Gothicana

She wasn’t ready to die.

‘But death might be ready for you,’ the insidious voice crooned.

‘You will live, Vivi!’ Mo shouted.

‘Help me, Mo,’ she begged to the one voice who had been her constant companion throughout the years, not knowing if he was real or an illusion of her mind, not caring because it gave her hope for a second.

‘I’m right here with you,’ he said, giving her the only thing he’d given her, his company.

“Walk to the edge, Corvina,” Jade ordered and Corvina felt her feet move without volition, taking her to the edge of the roof. And she knew exactly how Alissa and Troy must have felt being hugged by the wind, watching the sprawling mountains and the endless woods ready to greet them.

Her hair flew everywhere as she looked at all the places she had found herself on this mountain, places that had made her feel friendship for the first time, lust for the first time in her life, transforming into a deep love she had never imagined for herself but always hoped for. If she died, and it seemed likely that she would die, looking at those places, feeling that love in her heart, taking those memories of him with her into the afterlife was how she wanted to go – memories of silver eyes and whispered words and hard kisses and white-streaked hair, memories of his possession, his passion, his love for her.

She had walked these lands of evil and marked them with love. And after she was gone, they would bloom again.

Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the ruins where she had been first kissed.

“Did you burn the piano?” she asked the girl quietly, her body swaying as a strong gust of wind shook it.

Jade looked down at her hand, at the ring on her finger. “I was angry.”

She extended her hand to touch it and Corvina grabbed her wrist as tight as she could.

“Leave my hand,” Jade shrieked, trying to pull back and Corvina’s fingers flexed. No. If she let her go, she would destroy everything. She would destroy Vad, make him into a husk of a man. She couldn’t let that happen.

“I won’t let you ruin another life,” Corvina told her, tightening her grip on her hand, the only part of her body she could seem to control anymore.

“What the fuck are you doing, Corvina?!” she heard Ethan’s voice call out from below and she wanted to ask him if Vad had come back okay, if she could see him one last time before she had to go.   

Jade cried out from her side. “She’s gone crazy! I found her on the roof and tried to bring her down. She’s not letting me go!”

The fucking moronic bitch.

Shouts went up from under them, shouts for Corvina to let Jade go, shouts for her not to do something crazy, shouts begging her to not be mad.

They thought, they really thought, that she was a madwoman.

She would’ve laughed if she could’ve at the irony.     

‘It’s not ironic,’ said the insidious voice.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Mo countered.

The chaos inside her was going to make her head explode.

She felt someone else step on the roof that had been locked.

“You beautiful girl,” the deep, gravel voice came from somewhere behind them, and the sheer relief coursing through her body, the sheer pain at what he was going to witness, almost crippled her. Had her body not been paralyzed, she would have fallen to her knees in relief. She wanted to turn, to run into his arms and never let him go, but her body stayed frozen.

She began to sob.

“Don’t come any closer, Vad,” she yelled through her tears. “She has some kind of hypnotic drug. Don’t come closer.”

He didn’t even address her.

“Oh, you want to get rid of her? For us?” she heard his voice step closer and her heart began to pound. She needed to stop him.

‘He’s not even talking to you,’ the insidious voice said. ‘He’s looking at her. He doesn’t care.’

‘That’s a lie!’ Mo shouted, and her head began to hurt as though someone was hammering her skull from the inside. 

Corvina felt Jade’s grip leave her arm as she turned to the man behind her. “Vad. You know?”

His voice was seductive. Corvina knew the tone well.

“Of course, I know, silly girl,” he chuckled, his voice coming closer. “I know everything that happens in Verenmore, don’t I? And I’m so proud of you. You’re a true Deverell,” the pride in his voice made her stomach clench.

‘He never loved you, Corvina,’ the insidious voice gloated. ‘He’s just showing you the true colors now.’

‘You know that’s not true, Vivi,’ Mo reminded her, the constant back and forth making her groan as she tried to focus on the actual voices outside her head.

Vad was still speaking to pretend-Jade, his voice getting closer. “You know the thrill of the kill, don’t you, baby? The blood, the sex, the high. It’s incomparable.”

“Yes,” Jade breathed at her side. “I knew you’d understand me.”

“Let go of her hand, Corvina,” he commanded in that familiar tone she knew in her bones, addressing her for the first time.

Corvina felt her breathing falter, her body needing to see him but unable to move, the first seed of doubt entering her mind.

‘He wants her,’ the insidious one laughed. ‘He was just using you for a time. She’s right, he is sick like her. He probably only wants you to let her go so he can push you off himself.’

‘Vivi, do not listen to that bullshit,’ Mo cursed for the first time in her memory, his voice coming right over the insidious one, louder. ‘He would kill for you, never you. Remember what we decided? We trust him. Trust him.’

Both voices talked over each other, and Corvina cried out at the pain behind her eyes, her body shaking with the need to collapse.

Somehow making some sense of everything, despite every word coming out of his mouth and the voices screaming in her head, Corvina put her faith in him and let go of the only security she had.

She felt him at her back, his hand in her periphery coming to cup Jade’s face tenderly. “You did it all for me?”

Jade nodded, her breathing choppy. “We belong together. You and I, we are the perfect fit.”

Vad chuckled at her side. “Yes, we are. We like throwing people down, don’t we?” His grip on her face tightened. “How do you undo the effect of the drug?”

Realization dawned upon the girl. She began to laugh maniacally, trying to get out of his grip on her jaw but unable to. “Oh, Vad. You want to throw me down, don’t you? It won’t work. Verenmore is in my blood. I will always be here in these walls.”

He leaned closer to her, his voice hard. “How do you undo the effects of the drug, hmm?”

Corvina heard Jade’s cackle, her body completely frozen.

“You don’t. She will be your little plaything to do with as you please. Make her beg, make her crawl,” Jade smacked her lips. “I’ll watch.”

‘He can do anything to you now,’ the insidious voice said just as Mo chastised it to shut up.

“Watch from hell,” she heard Vad say, right before he let her go.

Corvina watched in frozen shock as the pink dress floated around the girl’s body as she fell, her laughter ringing in the wind with the shouts from below until she splattered on the ground, her eyes staring up at her, her mouth stuck on a mad laugh, blood pooling around her head like a demonic halo, soaking into her pink dress.

A shadow moved around the crowd and suddenly, multiple voices started to scream at her in her head, all at once.