Corvina stood, stunned.
“That’s impossible,” she heard herself gasp, her hands going to her head.
“She was in the system,” Ajax informed her as her mind spiraled, trying to make sense of what he was saying.
Suddenly a thought chilled her to the bone. She hadn’t been the only one to see Jade, had she? The idea briefly ran through her mind before she shook it. No, others had seen her. They had talked to her. She remembered it vividly. But were her memories wrong? Had her mind truly warped itself to the point where she had hallucinated memories for herself? Had she been so starved for a friend that she’d imagined the bubbly white-haired girl?
Corvina felt her heart pound, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t real at that point, her own narrative so unreliable she didn’t know what to think.
“You saw Jade too, right? My roommate?” she asked Ajax desperately. “The girl with short white hair and green eyes?”
To her great, great relief, he nodded. “Yeah. Which begs the question, if the real Jade Prescott is dead, has been dead for two years, who the fuck is that girl?”
Corvina didn’t know.
Who had she been living with every day for months? Who had she befriended and cared for? Who was the girl who had hugged her every day and lit up her life with her light?
How could her instincts have gone so wrong? Was she wrong about Vad too?
“I’m going to go and figure this out,” he ran a hand over his palm. “Come find me if your boyfriend isn’t back in an hour.”
Corvina nodded, watching him go to the Admin Wing, and stood under the moonlight, confused beyond belief. Who was her roommate?
A sound from her left had her turning.
It was the caw of a crow from above her tower.
And it was odd because crows couldn’t see well in the dark, so they always returned to their nest to sleep at night, foraging for food after dawn. So why the hell was there one flying around the tower and cawing?
Her eyes drifted down to her window and she froze as a shadow moved inside her locked room.
Was it Jade?
Just as the thought crossed her mind, something slammed into her head from behind, and everything went dark.
**
‘Wake up, Vivi,’ Mo’s voice and sandalwood scent were the first things in her consciousness.
The first thing she saw after opening her eyes was the moon.
As Corvina struggled to keep her eyes open through the fog in her brain, a pounding ache radiated from the back of her skull into her head. She took a second to realize she was lying on something concrete, somewhere high because the wind was forceful on her skin. Throat dry, mouth as though full of cotton, she tried to sit up.
And failed.
Panic swelled in her as she tried to move her arms again, feeling their leaden weight, and couldn’t move an inch, even though she couldn’t feel anything tying her down.
What the hell was going on?
Her eyes roamed around frantically, her chest heaving as she tried to make sense of everything.
‘Why make sense of anything?’ the voice she’d rarely heard before muttered insidiously.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this, Cor,” Jade’s voice came from the side.
Finding the strength somewhere deep inside her, Corvina turned her neck just enough to the side to be able to see her roommate, still in her fairy princess gown, smiling at her benevolently.
“Who are you?” Corvina could barely whisper, some kind of force keeping her paralyzed even as her consciousness worked.
Jade frowned. “You’re not supposed to be able to talk after this. Huh. The dose must’ve been lower than I thought.”
What dose? What had she done? Who the fuck was she? Where were they?
“You remember that tree by the ruins?” Jade sat down cross-legged on the floor by Corvina’s side, pushing her hair back with her fingers. “The tree with the eye?”
Corvina remembered the tree and its odd eye.
“My grandmother carved the eye on the trunk to recognize it,” Jade told her, smiling at her. “The tree was special. It only grew leaves once in a few years, and she realized that if you powdered the leaves, it gave you power.”
What the hell was she talking about?
“You could blow the powder in anyone’s face and control them,” Jade told her, sifting through her hair. “She called it the Devil’s Breath. That’s what she used on their playthings.”
Realization dawned upon her.
The Slayers.
This girl’s grandmother had been the so-called witch of the group of murders.
“Your grandmother was-” Corvina swallowed to wet her throat.
“A Slayer,” Jade grinned proudly. “Yes, she was. She was the one who brought the fun to the group. They thought she was a witch who did dark magic with the powder. Back then, they didn’t know it was a drug. She never told anyone.”
Corvina felt some feeling return to her arms. “How?”
“How do I know?” Jade asked, her green eyes twinkling. “That’s because she never died. She escaped that night, the only one to escape, and she was pregnant. She raised my mother here, and then they moved to town where she met my father. My father didn’t want her, so that’s when grandma told her about the Devil’s Breath. That’s the night she conceived me.”
