Page 42 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

I wait until their footsteps fade down the corridor before I allow myself to collapse. My legs give out, and I slide down the wall to sit on the cold stone floor. My whole body is shaking - from the orgasm, from the sheer overwhelming intensity of what just happened.

The Tenebris Vinculum sits innocently on my desk, but it is anything but. “What do you really want from me? From us?” I whisper.

It doesn’t answer, of course, because that would be too easy. Maybe it doesn’t even know itself.

I push myself to my feet, needing that shower when the book opens to the very first page.

There is no menace, no urgency, no riffling pages.

I gulp and move closer. There is a list of names grouped into fours.

My eyes scan the page and find ours at the bottom.

Above our grouping are two others, written in fading ink, the first more so than the last. I press my hand to the page and feel a deep sense of melancholy wash over me.

“You’ve been at this a while, haven’t you? Trying to get yourself completed? The others failed. Did they die?”

Yes.

The word is scrawled over the top of the first name, but then vanishes, leaving the page unmarred save for the names of its unwitting acolytes.

“Will we die?”

Don’t .

“Aww, you care.”

You will finish what they started.

Of course. I sigh. “Is there someone trapped inside these pages?”

You ask too many questions.

“So that’s a yes, then.”

No.

“Where does your power come from if not from a being?”

Nothing happens, so I guess chatting time is over. I turn away, but then the book’s pages ruffle my hair. I turn back and stare down at the page with the map. “Whatever is down there that you want us to find is the source of your power.”

The grimoire doesn’t write anything else down. I stare at our names, and as I do, a faint, yet very clear line moves across the page, directly over Evren’s name.

My heart thumps wildly as panic hits my chest, and I slam my hand over it. “No. Don’t you dare take him away from me.”

The line over Evren’s name darkens, becoming more pronounced. My breath catches in my throat as I stare at it, willing it to disappear.

“What does that mean?” I demand, but the grimoire remains stubbornly silent. “Answer me!”

The line pulses once, like a heartbeat, then fades to a thin grey mark. Not gone, but dormant. Waiting.

I back away from the desk, my hands shaking. The corruption in my chest throbs in response to my panic, the grey veins darkening slightly. Everything is connected. Every emotion, every fear feeds this thing.

I force myself to breathe slowly, to think. The grimoire showed me the failed attempts. Groups of four, just like us. The first group’s names are barely visible, faded to almost nothing. The second group is clearer but still old. Ancient.

We’re the third attempt.

And if we fail, there will be a fourth. The book will find new victims, new pawns to manipulate into completing whatever twisted purpose it serves.

But I won’t let it take them.

I grab the grimoire, holding it at eye level. “You want to play games? Fine. But if you hurt him or any of them, if you take them from me, I will find a way to destroy you. I don’t care if it kills me in the process.”

The single eye blinks once, slow and considering.

Then the book grows warm in my hands, almost burning.

Pages flip over, and I’m staring at the very beginning of the grimoire.

Words in Latin, I think, are marked on the page.

I frown. I can read it, but I’m not fluent in it.

Languages aren’t my thing, but I need to try to understand what it’s saying.

I squint at the faded Latin text, my fingers tracing the ancient words. Sanguis et umbra . Blood and shadow. Vinculum aeternum. Eternal bond. Tres morientur ut una vivat. Three will die so that one may live.

My blood turns to ice. I drop the grimoire like it’s on fire, and it lands with a heavy thud on my desk. It flips to another page, and more Latin is written in that familiar bloody script. This time, the words burn themselves into my mind, translating against my will.

The Siren’s song will wake what sleeps. The Architect’s design will reshape what was. The Sovereign’s fear will bind what fights. The Harbinger’s death will anchor what live s.

Each line feels like a prophecy, a roadmap to our destruction.

“The others, they were like us?” Anxiously, I turn the page back to the names and run my fingers over them. The faded text is barely legible in the first group, which shows how old it is. I lean closer, trying to make out the names:

Aeliana - Nox Siren

Kael - Harbinger

Thane - Architect

Rowan - Sovereign

The second group is clearer:

Seraphina - Nox Siren

Ivor - Harbinger

Niko - Architect

Ethan - Sovereign

Two Nox Sirens before me, sirens that no longer exist, their deaths contributing to the extinction of my species.

Three will die so that one may live.

But which three? And which one survives?

Which ones survived? Out of the eight names, two of them didn’t die. But which two? Are they still alive now? Or did they succumb to age from what is definitely an eternity ago?

“Damn you,” I mutter and close the book gently.

I turn away and strip off, needing that shower. Needing to get the feel of Dathan’s hands off me, needing to wash his cum away, the evidence that my body is more powerful than my mind.

The shower water runs hot down the drain as I scrub away the evidence of what just happened.

But no amount of scalding water can wash away the memory of Dathan’s hands on me, the way my body betrayed every principle I thought I had.

The corruption in my chest pulses with each heartbeat, a constant reminder that I’m running out of time.

I lean against the shower wall, letting the spray hit my face. Three will die so that one may live. The Latin echoes in my mind like a death sentence. Which three? Which one survives?

My hands shake as I wash my hair. Two groups before us. Two Nox Sirens who came before me, who sang their last songs in service to this fucking book. Did they know? Did they realise they were walking into their own extinction?

I think about Evren’s name with that line through it. My chest tightens with something that might be panic or might be the poison spreading through my veins.

I can’t lose him. I can’t lose any of them.

The thought hits me like a tidal wave. When did I start caring about them? When did these three monsters become something I’d fight to protect?

I turn off the water and grab a towel, wrapping it around myself. My reflection in the mirror shows the grey veins spread across my chest like a spider’s web.

The grimoire wants completion, and it is willing to sacrifice all of us to get it.