Page 100 of Cursed

I expected Bastian to have a retort ready, but he shook his head. “No. I— I found Avril walking in the hallways… she asked me for help with the grimoire.” His eyebrow rose lasciviously. “She was willing to tradeanythingfor my help.”

I crossed my arms over my chest as I stared at him. “And?”

“And I remember walking up the stairs to her room, and then— shadows. I woke up in my bed with the worst headache… like I’d been on a three-day bender.”

Valen chuckled.

“What?” Bastian snarled.

Valen smirked. “A girl who barely knows a hex from a charm has tricked us. Unbelievable.”

“Shut up, Valen,” Bastian hissed, his pale eyes icy.

I was tired of this back and forth. It was getting us nowhere.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Valen’s gaze flickered to me. “When I saw Avril in the garden, she was frightened— she had a vision. But she wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

“It’s the grimoire,” Bastian said. “It gets into your head.”

The room fell silent as we each considered our encounters with Avril. There was a feeling of unease that lingered in the air, and it made my skin prickle.

The shadows in my memories were something I’d tried to ignore—every day seemed to blend into the next at Withermarsh.

But if we were all experiencing the same thing—

“We need to deal with this,” I concluded darkly. “If she’s tampered with any advanced spells in the grimoire...”

“She’d be inviting danger,” Bastian finished grimly.

“And not just to herself,” I added. Our magic had always ensured our supremacy in the city’s underbelly. But if Avril had somehow managed to tap into the grimoire’s power—

“We can’t afford to lose control,” I said.

“Of what?” Bastian snorted. “If she’s using the grimoire—”

“Don’t say it,” I warned.

But the thought had occurred to me, too. If she was already using the grimoire, there was no telling what might happen.

But I needed to knowhow.

How had she been able to decipher those pages? How had she been able to resist the grimoire’s dark power? It had been years since I’d bled onto those pages, and the damned thing still whispered in my mind.

I didn’t want to admit it, but the whispers had grown louder in the last few weeks.

I thought I’d imagined it.

But if Avril was working spells without knowing what she was doing—

“Look, whatever she’s doing— we need to figure it out before she does something stupid.”

“Agreed,” Bastian said, and Valen nodded.

Before I could respond, a knock shook the room, and we immediately looked at the heavy oak door. It swung open slowly and revealed a servant who stood at the threshold.

“Master Lucian has summoned you,” the servant announced. His words sliced through the air with an authority that left no room for disobedience.

---