Curse Broken (Cursed Descent (MistHallow Academy) #3)

24. Vex

24

VEX

We’re barely inside the Academy building when Blackthorn’s magick finds us—dark and angry, like storm clouds heavy with lightning. He’s waiting in his office, and he’s still beyond pissed off with us.

I should probably feel more worried about that, but right now, I don’t think he will boot any of us out. Yet. We fixed the immediate crisis, even if we’re about to walk into another one.

“Ready for this?” I ask the others, pausing outside his office door.

Matilda straightens her shoulders, the Praxian force still shimmering faintly around her. “As I’ll ever be.”

Luc and Draven nod grimly. We all know what’s coming. Blackthorn doesn’t tolerate chaos at his Academy, and we’ve caused more than our fair share lately. He has a right to be mad with us, but I won’t take it sitting down if he comes down harder on Matilda. Not that I think he will. He seems to have a soft spot for her .

I push open the door. Blackthorn stands at his window, hands clasped behind his back, radiating controlled fury. The sky behind him is turning pink with the dawn, but the atmosphere in his office is pure midnight.

“Sir,” Matilda starts, but he cuts her off with a raised hand.

“Quiet.”

We file up like we did last time he yelled at us and wait.

Blackthorn turns, fixing each of us with that penetrating stare that could make a god crack. Never mind us. But this isn’t about broken rules anymore. It’s about the fate of his Academy and possibly much more.

“Did you fix the tears?”

“Yes, sir,” Matilda replies. “There were six, and they are closed, along with the Angel essences being sent back to where they came from. All before sunrise.”

His eyes narrow, but his lip twitches slightly.

“And the spirits?” Blackthorn asks, his gaze shifting to Draven.

“Back to normal, sir,” Draven answers. “No more divine essence fighting against their nature.”

Blackthorn nods slowly, but the tension in his shoulders doesn’t ease. “And the shadow creatures?”

How did he know about them? I groan inwardly at my thought. Of course he knew.

“Gone when we sealed the last rift,” I say. “Whatever they were, they couldn’t maintain form in our realm once we closed their way in. ”

“Whatever they were,” Blackthorn repeats, his voice dangerously soft. “Do you have any idea what you almost let loose in my Academy? Those were Void entities. Ancient things that would have devoured everything in their path.”

“But they didn’t,” I point out. “We sent them packing.”

“Yes, you did,” Blackthorn says, and something in his tone makes me look closer. Behind the anger, there’s something else. Calculation? “You sealed tears in reality that should have taken a team of master mages to handle. You guided divine essence back to its source without destroying the fabric of our realm. And you did it all with abilities that shouldn’t even exist.”

He moves away from the window, circling his desk to stand before us. “Do you know what that means?”

“It means we’re dangerous,” I say bluntly, watching Blackthorn’s reaction. “But it also means we’re effective.”

Blackthorn’s expression doesn’t change, but something shifts in his magick. “It means you’re unpredictable. And in my Academy, unpredictable elements need to be...”

“Contained?” Matilda challenges, a hint of rainbow light flickering around her.

“Directed,” Blackthorn corrects, and now I definitely catch that calculating look. “What you did tonight was reckless, stupid, and nearly catastrophic. It was also impressive. ”

We wait, knowing there’s more coming. Blackthorn doesn’t give compliments without a purpose.

“The question now,” he continues, “is what to do with you. Your enhanced abilities clearly aren’t going away, and after tonight’s display, I can’t pretend they don’t exist.”

“Are you kicking us out?” Luc asks quietly.

Blackthorn’s lip twitches again. “If I was going to expel you, you’d already be gone. Besides. You still have the menace to deal with downstairs and the magick unravelling, plus you need to get those straight As. Your positions hang in the balance. Make a checklist and get it done.”

That’s when I see straight through his badass Headmaster attitude. I smirk at him, and he glowers back, making me think I imagined it.

But I didn’t.

This is his way of getting us to focus and stop fucking about. He is holding the guillotine over our heads to make us work methodically, but quickly.

“As you wish,” I drawl, knowing now we are back on even footing. Well, as even as can be when he is Luke Blackthorn and I’m his nephew.

“Don’t get smart with me,” he clips out. “Go. Figure out where you are going to start and work until you have ticked everything off.”

Matilda looks like she wants to say something, but I grab her elbow and steer her out of the office. Luc and Draven follow.

I lead Tilly down the hallway and up the stairs to the dining hall. I don’t say a word, so no one else does either, as we look at food options and decide.

I grab a plate and pile it high with eggs, bacon, and toast. The others grab their choices, and we settle at a table in the corner. For a moment, we eat in silence, the weight of Blackthorn’s words hanging over us.

Matilda breaks the quiet first. “Why did you rush us out of there?”

“We have our orders, and we need to eat.” I’m not telling them about Blackthorn’s plan to get us to fall in line. It will make the more rebellious of our ragtag group dig their heels in, or worse, continue to fuck about if the threat of expulsion isn’t hanging over our heads.

