. “What’s wrong, princess? Not enjoying our quiet family meal?”

“We’re not a family,” I snap, stabbing a piece of roast potato with more force than necessary. “We’re a hostage situation with cutlery.”

“Semantics,” Verik murmurs, not looking up from his plate. “Every family is a hostage situation on some level. A contract bound by blood and mutual resentment.”

I stare at him. “You need therapy.”

“I have architecture,” he says, as if that explains everything. It probably does to him.

Evren slides his hand across the polished wood until his fingertips brush mine.

The burn of the brand subsides, replaced by a deep, soothing cold that travels up my arm.

My breath hitches. His ice-blue eyes meet mine, a silent question in their depths.

A silent apology. A silent promise. It’s too much. I pull my hand back.

“I can’t do this,” I mutter.

“Too late, Lysithea,” Verik states. “We are in this, and now we need to get up and find the Blood Court.”

“Easy peasy.”

“Actually, it is. I found a place to start.”

“Oh?”

He nods, looking somewhere between arrogant in his findings and a little unsure what we might be walking into. That kind of makes me feel a bit better about this situation. I’m not the only one with reservations. “Under the Blood Pit.”

A skitter of goosebumps travels across my arms. “The place where you violated me.”

“The place where whatever you screamed at, screamed back.”

“Do you think whatever it is, is still down there?”

Verik gives me a serious, too-serious, stare. “I think we have to prepare for every eventuality.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a maybe. We don’t know what we will find.”

“Or if we will even get that far. Blackgrove is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them,” Dathan adds.

“Nor is he oblivious. He probably knows what we did already.”

I glance at Evren. He is following this conversation but has nothing to add, with charades or his raven.

“So, we start there then, not the crypts.”

“Precisely. The resonance I found is a gateway for creatures like me,” Verik says quietly.

I nod. What else is there to do or say? We are in this, and there is nothing that can change that.

We leave the dining hall as a unit, a silent, four-person storm that parts the sea of students. Whispers follow us like ghosts. I can feel their eyes on my back, on the space between me and the three monsters who have become my shadows. My jailers. My… allies? The thought is a bitter pill.

The walk to the Blood Pit is a silent march.

The floating candles cast long, dancing shadows that writhe on the stone walls.

The air grows colder as we descend into the lower levels, the scent of old blood and forgotten pain clings to the air.

My back burns, a low, insistent throb that is joined by the dread coiling in my gut.

Dathan walks beside me. Verik is a step ahead. Evren is a constant, chilling presence at my other side. I feel the urge to reach for his hand, to let his chill soothe the fire of the Scar. I clench my fists instead. I will not be weak. I will not need them.

We reach the heavy doors of the pit. The sound-dampening wards press against me, a familiar, nauseating pressure.

Verik flicks his wrist, and they open slowly. I swallow and follow him inside, part of me hoping that Blackgrove finds us and stops us.

When we are all inside, the doors close behind us.

Verik leads us to the western side of the floor and pulls up one of the mats.

He crouches down as the air tingles around us.

I instinctively move closer to Evren. He stares down at me, searching my eyes for something, but I’m not sure what.

I draw my gaze to Verik. He is drawing a complex archway on the bare stone with a finger dipped in hellfire.

The lines glow a malevolent orange, which casts flickering shadows against his face.

The air crackles with ozone and the scent of burnt sugar.

A vibration rumbles under our feet, and I chew the inside of my lip.

This is so stupid. We are messing with forces we have no understanding of.

“Ready?” Verik asks, not looking at us. He adds a final, intricate flourish to the design. The archway of fire flares, the space within it shimmering, twisting into a vortex of oily darkness. A cold, metallic scent wafts out, like old blood and rust.

“Now or never,” Dathan mutters, his silver eyes fixed on the portal.

Evren’s hand finds mine, his grip firm, cold. A silent anchor. I don’t pull away this time. I need it. The Scar on my back is a searing brand, a chorus of their combined power screaming a warning in my blood.

“Ladies first,” Verik says, a wicked grin flashing across his face as he gestures to the swirling void.

I give him a look that could curdle milk. “Fuck you.”

He laughs, a low, rumbling sound that does nothing to ease the knot of dread in my stomach. “Would you? I feel this is now a race to see who gets between your legs first.”

“Ah,” I gasp. His words hit me in the chest at full force. I should’ve known but hearing it out loud makes me want to run and hide and hope that the oblivion that hasn’t shown up yet whisks me away. “None of you will ever get that,” I hiss, pulling away from Evren.

“Keep telling yourself that, princess,” Dathan murmurs, his eyes on my lips. “It doesn’t change the facts.”

Facts. I’ll give him facts in the shape of a vicious snake familiar that will bite his arse off.

Verik refocuses and steps up to the threshold of the doorway he made. He steps through the archway and vanishes.

The portal ripples, then stabilises. Dathan follows without hesitation. Now it’s just me and Evren. He takes my hand again and silently sighs. I feel every ounce of weight in that one quiet action. He squeezes my hand once. A question. A choice. My choice.

I nod reluctantly. Whatever they did to me, whatever that book wants, maybe there is a way to undo what they did. That is the only thing that makes me move forward.