Page 48 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

H is words are iron bars slamming shut around me.

I turn, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

“No,” I spit, the word a shard of glass.

“You don’t get to decide that.” My fury is a white-hot welcome inferno against the cold dread spreading through my veins.

The black lines on my chest throb in response.

“This isn’t your grand, heroic sacrifice.

This is my life. My curse. You don’t get to write the ending. ”

Dathan takes a step towards me. “Thea, be realistic?—”

I laugh, a harsh, broken sound. “I’m not your tragic fucking queen who will wander this earth alone and grieving for eternity.

” I snatch the grimoire from Evren’s grasp.

It feels heavy, sated. It got what it wanted.

Their fealty. Their lives pledged to its cause.

“Three will die so one may live,” I quote, my voice dripping with venom.

“It’s a prophecy, not a fucking instruction manual.

We break it. Or we all die trying. But nobody is dying for me. ”

I turn and stalk through the now-empty doorway, the book clutched to my chest like a shield. “Are you coming, or are you going to stand there planning your funerals?”

“You would grieve for us?” Verik asks, the first to move forward.

I grimace into the darkness. “For my sins.”

“Better than fucking nothing,” Dathan says, coming up behind me. “I’m in.”

Evren joins us, his icy chill forming frost at my back.

I nod, not facing them as I walk into the tunnel.

I can’t face them. Not after what I just admitted.

Not after I have told them I need them and can’t lose them.

Try as I might, telling myself that this is the brand talking, or fate or whatever twisted shit the Tenebris Vinculum has cooked up for us, it’s not.

I care about them in little ways that count.

Like the way Evren’s silent presence is a comfort, not a void.

Or the way Verik’s infuriating arrogance is a shield he holds up for all of us.

Or how Dathan’s possessiveness, as much as I hate it, feels like an anchor in this storm. Fucking hell. I am a mess.

The tunnel ahead is different. Clean. The walls are polished onyx, but unlike the void chamber, they reflect us. Distorted, elongated versions of ourselves follow us like ghosts.

“Well, this is creepy,” Verik mutters, his voice echoing strangely.

The tunnel opens into another spherical chamber, but this one is a labyrinth of mirrors. Floor-to-ceiling panels of polished silver twist and turn, creating an impossible maze of reflections. Our images multiply into infinity, a four-person army staring back at us.

“Right,” Dathan says, his voice flat. “A fucking maze.”

“And you know what lives in mazes,” I mutter right before the distant echo of a roar reverberates around us.

“Minotaurs,” Dathan mutters. “I fucking hate minotaurs.”

“Yeah, I think Vance got that message.”

We exchange a look that I can’t quite describe before the roar echoes, a bass note that vibrates through the polished floor. It’s closer now. A wet, guttural sound that promises torn flesh and snapped bone.

Dathan moves, a subtle shift that puts him partially in front of me.

Verik’s hands are wreathed in low-burning hellfire.

Evren’s silent presence becomes a tangible cold front.

A unified wall of monsters, ready to kill for me.

I hate it. I need it. I’m gripping the book, and I can’t put it down. It won’t let me.

“The book isn’t showing us the way through,” I say, my voice tight. The map shows the destination, a single point in the centre of this circular hell, but not the path.

“We make our own,” Verik snarls. He launches a bolt of fire at the nearest mirror.

It hits the surface and shatters, not the glass, but the fire itself. It refracts into a dozen smaller fireballs that scream around the chamber like angry hornets. We all duck as they zip past our heads.

“Reinforced,” Verik grits out, his jaw tight with professional indignation. “Magically.”

The roar sounds again, this time right behind me. We spin as one, finding nothing but our own wide-eyed reflections staring back.

“It’s using the maze,” Dathan says, his silver eyes narrowed, scanning the infinite corridor of our own images. “It’s everywhere and nowhere.”

This is a test of perception. Of truth versus illusion.

This one is for me.

“Well, let’s fight its roaring with one of my own. You might want to cover your ears.” I don’t wait for them to argue. I take a deep breath, focusing my intent. Not destruction. Clarity. I’m not trying to break the mirrors. I’m trying to break the lie.

The note that tears from my throat isn’t a scream of rage. It’s a chord of absolute truth, a sound that strips away deception.

