There was something wrong with the castle.
Something very, very wrong.
Or maybe it was her. Maybe it was her mind slowly splintering.
Corvina looked at the corner of the classroom where she’d seen the light flicker in broad daylight. Her heart was racing, galloping like a horse running from an unseen enemy chasing it. It could have been a trick of the light, something in her vision, anything but what she was thinking it to be.
“You can leave the class if we’re boring you, Miss Clemm,” the hard, gravel voice broke through her perusal. She shifted her eyes to Mr. Deverell sitting on his desk, tapping a pen to the side, his silver attention focused on her.
It had been a week since she’d encountered him in the woods that morning, a week since he had addressed her directly. She had bumped into him in the corridor one day, and he had simply looked into her eyes and given her a greeting, “Little Crow,” in that deep voice of his that had left her hot. And over the week, he’d watched her. He’d been around her classes, going up the stairs when she’d been going down, passing through the hallways when she stopped to admire a sculpture, just been all around her more. She’d felt his eyes on her, she’d felt them a lot. She’d felt them in the dining room when she ate with her new friends, on the grounds when she walked all alone, in the class when she took notes and kept to herself. And she’d liked it, though she shouldn’t.
He might not have been speaking to her verbally but his eyes said a lot. His eyes had been giving her words that only fanned the flames in her blood. His eyes had been whispering dirty things that made her skin flush just imagining them. His eyes were what she imagined on herself when she touched herself in the shower, just his eyes, watching her as he did. She’d never felt it for a man who hadn’t existed between the pages of a book. Raw, animal attraction, that’s what it was.
Right then though, his eyes looked pissed. And that somehow made her want to fan her face even more.
“I-” she began to speak before he raised a dark eyebrow up, inching it towards that streak of grey in his hair, and she shut up.
“You can sit with me if you’re bored, Purple,” Jax, one of Troy’s boys, called from the front with a smirk. “I’ll keep things interesting.”
A few snickers sounded around the class but her eyes, which were still on Mr. Deverell, watched as his jaw clenched. He broke their connected gaze and looked at the boy who’d just spoken.
“And what makes you think this kind of bullshit is okay in my class, Brown?” Mr. Deverell asked, putting his pen down on the desk and turning the full force of his attention on the boy.
The boy sat up straighter. “My name’s not Brown, Mr. Deverell. It’s Jax.”
“Oh, my mistake,” Mr. Deverell said with what Jade called his ‘resting bitch face’. “I thought we were calling each other by the color of our eyes and not given names.”
That shut the boy up.
Corvina felt something warm take root in her stomach, fluttering in her belly as she watched the silver-eyed devil casually defend her. Her eyes had always been something she’d been teased or taunted about. No one had ever defended her. Even with her mother, she’d been the one doing the defending. This felt new, unfamiliar, yet enlivening.
“I don’t like him but swoon,” Jade whispered from her side.
Swoon indeed.
“He’s defending you.”
Yes, he was.
“Anyone else has issues referring to people with their names?” he asked the class.
No one moved.
“And am I still boring you, Miss Clemm?” he asked her directly, his mercury eyes on hers again.
Oh, he was doing something for her but boring wasn’t the word she’d use. She shook her head, her words stuck in her throat as those eyes rested on her for a split second longer.
“Then let’s continue,” he looked out to the class again just as the bell rang.
“Alright, we’ll pick back up on Monday. I expect you all to have read about the motifs that emerged during the Middle Ages over the weekend. Stay back for a minute, Miss Clemm,” he ordered, picking up the diary he’d kept on the desk, reading something inside as the classroom emptied, students giving her odd looks before exiting.
Corvina stood frozen to the spot for a second. She felt an elbow nudge her in the side and looked to see Jade mouth ‘good luck’.
Swallowing, she picked up her brown bag, slinging it over her shoulder, hugging her notebook to her chest. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the front of the class and walked down the levels towards where he sat on the table, still reading something in his diary.
Corvina observed him in his dark black jeans and a shade lighter black sweater, the V-neck exposing the thick yet somehow graceful flesh of his neck, the fabric hugging the broad expanse of his chest, defining his pectoral muscles. She quietly watched as he read, tapping the pen on the side, a pen that looking tiny in his large hands with the long, skilled fingers. She wondered how those fingers would feel sifting through her hair, stroking the side of her face, sliding over the skin of her neck down to her breasts, playing her like the piano she’d seen him on that first night.
Her nipples pebbled.
“That’s not a look you give your teacher, little crow.”