It was too much. The entire night up until that point was too much for her to wrap her head around.
Corvina felt sick not just with the night but with the story, thinking about a man in a situation she was as a woman forced him. It was absolutely disgusting.
Jade went on, as though happy to finally get it off her shoulders. She’d always loved talking. “Sadly, my father never remembered, and mother died a few years later. That’s when my grandma took me in. She raised me, taught me everything, told me all about what she and my grandfather used to do.”
More strength returned to Corvina and she managed to turn slightly, staring up at the girl who had been her first friend in this new place, a girl she had trusted.
“Oh don’t look at me like that,” Jade scoffed. “It was so well done. No one suspected the bubbly little girl who lost two people close to her. Such a tragedy,” her voice mocked. “I was so convincing.”
“Why?”
Jade leaned back on her hands and looked up at the stars, looking ethereal in the moonlight. “Why what?”
“Why kill the real Jade Prescott?” Corvina asked, thankfully her voice more stable.
She shrugged. “To come to Verenmore, silly. Stupid girl had come to town jabbering about getting admission. I gave her a lift up, got her whole life story, and took her to the old shack my grandma had in the woods. I wanted to see the place that belonged to my bloodline.”
Corvina’s heart stopped.
“You’re a Deverell,” she whispered, pieces falling into place.
Jade smiled beatifically. “Yes, I am. My mother was conceived on a night much like this. My grandma told me all about it – the blood, the sex, the sacrifice. They played so good. God, it must’ve been such a fun time.”
The excitement in her voice made Corvina nauseous.
She remembered Vad telling her his story, the disgust on his face when he’d relayed similar events to her. He had maybe killed his grandfather over it. And this girl, she was… crazy. There wasn’t another word for it.
‘But are you not crazy too?’ the insidious voice whispered.
‘Ignore her, Vivi,’ Mo said.
Corvina somehow took his advice as things slowly started to make sense. “You burned her after we went in the woods and found the shack, didn’t you?” It was making sense now.
“I had to,” Jade wiggled her toes. “Nobody used to go in the woods so it was never a risk. And then, thanks to you, people got curious. God, I tried to warn you away so many times. I couldn’t risk her getting identified.”
Corvina looked at the girl, a dead weight settling in her stomach. “Did you have something to do with Troy’s death?”
Jade gave her a look, her eyes gleaming. “Of course I did. Troy was… suspicious of Alissa’s death. He began to investigate why she had gone to the roof. Someone told him they’d seen us going together before I came down alone. He began to wonder if I’d run away to throw people off my scent, and I had. I really liked him, but I had no choice.”
Hot rage pulsed inside Corvina, her eyes stinging as she remembered the amazing, smart boy who had lost his life because of the evil of one woman.
“You gave him the Devil’s Breath?”
“Yup,” Jade nodded. “And took him to the roof. This one right here. Told him to walk right off it. Nobody suspected a thing.”
The wind whistled over the roof they were on, picking up speed, making Corvina’s hair fly.
“I did,” Corvina told the girl, anger raging in her veins. “I knew he wouldn’t have killed himself. I told his brother the same.”
Jade chuckled. “But no one can prove anything.”
Which meant Corvina was never meant to make it out of this conversation alive.
“And the disappearances over the last century?” Corvina asked. “Did you or your grandma have something to do with that?”
Jade shook her head. “Nope, I genuinely have no idea what happens on Black Ball. My grandma doesn’t either. We both wondered quite a lot about it.”
“So you had nothing to do with Roy being in the lake tonight?”
Jade looked puzzled under the moonlight. “Roy? Why would I do anything to Roy? I like her. Is she okay?”
Corvina got whiplash from the way this girl confessed to killing in cold blood one minute and being concerned about a friend the next.
This girl was going to kill Corvina. She knew. Lying on that roof, talking to her, Corvina felt the truth sink into her bones.
“Why kill Alissa?” she asked the girl, buying more time as she tried to figure out a way to get out of this.
Her limbs didn’t even twitch under the effect of the drug. If she didn’t get out, she would become another tale at Verenmore, another unknown death.
