Page 47 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Dathan

I place my hands flat against the surface. It’s not a door. It’s a fucking buffet.

The fear is a torrent, a tidal wave of pure, undiluted terror that crashes into me.

I drink it down, my hunger a bottomless pit.

I taste the claustrophobic dread of being buried alive, the vertigo of a never-ending fall, the primal horror of being hunted by something with too many teeth.

It’s a symphony of nightmares that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

The black rectangle shimmers, its solid form weakening as I drain its essence.

I can feel Lysithea’s fear spiking, a delicious seasoning on this feast. I pull harder, my hunger insatiable.

The psychic construct screams in my mind, a thousand voices crying out in their final moments. I close my eyes and drink it all down.

With a final, silent shriek, the door dissolves into smoke. I open my eyes, and then I’m knocked flat on my back as whatever was on the other side rushes me with a loud howl.

“Fuck!” Verik roars, and the air lights up with hellfire.

“What is that thing?” Lysithea cries.

I struggle to my feet as a horde of whatever that was coming, rush through the entrance I just created. “Well, fuck,” I mutter. “That was a bad idea.”

“You think?” Verik snarls, slamming his fists of hellfire into the chest of one of the creatures.

It appears to be something like a lycan crossed with a dragon, with a bit of minotaur thrown in for good measure.

In a word. Monstrous.

And there is a pack of them.

One of them, bigger than the rest, with horns that curl like a ram’s, lowers its head and charges straight for Lysithea.

Bad fucking move.

I step into its path, the power from the fear-door thrumming under my skin. I don’t touch the beast. I touch its mind. It’s a simple, brutal move, full of rage and hunger. Easy to break.

I show it its own death. Being torn apart by its pack, its flesh ripped from its bones while it’s still alive.

The monster skids to a halt, its massive body trembling. It lets out a howl of pure, unadulterated terror before turning and sinking its fangs into the neck of the creature beside it.

Chaos erupts. The pack turns on itself, a whirlwind of claws and teeth driven mad by the nightmares I feed them.

Verik laughs, a wild, manic sound. He creates a dome of hellfire, trapping the beasts in their self-made abattoir. Evren stands back, a silent director to this orchestra of death, his hands raised as skeletal arms burst from the ground, dragging the wounded and dying down into the stone.

I drink in the fear, every last delicious drop.

The last monster falls, its throat torn out by its brother before it too bleeds out.

Silence descends, thick and heavy with the smell of blood. I shake. My hands tremble from the overload of terror and confusion. My world spins and I stumble. Lysithea lunges for me and catches me, but I take her down with me.

“Oww,” she moans when I land on top of her. “Get off.”

But I can’t answer her. My mind is swimming with the fear of the creatures I just tortured.

No… not them.

“More,” I croak out, trying to get to my feet as my vision blurs further.

“More?” Verik asks and then curses as the chamber is flooded with, I’m guessing, not very pleasant creatures.

“Dathan,” Lysithea says, taking my hand and squeezing it tightly. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I grit out.

“Liar,” she hisses. “Get it together.”

“Can’t at the moment, love,” I murmur. “The fear is…”

Darkness overwhelms my senses, and I’m alone when my eyes clear.

Alone in a chamber so vast and so dark, I know it’s a void.

Maybe even the void. There’s no up. No down.

Just a crushing, silent blackness that eats sound and thought.

This isn’t just a psychic backlash. It’s a cage.

Made from the very fear I just gorged myself on. A trap.

You are a god of fear who fears losing everything.

The voice isn’t a voice. It’s a thought that isn’t mine, planted in the barren soil of this void. It’s cold and ancient.

I lash out with my own power, trying to manifest its terror, but there’s nothing here to shape. I’m a king without a kingdom.

The void presses in, showing me Lysithea’s face. Not the defiant, furious woman I just fucked against a wall. This is her, pale and lifeless, the black veins of the corruption having consumed her entirely. Her eyes are empty, starless pits.

“No,” I growl, the sound swallowed by the silence.

This is your future. Your failure.

Rage coils in my gut. A hot, violent thing. “I won’t let you have her.”

The image shatters, and I’m falling, tumbling through the endless black. The cold seeps into my bones, a deathly chill.

“I’m not a god!” I roar, the very real fear that this is the truth and is what will doom us all, rising up.

Not yet.

“Who are you?” I force myself to calm down. The terror is ripping through me, and it’s wasting away my power, my soul.

The voice doesn’t answer. It doesn’t have to. I know what it is. The Tenebris Vinculum. The intelligence behind this whole sick game.

Your fear is a key, Nightmare Sovereign. But every key has a lock. And this one opens your cage.

The void constricts, squeezing the air from my lungs. The image of Lysithea’s dead face flashes again, closer this time. I can see the dust motes dancing in the dead light of her eyes.

“Fuck you,” I rasp.

If I’m a god of fear in the making, then my own fear should be the most potent of all.

I stop fighting the vision. I stop pushing it away.

I pull it closer. I wrap myself in the terror of losing her.

I let it flood every part of me, a tidal wave of pure, self-inflicted agony. I feed on my own fucking nightmare.

The void shudders.

The voice hisses, a sound of static and surprise. You embrace it?

“I am it,” I snarl. “And I am done with you fucking with me. I don’t know why you have taken such offence to me and not the others. You are making me jump through hoops to please you. Fine. But don’t make it so fucking obvious that you’re the most scared of me.”