It took her a second to realize he’d stopped reading and she’d been fantasizing as his hand simply rested on the diary. Chest heaving slightly, she looked up to find his intense gaze on her. Her hand tightened around the bag’s strap. She liked it when he called her that. She didn’t know why but the familiar way he used the words, the fact that it felt special just for her, oh yes. It made the warmth in her stomach move lower.
“That’s not a name you call your student,” she retorted quietly, wanting to use a special name for him as well but knowing that vocalizing it would make it much more real. “How am I looking at you?” she tilted her head curiously.
His eyes seared her. “Like you’re inviting me to play.”
She wasn’t the only one. Her breath hitched. “You look at me like that too, Mr. Deverell.”
He tapped his finger on his diary, observing her. She gripped her notebook tighter.
“Did you want something?” she asked after a long moment of silence, realizing a second later the words could be construed in a deeper, more erotic way.
Before he could respond, something flickered in her periphery. Corvina looked to the corner of the room, the space where the wall met the window, seeing a silhouette flicker for a moment in the sunlight filtering in before it disappeared.
Her palms began to sweat.
“What?” his voice came to her but Corvina couldn’t look away from the corner, focusing, trying to understand what she had seen.
“What are you looking at?”
She didn’t know. God, she needed mama to tell her what the hell was happening to her.
A firm grip on her chin turned her face, her eyes locking with his silver ones.
“You were looking at that corner during class too,” he asked quietly, his voice dripping with authority. “What were you looking at just now?”
“I don’t know,” she told him honestly, letting the sensation of his warm thumb on his chin anchor her, relishing the touch she’d never felt like this. “It was probably a trick of the light.”
He considered her for a few seconds before letting her face go, and she bit her tongue to keep from calling the touch back.
“You need to be less obvious when you drift off. We all do it but I can’t let that slide without reprimand in my class. And I don’t want to bring attention to you.”
Corvina bit the inside of her cheek. “Why?”
“Because you’re bewitching,” he murmured, his eyes roving over her entire face. “And I don’t want others fantasizing about you during my class.”
“Others?” she asked, her heart pounding. He fantasized about her?
She saw the pupils in his eyes expand, a black hole consuming the silver, but he didn’t say a word. Hopping off the table, straightening to his full height, he kept his gaze steady on her as he’d done during the week. Corvina tilted her head back, her heart battering in her chest as their bodies communicated in the age-old way – quicker breaths, blown pupils, flushed skin. She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, his lips pursed tightly.
“Steer clear of me, little crow,” he muttered, his eyes piercing, flaying her open. “You might be a luring siren but I’m no ordinary sailor. I’m a mad pirate and I’m trying to resist your call. If I land on your shores, I will plunder and take away everything worth having. Be very careful giving me those eyes.”
With that, he pivoted on his heels and headed to the door, pausing on the threshold to sear her with an intense look, before leaving in silence.
Corvina blew out a breath, holding her notebook against her chest for life. “Holy shit.”
God, she felt heady, intoxicated, aroused beyond belief from a simple look and those words. She imagined him speaking in that low tone at night, his words rasping over her skin from above her, around her, and closed her eyes, shaking it off. She shouldn’t. She couldn’t. Whatever lust he’d ignited in her could never come to fruition. But that probably wouldn’t stop her fantasies.
Just that morning, she had closed her eyes in the shower and imagined him there with her, just watching her with those eyes and intensity, and she’d come harder than any other time, grasping the wall to keep from falling. She didn’t know what it was about him. There was an animal magnetism there, certainly, but there was something else, an undercurrent she felt for the first time but didn’t have a name for. Maybe it was a facet of lust romance books hadn’t warned her about.
She needed a distraction.
Walking out after collecting herself, she passed through the corridors of the Academic Wing. This part of the wing had the tallest burette she’d ever seen, some classrooms and staff rooms on the higher levels, a library she had yet to visit in what had once been the dungeon, and beautiful, high windows that let in all the natural light. All her classes – World Politics, Language and Literature, History, Global Justice, Environmental Studies, Basic Economics, and her elective Psychology – were on the first and third floors. Except on Mondays, Mr. Deverell was usually her last class of the day, on the first floor, so it didn’t take her long to exit out into the sunshine.
A beautiful garden was nestled between the Academic Wing and the Main Hall, a long open corridor connecting the two on the right side, a steep incline on the left leading into the forest.
Corvina cut through the garden, feeling the warm rays of the sun on her face. Sun, as she’d realized over the last few weeks, was a rare guest this time of the year. Others said it would get better in the summer when the skies would clear, even though it would always be cool this high up in the mountains. The sunlight on her skin reminded her of her hometown. A small town in the middle of nowhere, Skarsdale had been a mostly moderate, sunny place to live, at least weather-wise.