The mirror panels don’t shatter. They ripple, their silver surfaces turning to liquid mercury. Our infinite reflections writhe, melt, and dissolve into nothing. For one perfect, ringing moment, the maze is gone. We’re standing in a simple, spherical chamber.

And the minotaur is there.

Caught mid-charge, twenty feet away, its brutish face is a mask of stunned confusion. It blinks its red eyes, the illusion it relied on stripped away.

The mirrors solidify, the maze snapping back into place around us. But it’s too late. We’ve seen it. We know where it is. The grimoire adds a piece to the map, this horrifyingly complex maze that even with this drawing, we would wander around for a hundred years.

Dathan’s grin is a feral slash in the dim light. “Found you.”

Evren’s shadow magic lashes out at a panel to his left. The shadow strikes the mirror, and the real minotaur roars in agony as he hits it.

“Keep going,” Verik says, bringing fire to his hands.

I ignore their offensive magic. I resort to what I know best. I let out a low hum and the mirrors rattle, cracking under the weight of my vocal magic.

The guys stand down. They know this is my turn to destroy, to clear the path so we can continue our quest. I increase the pitch of the hum, and then I open my mouth to let out a song that Clara the witch used to sing to me at bedtime, full of nightmares and death.

Bitch.

She would shit herself if she came across Dathan now.

The song pours from my lips, a melody of poison, of broken glass and forgotten graves. Each note is a razor, honed on years of silent rage. The mirrors scream. Not a sound of shattering, but a high, keening wail as my voice unbinds the magic woven into them.

They explode. A hurricane of silver shards rips through the chamber. The minotaur is caught in the storm, its brutish roar turning into a wet gurgle as the song gets inside its head. It sinks to its knees, blood weeping from its eyes and ears, its mind shredded by a lullaby meant to break a child.

Silence falls, heavy and absolute. The maze is gone, replaced by a glittering carpet of razor-sharp silver. The minotaur is a heap of twitching muscle on the floor.

The book in my grip glows with a soft, appreciative light. The map sketches another piece into existence.

I don’t wait for their permission. I walk over the glittering ruin of the maze, my boots crunching on the remains of the illusion.

“Turn around and go back to the surface.”

I freeze at Blackgrove’s voice and turn my head to the left.

“No,” I say to what I think is a mirage of the formidable headmaster.

“You are under my roof, Miss Lysithea. No isn’t in your vocabulary.”

“Like hell it’s not,” I growl, taking a step towards him.

He holds up a hand, and I stop dead. I look around, wondering why the guys have gone quiet, only to see them as stone statues around me. A low hissing noise catches my attention. A basilisk.

It slinks into view, which triggers a bizarre reaction. My shadow snake springs to life with a mind of its own, landing at my feet and rearing up to protect me.

“The basilisk won’t harm you,” Blackgrove says. “You are immune. It’s why I brought it.”

“Immune?” I frown at him. “How?”

He shrugs and moves forward. “You think I am not real, but I can assure you, I am not a construct of the book. You are walking into dangers you cannot even fathom, and you need to turn back. My job is to protect you, and I will not fail.”

“Why?” I ask, my voice quiet in the vast chamber.

He is quiet for a moment before he replies. “You are a student here under my protection.”

“That’s not a reason… Thane.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he hisses at me, but he didn’t move or make a single sound. I wonder for a moment if I misjudged this, but he smiles. It’s sinister and chills me to my core. “You speak that name as if you know it,” he says.

“We put two and two together. You took Verik down that passageway where your portrait is, knowing he would find it odd that he couldn’t see the face but could read the name. You knew he would find it significant and that we would find it in this book. The question is why?”

“As a warning,” he concedes eventually. “If I couldn’t complete this ritual, what makes you think you four can?”

Okay. The terrifyingly powerful, ancient creature has a point. “Because your Nox Siren wasn’t me.”

He raises an eyebrow in surprise. I feel quite smug that I caught him off guard. “Such confidence.”

“Warranted, I feel.”

“Go back upstairs, Miss Lysithea. Play time is over.”

He claps his hands, and darkness plunges over us.

When it clears, I am back in my bedroom, minus the book and minus the guys. “Fuck,” I grit out as the corruption on my chest spreads down my arm, making it ache. “Fuck!”