Gothicana

CHAPTER 23

Corvina

The next few weeks 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 get ready 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 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 di

They fucked.

They fucked a 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 them anymore, and the rumors 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.

Corvina didn’t believe all the rumors, mostly because the voices in her head had been quiet. Yet, a sense of relief wasn’t what she felt as they got closer to the Black Ball. It was a sense of doom, a sense of something being terribly, horribly wrong. Dr. Detta never called back and that was even more frustrating.

“I can’t explain it,” she told Vad as she sat in the library armchairs after an intense, blissfully orgasmic round of sex early in the morning. “It’s like… my instincts are screaming at me. Something bad is going to happen and I don’t know what it is.”

Vad poked the wood in the fireplace, sitting on his haunches, his arresting face lit up by the firelight. The weather had definitely taken a turn for the better during the daytime but early mornings were still too cold.

“Is there anything in particular that triggers it?” he asked, taking a seat in the plush, red and brown armchair beside hers, buttoning up his shirt that was missing a button somewhere on the library floor.

Corvina paused to consider his question, trying to think about when she got the feeling. Her heart sank. “It’s always the strongest after we’re together. I… I think it might have something to do with you, or maybe your family?”

He put a hand on her restless knee, stilling it. “It could entirely be hormonal. I’m not saying it to be a dick, but your hormones are high when you’re with me. You feel more intensely. That could be a reason.”

He made entirely too much sense sometimes. Corvina sighed. “Then we’re back at square one, of me having zero idea about anything.”

A squeeze on her knee. “Ajax came yesterday. Told me they’ve identified ten of the victims. Four remain unknown.”

“But there were fifteen of them, right?” Corvina remembered from the empty graves.

“Yes,” he stood up. “They could’ve been disposed off elsewhere. Given these woods, we may never know.”

“Are you leaving?” Corvina tilted her head back to look at him, seeing his tall, broad physique covered in black, his hair swept back from his face with that white streak shining in the firelight, highlighting his beautiful cheekbones and those searing, stu

“I’m finishing my thesis today,” he bent down to close his lips over hers, giving her a hard kiss, before pressing a kiss to her piercing, his eyes blazing. “Be good.”

She smiled. “When am I not?”

His lips twisted, before he picked up two books from the desk he’d fucked her on, and went out.

Corvina exhaled, turning back to studying critical theory, the knot in her stomach never truly dissipating.

It was in that moment that for the first time in her life, Corvina opened her journal and uncapped her pen, and began to let the thoughts flow.

The wind in the walls

Echo secrets and sins

Whisper to me

Urging me

To listen

And I try

Fail

Not hearing the death

That is coming

She looked down at what the fuck she’d written in her stream of consciousness, closed her eyes, and tore the page off, throwing it into the fire. It devoured it, the ink melting in the flame, consumed, one with the ashes that would remain in the end.

Stroking a hand over her journal, she quietly began to write the story of a girl who had died in a castle, haunting the walls for a lover who never came.

Jade found her a few hours later, sitting in the armchair and scribbling furiously in her notebook, as though the floodgates had opened.

Jade dropped her bag on the floor, looked at Mrs. Suki’s empty desk, and fell into the armchair Vad had been sitting in hours ago.

“I can’t study anymore,” she complained in a tired voice. “If I have to read one more date for History, I will do something drastic.”

Corvina felt her lips twitch but stayed silent, finishing the last line on her page before closing it and putting it in her bag, the thrill in her veins at the story something novel.

“Are you excited for the Ball?” Jade asked her once she was done.

To a tiny degree, she was excited. She’d never seen anything like the Ball these guys talked about in her life. Good food, good music, good clothes, and masks, it all sounded like such a perfect night. As long as no one disappeared this time, that is.

She shrugged. “A bit, yeah.”

Jade looked down at her nails that she’d finally painted pink again for the first time since Troy. Just thinking of him sent a pang through Corvina’s heart. She missed his presence and his trademark grin every single day, so she couldn’t even imagine how much harder it must be for her roommate. She imagined sometimes how she would feel if she lost Vad the way Jade had lost Troy, and just the fact that Jade could get up from bed and resume life was a marvel to her.