Page 108 of Gothikana

‘You will live, Vivi!’ Mo shouted.

‘Help me, Mo,’ she begged to the one voice who had been her constant companion throughout the years, not knowing if he was real or an illusion of her mind, not caring because it gave her hope for a second.

‘I’m right here with you,’ he said, giving her the only thing he’d given her, his company.

‘Walk to the edge, Corvina,’ Jade ordered, and Corvina felt her feet move without volition, taking her to the edge of the roof. And she knew exactly how Alissa and Troy must have felt being hugged by the wind, watching the sprawling mountains and the endless woods ready to greet them.

Her hair flew everywhere as she looked at all the places she had found herself on this mountain, places that had made her feel friendship for the first time, lust for the first time in her life, transforming into a deep love she had never imagined for herself but always hoped for. If she died, and it seemed likely that she would die, looking at those places, feeling that love in her heart, taking those memories of him with her into the afterlife was how she wanted to go — memories of silver eyes and whispered words and hard kisses and white-streaked hair, memories of his possession, his passion, his love for her.

She had walked these lands of evil and marked them with love. And after she was gone, they would bloom again.

Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the ruins where she had first been kissed.

‘Did you burn the piano?’ she asked the girl quietly, her body swaying as a strong gust of wind shook it.

Jade looked down at her hand, at the ring on her finger. ‘I was angry.’

She extended her fingers to touch it and Corvina grabbed her hand as tight as she could.

‘Let go of me,’ Jade shrieked, trying to pull back, and Corvina’s fingers flexed. No. If she let her go, she would destroy everything. She would destroy Vad, make him into a husk of a man. She couldn’t let that happen.

‘I won’t let you ruin another life,’ Corvina told her, tightening her grip on her hand, the only part of her body she could seem to control anymore.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Corvina?!’ She heard Ethan’s voice call out from below and she wanted to ask him if Vad had come back okay, if she could see him one last time before she had to go.

Jade cried out from her side. ‘She’s gone crazy! I found her on the roof and tried to bring her down. She’s not letting me go!’

The fucking moronic bitch.

Shouts went up from under them, shouts for Corvina to let Jade go, shouts for her not to do something crazy, shouts begging her not to be mad.

They thought, they really thought, that she was a madwoman.

She would’ve laughed if she could’ve at the irony.

‘It’s not ironic,’ said the insidious voice.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Mo countered.

The chaos inside her was going to make her head explode.

She felt someone else step on the roof that had been locked.

‘You beautiful girl.’ The deep, gravel voice came from somewhere behind them, and the sheer relief coursing through her body, the sheer pain at what he was going to witness, almost crippled her. Had her body not been paralyzed, she would have fallen to her knees in relief. She wanted to turn, to run into his arms and never let him go, but her body stayed frozen.

She began to sob.

‘Don’t come any closer, Vad,’ she yelled through her tears. ‘She has some kind of hypnotic drug. Don’t come closer.’

He didn’t even address her.

‘Oh, you want to get rid of her? For us?’ She heard him step closer, and her heart began to pound. She needed to stop him.

‘He’s not even talking to you,’ the insidious voice said. ‘He’s looking at her. He doesn’t care.’

‘That’s a lie!’ Mo shouted, and her head began to hurt as though someone was hammering her skull from the inside.

Corvina felt Jade’s grip leave her arm as she turned to the man behind her. ‘Vad. You know?’

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