Page 110 of Gothikana

‘Don’t listen to them!’

‘Jump and end this, Corvina. You know you want to. There’s nothing for you here.’

Corvina screamed at the pressure in her skull, her eyes, her ears, her nose, her teeth, everything hurting as her body began to shake, unable to bear too much mental stimulation, her voice cracking as the pain in her head pounded through every inch of her bodythat just couldn’t move. Tears and sweat streamed down her face as she whimpered, swaying on the edge of the roof.

She felt herself begin to tip forward and closed her eyes.

An arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her back from the edge, her body stiff and hurting.

‘Why did he have to come?’

‘Tell my mom I didn’t want to go.’

‘Get away from the roof.’

‘Fucking die.’

‘Look at me!’ The deep command broke through the noise. She felt him turn her, his hands cupping her face and tilting her head, his voice cutting through all the ones in her head. ‘Corvina, give me those eyes. C’mon, baby.’

‘Leave him behind.’

‘Jump down.’

‘That’s the only end.’

Her eyes began to close.

‘No, no, look at me. Stay with me,’ his deep, gravel voice ordered, an edge of panic in it unlike she’d ever heard. She didn’t want him to panic. She was just going to sleep and shut off everything in her body — her skin which was sweating too much, her brain which just wouldn’t shut up, her heart which was pumping too fast, too loud, her body which seemed to be shaking out of her control.

Everything hurt.

‘Corvina!’ the terror in his tone reached her somewhere deep down where she was still capable of one last rational thought. Somehow, she fought everything inside her and opened her eyes for one split second to look at him, just to take him in one final time, her eyes locking with those beautiful silvers.

‘The voices won’t stop,’ she managed to whisper somehow.

She became aware of him swinging her up in his arms as she began to murmur things she didn’t even understand, her eyes going blank, the voices in her head finally taking over.

This was whatDanse Macabrefelt like.

Chapter 29

Vad

A life withouthis violet-eyed witch was the scariest thing Vad could imagine, a possibility that had become too real in the one split second she had tipped over on the tower.

He had loved his melancholy until she had touched him with her magic — with her shy looks that got bolder as she opened up to him, with the way she accepted his dark parts and filled them with her stars, with the tenderness inside her that somehow always soothed his jaggededges.

And now he couldn’t imagine going back to the melancholy again, to being an endless night without the stars, to being a lone mountain without a castle atop it.

He wasn’t a believer of anything beyond what he could see, but there had been something at work beyond his understanding that had driven him to her. Because what were the odds that the day blind Old Zelda had grabbed his arm had been the day this girl had been born? He didn’t believe in destiny, but he was living the effect of it. It had been the same thing that had led him to look for Fury and find the violet-eyed paranoid schizophrenic with dementia at the institute. It had been the same thing that had made him stop and glance to the left of the hallway where he’d seen her for the first time.

Vad sat in the same hallway, elbows on his knees, eyes on the door where they had taken her through.

He had been in the tunnel when that same indefinable something had urged him to get back to the castle. He had run, followed by an instinct he didn’t even understand, to the roof where two young people had already died.

Wiping a hand over his face, he glanced at the clock, trying to focus on something other than the bone-deep terror he had felt when she’d started to sway close to the edge, her beautiful eyes glazing over, lost in a place he couldn’t go, her body seizing in his arms. He had taken her to the medical room where the residing doctor had given her a safe sedative while Ajax had called for the Squad Emergency chopper, allowing Vad to bring Corvina to the institute where she would get thehelp she needed. He hadn’t lied to her when he said he would move mountains to make sure she was okay. But god, he hated owing the fucking bastard.

‘Mr Deverell.’ The small man he now identified as the famous Dr Detta came toward him. Vad got to his feet immediately, his chest tight. He needed her to be okay. He really fucking needed her to be okay.

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