by RuNyx .
“We are going,” Jax asserted. “Question is, are you coming or not?”
Corvina didn’t want to go, not after the crazy comment or how close it hit home. But she also didn’t want them to go towards the ruins. She felt protective of them, for some bizarre reason. She didn’t want anyone finding them, anyone stumbling upon them – not the ruins, the graves, or that old piano covered in a new tarp. She hadn’t realized but she’d already claimed the place in her mind, willing to share it with only one person, one who’d claimed the woods as his solace long before she got there.
That was the only reason she said, “Sure.”
Jax gave her a winning grin while Jade sighed, pinching her nose. “Fine. But we don’t go too deep. And we get back before the sun goes down.”
“Deal,” he assured her. “Meet us in front of your tower. I’ll get some stuff.”
Troy gave Corvina a side hug. “Thanks, Purple.”
Corvina rolled her eyes, her heart warming at his gesture.
The boys jogged off and Jade gave Corvina a curious look. “You go in the woods a lot?”
Corvina shrugged and made her way towards the tower. She had been going into the woods more over the week, early every morning. More specifically, she’d been going to the ruins with some food and her journal. She liked sitting on one of the large stones by the crumbling wall, surrounded by nature taking back what man had once made. She liked that every morning there were more and more crows that came to be fed by her. She liked watching them feast while writing in her journal – observations about people, inferences about herself, and thoughts about one man. She liked putting the words on paper. It made her make sense of everything that went on inside. Journaling wasn’t something she had always done. In fact, she hadn’t even thought of doing it until Dr. Detta had suggested it.
The cold wind brushed her face, whipping strands of her hair that had escaped her fishtail braid. The sun was bright but close to the horizon. They had probably an hour or so of daylight left.
She tugged the strap of her sling bag higher over her shoulder as she spied Troy, Jax, Ethan, and two other boys she didn’t know standing by the tower. Five in total.
“Should we get some girls?” Jade asked quietly from the side. “Not that I don’t trust them. But you don’t know them, and I don’t want you to get uncomfortable.”
Corvina felt her lips tip up in a smile at her friend’s consideration. “I’m fine, don’t worry. Thank you,” she put a hand on her petite shoulder and squeezed.
A few minutes later, the boys having armed themselves with food and water, looked at Corvina.
“So, where to, Purple?” Troy asked indicating the opening in the forest. “You know it best.”
Corvina was no expert in the neck of these woods, but she did know them better than these guys. The ruins to the left and the lake straight forward, both were places she wanted to avoid – the ruins because they were hers, and the lake because of the voice.
She indicated the right. “I haven’t explored that side, so let’s go there.” Hopefully, there would be nothing but woods.
The group, all seven of them, entered the forest and headed right. Under the thicket, the light was considerably less bright, the shadows longer, the wind cooler.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Jade piped up from her side, her hands fisting the straps of her backpack.
“We’re just going to go further a bit and return, okay?” Troy put his hand around Jade’s smaller shoulders, tucking her in his frame. “We wouldn’t have had the balls had it not been for Purple here,” he nodded at Corvina. “She’s been going into the woods so coolly over the last few weeks, we had to see for ourselves, you know? I actually have a fear of woods and heights for a long time.”
“Why?” someone asked, and Corvina listened, curious about Troy’s past.
“Just one of those things,” Troy shrugged it off. “But I’ve always wanted to explore these woods. Most kids on campus are scared of it.”
“Oh yeah,” one of the new boys chimed in. “The Slayers are just a freaky legend told to students to scare ‘em off anyways.”
“Slayers?” Corvina asked, remembering the word the boy had told her in the library, her hand drifting over the hard, rough bark of a tree.
“Yeah,” Troy explained. “It’s a stupid name. But that’s what everyone calls the students all those years ago who kidnapped and murdered the villagers.”
Goosebumps erupted over her arms. What the hell? What had the boy in the library meant with his message? Who the hell had he been? Clearly, he had just been messing with her.
“You wanna know something even freakier?” Troy continued, not realizing anything was amiss in her mind.
Corvina nodded, the unsettling twist in her gut wounding up tighter.
“The students who finished the Slayers?” Troy grinned. “Legend says after ending them, they disappeared off the face of the earth after leaving Verenmore. Every single one of them.”
A chill wracked her frame as Jade punched Troy in the side. “Stop scaring us!”
“The woods are a place for scary stories, Jadie-girl,” he ruffled her hair.
The incline steepened as they walked, and Jax gave her his hand to help her as she grabbed her skirt. It was the first time in her life Corvina realized that hands held different sensations. Mr. Deverell holding her hand had been an entirely different experience than Jax holding her hand. Both their grips were firm and large, but where Mr. Deverell’s warm grip had penetrated her skin and sunk in to ignite something deep, deep inside her, Jax’s just was. It didn’t make her have even an iota of the same physiological or psychological response.
“How do you know so much?” Corvina asked Troy to distract herself from the thought of the mercury-eyed man.
Troy slid her a serious look. “I work for the university part-time, taking packages to town twice a month, sending them out. The people in town, while drowning in rumors, also have some very interesting info about this place. Especially the old woman at the post office.”