Jade’s eyes flashed, something going off behind them. “Exactly why I’ll kill you, Corvina. Even though I truly loved you like a sister in the beginning.”
Corvina stared at the girl, trying to understand what she and Alissa had had in common. The answer came to her on a chilling realization.
“Vad,” she breathed.
Jade smiled. “Vad.”
Corvina blinked. “But… why? I don’t understand.”
“The slut went and slept with him,” Jade grit out, leaning forward. “He was mine.”
“He’s… your grandfather is same. He’s your family,” Corvina stuttered.
“He’s mine,” the girl shouted suddenly, making Corvina flinch, her green eyes going wild, the wind hard in her short hair. “We both have Deverell blood in us. That makes us strong. He’s the devil of this castle and I’m the devil’s breath. Together, we would be a force to be reckoned with. We could leave behind a legacy for our children.”
The vomit rose up to the back of her mouth, and Corvina swallowed it down. This girl, whoever she was, was truly, deeply sick.
‘You’re sick too, Corvina,’ the insidious voice said. ‘Or else why would I be here?’
‘Focus on the girl, Vivi,’ Mo cajoled.
It was harder to focus this time.
“It’s so wrong,” Corvina muttered, her entire being disgusted. “He would never have accepted you.”
Jade smiled a smile that chilled her to the bones. “He wouldn’t have had to, Cor. He wouldn’t have had a choice. He will accept me after you’re gone.”
The sickness couldn’t be contained anymore. Corvina heaved to the side, her stomach empty but her throat burning, the idea, the very idea of her Vad becoming a helpless victim to this girl’s deceit making something red hot come alive inside her.
No. No.
‘Kill her,’ the insidious voice said.
‘Vivi, focus,’ Mo was loud.
God, they both needed to shut up. Her head was pounding.
If she was going to die tonight, she was going to take this girl with her. There was not a world in which she would let her live and make her lover a slave. No.
“We would’ve never come to this, Corvina,” Jade sighed, finally standing up, dusting her ass. “I tried to warn you away from him so many times. You. Just. Wouldn’t. Listen. You went ahead and spread your legs for him like a whore all over the castle. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
She stood up and brushed off her hands, walking a circle around Corvina’s helpless body. “Now, you’re going to jump off this roof and he’s going to find me. We will share the grief of losing you, and I will help him heal,” the earnestness on her face truly made Corvina want to kill her.
The betrayal was so deep, of her, of Troy, of Alissa, of everyone she had ever come in contact with.
Corvina tried to will her hands to move, her legs to move, for anything to move at all, and nothing happened.
“What is this drug?” she asked the girl.
“I don’t know the exact composition,” Jade walked to the edge of the narrow roof, looking down, the girl who had clearly lied about her fear of heights. “Grandma said it’s native to the Amazon. Someone must have planted it here years ago. It has scopolamine, from what she said, and something else. Depending on the dosage, your will is mine. For example, I told you to come with me to the roof and you did. Do you remember?”
Corvina shook her head once, her heart pounding at the black before she’d woken up.
“That’s because I told you to forget it. Now, I’m going to tell you to stand and walk to the edge of the roof.”
Corvina wouldn’t have believed it possible if her muscles suddenly didn’t relax, sending feelings to her limbs. She found herself standing up even as she fought it with everything inside her. Her body stood upright, the muscles in her feet urging her forward as her brain tried to override whatever was happening to her.
“You’re resisting,” Jade’s surprised voice came from behind. “That’s not possible. Usually, the consciousness isn’t at the forefront when the drug takes effect.”
She felt Jade come to stand in front of her as she stood shaking in the strong wind, her hands fisted by her sides.
Green eyes looked into hers, and for the first time in her life, Corvina felt truly terrified. She was looking true evil in the face. The monsters were real, and they didn’t live in her head. What existed in the world was scarier than anything her mind could conjure. She was seeing one with a beautiful, innocent face and energy so deceptive it had fooled her instincts. And she had to find Vad and tell him he wasn’t evil, that true evil didn’t wear it on the outside for the world to see. True evil was insidious.
Her time for the dance with death was coming, and Corvina didn’t want it. She had to go see her mother one more time. She had to get herself a dog, a family. She had to find her happy ending with Vad. She wanted a life with him, even if it was a life of risk for her mind. She wanted to kiss him out in the open without fear anyone would see. She wanted to travel with him to places she read about in her books. She wanted her ending like in the books she loved. She wanted to one day have a child with him. She wanted everything.
