The chandelier was illuminated in dim yellow light, casting the entryway in a gloomy glow as Corvina entered her own tower. Tugging at the sleeves of her sweater, she watched all the other girls who stayed in the tower, chattering about everything that had happened.
A throb started right behind her eyebrows at the noise, the stress, the questions. Grabbing the railing with one hand, she put the other on her forehead and turned back around.
“You okay?” Roy looked at her hand pressed to her head, slight worry in her eyes.
Corvina nodded, and the other girl walked away to her friends, leaving her alone.
She didn’t want to be here in the middle of all this conversation. She didn’t want to go up to her room all alone knowing her mind was going to play with her again, with shadows or voices, she didn’t know.
Taking her skirt in one hand and a deep breath in, she slowly exited the door she’d come in from and went outside in the cold, fresh air. A few students were still milling around even though most had left, a giant pool of dark blood staining the ground on her right.
Corvina took the blood in, the ache behind her eyes getting worse, and moved away from the people. She needed quiet, but she couldn’t go into the woods, not after what had just happened. She didn’t have any problem admitting to herself that she was scared. Something was happening to her or around her, neither of the scenarios boding well for her well-being.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she mindlessly followed the cobblestone path in the direction away from people. A thick layer of fog had rolled in from the woods, staying close to the ground, wrapping around her ankles as she moved. The sounds of the night came to her the further she walked towards the entrance, darkness wrapping around her even with the small lights that lit the path.
She reached the entrance and turned to look at the castle, a shiver going down her body. The giant, stunning architectural marvel she’d thought beautiful at first sight in daylight months ago seemed foreboding in the night. The tall burettes looked deadly, an air of gloom clinging to its stone walls. Small lights added more to the ominous glow than curb it, the light eclipsed by shadows all around.
As the cold wind helped clear her head a bit, she contemplated, seriously contemplated, leaving for a moment. Ever since she’d stepped foot on this ground, something had been happening to her. After she’d had herself tested at the Institute, she’d spent months at her little cottage with only Mo’s voice for company, and that too occasionally. Something about this place had triggered not only the frequency of Mo’s voice but added a bunch of foreign voices she’d neither heard before nor recognized to the mix. Add to that, she’d never, not once, seen the kind of shadows she’d begun to see at the castle. The dark that had always been her friend had become a stranger, and Corvina didn’t like that. These things were either in her head and she was losing her mind, which meant she needed to leave and go to the Institute again. Or they weren’t in her head, which meant something awful had been happening in this place for a long time and she should leave.
Corvina didn’t know which option she wanted to be truer.
“Verenmore,” the deep voice from her side made her turn slightly to look up as Vad came to stand at her side. “This castle has always been something else.”
Corvina blinked in surprise, watching him light up a cigarette as he watched the castle. “Then why stay?”
He didn’t reply.
They stood in silence for long minutes, him smoking quietly and she lost in thought before she turned and started to walk again.
“I never intended to stay this long,” he told her eventually, joining her without invitation. His scent mixed with the nicotine in a comforting concoction, and she inhaled deeply, letting it fill her lungs.
“I don’t know if I’ll stay at all,” she admitted and felt his silver gaze sharpen on her.
“Because of Troy?” he asked as they took the curve in the cobblestoned path to a part of the grounds she’d never been on, one that led to the faculty and staff quarters.
Corvina gripped her elbows. “I don’t understand what happened with him. He wasn’t suicidal, at least not from what I knew of him. He was fine this morning, happy. It’s just… out of nowhere.”
Vad finished the last of his cigarette, mashing it in a metal dumpster a few feet further, before turning to her, his face somber, the light from the side highlighting the streak of white.
“If I show you something,” he asked her seriously, “will that stay between us?”
Corvina straightened at the severity in his tone. “Yes.”
He nodded. “Come with me. And be quiet.”
They walked further up the path, the cobblestones wet and shiny and clicking against their feet as he took them to the other side of the castle. The towers here looked newer than hers and much lower down the incline, the flattened path turning to low stairs carved in the mountain to take them below.
He took her by her elbow to help her down, his grip firm and warm and encircling her arm entirely as she picked up her skirt.
“Won’t someone see us?” she asked quietly, looking around the empty area and the mostly darkened building up ahead. It looked to have the same stone texture as the rest of the buildings on the ground, and that same grotesque gutter gargoyles sticking out from the walls. However, it had only three floors and a steep blue-tiled roof.
“This path isn’t visible from anywhere,” he informed her as they made their way down. “Not from the top of the campus, and not from the faculty towers.”