Corvina felt her brows furrow, surprised at this fact about Troy. “What about her?”
“Oh, this’ll be good,” one of the boys laughed from the back.
Troy remained quiet as he helped Jade over a fallen log. “Her father’s younger sister was one of the girls who’d been taken. She was born a few years after everything allegedly happened but she learned all about it from her parents.”
“Why are you even investigating all this?” Jade demanded, shaking her head.
“You’re not interested in knowing what happened here?” Troy demanded back. “This is our home and you don’t want to know why they keep all this shit hidden from us?”
“Actually, no, I don’t,” Jade responded. “I’m happy with my life here, and I don’t want to unsettle that. Simple.”
“Not even after what happened with Alissa?”
“Especially after what happened with Alissa.”
Alissa who had been hiding something from Jade.
‘Please help me.’
The voice came out of nowhere, echoing in her head, bringing with it that ugly coating on her tongue. Corvina bit her lip to keep from reacting, gripping the trunk of a tree at her side, keeping her eyes to the ground, to the rich, dark soil and thick grass around the folds of her skirt.
“The fuck!” Ethan exclaimed and everyone turned to see him standing at the back, towards the left, his eyes on something. Corvina followed his gaze to see what he was looking at and blinked.
A shack. Brick and wood. Not quite dilapidated. Unbroken windows.
And a long silhouette moving inside.
Her heart stopped.
“Fuck, let’s go,” Jade tugged on Troy’s arm, her eyes frantically connecting with Corvina.
One of the guys stumbled back. “Man, let’s get outta here.”
Pulse racing, Corvina squinted, but the shadow didn’t move again. It stayed still. Could it be someone who needed help?
>
‘Go back, Vivi,’ Mo’s voice sounded in her head, and that was a good enough answer for her. Whatever it was, a voice or her subconscious, Mo looked out for her.
Without a word, she started back uphill, knowing the others would follow her out. Their climb back was mostly in silence, their paces hurried, most of them lost in their own thoughts.
“What the fuck was that?” Jax asked after a few minutes, giving Corvina a hand over the same log again.
“Maybe an animal?” a guy suggested.
“An animal that tall?” Troy said quietly from the side. “I doubt it. Did you guys even see the door?”
Corvina looked at Troy, frowning. What about the door?
“What about the door?” Ethan echoed the question in her head.
“It was locked from the outside,” Troy stated, giving them a look before continuing up. “If there was anything inside, it was locked there.”
Jax hesitated, holding Corvina’s hand for support as she navigated the terrain. “Should we go back and see if it’s someone who needs help?”
The words left Corvina’s mouth before she could stop them. “We need to stay away from that place.”
She felt Troy’s eyes sharpen on her. “Why do you say that, Purple?”
“Just a feeling,” she told him simply. She didn’t think mentioning that a voice that may or may not be real, one she’d been hearing her whole life, had told her so would sit well with them.
“Yeah, well, I’ll trust her feeling,” Jade agreed. “Let’s just get back.”
They made their way uphill in silence as the daylight slowly disappeared, finally entering the castle grounds just as the sun sank below the horizon. They stood for a second in front of the towers, processing whatever had happened back in the woods.
A dark figure moved towards the Main Hall, his eyes taking in their group, lingering on the hand Corvina hadn’t realized was still being held by Jax. She saw his eyes pause on the hand for a long second before he moved on, and she didn’t understand why she felt the need to follow him.
“You don’t-” one of the boys began before pursing his lips.
“What?” Troy demanded.
“You don’t think Mr. Deverell has something to do with that, right?” the boy asked. Corvina felt her attention sharpen at his name, her eyes taking in his retreating figure, the idea whirring around in her mind. Could he? Could he truly have something to do with whatever it was back there?
Troy ran a hand through his hair, looking up at the sky. “I don’t know, man. He’s secretive and he goes in those woods all the damn time, and no one knows why. But I never got a bad vibe off him.”
Jade visibly shuddered. “It could be one of those wrong place, wrong time things.”
“He’s been here longer than any of us,” another boy pointed out. “For years, longer than most of his peers. First as a student, then as a teacher. Who knows what all he’s seen and done? Or even why he always goes into those woods.”
“Those woods,” Ethan said, looking at the sea of dark green hiding countless secrets. “I don’t know about Mr. Deverell, but something is very wrong in those woods.”
Something was very wrong in this whole place, and Corvina didn’t have a clue as to what it was.
CHAPTER 8
Unknown
The girl should never have come to Verenmore.
They saw as she roamed the castle in her gown and loose hair holding a candle aloft, like a ghostly apparition haunting the spaces between the walls. They saw as she went into the woods alone in the morning. And they had let her be.
But those purple eyes saw entirely too much, much more than they could reveal.
She was too daring, too curious for her own good. Those two together in one odd girl were a dangerous combination. She’d been far away from anything concerning them until now. Now, she could stumble upon something, uncover secrets buried deep, unravel everything they had worked so hard for.
They had to keep her away.
It was time for the diversion.
