Page 36 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Evren

M y hand is still cold from the werewolf’s throat. The memory of his life force stuttering against my touch is a familiar echo. A lullaby of endings. I brush the lingering taste of his terror from my fingers like dust.

Dathan is practically glowing. He’s drunk on the fear I just served. A five-star vintage.

“Well,” Verik says, a slow smirk spreading across his face. “That was an articulate statement of intent.”

I don’t look at them. My focus is on the empty doorway she just walked through. She thinks she escaped. She doesn’t understand. She is the epicentre of our storm now.

The brand on my arm is a dull ache. A reminder of my failure.

Of my fear. I rejected her, and the book made her pay.

I won’t make that mistake again. My silence was a shield for myself.

Now it’s a weapon for her. The next time something threatens her, I won’t just silence its heart. I will stop it from ever beating again.

I stand. The conversation at the table means nothing. The food means nothing. Only she matters.

Dathan and Verik watch me go. They know. We’re all just satellites caught in her gravity now. And I will burn anyone who tries to pull us from her orbit.

I walk the corridors, a ghost in my own skin.

Her scent is in the air. Midnight orchids and ozone.

A storm and a garden. I follow it, a silent hunter on the trail of something precious.

The dark hallways shift around me, the academy’s architecture knowing where I want to go.

It offers me shortcuts, shadowy paths that keep me just out of her sight.

She is a bright, burning star in the perpetual night of our existence. A single point of life in a universe of endings. Before her, I was an echo. Now, I am a blade. The werewolf was just a practice. A test of the edge.

I see her disappear into the Advanced Vocal Magic lecture hall. The one where she created the obsidian rose. A thing of beauty forged from her voice and Verik’s power. My power is colder. What would we create together? Another frost-burned mark? A perfect, silent winter?

The thought is a dangerous warmth in the coldness of my chest.

I turn away from the door and head for the crypts.

I have work to do that involves figuring out a way to live for her.

If I fail her again, she will suffer, and I would rather go back to that hell dimension and endure an eternity of torture than hurt her again.

I sit on my throne of bones and rest my head on the back, closing my eyes.

The ghosts are agitated. They swirl around my throne. They can feel it. The echo of her life thrumming through the Scar, a foreign rhythm in my quiet tomb. They fear it. They fear what it’s doing to me.

The memory of her lips is a phantom burn.

I tasted life. True, unfiltered, chaotic life.

For a single, shattering moment, the cold receded.

It was a warmth so profound that it felt like an agony; I would die for a second time just to feel it again.

It’s a craving. A hunger more desperate than Dathan’s.

I lift my hand, turning it over in the gloom. The skin is still bone-white, the veins still rivers of ice. But something is different. I feel the sluggish beat of my heart thud a little stronger now. She is giving me back my life, one tiny piece at a time.

My touch leaves frost. A mark of the grave. The book demands I touch her, but my nature is a poison to her warmth. I am an ending. She is a cataclysmic beginning.

The ghosts whisper a single, chilling thought into the silence.

A price for what was taken.

My life was taken from me in a hell dimension.

Her life is what the book wants me to take in return.

The book wants intimacy. I will give it what it wants.

I will learn to touch her without leaving a winter in my wake.

I will burn with her life force, even if it turns my borrowed bones to ash.

I will not be the reason she suffers again.

My eyes snap open when I sense someone watching me. It’s nothing but a ghost from years past, hovering in my line of sight.

Don’t let her die.

The hiss inside my skull startles me, and I rise, but the ghost vanishes, leaving a trail of something sour in its wake. That wasn’t any ordinary ghost.

Don’t let her die.

That’s definitely not on the agenda, but what is it to this old ghost? Who is Lysithea, really? The only Nox Siren in existence is something special, but there is more to it. There is more we don’t know. More we need to find out.

An arctic blast of air rushes past me, chilling even my half-dead flesh. It hits me hard, seeping into my brittle bones.

Warmth. I need warmth.

Stepping into the shadows, I materialise in my bedroom.

If you could call it that. It is spartan, only a single wooden bed with a thin mattress and no covers.

The drawers in the far corner are sparsely filled with clothes from my old life.

I close my eyes and remember. A harbinger.

Closer to death than most, not as close as I am now, I could commune with the spirits, see into the past and more often the future.

I delivered omens, the endings of others.

A service I provided without emotion. A truth I delivered without bias.