“Okay,” she carefully took the final step down before they were back on the flattened ground again. He took them around the side to what looked like a heavy wooden door with a huge brass knocker with a demonesque figure laughing.
Vad pushed it open with one hand splayed wide over the knocker, covering the entire demonesque thing under his palm. The door was heavier than it looked, creaking on the metal hinges as it cracked open enough for them to enter.
It was completely dark, only the glow of the moonlight filtering in through the wide expanse of a series of arched windows on the left. In the light, she saw it was a huge, cavernous room, almost like a hall. There was another door right opposite her – from the other side, she was assuming. Two wooden pillars went from the floor to the high, arched ceiling supporting its weight. A fireplace sat on the right with some heavy furniture before it, a long corridor opening on the side.
He took them to a set of stairs opposite the corridor and climbed up, Corvina following his lead. They passed the first two levels, all quiet and still, and emerged on the third floor, the highest in the tower, with only one dark door at the very end of the landing.
Taking out an old iron key with a distinctive pattern on top, she watched as he pushed it in the slot under the bar, turned it once. A click shot loudly through the silence, and Corvina’s heart began to pound harder as she realized she was moments away from entering his room, his very own lair.
Her grip on her elbow tightened as he opened the door and entered, leaving it wide for her. A switch flicked on, bathing the room it muted warmth as the lights turned on. Corvina stood on the threshold, taking the space in.
It was an attic. A huge attic.
It was painted off white, with four thick brown wooden pillars going from the floor to the beams in the ceiling. The roof overhead was slanting on one side until it met a row of windows on the vertical wall right in front of her. The windows continued to the wall on her right side. A bed, much bigger than any she’d ever seen but one he probably needed with his size, was pushed up against the one wall without any windows, to her left. Right beside her, next to the door, was a tall stack of shelves filled with books. A big armchair was pushed up against a window, right next to a small table holding a sleek laptop and glasses folded over them. The light in the room came from a lamp on the small bedside table and one hanging overhead in a broken chandelier.
The room was eclectic, as though parts had been collected from different places and put together as one.
She was in love.
Corvina had never expected something like this, something so chaotic and not neatly synchronized from him. And watching the space, putting together everything she’d glimpsed from him, she realized that while Mr. Deverell was the controlled, neat, intelligent creature of habit, Vad was wilder, more chaotic, just like his name, untamed.
“Close the door,” he instructed her, taking a seat on the armchair, sitting in the way she imagined kings must have sat eons ago, legs spread slightly, leaning back, elbows resting on the arms, one hand on the side of his face, eyes on her.
She didn’t know how smart it was, being alone with him, but then she never claimed to be smart. She was more driven by emotion than logic, more attuned with her senses than her brain, more adept at understanding instincts than rationale. Which was exactly why she closed the heavy door, sealing them in the space together, breaking another one of the rules.
“Sit,” he indicated the bed, and she hesitated, before silently perching on the edge, watching him.
“Tell me about the shadow first,” he instructed, sitting still, his entire focus on her. In the muted light of the room, he looked intimidating.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Corvina stayed still, imitating his severity, and told the bald-faced lie.
“I’m talking about,” he leaned forward, elbows coming to rest on knees, “you running from your class like the hounds of hell were on your heels. You needed to get to the tower where a boy was already on the roof, about to fall to his death. When I asked you, you told me it was a shadow. So, tell me, Corvina. What’s with the shadow? And why did you have to get to the tower? Did you know about Troy?”
She shook her head immediately. “No,” the denial flew from her lips. “I swear I didn’t know about him.”
“But you knew something,” Vad caught her omission, his gaze brutal in trying to make sense of everything.
Corvina bit her lip, her hands fisting her skirt.
“Whatever you tell me doesn’t leave this room,” he told her after a moment.
She chuckled. “That’s not what worries me. I-”
“What?”
She broke their gaze, looking down at her hands. “I don’t want to be crazy,” she whispered softly, admitting to the deepest, most fierce desire of her heart. “And talking about it, I’ll sound it.”
“Look at me,” he grit out, his tone reminiscent of when he’d said the same words to her weeks ago.
Her fingers twisted her skirt before she took a deep breath and brought her eyes up to lock with his.
“This castle is crazy, Corvina,” he told her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
God, she wanted to. She so badly wanted to believe in him, so badly wanted the atmosphere in the room to absorb all her secrets as she let them out of her lips, trusting someone with them out of choice and not a necessity. More than that, she wanted him to believe her, to see her, to tell her it was okay and she’d be okay and she wasn’t going mad.
