Page 18 of Wild Ivy (Kings of Thornfield #3)

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IVY

Darkness pulses around me like a living thing, pressing against my skin with an almost physical weight. The void is nothing like I expected—not empty space or swirling chaos, but something worse—something hungry.

I can feel them out there, the souls I once commanded, now twisted into something feral by this place. Their hatred radiates through the darkness in waves. The hunter becomes the hunted. There’s probably some cosmic justice in that.

A whisper of movement to my left catches my attention. I spin, reaching instinctively for my chaos magick. I have a feeling it will be feared more. At least, that is my hope.

“Come on then,” I mutter, backing up against what feels like a wall, though I can’t actually see it. “If you’re going to?—”

The attack comes from above instead. Claws rake across my shoulder before I can dodge. Pain flares, sharp and real, too real for a place that supposedly exists outside of reality. I kick out blindly, connecting with something that feels like smoke but hits like concrete.

A familiar laugh echoes through the darkness. Marcus. Of course he’d be here, waiting. How many other of those I’ve assassinated over the years are lurking in this nightmare?

“Not so powerful now, are you, Poison ?” His voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. “No one to hide behind. Nowhere to run.”

“I never hid behind anyone,” I snap, trying to track his movement through the darkness. My shoulder throbs where he caught me, but I can’t tell if I’m actually bleeding. Everything feels different here.

Another whisper of movement, this time accompanied by multiple voices - more souls joining the hunt. They’re toying with me. They could have swarmed me already, torn me apart. Instead, they’re drawing it out.

The darkness shifts again, and I know I have seconds before they attack en masse. I’m not helpless. I never was. I refuse to be now.

Taking a deep breath, I have one option right now.

Run.

I sprint through the darkness, letting instinct guide me. My chaos magick may not work the same here, but years as The Syndicate’s assassin taught me other skills. How to move silently. How to become a shadow. How to survive. How to kill without a trace.

“I remember how you killed me,” a voice whispers. I turn my head to see Dominic, a dark warlock who’d been trafficking supernatural children. “You made it look like a rival’s curse. So clever. So artistic.”

“Nothing artistic about this,” another voice joins in - Selena Winters, a blood witch who’d been harvesting vampire hearts, closes in, forcing me to a stop. “We get to tear you apart now, piece by piece.”

I duck behind a column, controlling my breathing. The void shifts around me, making it impossible to tell if I’m actually moving forward or just circling in place. But staying still means death. Or whatever passes for death in a place like this.

“You’re just prolonging the inevitable,” Marcus calls out. “We know all your methods, Poison. You killed most of us in different ways. We talk, you know.”

“Nice, you’ve got a mother’s meeting going on in here,” I call out. “I’m honoured to be the topic of your conversations.”

“Don’t be,” a soul hisses right in my face, and I rear back. It’s the vampire paedophile I coaxed into biting me after injecting holy water into my veins.

A tendril of something cold wraps around my throat. I surge forward, barely avoiding the spectral fangs that snap through the space where my throat had been. The movement puts me in a more open area - vulnerable.

“Remember me?” A new voice, closer. Andrew Cliff, my very first hit. A vampire who’d been turning too many humans to avoid suspicion. “You were so uncertain then. But you learned quickly, didn’t you? Became Death’s perfect weapon.”

I spin again and run in the opposite direction.

They’re herding me. Each attack is pushing me in a specific direction. But why? What’s worse than what’s already hunting me?

“All those careful plans,” Selena taunts. “All those creative deaths. Bet you never thought you’d end up here, did you?”

I need to think. The void operates on different rules. Rules I don’t understand yet. But there has to be a way out. Life wouldn’t have trapped me here if escape was impossible. She wants something from the others, which means I’m leverage. Which means...

A flash of movement. I dive and roll, but not fast enough. Pain explodes across my back as ghostly claws infused with dark magick find their mark. The darkness seems to pulse with their satisfaction.

“Found your limits yet, Poison?” Marcus laughs. “Or should we help you discover what true supernatural torture feels like?”

Getting to my feet, I press deeper into the darkness, following the thrum of energy I can feel all around me. The void isn’t just a prison. It’s something else. Something is changing.

“Where are you going, little assassin?” Dominic’s voice echoes. “There’s nowhere to hide that we can’t find you.”

He’s right about that. They can sense me here just as easily as I once sensed them in the living world. But sensing isn’t the same as catching.

I launch myself forward as magick tears through the space where I’d been. The darkness shifts and warps around me, but that humming grows stronger. Like a heartbeat.

“Remember how you killed me, Poison?” A new voice now, Rachel Storm, a necromancer who’d been raising children as her personal army. “Slipped into my house like a shadow. Poisoned my tea with dried vampire blood. The agony lasted days.”

“You deserved worse,” I spit, ducking under a ghostly tendril that tries to snag my arm.

The words give me a burst of energy, reminding me why I became who I am. These weren’t innocent souls. They were monsters. And I refuse to let monsters win.

I sprint forward, letting my assassin’s training take over. In the living world, I’d learned to move through shadows. Here, in the void, everything is shadow. Instead of fighting it, I let it envelop me, become part of it.

Their enraged screams echo behind me as I weave through the darkness, changing direction randomly. My eyes are adjusting to the gloom, and I spot a wall to my right. I use it to propel myself forward, staying low, staying quiet. Just like hunting in the real world, except now I’m the prey.

Something whistles past my ear—a ghostly weapon of some kind. I don’t stop to analyse it. Can’t stop. Have to keep moving.

I sense the souls trying to surround me, but they’re spreading too thin. They might know this place better, but I know pursuit. Know how hunters think, and right now, they’re making the biggest mistake a hunter can make. They’re letting their anger control them.

I see a crevice in the void’s fabric and squeeze into it, making myself as small as possible. The souls rush past, their fury making them careless. Making them miss what’s right in front of them.

As their voices fade into the distance, I finally let myself breathe. I need to think. Need to plan. The void may be their domain, but it’s changing. The pulsing in the darkness has a life of its own.

Life trapped me here for a reason. She’s using me as leverage, yes, but there’s more to it. Something about this place scares her, and anything that scares a primordial force is worth understanding.

I press my hand against the wall of my hiding spot, feeling that steady thrum. Maybe getting out of here isn’t about fighting or running.

Maybe it’s about understanding what the void is becoming.

I stay perfectly still in my hiding spot, controlling my breathing like I learned during my first years of training. The souls are still out there, their rage vibrating through the void like a twisted heartbeat, but they’ve lost my trail for now.

The wall beneath my fingers ripples. It’s almost like the void is trying to communicate, if I could just understand its language. I close my eyes, though it makes no difference in this darkness, and focus on the sensation.

It changes pitch slightly. There’s a pattern to it, something almost familiar. It’s like the pulse of my chaos magick, but darker. Older.

“Think, Ivy,” I mutter to myself. “Life wouldn’t trap you here without a way out. She needs something from them, which means...”

A ghostly hand suddenly plunges through the wall next to my head. I roll away, deeper into the darkness, heart pounding.

“Found a trace!” Andrew’s voice rings out. “This way!”

No time left to hide. I sprint through the void, letting instinct guide me. The thrumming becomes a beat, and it grows stronger with each step, almost like it’s leading me somewhere. But can I trust it? Can I trust anything in this place?