Enjoying the warmth, she made her way across the garden where a few students were loitering, heading towards the left of the Main Hall where the cobblestoned path began on the edge of the incline. That wide path started on the side, ran to the residential towers, to the front of the university and the driveway where the car had dropped her, curving back from there towards the faculty and staff residences, and ending back on the Academic Wing. It was a semicircular path, one she’d not traveled over the days since the other side of the university didn’t have anything for her. Even though there were indoor paths to cross between the building, she preferred the outdoors with its exquisite view.
She found Jade and Erica sitting out in the gardens in front of one of the boys’ towers, along with Troy and Jax and another of his friends she’d never been introduced to.
“Please tell me Mr. Sexy Eyes had a delicious reason for keeping you back,” Erica spoke in the way of greeting, making them all look up at her. “We won’t tell.”
It struck Corvina sometimes how much older she was than the kids in her class. They were eighteen-year-olds just coming to college for undergrad, the seniors being either nineteen or twenty, and she was almost a twenty-two-year-old first-year. Sometimes, she felt a century older than the new friends around her.
Troy, with his light good looks, grinned at her. “Mr. Deverell usually isn’t such a hardass.”
“Oh, he’s hard something, alright,” Jade muttered from her side and they all snickered.
Corvina plopped her bag beside Jade and sat down folding her legs under her long skirt. “He’s a teacher,” she shrugged the topic off and focused on the other two guys she’d always seen with Troy. “Hi, I’m Corvina.”
The brown-haired boy from the class nodded with a nice smile. “Jax. Sorry if I offended you earlier.”
Corvina shook her head, turning to the other boy.
“Ethan,” he said, a blonde like Troy, but wearing glasses without frames said. “I’m a senior with Troy. His roommate.”
“Great, introductions are over,” Jade turned to her. “Now, what did he want?”
Corvina shrugged, leaning back on her hands and raising her face to the sun. “Just to tell me not to zone out in class.” Among other things she’d never say.
“That’s it?” Jade asked, disbelief in her voice. “Just, I know I keep saying it, but be careful with him. He’s skirted the rules before and it didn’t end well. He’s still too unknown to be trusted. Just, don’t bring his attention to yourself.”
Exactly what he’d told her, which made her wonder why he would even do that if his intent had been to hurt her.
“Damn, you’re way too serious about Mr. Deverell, Jadie-girl,” Troy’s voice said from her right. “Chill.”
Corvina watched Jade’s face tighten and remembered that these guys didn’t know about Alissa and her hook-up with the teacher. They probably thought Jade was being weird. Corvina gave her a soft smile, telling her she understood her concern silently, and saw her relax slightly.
“Anyways, so what are we doing for Black Ball?” Ethan piped up from the side.
Corvina’s interest perked up, but she tilted her head back and stayed in the same position, keeping her ears open.
“Staying together, what else?” Erica voiced from her opposite side. “My roommate told me about what’s been going on with it. I don’t see how anyone can disappear if they stick with a group of people.”
“Yeah, but it’s easy to get lost with the masks,” Jax pointed out.
“I don’t even understand what the point of the masquerade ball is,” Ethan huffed. “Like sure, it’s a ball but you know there have been incidents every fucking time. Why not make it less easy for people to vanish?”
Slight silence ensued after that. Corvina looked at the clouds, at all the shapes they made it the clear blue sky. The one she was staring at looked like a squirrel with a nut in its hand. She smiled at the image.
“Have any of you gone into the woods yet?” Ethan asked after the pause.
“Corvina did,” Erica supplied. “Came out right after Mr. Deverell. It was all over the girl towers.”
“Mr. Deverell goes into the woods all the time. I don’t know if he’s brave or stupid,” Jax whistled, turning to Corvina. “Did you see anything weird? I’ve heard there are all sorts of bizarre things in there.”
Corvina finally looked back down at the group to find all of them staring at her. “Nothing interesting, at least not something I stumbled across. Just woods? And a lake. But that was it.”
“Lake?” Jade asked, surprised. “There’s a lake in there?”
“And quite a beautiful one too,” Corvina added. “It’s dark and murky. But peaceful.”
The memory of the strange feminine voice surfaced and she pushed it away.
“What’s on top of our tower?” she voiced the question she’d been thinking about for a long time. She knew the room had a piano in it, but she had no idea what purpose it served.