She wasn’t ready to die.
‘But death might be ready for you,’ the insidious voice crooned.
‘You will live, Vivi!’ Mo shouted.
‘Help me, Mo,’ she begged to the one voice who had been her constant companion throughout the years, not knowing if he was real or an illusion of her mind, not caring because it gave her hope for a second.
‘I’m right here with you,’ he said, giving her the only thing he’d given her, his company.
“Walk to the edge, Corvina,” Jade ordered and Corvina felt her feet move without volition, taking her to the edge of the roof. And she knew exactly how Alissa and Troy must have felt being hugged by the wind, watching the sprawling mountains and the endless woods ready to greet them.
Her hair flew everywhere as she looked at all the places she had found herself on this mountain, places that had made her feel friendship for the first time, lust for the first time in her life, transforming into a deep love she had never imagined for herself but always hoped for. If she died, and it seemed likely that she would die, looking at those places, feeling that love in her heart, taking those memories of him with her into the afterlife was how she wanted to go – memories of silver eyes and whispered words and hard kisses and white-streaked hair, memories of his possession, his passion, his love for her.
She had walked these lands of evil and marked them with love. And after she was gone, they would bloom again.
Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the ruins where she had been first kissed.
“Did you burn the piano?” she asked the girl quietly, her body swaying as a strong gust of wind shook it.
Jade looked down at her hand, at the ring on her finger. “I was angry.”
She extended her hand to touch it and Corvina grabbed her wrist as tight as she could.
“Leave my hand,” Jade shrieked, trying to pull back and Corvina’s fingers flexed. No. If she let her go, she would destroy everything. She would destroy Vad, make him into a husk of a man. She couldn’t let that happen.
“I won’t let you ruin another life,” Corvina told her, tightening her grip on her hand, the only part of her body she could seem to control anymore.
“What the fuck are you doing, Corvina?!” she heard Ethan’s voice call out from below and she wanted to ask him if Vad had come back okay, if she could see him one last time before she had to go.
Jade cried out from her side. “She’s gone crazy! I found her on the roof and tried to bring her down. She’s not letting me go!”
The fucking moronic bitch.
Shouts went up from under them, shouts for Corvina to let Jade go, shouts for her not to do something crazy, shouts begging her to not be mad.
They thought, they really thought, that she was a madwoman.
She would’ve laughed if she could’ve at the irony.
‘It’s not ironic,’ said the insidious voice.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Mo countered.
The chaos inside her was going to make her head explode.
She felt someone else step on the roof that had been locked.
“You beautiful girl,” the deep, gravel voice came from somewhere behind them, and the sheer relief coursing through her body, the sheer pain at what he was going to witness, almost crippled her. Had her body not been paralyzed, she would have fallen to her knees in relief. She wanted to turn, to run into his arms and never let him go, but her body stayed frozen.
She began to sob.
“Don’t come any closer, Vad,” she yelled through her tears. “She has some kind of hypnotic drug. Don’t come closer.”
He didn’t even address her.
“Oh, you want to get rid of her? For us?” she heard his voice step closer and her heart began to pound. She needed to stop him.
‘He’s not even talking to you,’ the insidious voice said. ‘He’s looking at her. He doesn’t care.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Mo shouted, and her head began to hurt as though someone was hammering her skull from the inside.
Corvina felt Jade’s grip leave her arm as she turned to the man behind her. “Vad. You know?”
His voice was seductive. Corvina knew the tone well.
“Of course, I know, silly girl,” he chuckled, his voice coming closer. “I know everything that happens in Verenmore, don’t I? And I’m so proud of you. You’re a true Deverell,” the pride in his voice made her stomach clench.
‘He never loved you, Corvina,’ the insidious voice gloated. ‘He’s just showing you the true colors now.’
‘You know that’s not true, Vivi,’ Mo reminded her, the constant back and forth making her groan as she tried to focus on the actual voices outside her head.
Vad was still speaking to pretend-Jade, his voice getting closer. “You know the thrill of the kill, don’t you, baby? The blood, the sex, the high. It’s incomparable.”
“Yes,” Jade breathed at her side. “I knew you’d understand me.”
