Page 45 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

I stagger back against the bookshelf, my hand pressed to my chest where the corruption spreads like poisoned roots. “Someone orchestrated all of this. Brought us all together for this fucking book.”

“The question is who,” Dathan says, but we all know the answer.

“And why,” Verik adds, his hellfire eyes burning with barely contained rage.

“Or what?” Evren’s raven adds.

I look at each of them, these three monsters who’ve become something I can’t name. Protectors. Captors. Mine. The brand on my back simmers with heat, responding to the intensity of my emotions.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, pushing off the bookshelf. “We can’t change what’s already been done. We can only move forward.”

“Thea—” Dathan starts, but I cut him off.

“No. I’m done being a victim. If Blackgrove wants this grimoire completed, if he’s been manipulating us from the start, then fine. But we do it on our terms.”

The corruption in my chest flares, sending tendrils of ice through my veins. I gasp, doubling over as the pain lances through me. Evren is there instantly, his cold hands on my back, but even his touch can’t ease the agony this time.

“I wouldn’t say that Blackgrove wants this grimoire complete, per se,” Dathan says carefully. “He is as much a victim of it as we are.”

I growl at his choice of word.

He waves it off. “You know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, I do. “It makes no difference. We are in this up to our necks now. We have to finish it.”

The guys nod, and Evren sends his raven back to the shadows.

He is done talking for now, even through his construct.

He must be exhausted. I turn from them without another word and head out of the library and across the courtyard to the residence building.

Slipping into my room, I pause. The book is not on the desk where I left it.

“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter. “Where is it?”

But as I say the words, it becomes visible, right where I left it. It’s protecting itself.

I pick it up and stare into the eye. “We are going to finish you. But we need you to help us, not hinder us. Can you do that?”

It blinks once.

“Is that a yes?”

“Ask it another way,” Verik suggests. “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

I nod and look at the book. “You’re going to help us finish you, blink once for yes, twice for no.”

It blinks once.

“Good. Because I think we have all proven ourselves more than once. We know the score, and we are here. If we fail, you fail. Right?”

It blinks once.

“Okay, good.” I relax a smidgen. We are on the same page, as it were. “So do we start in the crypts?”

It blinks once and opens itself to the map. I hold it out to Evren. “Do you recognise this area?”

Evren shakes his head but takes it and studies it.

“Then we go there and try to discover which section of the crypts this belongs to, and what is there that will trigger another piece of the map.”

“I quite like you all, bossy and in charge,” Verik says with a lazy smile.

I shoot him a withering glare. “Liar. You hate it and want to tell all of us what to do.”

He snorts. “Okay, yeah, you got me. But still. If you want to be all bossy bitch while you’re bouncing on my dick, I won’t say no.”

“In your dreams,” I mutter, but I know it will happen. And maybe not out of choice. This book will demand more and more from us until there is nothing left to give but our souls. “Let’s go.”

We follow Evren out of the room, who is still staring at the map.

Hopefully, we will find out where this section is, and whatever is down there won’t take us an eternity to find.

We are running out of time, and while the book is being amicable right now, if we fuck about taking too long, that will change.

The walk to the crypts is a silent, grim procession. Dathan keeps shooting me glances, his silver eyes still hot with the memory of what we did. I ignore him. I have to. If I think about how my body betrayed me, about how much I fucking liked it, I’ll fall apart. And falling apart isn’t an option.

We descend the familiar stone steps, the air growing colder, smelling of dust and old death. This is Evren’s territory. He moves with a quiet confidence he doesn’t have above ground. He holds the grimoire open, the map glowing faintly in the gloom, and leads us deeper into the labyrinth of tombs.

The ghosts flicker at the edge of my vision, their whispers a constant, unsettling chorus in my head. They’re agitated, their ethereal forms swirling like smoke in a hurricane. They know what we’re doing. They know what the book wants.

Evren stops in front of a section of wall that looks like every other section of wall.

He traces the lines of the map with a finger, then looks at the stone.

He presses his palm against it. A low hum vibrates through the floor, and the wall grinds open, revealing a passage that wasn’t there a moment ago.

A passage that reeks of ancient, hungry magic.

The corruption in my chest gives a vicious throb. A reminder. The clock is ticking.

Evren clicks his fingers, and we all look at the book. More parts of the map are being sketched onto the page.

“Okay, we’re doing this right,” I mutter.

The passage is pitch-black, and Verik lights an orb of hellfire to show us the way.

The air is thick, stale, vibrating with a power that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

The walls are slick with something that isn’t water, and the floor slopes down, pulling us deeper into the guts of the academy.

I don’t wait for them. I walk into the darkness, the faint glow from the orb lighting the way.

It hovers in front of me, alerting me to the fact that the walls are dripping with blood. “Oh, I wish I hadn’t seen that,” I mutter, but carry on, surrounded by bleeding walls, being led by a malevolent book into who knows what.

The guys are pressed close behind me as the passage opens into a circular chamber. In the centre is a chasm, a sheer drop into absolute blackness. A bridge of solid shadow spans the gap, but it’s incomplete, shimmering and unstable.

“Okay, architect,” Dathan says, his gaze fixed on the broken bridge. “Looks like you’re up.”

Verik steps forward, his eyes narrowed on the structure. “It’s woven with reality. Or un-reality.” He cracks his knuckles. “This is going to be fun.”

“Less fun, more fixing,” I murmur.

He gives me a dark smirk, a flash of hellfire in his eyes. “Patience, hellcat. You can’t rush good design.”

He holds out his hands, and the air around the bridge warps.