Gothicana

CHAPTER 28

Corvina

 

 

Corvina stood, stu

“That’s impossible,” she heard herself gasp, her hands going to her head.

“She was in the system,” Ajax informed her as her mind spiraled, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

Suddenly a thought chilled her to the bone. She hadn’t been the only one to see Jade, had she? The idea briefly ran through her mind before she shook it. No, others had seen her. They had talked to her. She remembered it vividly. But were her memories wrong? Had her mind truly warped itself to the point where she had hallucinated memories for herself? Had she been so starved for a friend that she’d imagined the bubbly white-haired girl?

Corvina felt her heart pound, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t real at that point, her own narrative so unreliable she didn’t know what to think.

“You saw Jade too, right? My roommate?” she asked Ajax desperately. “The girl with short white hair and green eyes?” 

To her great, great relief, he nodded. “Yeah. Which begs the question, if the real Jade Prescott is dead, has been dead for two years, who the fuck is that girl?”

Corvina didn’t know.

Who had she been living with every day for months? Who had she befriended and cared for? Who was the girl who had hugged her every day and lit up her life with her light?

How could her instincts have gone so wrong? Was she wrong about Vad too?

“I’m going to go and figure this out,” he ran a hand over his palm. “Come find me if your boyfriend isn’t back in an hour.”

Corvina nodded, watching him go to the Admin Wing, and stood under the moonlight, confused beyond belief. Who was her roommate?

A sound from her left had her turning.

It was the caw of a crow from above her tower.

And it was odd because crows couldn’t see well in the dark, so they always returned to their nest to sleep at night, foraging for food after dawn. So why the hell was there one flying around the tower and cawing?

Her eyes drifted down to her window and she froze as a shadow moved inside her locked room.

Was it Jade?

Just as the thought crossed her mind, something slammed into her head from behind, and everything went dark.

 

**

 

‘Wake up, Vivi,’ Mo’s voice and sandalwood scent were the first things in her consciousness.

The first thing she saw after opening her eyes was the moon.

As Corvina struggled to keep her eyes open through the fog in her brain, a pounding ache radiated from the back of her skull into her head. She took a second to realize she was lying on something concrete, somewhere high because the wind was forceful on her skin. Throat dry, mouth as though full of cotton, she tried to sit up.

And failed.

Panic swelled in her as she tried to move her arms again, feeling their leaden weight, and couldn’t move an inch, even though she couldn’t feel anything tying her down.

What the hell was going on?

Her eyes roamed around frantically, her chest heaving as she tried to make sense of everything.

‘Why make sense of anything?’ the voice she’d rarely heard before muttered insidiously.

“I’m sorry it’s come to this, Cor,” Jade’s voice came from the side.

Finding the strength somewhere deep inside her, Corvina turned her neck just enough to the side to be able to see her roommate, still in her fairy princess gown, smiling at her benevolently.

“Who are you?” Corvina could barely whisper, some kind of force keeping her paralyzed even as her consciousness worked.

Jade frowned. “You’re not supposed to be able to talk after this. Huh. The dose must’ve been lower than I thought.”

What dose? What had she done? Who the fuck was she? Where were they?

“You remember that tree by the ruins?” Jade sat down cross-legged on the floor by Corvina’s side, pushing her hair back with her fingers. “The tree with the eye?”

Corvina remembered the tree and its odd eye.

“My grandmother carved the eye on the trunk to recognize it,” Jade told her, smiling at her. “The tree was special. It only grew leaves once in a few years, and she realized that if you powdered the leaves, it gave you power.”

What the hell was she talking about?

“You could blow the powder in anyone’s face and control them,” Jade told her, sifting through her hair. “She called it the Devil’s Breath. That’s what she used on their playthings.”

Realization dawned upon her.

The Slayers.

This girl’s grandmother had been the so-called witch of the group of murders.

“Your grandmother was-” Corvina swallowed to wet her throat.

“A Slayer,” Jade gri

Corvina felt some feeling return to her arms. “How?”

“How do I know?” Jade asked, her green eyes twinkling. “That’s because she never died. She escaped that night, the only one to escape, and she was pregnant. She raised my mother here, and then they moved to town where she met my father. My father didn’t want her, so that’s when grandma told her about the Devil’s Breath. That’s the night she conceived me.”

It was too much. The entire night up until that point was too much for her to wrap her head around.

Corvina felt sick not just with the night but with the story, thinking about a man in a situation she was as a woman forced him. It was absolutely disgusting.

Jade went on, as though happy to finally get it off her shoulders. She’d always loved talking. “Sadly, my father never remembered, and mother died a few years later. That’s when my grandma took me in. She raised me, taught me everything, told me all about what she and my grandfather used to do.”

More strength returned to Corvina and she managed to turn slightly, staring up at the girl who had been her first friend in this new place, a girl she had trusted.

“Oh don’t look at me like that,” Jade scoffed. “It was so well done. No one suspected the bubbly little girl who lost two people close to her. Such a tragedy,” her voice mocked. “I was so convincing.”

“Why?”

Jade leaned back on her hands and looked up at the stars, looking ethereal in the moonlight. “Why what?”

“Why kill the real Jade Prescott?” Corvina asked, thankfully her voice more stable.

She shrugged. “To come to Verenmore, silly. Stupid girl had come to town jabbering about getting admission. I gave her a lift up, got her whole life story, and took her to the old shack my grandma had in the woods. I wanted to see the place that belonged to my bloodline.”

Corvina’s heart stopped.

“You’re a Deverell,” she whispered, pieces falling into place.

Jade smiled beatifically. “Yes, I am. My mother was conceived on a night much like this. My grandma told me all about it – the blood, the sex, the sacrifice. They played so good. God, it must’ve been such a fun time.”

The excitement in her voice made Corvina nauseous.

She remembered Vad telling her his story, the disgust on his face when he’d relayed similar events to her. He had maybe killed his grandfather over it. And this girl, she was… crazy. There wasn’t another word for it.

‘But are you not crazy too?’ the insidious voice whispered.

‘Ignore her, Vivi,’ Mo said.