Page 37 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

W hen the lecture ends, I hurry out of the lecture hall, the memory of Evren’s shield cool and solid in my mind. He protected me. He anticipated the threat. He acted without hesitation. It was a silent, absolute declaration.

The warlock who threw the shadow dart scurries past me in the hallway, his head down, avoiding my gaze. He should be scared. They all should be.

My smile from class fades. This is a protection racket.

The price is my autonomy. The brand on my back gives a low, warm thrum, a constant reminder of the leash.

I felt the ice in his magic, a clean, sharp certainty that had nothing to do with the grimoire’s sick games.

It was his. He is true. The other two? That remains to be seen.

The certainty of this revelation sits uneasily in my gut, and I need to get away from him, from all of them.

I head for the library. Reena’s words echo in my head. You’re a queen with a contested throne. I don’t want a throne, but if I’m going to be a prisoner, I might as well understand the layout of my cell. The Blood Court. This forge place. They’re part of a history I’ve been forcibly written into.

The library is quiet. I bypass the main sections, walking towards the restricted alcoves with a grim sense of purpose.

I run my fingers along the spines of the ancient texts. Histories of DarkHallow. Genealogies of forgotten monster lines. Cartographies of realms that no longer exist. Somewhere in this collection of dust and whispers is an answer. A clue.

I pull out a heavy, leather-bound volume titled The Sunken Spires: An Architectural History of the Under-Realms. The pages are brittle, the ink faded.

I flip through diagrams of impossible structures, of courts carved from the bones of dead gods.

Most of it is written in a text that I don’t read or understand.

I squint at a single, almost illegible line of handwritten text at the bottom of a page.

Sovereign Forge: A place of blood. Where bloodlines are tested, broken, and remade.

My blood runs cold. Remade into what?

I slam the book shut, its pages a useless litany of foreign words. This whole situation has distracted me from the research I was conducting on myself. I should be learning about Nox Sirens, not ancient tribunal areas and spires.

I shove the heavy tome back onto the shelf. It lands with a dusty thud that echoes my own frustration. Remade. The word is a fucking threat. My blood is the only thing I have left that is entirely mine.

I stalk down the aisle, my fingers trailing over spines until I come across an alcove that I know I haven’t seen before.

I pause next to it. It is in deep shadows, no candles flicker inside.

I look back over my shoulder, but I am alone.

I shouldn’t be surprised this appeared out of nowhere.

DarkHallow has that way of switching things around.

But why now? What is inside there that it wants me to see?

There is only one way to find out.

I step into the darkness, and a candle flickers on, illuminating the foreboding space in a single patch of light that flickers over a volume whose title is the only one visible.

Extinct Bloodlines.

With my heart beating rapidly, I reach for it and pull it out, half expecting it to vanish from my grip.

I sink to the floor and curl my legs up as I place the book on my lap.

The candle moves with me, giving me enough light to see the text when I open it.

Checking the Table of Contents, I run my finger down the list of species that are mentioned in the book.

My breath hitches when my finger lands on the last entry.

“Nox Sirens,” I whisper.

Flipping through the pages until I reach the final chapter, I blink at the single line under the fancy font announcing my species.

She will come .

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

I run my finger over the spidery script. The ink is old, faded.

She will come. Me. It has to be me.

The candle flame dances, casting long, distorted shadows that writhe on the stone walls. The book offers nothing else. Its one chilling sentence is all the answer I’m getting.

My research wasn’t meant to uncover some grand destiny. It was meant to help me understand the monster inside me, not chain her to a purpose I don’t want.

I slam the book shut. The sound is a gunshot in the silent alcove. I stand and shove it back onto the shelf with force.

The candle flickers out, plunging me back into absolute darkness.

I blink to adjust to the lack of light. I jump when hands grab my wrists, my heart nearly lurching out of my chest. A thousand whispers surround me, cold mist touching my cheeks in the blackness of this alcove that I suddenly realise is no longer in the library.

The sight beyond the entryway is pitch black.

I struggle in the grip of the cold hands, letting out a low hum that rattles something around me, but I’m not sure what.

The whispers recoil, a collective, startled hiss that dies in the oppressive dark. The grip on my wrists doesn’t loosen. It’s not a restraint. It’s an anchor.

“Silence, child,” a voice rasps from all around me. A thousand dead voices speaking as one. “Your song is not for us.”

The darkness around me shifts, coalescing, pressing in on me, making me struggle for breath.

A faint, spectral light blooms in front of me, revealing the figure holding my wrists. A ghost, more solid than any I’ve seen before. An old woman with eyes like chips of obsidian and a face etched with the memory of a power that hasn’t faded with death.

“Who are you?” I croak.

The ghost smiles. It’s chilling. “We are the ones who wait,” she says, her voice a symphony of the dead. “And you are late.”

“Late? For what?” I stammer.

“Late for your death.” She screams in my face.

My mouth drops open as the pain lances through my head. I taste blood, feel it pouring out of my eyes, my nose, my ears.

I wrench my arms free and clap them over my ears, dropping to my knees as the sound incapacitates me. This is what my scream does to others, but shouldn’t I be immune to my own power? I realise as my brain trembles in my skull that no one knows. Or if they did know, that knowledge has been erased.

I lower my head to my knees, the Scar on my back burning like an inferno from the pits of hell.

Then… it all stops.

The silence descends like a shroud. I breathe in and then lift my head slightly, sweeping my fingertips under my eyes to brush the blood away.

A heavy sigh hits my sensitive ears, and I wince, my gaze going to the owner of the frustration.

“Miss Lysithea. What on these forsaken lands are you doing messing with the ancestors?”

“Ancestors?” I croak, dribbling blood from the ruptured blood vessels in my mouth on Blackgrove’s plush office carpet. “I don’t…”

Blackgrove sighs again, a sound of infinite patience stretched to its absolute limit. He waves a hand. The blood vanishes from my face, from his carpet. The pain in my head recedes to a dull throb, the mark on my back is a different story, though. It is a blinding pain that is making me feel sick.

“You set off ancient wards and woke things that are best left sleeping.”

I push myself up, my body trembling. “I was in the library minding my own business.”

“And now you are here,” he says, as if it explains everything, “The ancestors have their own pathways that you stumbled onto. You have their attention. I suggest you learn to be less interesting.”

“They said I was late,” I whisper, the memory of the ghost’s voice a chilling echo. “For my death.”

“Yes, well, the ancestors do like a good killing,” he says dryly.

“Whose ancestors?” I ask, slightly petrified of the answer.

He shrugs. “Mine, yours, theirs? Who knows?”

“You are supposed to know.”

He smiles. It’s slow, sinister and blood-chilling. And it’s a fucking answer, wrapped in more questions. He knows exactly who they are and what they want.

“Dismissed, Miss Lysithea,” he says, turning back to his desk, his interest in my near-death experience already over.

I want to scream. I want to shatter the nebula of starlight on his ceiling and bring his whole fucking office down around him. But what would be the point? It would be a lesson in not antagonising the Headmaster of DarkHallow.

Ushered by an unseen force, I stumble out of his office, the heavy door closing behind me with a final, damning click.

The hallway stretches before me, a tunnel of shadows and judging gargoyles.

Every step is a fresh wave of fire across my back.

The grimoire. The tests. The ancestors. It’s all connected, a web with me trapped at its centre.

The pain intensifies. I lean against the cold stone wall, gasping.

I need Evren. I need the chill of his hands on me, taking away this constellation of pain that is burrowing deeper under my skin, into my veins.

I don’t make it two steps before my legs give way, and I hit my head on the stone wall as I go down.