Page 83 of Gothikana

‘They’re still finding them,’ he told her, his eyes on the lake. ‘The bodies were weighed down.’

Corvina remembered her dream, the hands gripping her ankles, dragging her down. ‘From the feet, weren’t they? Something tied to their feet?’

He slid a glance her way. ‘Yes.’

They stood in silence after that, witnessing the aftermath of the mayhem his grandfather had created. This couldn’t have been easy on Vad.

Corvina looked around to see no one was watching, then slowly ran a finger over his hand in solidarity. ‘Are you okay?’

He huffed a laugh. ‘I’m actually happy. Relieved.’

Corvina glanced up at him, her brows furrowing. ‘At the bodies being found?’

‘Yes.’ He ran a hand through his hair, over that white streak. ‘We’d probably never be able to identify all of them, but knowing they’re found, it’s a relief. Having so many deaths in one place—’ His voice went quiet. ‘It might actually lift some of the curse off this castle.’

‘You think it’ll finally stop the disappearances during the Black Ball?’

‘We’ll know in a month, won’t we?’

Over the next few hours, as more and more students from the university came to the lake just to stand on the sidelines and watch the proceedings, Corvina stood with her friends in a daze and saw as the divers took equipment down and brought something out, over and over, until dusk began to fall and the diving had to be paused.

It took three days for the divers to bring up everything they found on the lakebed. By the end of it, more investigators flooded the area, more students coming to see what was found, more forensic experts to neatly organise and recordeverything.

On the last evening, under a full moon, a neat row of the items collected lay on four wide tarps. From personal belongings like shoes and hair clips and watches to skeletal remains.

Bones.

Fourteen skulls.

A total of eight hundred and sixty-eight fragmented bones, human and animal, the rest of them probably buried under the lakebed.

The feminine voice didn’t come again.

And her one question remained unanswered.

How the hell had she known about them?

CHAPTER 23

Corvina

The next fewweeks passed in a blur. Between studying for exams, writing final papers, and sneaking with Vad, Corvina barely had any time to breathe.

Having a boyfriend, who was a teacher and the owner of the castle and a member of the Board, came in very handy in some ways.

She got special permission from Mrs Suki to open the library early to do some studying, a fact students weren’t told because Mrs Suki didn’t trust them with her books. Her routine was simple. She’d wake up early and go to the library to work on one paper for a few hours, after which Vad would usually find her in an aisle after his workout, all sweaty and hot, push her against the books and fuck her for the day in the empty library. She’d then go back to her tower, shower and getready for classes, hang out with her friends, especially Jade, and help her slowly heal.

During classes, she would focus and study until Vad’s, where she would pretend that she didn’t know how he felt inside her, all the while ogling him. After the last class of the day, she would tell her friends she was going to the library but either stay back in class to have him bend her over his desk or push her against the window so she could see nothing but the cliff as he drilled into her from behind, or she actually would go to the library to study.

After dinner, she would tell her friends she was going for a walk and either meet him in the Vault — which was still not open to students due to repairs — or meet him in his room for a few hours.

Theyfucked.

They fuckeda lot, with an insatiable need that seemed to be growing wilder and an intense tenderness that seemed to be blossoming deeper. They talked a lot, too, after catching their breath in bed, or in the tub looking up at the castle, or in the woods going for a walk. Sometimes, they didn’t talk at all. Sometimes, he played his music banishing his demons and she read her romances acknowledging her angels.

Whatever they were, they just were. They stopped fighting against the current and gave themselves to it, not knowing where it would land them.

The fact that the bodies had been found in the lake had somehow made those woods even scarier on campus. Nobody went in themanymore, and the rumours that all the dead were haunting the castle seemed to find more and more validation in people’s minds. Everyone started seeing ghosts. Stories of ghosts in the towers, in the corridors, in the gardens, became rampant around campus. It got to the point where Corvina wanted to bash her head in when one of her classmates swore he’d seen a ghost in the toilet taking a leak.

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