Page 12 of Gothikana

‘What the hell was that?’ she hissed as the other students began to leave the room.

Corvina looked at her with a frown. ‘What?’

Jade’s eyes were troubled. ‘Whatever that was between you two. The air was pulsing, Cor. I’m not even kidding.’

Corvina shut her notebook, chuckling. ‘That was probably all the ovaries in the room melting for him.’

‘No.’ Jade stood with her. ‘That was the two of you. It felt… hot. And that’s not okay, not in this place. Just be careful, okay?’

Corvina huffed as they made their way to the door. ‘He’s our professor, Jade. I know that.’

‘Damn…’ They turned to see a 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.’

Corvina shook her head at them. ‘I don’t know what you guys are talking about.’

‘Girl,’ Erica said, passing them towards the corridor outside, ‘from where I was sitting, it was lit up so bright aliens could probably see it. Mr Deverell looked like he’d eat you alive. No, it looked like he’d feast on you if given the chance.’

Corvina clutched the strap of her bag as they exited into the corridor and Erica went to greet someone else.

Jade began to walk toward the stairs just as the man in question ascended on the other side.

Her friend turned to look at Corvina seriously. ‘You don’t understand, Cor. He’s just so… unknown. Like we all have our secrets, but he takes it to the extreme. He’s the only one who goes into those woods all the damn time. No one knows where he comes from. He doesn’t have any friends, only his colleagues. Then Alissa hooks up with him against the rules and jumps off a tower? It’s just… weird.’

Corvina couldn’t deny that as she watched his black-clad form disappear up the staircase. It was weird.

‘And you wanna know something even weirder?’ Jade asked, taking the other staircase for their next class.

‘What?’ Corvina asked, realising she asked that a lot to this girl.

Jade looked at her, her green eyes sombre. ‘The last girl who went missing at the Black Ball five years ago? She was with him at the time. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

CHAPTER 4

Corvina

‘Don’t fret, Vivi.’

The whisper drifted into her ear so lightly she almost wrote it off. Almost. And then she suddenly came to a standstill in the middle of the garden. It was early in the morning, too early for most people to be awake.

But she was up at the crack of dawn. She’d slept restlessly, with the castle groaning at night, and woken up with a hot flash she hadn’t had in many years. Sweating, she had run to the empty common showers, turned on the cold faucet, and cleansed herself as thoroughly as possible. Then, ready for the day, she had takena packet of dried nuts and gone down to the gardens to take in some fresh air. And the whisper had come.

Mo. But why was he so light in her head?

She didn’t know whose voice it was, or if it was even real. With her history, it was entirely possible that it was simply in her head and she was imagining it. But this voice was a man’s. It had always been a man’s. She’d liked to imagine when she’d been younger that it had been her father’s. She didn’t know much about him, only that he had killed himself, leaving behind the cottage and the little land to her mother.

A crow flew overhead. The first one she’d seen in all the weeks she’d been there.

‘Follow the bird.’

Should she? She usually always did whatever Mo told her to without question.

Corvina looked up at the bird, following it with her eyes as it went down around the castle to the woods beyond. She’d not ventured into them here, but she knew woods. Her sense of direction was fantastic, so she wasn’t worried about getting lost.

Determination zinging through her, she wrapped the burgundy shawl around her frame and headed down the incline to the same spot the bird had flown over. The fog swirled around her skirt early in the morning, her breath misting in front of her face as she stepped into the woods, waiting for the sounds of the bird to guide her.

When she’d been a little girl, her mother had taught her to follow the caws of the crows into the woods to feed them at a certain spot. That way, the birds knew exactly what area to expect their food in.

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