CHAPTER 9
Corvina
The girl with long, dark hair lay face down in the water, her tresses floating over the surface ethereally, her skin ghostly pale in the moonlight. Corvina looked around, not knowing the place or the time, just that she needed to get to the girl. She took a step forward, her ankle dipping in the icy water, disappearing under the blackness.
Heart pounding, she took another step, just as something cold, slimy gripped her ankles, locking her in place. Corvina struggled trying to get to her, but the movements caused ripples that made the girl float further away. She struggled harder, but the slimy fingers around her feet gave no room.
The girl reached the middle of wherever they were, and slowly began to sink into the murky water, inch by inch, until only her hair remained floating on the surface.
Corvina opened her mouth to call out to her but nothing came out, her voice muted, her throat locked in place like her ankles.
“Corvina,” a voice called from behind her, a voice she knew and loved in her soul. Her mama’s voice.
She turned to see her mama standing a few feet away on the shore, dressed in her black cotton gown and braid, smiling. But her eyes were blown up with black covering everything until she couldn’t see the violet eyes full of love. She was shuffling a deck of cards, watching Corvina with those eerie fully black eyes.
“Mama,” she called out, her voice working this time.
One card fell out from the deck, and another, and another. Her mama smiled up at her, throwing the deck to the side and picking up the cards that had come during her shuffle, turning them to show her.
The Devil. The Lovers. The Tower.
All major arcana. All powerful omens.
“You know what’s coming, baby,” her mother said, still smiling. “A storm. The only safe place is the eye. He is the storm. He will keep you safe.”
“Who, mama?” Corvina asked, trying to free her legs from whatever was holding her in place.
“The devil,” her mama answered.
“The one in the card?” she outstretched her hands, trying to reach her.
“The one in your heart,” her mother chuckled. “Once you taste the forbidden fruit, you belong to the devil.”
Corvina cried out as the hands holding her ankles began to tug her into the water, away from her mother.
“Mama,” she uttered in horror just as her mother began to disappear simultaneously. She struggled harder to get to the shore but to no avail, her body moving frantically deeper into the depths.
“Mama!” she screamed, her hands outstretched, trying to reach a mother who wasn’t there.
Something shook her hard.
“Corvina!”
Her eyes flew open to see Jade’s worried face looming over her, her hands holding her down by her shoulders. Corvina panted, her chest heaving, her entire body drenched in sweat, her eyes looking around the room wildly as her mind processed what had happened.
A nightmare. She’d had a nightmare.
Breathing through her mouth, she sat up, her hands trembling.
“You were screaming for your mom,” Jade told her softly, handing her a glass of water from the side. Corvina accepted it gratefully, gulping the whole thing down in seconds, letting her racing heart slow down.
A nightmare. Just a nightmare.
“Thank you,” she told her worried roommate, handing her the glass back.
“Are you okay?” Jade asked, taking a seat on her bed.
Corvina nodded. “It was a bad dream.” And that worried her. She’d never been prone to nightmares but the very few she’d had in her life weren’t good signs. Her mother had told her they were ominous, especially with her. The doctor had said they were damaging. She needed to get a grip of herself.
Swinging her legs out of the bed, she rubbed a weary hand over her face. “I’m going for a walk.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Jade told her, her eyes cautious.
“Are you sure?”
Corvina nodded. “I need some air. I need to walk it off. Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”
Pushing her feet in her boots, still clad in her blue nightgown, Corvina pulled her hair over a shoulder and took a candle from the drawer beside her. Her eyes fell on the tarot deck sitting beside it. Picking it up as well, sticking the candle on a holder, she lit it up and gave Jade what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Seriously, go to bed. I just need to walk it off.”
Jade bit her lip, eyed her flickering candle. “I’d suggest a lantern if you’re going out the walls. The wind is sharp tonight.”
Corvina glanced outside the window. The grotesque gargoyle outside the window loomed like an ominous monster screaming at the moon. An almost full moon. She’d be fine. Nevertheless, she nodded to her friend, wrapped a shawl around herself, and walked out.
The corridors were empty at this time of the night, the candle providing enough light for her to make her way down the stairs. There was no piano being played, it hadn’t been for a few days. She needed to go to her place, the quiet place where it was only her and no one else to interrupt.
Emerging into the foyer, she pushed open the entrance door of the tower with the hand holding her deck, and looked outside, to check any guards patrolling the grounds. Seeing her path clear, she slipped outside.
The wind cut on her face, cold and biting and enlivening. The flame on her candle danced with the wind for one wild second like a paramour, flickering and resisting its passion, before surrendering and extinguishing itself under his demand. The scent of the forest beckoned to her, the scent of rich soil and sleeping foliage, the scent of trees unknown and flowers unseen.
Still keeping the candle holder with her, she made her way to the forest and turned left towards the ruins. She’d never been to the woods at night here, but as she made her way to her destination, with the sounds of the forest and its creatures to keep her company, she felt herself relaxing. The woods at night were the same as they had been in her hometown. Nocturnal insects chirped, reminding her she wasn’t alone in the dark. Bats flew overhead going places at their hour. A bird cooed on every count of three.