“Let go of her hand, Corvina,” he commanded in that familiar tone she knew in her bones, addressing her for the first time.
Corvina felt her breathing falter, her body needing to see him but unable to move, the first seed of doubt entering her mind.
‘He wants her,’ the insidious one laughed. ‘He was just using you for a time. She’s right, he is sick like her. He probably only wants you to let her go so he can push you off himself.’
‘Vivi, do not listen to that bullshit,’ Mo cursed for the first time in her memory, his voice coming right over the insidious one, louder. ‘He would kill for you, never you. Remember what we decided? We trust him. Trust him.’
Both voices talked over each other, and Corvina cried out at the pain behind her eyes, her body shaking with the need to collapse.
Somehow making some sense of everything, despite every word coming out of his mouth and the voices screaming in her head, Corvina put her faith in him and let go of the only security she had.
She felt him at her back, his hand in her periphery coming to cup Jade’s face tenderly. “You did it all for me?”
Jade nodded, her breathing choppy. “We belong together. You and I, we are the perfect fit.”
Vad chuckled at her side. “Yes, we are. We like throwing people down, don’t we?” His grip on her face tightened. “How do you undo the effect of the drug?”
Realization dawned upon the girl. She began to laugh maniacally, trying to get out of his grip on her jaw but unable to. “Oh, Vad. You want to throw me down, don’t you? It won’t work. Verenmore is in my blood. I will always be here in these walls.”
He leaned closer to her, his voice hard. “How do you undo the effects of the drug, hmm?”
Corvina heard Jade’s cackle, her body completely frozen.
“You don’t. She will be your little plaything to do with as you please. Make her beg, make her crawl,” Jade smacked her lips. “I’ll watch.”
‘He can do anything to you now,’ the insidious voice said just as Mo chastised it to shut up.
“Watch from hell,” she heard Vad say, right before he let her go.
Corvina watched in frozen shock as the pink dress floated around the girl’s body as she fell, her laughter ringing in the wind with the shouts from below until she splattered on the ground, her eyes staring up at her, her mouth stuck on a mad laugh, blood pooling around her head like a demonic halo, soaking into her pink dress.
A shadow moved around the crowd and suddenly, multiple voices started to scream at her in her head, all at once.
‘I’ll never leave.’
‘I’m glad she died.’
‘Tell my brother I didn’t kill myself.’
‘Give my family the news.’
‘Can you hear us?’
‘Jump, jump, jump.’
‘Why are you fucking alive?’
‘Don’t listen to them!’
‘Jump and end this, Corvina. You know you want to. There’s nothing for you here.’
Corvina screamed at the pressure in her skull, her eyes, her ears, her nose, her teeth, everything hurting as her body began to shake, unable to bear too much mental stimulation, her voice cracking as the pain in her head pounded through every inch of her body that just couldn’t move. Tears and sweat streamed down her face as she whimpered, swaying on the edge of the roof.
She felt herself begin to tip forward and closed her eyes.
An arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her back from the edge, her body stiff and hurting.
‘Why did he have to come?’
‘Tell my mom I didn’t want to go.’
‘Get away from the roof.’
‘Fucking die.’
“Look at me!” the deep command broke through the noise. She felt him turn her, his hands cupping her face and tilting her head, his voice cutting through all the ones in her head. “Corvina, give me those eyes. C’mon, baby.”
‘Leave him behind.’
‘Jump down.’
‘That’s the only end.’
Her eyes began to close.
“No, no, look at me. Stay with me,” his deep, gravel voice ordered, an edge of panic in it unlike she’d ever heard. She didn’t want him to panic. She was just going to sleep and shut off everything in her body – her skin which was sweating too much, her brain which just wouldn’t shut up, her heart which was pumping too fast, too loud, her body which seemed to be shaking out of her control.
Everything hurt.
“Corvina!” the terror in his tone reached her somewhere deep down where she was still capable of one last rational thought. Somehow, she fought everything inside her and opened her eyes for one split second to look at him, just to take him in one last time, her eyes locking with those beautiful silvers.
“The voices won’t stop,” she managed to whisper somehow.
She became aware of him swinging her up in his arms as she began to murmur things she didn’t even understand, her eyes going blank, the voices in her head finally taking over.
This was what Danse Macabre felt like.
