Gothikana

by RuNyx

It was the absence of color, the keeper of dark, the abyss of unknowns. It was her hair, her mama’s clothes, the vast sky all around them. She loved black.

🖤

For as long as she could remember, her mother had taken her to a clearing a few minutes away from their little cottage every morning to feed the crows. Her mama told her, on one of her good days when she was speaking, that they were intelligent, loyal creatures with the spirits of their ancestors, and they watched over them from the skies during the day, just like the stars did at night.

No mention of how she named the protagonist after them?

Her mama didn’t talk much but she did hear voices, voices that told her things. They told her to not talk to people, to homeschool Corvina after that incident at the school, to keep her away from everyone. Her mama told her she couldn’t wander or they would take her away. She couldn’t leave her side in town or they would take her away. She couldn’t talk to anyone or they would take her away.

😟

As she walked beside her on her little feet under the moonlit sky to the clearing—a rare Ink Moon that happened once every five years, an Ink Moon she was born under—she smiled.

What is an ink moon?

If her mother was a freak, then maybe so was she. After all, sometimes she heard the voices, too.

“Didn’t they investigate?” she asked her new friend, pulling out a drawer for her underwear. Not that she liked wearing it. Bras and Corvina were not friends. Having grown up the way she had, all alone with just her mother for company, bras had seemed necessary only once in a while. Panties she wore every day except when she just didn’t want to.

Um, ok? Why is her underwear situation relevant? Maybe she won't be wearing any on a later occasion. Like, in a scene with the LI?

He was sitting in the semi-darkness, dressed all in black, the sleeves of his sweater pushed up his forearms, his eyes closed as he bent forward, the line of his jaw chiseled square and shadowed with stubble, a lock of his dark hair falling forward.

That square jaw again (second to last book I read, too), because I guess LIs can't have any other shape.

The silence lengthened and she knew, just knew, that he was watching the door and the staircase. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. And she had to stand there and hide until the pressure of his gaze lifted. Whoever he was, he had intensity unlike any she had encountered before. “Whoever the fuck you are, walk away right now.” A masculine voice called out the command.

Lol, what?

Deep, gravel baritone. There was something dulcet but rich about it, heady, textured.

Dulcet is the opposite of baritone.

“Because every Black Ball, someone goes missing.”

And they just keep having them? Does this faculty sacrifice students?

“the first noted disappearance was about a hundred years ago. They said the guy went into the woods and got lost. The next disappearance happened on the same night five years later. It’s been like a hundred years and almost twenty people have gone missing on the same night. It’s just really spooky, okay?”

Yeah, they're sacrificing students. 💀

“Why didn’t anyone stop the Black Ball?”

Because they're sacrificing students and you're next!

“So, why didn’t they shut down the ball?” Jade sighed. “They did, actually. For a decade, I think. People went missing anyway.”

The silver-eyed devil walked in with a diary in hand, striding with confidence, his broad shoulders back, his wide chest steady, his long legs eating up the distance, commanding the molecules around him to shift.

It's always broad chests and wide shoulders, lol Also lol @ "commanding the molecules around him to shift"

There was slight premature gray at his temples, and Jade had been right—he made it work for him really, really well.

So the author wants the aesthetic of an age gap relationship without the actual considerable split.

“You will refer to me as Mr. Deverell. Not professor. Not my first name. I’ll be teaching you Language and Literature this semester. It is one of the core subjects of this course, hence mandatory. We’ll be covering the fundamentals of literature, the different schools of critical thought, and study some classics with the perspective of why they are so. Following so far?”

He's so condescending. Yeah they're following—you didn't exactly say anything complicated. 🙄

And the entire time, the silver-eyed devil nodded at them while keeping his eyes on hers, as though he could flay her open and delve into the deepest recesses of her mind.

He's just openly staring at her the whole time? Lol

“Are you scared?” Mr. Deverell asked, not moving from his spot at all. “Should I be?” she asked, raising her eyebrows slightly even as a part of her wanted to break the eye contact and blush furiously at the singular masculine attention from a very masculine male. “Yes,” he answered succinctly. “The woods are dangerous, especially for someone who doesn’t know them.”

"masculine attention from a very masculine male" 😬🔫

He exhaled and she watched the smoke suspend itself in the air, before dispersing into molecules unseen. Some of those molecules must have touched her lips because she felt her mouth tingle.

What??

“Are any of the rumors about you true, Mr. Deverell?” She saw his eyes flare slightly before he looked back out at the lake, taking another drag of the cigarette. “You’re very unusual, Miss Clemm. Almost enough to interest me.” He turned his eyes back to her. “And let’s just say that’s not a good thing.”

Yeah, she heard. Eh. I'm trying my best to read through this, but it's looking like another for the DNF list. I just want to find good gothic romantasy for October. 😭

Dr. Kari was one of her scariest professors in the semester. He had down-tilted dark eyes and a fierce white beard, and he was strict. One time a girl came late to the class and he made her stand outside in the corridor in full view until she had gone red in the face from humiliation. Students were reluctant to ask him a question. But it didn’t end there. He also seemed to enjoy looking at young girls too much in the class, all eighteen-year-old first-years, except an older Corvina.

Ok first : this description perfectly displays this book's wattpad teenage author style of writing. Second : I've read two books now that refer to college students as "young girls" rather than "young women". Once you're a legal adult, you don't qualify as a "young girl" anymore.

“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.”

Ok, I think I've had enough. 🙈

“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?”

Mte, Ethan.

the smoke flickered softly, once, twice, before the shadows and smoke began to sway together. Phantom ants crawled over her exposed arms. Clutching her blanket to her chest, she watched as the smoke took a shape and drifted away toward the door. She closed her eyes, shaking her head. No, it was an illusion of light, or perhaps even her mind playing tricks on her. “Find me.” The soft, feminine voice echoed in her head, followed by that ugly coating on her tongue and that rotten smell. Heart pounding hard in her ears, Corvina opened her eyes.

