Gothikana

by RuNyx

“I need to call Dr. Detta,” she whispered, hoping he would give her privacy to do so. He rubbed her lower lip. “Then call him. I’m not leaving. There’s nothing in your file that I don’t know already.”

😬

Jade sat down with her tray at lunch, her green eyes wide. Erica nodded from her side. “I know. I saw a team of people drive up during my free period.” Corvina took a bite of her salad, chewing slowly as she listened to the conversation, hoping for some update. “Why do you think they’re doing it now?” Ethan wondered, munching on a carrot stick. “Something must have happened to make them. I don’t think anyone’s even gone to that lake before.” Jax turned to her suddenly. “Hey, didn’t you find the lake in the woods at the beginning of the semester?”

Finally, they're back!

She realized she had actually stopped caring so much for social acceptance as of late, feeling less lonely and more whole, and it probably had to do with the way Vad accepted her. He was empowering her through their connection, making her realize she was lovable as she was, that she wasn’t an outcast, that she belonged somewhere precious.

Her friends accepted her first!

It was a surprisingly clear night. From this high in the tower, she could see the twinkling lights of the town far away in the valley, the endless mountain surrounded by velvety black forest, the half-moon so close she could reach out her hand and touch it. She wondered how the wind would feel on her face at this height. The windows were covered with glass, possibly to keep the elements from making their way into the room.

Yeah, that's what widows are. What is that sentence? 😆

“That house, Vivi.” Corvina froze. What house? The creepy shack in the woods?

Yes. Please go there. I've been waiting !

The woods looked unreal bathed in the brightness of the sun. The trees stood tall, a plethora of earthen colors from browns to greens and colorful flowers dotted around, azure sky peeking from between the branches. Without the constant gray and the fog, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. And yet, darkness clung to it.

Corvina stepped closer, taking a hold of his free hand. “I missed you.” He leaned toward her, touching her lips with the beak of his mask deliberately.

A surprisingly cute gesture. 😅

She locked her knees, gripping the side of the pillar for support with one hand, the other holding her glass tight as he wreaked havoc with his hand.

She's holding a drink through this? 😂

A scream from somewhere in the woods broke them all from their silent consideration, spurring them into action. All of it seemed to be happening so fast, a night that had been beautiful suddenly spiraling into one of horror with each passing minute.

“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 expressed concern about a friend the next.

😆

“Give my family the news.”

Lucky for the imposter, her family never reported her missing. Did they just assume she was ghosting them?

“Tell my mom I didn’t want to go.”

🙁

“If you had asked me a few years ago if a paranoid schizophrenic could raise a child alone without damaging the psyche of the child, I would have said no,” the doctor began. “But Celeste Clemm not only raised Corvina all on her own, she was rational enough to make a living, homeschool her, teach her everything she needed to be self-sufficient, all the while dealing with her own undiagnosed condition. It is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve heard. But then, maternal instinct has always been something understudied. It’s a very complex case.”

So the fact that an untreated mentally ill woman was able to raise someone that "well-adjusted" is unusual. But I would argue Corvina isn't even well-adjusted mentally. She was able to navigate social situations because she read a lot of books growing up, but she got her worldview and sense of reality 100% from fiction books—which isn't a healthy outlook. (We have no mention of her reading non-fiction.) Corvina is desperate to belong somewhere and be loved despite not being normal, so she rushed into an ill-advised relationship with a questionable man. It just so happened to work out and he wasn't as bad as he seemed, but this could have ended horribly for her.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Deverell. The human mind is extremely complex. She could have simply picked up subconscious cues that manifested when triggered by something. Her friend could have been slipping her small doses of the drug without her knowledge. Or maybe she actually heard ghosts.

This is an interesting world. Nobody rules out the paranormal, like "Who knows. Weird shit happens.🤷🏽‍♀️"

Her time at Verenmore had triggered her subconscious for some reason. Or maybe it hadn’t been her subconscious at all. Maybe she was a little otherworldly like Old Zelda had been.

I mean, obviously.

And Celeste might have given in to the voices in her head, but her love for her daughter still tethered her heart somewhere.

"Given in to the voices" That's not how that works. 😑

Love for this woman, this slight little woman who had touched him with her eyes and breathed magic in his world, swelled within him, brimming, overflowing. He pressed a kiss to her trembling mouth, then kissed her cute nose ring that was one of his favorite things, a piece of silver on her.

"slight little" I get it's just him describing her physically, but I don't like his emphasis of it.

“What will we do now?” she asked, her violet eyes hypnotic. She had sorcery in those eyes, and he was bewitched, besotted, begone.

"Begone" As far as I know of this term, that isn't the proper usage of it.

“Eyes on me,” he commanded her, and Corvina moaned, turning her head to catch his silver gaze as he pushed inside her from behind, his back pressed against her on the bed, rocking into her slowly, early in the morning before he had to take Count, their two-year-old husky, out.

So I ignored so many instances of this, but I'm almost done so I'll summarize in this one— Big sentences like this should be broken up. The tone of the erotica is incongruent with the tone in the part describing responsibility. It's jarring seeing them pushed together like that.

There had been another Black Ball last week, and she had learned that for the first time in a century, nobody had disappeared. Maybe someone would the next time. Maybe not. She didn’t know.

So why were people still disappearing if it wasn't anyone originally involved or copycats or paranormal happenings? Like, why did Roy end up in the water? What was happening there? Just going to leave a loose end?

They had talked about kids someday, both of them fearful of what kind of genes they would pass on, if it would be worth it. It had taken a long, long time for them, and parenting Count, to realize they wanted a family, a big family, something they’d both never had.

Another instance of a run-on sentence, Also : Five years isn't really "a long, long time", though. (Long enough to decide whether they're ready for parenting, yeah.) I would say a decade is "a long, long time", but five—no.

She never found out what had happened to Roy that night, never found out who the boy in the library had been, never found out what actually happened at the Black Ball, so many things unanswered. She had poured it all out in a hundred-thousand-word book. Corvina picked up the hardcover of the book from the desk in his office, one he always kept there because of how proud he was of her, and looked down at it. Gothikana by C. V. Deverell

No explanation?! Ugh, I guess sometimes everything can't be known—but goddamn, I thought something would come of that!

“It’s time for us to go home, Vad.” She rubbed her thumb over his jaw. “Dark as it can be, it’s where we both found ourselves. We can make it better.” He gave her a fierce look, his arm tightening around her, the tickets falling into her lap as he kissed her hard. Corvina smiled against his mouth. The castle on the mountain awaited them. Tomorrow, they would return to Verenmore once again. THE END, FOR NOW

They're going to raise kids there? That's not how colleges work. 🙈 They're institutions of learning, not an extended family home. Corvina's just going to run her business and they'll raise a family all in Vad's wing??? No house in the town where he can come back to them at night? It's totally unsafe for people in general with the unexplained paranormal happenings, but they're going to raise kids there now? I know this is pulp fiction, but that's just stupid.

Jaw clenching, he decided not to share any of his findings with his little crow. There was a reason Verenmore had buried so many secrets within itself, and some of them, perhaps, were never meant to come to light. He would let them stay buried, and never speak of them again. And maybe one day, the secret would escape the abyss.

More secrets from her? No, that's unacceptable. Was there supposed to be a sequel? Maybe their daughter solves the paranormal mystery?

There were certain things I experienced in my time there that did defy explanation, and in a way writing Gothikana gave me some closure and acceptance to a lot of open-ended questions. Sometimes, not all questions have answers, and if they do, we don’t always find them. And we have to learn to live with that.

Well, this is a book and I want those answers!! They were the number one reason I was reading. 😭