“Top of the tower?” Jade looked at her, puzzled.
“She means the store rooms, I think,” Ethan narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. “Why do you ask?”
Yeah, she wasn’t going to tell them about Mr. Deverell playing the piano there. She wasn’t an idiot.
“Just curious,” Corvina replied with sincerity. “It’s all so new to me.”
Troy gave her a soft smile, his blonde hair and blue eyes glinting in the sunlight. “It’s a store room. Every tower has one on top. The admin people keep old stuff that had originally belonged to the castle there. No one really goes up there.”
Just like the woods. And just like the woods, Mr. Deverell ventured into places other people didn’t go. But why come to one of the girls’ towers? Was it because of the piano? Was her tower the only one that had it? And if so, why come to play at night? And why did none of the other girls hear him? Was the room soundproofed in some way or was everyone else just too used to the odd castle sounds at night? That seemed most likely, since she was the only new girl in her tower, all of the others having been around for at least a year or more. Maybe she wouldn’t have heard the music either had she been asleep that night.
Questions still circled her mind. The more she observed him, the more she felt herself falling into her curiosity. There was something about him, something she couldn’t put her finger on, that made her realize he wasn’t a usual man. There was something… dark around him, but what was it hiding? It made her want to take a harder look and try to understand what it was and why it sparked something in her.
“The driver who dropped me here told me the castle is rumored to be haunted,” Corvina asked, changing the topic. “Is that true?”
“The town,” Ethan scoffed, “likes to demonize shit up here. They think we all have orgies and worship the devil or something. I’m not surprised they’d think it’s haunted too.”
“They have good reason to,” Troy pointed out.
“It’s a load of bullshit,” Ethan argued back. “You know better than to believe some old wives’ tale.”
What tale? Corvina looked at them both in confusion, seeing Troy pull out the grass at his feet, and Ethan looking at his roommate with agitation as though it was an argument they’d had before. Why?
Before she could speculate, Jade abruptly brushed her shock of white hair back, glaring at Ethan. “Whatever you believe or don’t, you have to admit it’s weird.”
“Wait,” Corvina interrupted, bringing up a hand to silence whatever Ethan had been about to say. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m equally confused, girl,” Erica chimed in, looking around at them.
“And me,” Jax agreed.
There was pin-drop silence for a long moment before Jade sighed. “I forget you don’t know half the mad shit circulating around here sometimes.”
Her roommate looked down at her pink nails, worrying her lips as she began. “It’s one of those crazy stories kids tell around the bonfire, you know? One that makes most people here very uncomfortable.”
“Those who believe them, you mean,” Ethan corrected.
Corvina nodded for Jade to go on, intrigued enough to discard Ethan’s commentary.
Her roommate took a visible breath. “They say there was a group of students at the university about hundred years ago, a good few years after it was founded.”
“Okay,” Corvina encouraged when Jade hesitated.
“It’s all hearsay but this group of students… they’d go down the mountain to the village – that’s the town now – and take someone into the woods with them for ‘fun’,” Jade emphasized the word with finger quotes in the air.
“For real?” Erica exclaimed from her side, disbelief evident in her voice. “Why?”
Troy shrugged, picking out more grass. “Who the hell knows? It’s a story.”
“The story,” Jade picked up again, giving them a glance, “says they did terrible things to their hostage for a while before finishing in some kind of sacrificial orgy. I don’t know the exact details or anything,” her voice trailed off.
“No one does,” Troy supplied, looking up at Corvina. “But it’s said that after a few times, people at the university found out what was going on and decided it was enough.”
Corvina listened with rapt attention, the light in the lawn shifting as a cloud passed over the sun, the tower behind them casting long, eerie shadows on the ground.
Jade looked at her with her solemn green eyes and swallowed. “A different, larger group of Verenmore students followed them into the woods one night and found them surrounded with the blood.”
“What happened then?” Corvina asked, invested in the tale.
“They lynched them.”
A chill stole over her.
The sensation of ants crawling over her skin returned tenfold. Corvina gripped her arms as a shudder wracked her frame.
“Jesus,” Jax muttered from his place, exchanging a look with Corvina. “That’s… something.”
“Yeah,” Troy threw the grass. “They’re said to haunt these lands, the woods, the castle, everything, still looking for their killers. It’s said that they still take a sacrifice on the night they were killed.”
“Don’t tell me,” Erica voiced her thoughts as Corvina felt her jaw slacken in realization.
Jade nodded, holding her own arms. “Yup. They were all murdered in the woods on the night of the Black Ball.”