“Okay, let’s bargain. A secret for a secret,” he offered. “You give me one of yours and I’ll give you one of mine.”
“You can’t handle my secrets, Mr. Deverell,” she told him with a toneless laugh.
“You have no idea what I can handle, Miss Clemm. And I told you to call me Vad when we’re alone.”
“You also said we wouldn’t be alone again,” she pointed out, settling back a bit more on the bed.
Vad sighed and put a hand inside the pocket of his jacket, bringing out a piece of folder paper. He picked up the glasses from the table at his side, the square black frames somehow adding more gravitas to his already arresting form.
“You told me your mother is institutionalized,” he reminded her of their conversation in the car. “However, you didn’t tell me you admitted yourself to the institute for two months with her.”
Her heart began to pound.
“How do you know that? It’s not in my file.”
“I know a lot of things, little crow,” he told her softly, his eyes glinting behind the glasses, holding so many secrets. “Now give me your story and I’ll show you what’s on this. I found it on the roof.”
Corvina looked at the paper held between his index and middle fingers, and to his eyes as he waited for her story, and felt the pounding in her head ratchet up.
He knew.
He knew.
She didn’t know how, but he knew about her.
She put a hand on her forehead to calm it down, her heart galloping like an injured horse running for his life. A bead of sweat formed on her neck, dropping down in the scoop of her sweater in a journey that chilled her. Her breathing got choppy, blackness creeping around the edges of her vision.
All of it came crashing down on her – years spent with her mother who was lost in her head most of the time; living her life alone with no kith or kin; coming to this new place; the voices; the shadows.
Scene after scene.
Kids telling her she was a freak, town people turning away when they saw her, her mother looking at her with blank eyes.
Moment after moment.
Troy, the boy who teased her jumping off the roof; his voice in her head after, never to be heard again.
Visual after visual.
Seeing the castle for the first time, feeling the hope that everything would be better. Seeing him play that night. A first kiss in the dark, a first time in the rain.
And he knew.
He would think she was a damaged freak. And she would be left all alone all over again, someone else she got attached to without even realizing cutting her off for the way she was.
It all became too much.
The black began to consume.
A whimper left her.
Suddenly, she was flat on her back, looking up at the beams on the ceiling for a split second before silver eyes face appeared in her vision, looking down at her fiercely. A large hand splayed between her breasts, right over where her heart thundered in her chest. He held her down, his other hand straight by her side.
“Calm the fuck down,” Vad commanded in that deep voice, putting pressure on her chest. “Corvina, give me those eyes. Take a deep breath.”
Corvina complied, taking in greedy gulps of air, her head splitting open with pain.
The pressure of his hand left her before he moved, picking her body and moving it higher up the bed so her head rested on his pillow. His hand came to her chest, strong and warm and so there, the heaviness in her chest decreased slightly.
Taking a seat by her hip, he pushed her hair back from her face with his other hand, tracing the curve of her jaw, his thumb caressing her nose piercing. It felt good, so good she wanted to disappear in his bed and never come out.
A bottle of water appeared in her line of vision as he made her take small sips, before letting her fall on the pillow again, resuming his soft caresses, gentling her in a way she’d never been taken care of before.
“Forcing you to have this conversation right now was a mistake,” he said, his fingers stroking the side of her face lightly. “You’re not ready.”
“You already know,” she whispered, keeping her eyes on his neck.
“Just the facts,” he told her. “I want your story. But later.”
“How do you know?” she gulped in a lungful of air. “It’s confidential information.”
His thumb caressed her cheek. “I have my ways.”
So cryptic.
With that, he got up and picked up the paper that had been in his hand from the floor. He must have thrown it when he got to her. He placed the paper beside the lamp and pressed a soft kiss to her piercing.
“I found that on the roof.”
Without another word, he took off his jacket and draped it over the chair, opening a cupboard by the bookshelves and taking out a small bag, swinging it over his shoulder.
“I’m going to work out for a while,” he told her, heading to the door. “Rest. Don’t try to leave. We’ll talk after I’m back.”
Corvina watched as he clicked a switch on the wall, leaving only the lamp on in the room. He pushed the heavy door open and went out, pulling it shut behind him, leaving Corvina all alone in his space, surrounded by his things and his scent.
Digging her head back into the pillow, a wave of tiredness washed over her. She turned to the table on the side before her eyes could close, taking the folded paper in her hand. Hesitating, wondering why it had been on the roof, she unfolded it, and read the two words written in block letters and blue ink.
Danse Macabre.
What the hell?