Spoomky. 🙊

donning one of her thin black sweaters and a long, dark maroon skirt that flared when she turned, Corvina left her wet hair to air-dry. Adjusting the crystal bracelet that her mother had made for her when she was four—with an obsidian, a tiger’s eye, an amethyst, a labradorite, a red garnet, a malachite, a turquoise, and a moonstone—she settled it over her pulse, letting the weight and the warmth seep into her. It had always been an anchor for her, something Dr. Detta had told her she could train her mind to use to focus and settle in times of stress.

Yis. Fashion.

Hooking on the pendant she’d made herself, a silver star on a long chain that nestled between her breasts, along with her ribbon choker, she put the white feather danglers in her ears, and felt ready. Grabbing the cookies she’d taken during dinner, she swiped on a deep maroon lipstick that matched her skirt

Werk

There was a natural order to the world, a system that could not be inverted. Taking a life was unnatural, something against the very basic cycle of life and death. An act of such severity tainted the energy around it.

So this is something other works have had as a plot point, too (Harry Potter, for example)—But it is a modern concept. Most of human existence was bloody, and it continues to be in many places today. This idea of killing being "unnatural" is a sentiment only of our recent history. Homo sapiens are just advanced primates; we're animals, too. The difference is that we have higher brain capacity, thus the potential to not act on impulse—but that doesn't mean everyone will.

She didn’t know if she was overly sensitive or had an overactive imagination or both, but after learning of the legend, she could feel something different in the air around her skin. It was entirely possible that she was imagining it. She didn’t know. Her own mind was unreliable.

Interesting characterization.

A tree stood right beside the gargoyle, a tree unlike any she’d ever seen before. In the middle of a thicket, it was the only tree without leaves, its branches naked and weathered and browned, webbing out into the sky in a scary, twisted shape. But that wasn’t what made Corvina pause. It was the eye carved into the trunk of the tree, one single eye so realistic it looked like the tree was watching her, the eye moving as she moved.

👁️ Cool, cool

The cawing of a crow broke her out of her trance. She watched a crow—not the one who’d been with her by the lake, this one was larger—perch himself on one of the stones. Shaking herself, she smiled at the crow. “Hello.” She spoke softly, crumbling one of the biscuits in her hand and trailing it on the wall.

🖤

Brushing her hands off, she turned back to take in the ruins. They were older than old. They looked ancient. Her eyes swept over the area, going to the graves on the right, and a pile of junk she could see beside it.

They dumped their trash in a cemetery? Tacky !

Corvina inched forward and extended her hand to the side, taking hold of the tarpaulin, and tugged it upward to uncover whatever it was protecting. Little by little, it came up, exposing dark wooden legs at first, then the base, and finally the body of what looked to be an old, damaged piano. It was a piano.

How'd they get a piano there?

Verenmore had a giant—and it was giant—library down in the dungeon.

Underground is a horrible place to store books. The moisture damage can lead to mold and even without that forming, the paper will degrade faster.

While studying interested her well enough, she wondered sometimes what exactly she was doing at a university in the first place.

Getting sacrificed in some shadowy ritual by the staff...!

Heart racing as the book slipped from her fingers, hitting the floor with a thud, she looked at the unfamiliar young boy gazing at her with shifty eyes.

Edit after 100% : Finished reading, and this is never explained.

A slight chuckle escaped him as he leaned closer, making her pulse flutter as his nose touched her neck. “I was with her one time, little crow,” he said against her neck. “That was before I knew she was a student. I haven’t come this far to risk it all for a random fling.”

1.) How didn't he know she was a student? Did he see her in town and assume she was a resident there? Did they quickly bang in a bathroom and go on their way? 2.) He says, risking it all to have a fling with *Corvina*. 😆

His hand—his big, naked, skilled hand—brushed over her hip, her thigh, his fingers glancing over

"Glancing"? Author means 'grazing', I think.

Silences were comfortable, but most people didn’t feel that way. She was realizing that most people had an unnecessary need to fill silences, a need she didn’t share.

Interesting characterization.

She had been going into the woods more over the week, early every morning. 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,

Journaling wasn’t something she had always done. In fact, she hadn’t even thought of doing it until Dr. Detta had suggested it.

More interesting characterization.

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.

I guess the premonition in the beginning was because they're ~soulmates~.

“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,

Yess. Let's go, scooby gang — Solve the mystery ! 🚩

“The fuck!” Ethan exclaimed, and everyone turned to see him standing at the back, toward 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’s. One of the guys stumbled back. “Man, let’s get outta here.”

You get your asses in that shack ! 😠

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.

Oo, let's go, sinister entity ! Edit after 100% : That is never fucking explained. 😑

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.”

Ha! Love dream mom and her figurative language.

“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.”

Dream Corvina, where did your brain go? Also, spit 🎤 dream mom !

If you value your life, don’t look at me like that. Not with those eyes.”

Yes, yes, she knows. Girl don't care, tho 🤷🏽‍♀️

She wanted this deviant mouth that kissed her like she was his feast after relentless gnawing hunger to kiss her in places no one had.

Should have commas : She wanted this deviant mouth, that kissed her like she was his feast after relentless gnawing hunger, to kiss her in places no one had.

He stayed silent for a long moment before speaking. “Vad. When we’re alone, you can call me Vad.”

Great way to maintain distance and not cross boundaries with a student. 😑

Despite the cool wind on her face, she could feel her skin flush. “You give me mixed signals, you know?” she told him quietly. “When you say stuff like that, it’s one. Then you warn me away from you, it’s another. You need to make up your mind about what you want from me.”