Page 11 of Gothikana

‘I’m Vad Deverell,’ he said, addressing the class, his deep, gravel voice dripping with authority. ‘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?’

Most of the students nodded.

‘Good.’ Mr Deverell leaned against the table, putting his diary on the desk, hands on either side, hands she’d seen work a piano so masterfully. ‘For the classics, I’ll give you all a choice between a few. Whichever you decide, we’ll study. For my class, you’ll need to write two papers for the entire semester — one creative and one critical. And I don’t want answers from the book. Think free. Give me the context of why you choose a certain topic. And we’ll go from there. Any questions?’

A girl at the front in red raised her hand.

He nodded for her to go on.

‘Aren’t you a student yourself, Mr Deverell?’

His silver eyes glinted in the light from the window. ‘A doctorate student, yes. I’m completing my thesis this year.’

‘What is your project on, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?’

‘Don’t call me sir,’ he commanded, his hands gripping the table at his side, his eyes coming to Corvina. ‘My thesis is the correlation and influence of music on literature through the ages.’

Damn.

Damn.

He was unsettling. Very unsettling in a way that made her want to squirm in her seat, especially when he looked at her like that and talked with such intelligence. Corvina could admit she’d never encountered that. And she wasn’t the only one who felt that. She could see a few flustered girls around the class, and she knew they were feeling whatever was rolling off him.

Corvina broke their gaze again and looked down at her notebook, her chest heaving. She realised it was possibly the first time in her life she was feeling lust induced by an actual man and not a fictional character. This was what it felt like — writhing, hot, velvety. This was lust. And she wanted to roll in it.

‘Introduce yourselves now,’ he ordered the class, crossing his arms over his chest, and Corvina looked up to find those mercurial eyes ensnaring hers.

‘Jax London,’ the good-looking guy at the front who’d been hanging around with Troy started.

‘Erica Blair.’

‘Mathias King.’

Followed by the next, and the next, and the next.

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 wanted her name. He wanted to hear her voice. She knew it in her bones. And for some reason, her stomach felt heavy at the thought of directly addressing him, at the thought of giving him her name. Names had power, as her mother told her.

‘Jade Prescott,’ her roommate spoke from beside her and Corvina knew she was next.

She swallowed as he nodded at Jade, before giving the entire ferocity of his focus to her. Palms clammy, she rubbed them on her skirt and wet her lips.

‘Corvina Clemm,’ she voiced softly, grateful that her voice didn’t reflect her inner turmoil.

The boy from the front, Mathias, turned to look at her. ‘That’s a cool ass name. Does it mean something?’

Corvina, who was still trapped by silver eyes, saw his jaw clench at the boy’s interruption. ‘Crow,’ he spoke, addressing Mathias. ‘It means little crow.’

‘Raven,’ she corrected him automatically.

His eyes flared. ‘Raven and Clemm. Your parents liked Poe?’

‘My mother did,’ Corvina said, her eyes stinging remembering how much her mother had loved the poet. Her nose twitched involuntarily.

She saw his eyes linger on it for a second longer before he moved on to the next student, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Alright, let’s get started.’ He clapped his hands, and the rest of the class passed in a blur, mostly with her keeping her head down and focusing on taking notes. Before long, the bell rang.

‘We’ll discuss this tomorrow,’ he said, picking up his brown leather-bound diary, and left the room, taking that charge of electricity in the air with him. Corvina slumped slightly, a breath escaping her just as Jade turned to her.

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