Now, my own truth is a fractured thing. I am a living contradiction. A dead man craving warmth. A silent man screaming her name in the void of my soul.

The ghost’s warning returns, a cold finger tracing my spine. Don’t let her die.

It wasn’t a ghost. It was an omen, delivered by a messenger of the grave. A prophecy I can no longer see the shape of. Her death is a thread in the tapestry now, and I don’t know if I’m meant to cut it or bind it tighter.

I need to understand. The book is the architect of this new, terrifying reality. It has chosen her as its foundation.

Turning to the small en-suite bathroom, I step inside and stare at the shower. For two years, I’ve stood under the ice-cold spray, never daring to reach for the heat. Now? Now, I want to feel it seeping into my bones.

My fingers, stiff and clumsy, turn the tap. Not to the familiar, biting cold, but to the other side. The one marked with a single, damning red line.

Stripping off slowly, I stand there naked for a moment before stepping inside.

The water hits my skin. It’s a fucking inferno.

I grunt, a ragged, soundless tear in the silence. It’s not a pleasant warmth. It’s a scouring. A violation. Every nerve ending screams in protest, a chorus of agony from a body that forgot how to feel anything but cold. This is what she feels like. Life. It’s violent and burning.

The Scar on my arm flashes in agony. The heat is her power, her life, her fire. I’m forcing it into me, a self-inflicted brand to match the one she bears. To touch her, I have to learn to endure her.

Steam fills the small room, a suffocating cloud. My lungs ache. My dead heart gives a sluggish, painful lurch. I grit my teeth and stand under the torrent, letting it burn the chill from my bones.

When it becomes unbearable, I reach for the tap, but simply rest my hand on it and close my eyes as the torture continues. You’d think I’d be used to that now. You’d think I’d be stronger than this.

My knees buckle. I slide down the tiled wall, the water a relentless, scalding whip across my back.

My mind splinters. The steam isn’t steam.

It’s smoke. The scent isn’t clean water; it’s burning flesh.

My flesh. The heat isn’t from the shower; it’s from the glowing brand that presses against my skin, searing, rewriting my existence.

I open my mouth to scream, but the memory is absolute. The agony as they cut my tongue from my mouth. The taste of my own blood, hot and coppery. The silence that followed wasn’t a choice; it was a mutilation.

My hand shoots out, a spasming claw, and slams against the tap. The inferno cuts off. The silence that rushes in is the same silence from the hell dimension. Cold. Final.

I stay there, slumped on the shower floor, water dripping around me. Shaking from the ghost of a pain I thought I’d left behind. This is different. This pain has a purpose. It has a name.

Lysithea.

I will burn for her. I will learn to walk through her fire, so she never has to feel the cold of my grave again. Getting to my feet, I grab a towel and dry off before I dress. Every movement is a deliberate act of will.

Leaving my room, I head to my lecture. Shadow Manipulation. I will see her.

I slide into my seat in the tiered amphitheatre.

She enters moments later, her gaze finding mine. She hesitates, but then moves forward, slipping into the seat next to mine with a soft smile. That smile that is reserved for me and me alone. I return it, forcing myself to be what she needs me to be.

Professor Umbra materialises, his form a ripple in the deep shadows at the front of the hall. “Defensive constructs,” his voice rustles. “A personal shield. Woven from your own intent.”

The shadows at my feet answer my call. They are not eager today.

They are cold, disciplined, forged in the memory of a pain I will not allow her to feel again.

They rise, weaving a wall. A perfect, seamless slab of absolute nothingness that hovers before me.

It doesn’t absorb light; it annihilates it. A piece of the grave made manifest.

Across the room, a lanky warlock with more ambition than sense sends a jagged dart of shadow flying towards Lysithea’s desk. A test. A casual piece of classroom aggression.

Her shield is still forming, a shimmering, unstable haze. It won’t be enough.

Before the dart can strike, a sliver of my shield detaches. It moves faster than thought, a blade of pure void that intercepts the attack. There is no impact. No sound. The dart simply ceases to exist, consumed by my silence.

The warlock pales, knowing he picked the wrong fight. Clearly, the word has not yet spread to him about what we do to those who hurt her.

She smiles slowly, and it lights something inside me that was dead and buried. It never arose with me when whoever brought me back for whatever purpose. It also brings with it a realisation that has been out of my reach all these months.

Whoever brought me back knew exactly what they were doing. They brought me back for her.