Gothikana

by RuNyx

To everyone who felt you never fit in, and learned the hard way that you don’t have to. Being different is your double-edged sword. One day, you’ll find your shield to match.

Her mother wasn’t a witch or a freak. Her mother was her mother. She just didn’t like people. Corvina didn’t like people either, but then most people in town weren’t very likable.

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

She was a twenty-one-year-old girl who’d been homeschooled and secluded her whole life by her mother. Why would a university want an undergraduate student way past the normal age, one who didn’t have anything close to conventional schooling? And who sent handwritten letters anymore?

Whenever she got the chance, she enjoyed people-watching.

“What rumors?” “Strange thin’s,” he said, his accent heavier. “People killin’ themselves, goin’ missin,’ as such. Now, we dunno how much truth it got. Townsfolk only get to the castle for temp jobs. Cleanin’ or deliverin’ somethin’. But that’s what my mama told me, and her mama before her. Folks at the castle go mad.”

That was very oddly specific for a rumor. Although she didn’t know if it had any grain of truth in it at all.

Books had become her refuge, especially books with men—humans, shapeshifters, or aliens—who fell in love hard and claimed their women, body and soul. Those were her favorite.

New beginnings, newer her.

“But also, I don’t blame Alissa for hooking up with him at all. She shouldn’t have done it but Mr. Deverell—there’s something about him. He’s hot but so freaking cold. Nobody knows shit about him, where he comes from, anything. Silver-eyed devil, that’s what we called him. And he’s got this premature gray streak of hair that just works so good for him, you know?”

Bras and Corvina were not friends.

One single card from her deck was upturned on her sheets, a card she didn’t remember pulling, a card she didn’t even remember touching. The Death card.

Gritting her teeth, she immediately got up again. She was meant to listen to this music. There was a reason for it. The last time she’d felt this breathless tug had been right before her mama had been taken away, a longing deep-rooted in her heart. This was, for some reason, important, and she couldn’t ignore it.

How was nobody else waking up at the music? Were they so used to it? Or couldn’t they hear it at all? Was it inside her head?

Corvina swallowed, wanting to tell him that she hadn’t meant to disturb him, to tell him that he was possibly the most darkly beautiful man she had ever seen, that he played like he had been cursed to play for his life. She wanted to tell him all of those things, but she said none.

Even though a part of her wanted nothing more than to find someone who would take her secrets without her having to make constant choices. It was exhausting being alone.

“This castle has so many secrets,” Jade whispered, looking out the window. “I love this place, but it scares the fuck out of me.”

“It means little crow.” “Raven,” she corrected him automatically. His eyes flared. “Raven and Clemm. Your parents liked Poe?” “My mother did,”

“Damn…” They turned to see the tall, gorgeous Black girl who’d introduced herself as Erica, walking behind them. “That was some peak sexual tension. Bottle it, and you’d be the richest fucking girl this side of Tenebrae.” “See.” Jade pointed to Erica. “It’s not just me.”

“Follow the bird.” Should she? She always did whatever Mo told her to, without question.

“You must know so many secrets about this place. I wish you could tell me.” “Be careful what you wish for.”

“Stay out of the woods, little crow. Your feathery friends can’t help you if you’re dead.”

“Would you prefer it be night all the time?” Corvina asked curiously, crossing one leg over the other. “Hey,” Jade yawned. “Gimme a hot guy and pots of money and I’d be a night girl my whole life. Mornings are the devil’s work.”

“And what makes you think this kind of bullshit is okay in my class, Brown?”

“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.

Oh, he was doing something for her, but boring wasn’t the word she’d use.

“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.”

“Aren’t you fearsome? I met your friend the other day by the lake. Surprisingly, I don’t see you guys on campus at all. Why don’t you come to the university area? Is it because of other people? Or do you have a nest in the woods and like to stay close?”

“Well, I’m just telling you what the rumor mill is churning. You’ve been doing animal sacrifices and giving blow jobs in the woods, apparently.” Corvina felt a laugh bubble out of her. “So, wait, am I going to the woods to be witchy or slutty? I’m confused.” She saw Roy’s lips tip upward before she controlled them. “Just letting you know.”

But Jade told her that Alissa had been hooking up with him, or at least that’s what she’d told Jade. Had she lied to her roommate? And if so, why? What the hell had she been involved in to kill herself afterward? Or was he lying to her?

told you not to give me those eyes.” Silver met violet in a dark corner of the library. “Your eyes have such hunger. Your soul is starved, and your flesh is famished. Tell me, Miss Clemm, do you want relief?”

Verenmore was her clean slate, and Vad Deverell was her writing on the wall.

She was mostly an introvert, perhaps because of the way she had grown up with silence as her companion.

Goose bumps erupted over her arms. What the hell? What had the boy in the library meant with his message? Who the hell had he been? Maybe, he had just been messing with her.

“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.

She didn’t think mentioning the voice she’d been hearing all her life—which might or might not be real—would sit well with them.

A bird cooed on every count of three. One. Two. Coo.

“Things like my fist in your hair and my tongue in your mouth,” he told her harshly, the lines of his face strained. “Things like fucking you in front of the boy who held your hand, just to tell him you’ll never be his. Things like bending you over my desk after class and telling you to wrap your lips around my cock like you do with your pencil.”

“This is lust,” she whispered, trying to validate it, excuse it. “No, Corvina.” The side of his lips twitched. “I’ve known lust. This is something worse. This is a barbaric need to possess, to eliminate, to own. This is madness.” Madness.

“If this is madness,” she whispered almost against his lips, “drown me in it.”

“If this is madness,” he told her, echoing her words against her lips, “I’ve already descended too far.”

“One thing I knew growing up as a little girl was this—do not go into those woods, and do not stay out on the full moon night. Everyone in town will tell you the same. Nothing good happens in these parts on a full moon. There’s something unholy around that castle. Best not rouse it.”

“I never regretted kissing you, little crow.” Corvina looked at his face, so close to hers, her body warm. “Then what did you regret?” “Having to end it.”

As though he heard her voice, he looked straight down, right at her, and gave her a smile that chilled her to her bones. Then he walked off the roof. Her scream drowned in a sea of others as his body succumbed to gravity.

Human contact was such a precious thing. Only people who had been starved of touch knew the value of it, knew never to take it for granted, especially something so intimate as sleeping beside someone.

“She told Vad to look for purple eyes.” Ajax looked into her gaze. “We were just kids. We made fun of him about that. Nobody had purple eyes, you know? But that’s all she told him.”

Ajax gave a hard grin. “Verenmore has always belonged to the Deverell family. It’s not common knowledge, but legally, the castle and this mountain are both his.”

Something pulsed in the air between them, an aura of danger wrapping around him that sent a perverse thrill to her lizard brain.

🦎

“I’m in your head, in your blood, in your very veins. I’ve claimed you before anything else ever could. Your body, your heart, your mind, your fucking soul, it’s all mine. Your hunger is mine to feed, your madness is mine to tame. Do you feel that?”

“My little witch with those fucking purple eyes, fucking made for me. And I’m your devil, am I not?”