Scared? I fear nothing.

“Then why are you so hell bent on making me pay double, triple what the others are?”

Silence.

But when it speaks again, I stop fighting it. You are the one who can take her away from me.

The confession hangs in the void, a raw nerve exposed. The book is afraid. Of me. The realisation is a shot of pure, undiluted power. A slow, savage grin spreads across my face. I’ve found its fucking weakness. It’s not my fear it wants. It’s my submission.

“So that’s it,” I say, my voice dripping with my usual arrogance. This thing might’ve rattled me, but it just made a mistake. “You’re jealous.”

The thought is absurd. A sentient book, an ancient power, jealous of me. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. It isn’t just testing us. It’s testing her loyalty. It’s testing our bonds. And it sees me as the biggest threat to whatever claim it has on her.

She is mine .

“Oh no, you cunt. She is mine ,” I snarl, the words a physical force that pushes against the darkness.

I pour every ounce of my possessive, all-consuming need for her into that statement.

“You saw us fucking. You saw her take my cock like she couldn’t live without it.

You think she is yours? You have no fucking idea who you are up against.”

The backlash of my defiance is rough.

The void implodes, crushing me in a grip of pure malevolence. My soul feels like it’s being ripped apart, every fear I’ve ever consumed turned back on me as a weapon. The book’s fury is a shriek that tries to unmake my mind.

It shows me Lysithea, but this time she’s not dead. She’s with Verik, her body arching under his touch. Then Evren, her face soft with a love that isn’t for me. It’s a cheap shot. A pathetic attempt to assert jealousy where there is none.

I laugh. The sound is ragged, torn from my throat. “Is that all you’ve got?” I snarl into the darkness. “You think I’m afraid of sharing her? That’s the whole point of this, arsehole. She is mine, she is theirs. She is not yours. You want her? You have to go through all of us.”

You don’t scare me. I have ripped through more beings than you can count in your lifetime in search of the perfect truth.

“The perfect truth? And what the fuck is that?”

You aren’t ready to hear that.

“So why am I here? So you can try to dismantle my mind, piece by piece? Never going to happen.”

Do not take her from me.

“Too late.”

She will see this through. She has to live. The rest of you…

It doesn’t need to finish that sentence. It doesn’t give a fuck. This is all about Lysithea and what she can do for it. We are merely the sideshow, the ones who can get through the traps to bring Lysithea to wherever the fuck it wants her.

The words are a death sentence. A dismissal. A cold fury, colder than Evren’s touch, settles in my gut. This ancient, all-powerful book is a possessive, insecure little shit. But.

There is a massive but, so big it’s filling the void around me.

“You think we’re disposable. Fine. I get that. She is the star of your twisted, little show. Whatever she can give to you at the end of this nightmare is all you care about. I care about her . I care that she lives. Can you guarantee that?”

No. That is why you are here. To make sure she survives.

The admission is a crack in its perfect, all-knowing facade. It needs us. It needs me to keep her safe, even as it sees me as the one who will ultimately take her. A beautiful, fucked-up paradox.

“You need me. You need all of us. Because without us, she’s just another dead, failed Nox Siren to add to your collection.”

The silence that answers is confirmation enough.

“Let me out,” I command. “Or your precious prophecy dies right here with me. Your clock runs out. And you fail. Again.”

The void convulses. It doesn’t want to let me go. It doesn’t want to admit I’ve won. But it has no choice. Its own rules have trapped it.

Reality slams back into me. The stench of blood and monster guts fills my nose. The crack of Verik’s hellfire and Evren’s snapping of bones is a chaotic cacophony. I’m on the floor, Lysithea’s hands on my face, her eyes wide with terror. A fresh wave of creatures is pouring through the doorway.

“You’re back,” she breathes, her relief a sweet, potent drug.

I push myself up, my grin all teeth. “Yeah,” I say, my gaze locking on the nearest monster.

“And I’m fucking starving.” I push off the floor, a wave of raw, intoxicating power coursing through me.

The book thinks it can break me? It just fed me the most potent fear in existence: my own. And it was fucking delicious.

The new wave of creatures with all their teeth and claws and mindless rage is a joke.

I don’t even bother with physical attacks.

I reach into the hive mind of their pack, find the one, singular terror that binds them all, and I twist it.

The fear of being abandoned by the hunt. The dread of being the weakest link.

They don’t turn on each other this time. They just stop. They freeze, their monstrous forms trembling as I flood their minds with the chilling certainty of their own obsolescence. They whimper, great, hulking beasts reduced to pathetic, terrified creatures.

“Get out,” I command, my voice a low rumble that echoes with the power I just stole back from the void.

They turn and flee, a stampede of cowardice that clears the chamber in seconds.

The silence that follows is thick, broken only by our ragged breathing. Verik lowers his fists, the hellfire extinguishing with a hiss. Evren lets a half-formed skeleton crumble to dust at his feet.

I turn to Lysithea. “This isn’t over. Not by a long fucking shot. If we fail, you die, and I’m not letting that happen. If I have to leave this realm protecting you, then so be it. You will live.”

“Dathan,” she says, shaking her head.

“That’s the way it is,” I state, the finality in my voice absolute.

“Agreed,” Verik says.

Evren nods.

Her face crumples, and she turns away from us. But I know my purpose now. I have accepted that I, and probably Verik and Evren, won’t make it out of this alive. But we will die so she can live.

That’s the way it has to be.