“Fair enough,” Draven mutters, digging into his pancakes while Luc sips his blood.

“So where do we start? Big B said to make a list,” Matilda says after a minute of intense shovelling of food into her mouth.

I swallow a mouthful of bacon before answering. “The menace downstairs seems like the most pressing issue. He listed Anu first… twice. That’s his way of steering us in the right direction.”

“You think?” Matilda asks worriedly. “Isn’t the magick thing more pressing?”

“If it were, he would’ve insisted we do that first. Trust me. We deal with Anu first. Once she is out of the way, that thundercloud will disappear over our heads, and we are all clear to focus on the magick. ”

Luc nods thoughtfully. “Agreed. But we need to know if killing Anu will also kill Tilly.”

“Unless we don’t kill her,” Draven adds quietly.

It piques my interest. “What did you have in mind? She can’t stay here, and containment on the outside is risky; someone might be convinced to let her out.”

“Not if she is in Hell.”

Narrowing my eyes at him, I lean forward. “Go on.”

“She admitted to me that her ultimate goal wasn’t universal domination. Simply domination of one realm.” He looks at Luc. “Hell.”

Luc splutters on his blood. “What?” he croaks. “Are you bullshitting me?”

“Nope.”

“Mom will throw a shitfit.”

“She will also make sure that Anu has a nice little cage of Hellfire all of her very own for eternity.”

“Road trip then?” Matilda asks.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “We can’t all go to Hell. Luc and Draven will have to do it alone.”

“Or we let Mom come up here and take her,” Luc says. “It’s probably safer.”

“Okay,” I say with a decisive nod. “One of you should go to your mum and ask her to come here to collect Anu and fill her in on Anu’s dastardly plans. But be sure to remind her repeatedly that she can’t kill her.”

Luc rolls his eyes at me, but I slap my hand on the table, making our plates rattle.

“Tilly’s life is at stake,” I hiss at him.

He sobers up. “I know that. ”

“Then you make sure your mother, the Devil, doesn’t kill her. Okay?”

“Obviously,” Draven says.

“I’ll go and get her. I need to warm up a bit. My insides are aching from the cold,” Luc says.

“Fine. Go. Be quick.” I wave him off.

“What now?” he complains.

“Unless you want another lecture from Big B, yes, the fuck now.”

“All right, I’m going,” he says, holding his hands up.

“We will be in the library, working on the magickal redistribution shite.”

“Shite?” Tilly chokes on her toast. “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

“Then why are we still sitting here discussing it?” I point out, staring into those blue eyes of hers and wishing this was all over with so I could just stare at her for hours.

“Fair point,” she murmurs and gulps back her tea, rising, and I join her. “Let’s find Morrigan and see if she will help.”

“You go to the library, and I’ll go and look for her. We need to divide and conquer.”

“So what do I do?” Draven asks.

“You go with Tilly and pick up where we left off yesterday. We were onto something big, we just need to make sure the details are ironed out, so we don’t fail, or worse.”

He nods, and he and Tilly head off after clearing away their trays. Luc gives me a swift nod and slinks off to find somewhere to sneak off back home. And I head to my room in a flash of lightning, going straight to my desk to pull open the drawer. I unlock the ward, and it reveals the amulet my mother gave me that holds the Well ancestral magick. I turn it over in my hand, feeling its power, but unable to access it fully. There is only one creature who can help me, and while he may be super annoyed with me right now, I know he will help.

Gripping the medallion tightly, I transport myself to Blackthorn’s office, bypassing the regular magick dampeners that the Academy has in place with even greater ease now that my magick has grown darker.

Blackthorn doesn’t even flinch when I materialise. He’s back at his window, but this time, he’s holding a cup of highly pungent coffee.

“I wondered how long it would take you,” he says without turning around.

“You knew I’d figure it out.”

“That I was manipulating you all into focusing? Of course. You’re not stupid, Vex. Just reckless.” Now he does turn, eyeing the medallion in my hand. “And that’s why you’re here.”

I hold up the amulet. “I need to access it fully. The Well magick. And you’re the only one who can help me understand how.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “Why now?”

“Because the world’s magick unravelling is a big deal shitstorm brewing on the not-so-distant horizon. We need it. Plus, Draven is the only Necro who was able to resurrect my mother for long enough to tell me where it was.”

He snorts. “Yes, I can see how that timeline tracks. He is a powerful ally. They both are. Are you sure sending Anu to Hell is the right course?”

“Yes,” I say with zero hesitation, and absolutely no surprise that he already knows our plan. “Annabelle will want her close once she finds out what her plot has been all along. She isn’t our problem now. She is Hell’s.”

Blackthorn sits down and cradles his cup. “Nice passing of the buck.”

“It’s not buck passing. It’s strategic. We can’t kill her in case it kills Matilda. So it leaves us with one option.”

“Well played.”

I throw the medallion on the desk between us. “So, will you help me or not?”

Blackthorn picks up the medallion, its ancient power a shimmer around his hands. “The combined force of every Well who has ever lived. Their power, their knowledge, their abilities, all stored in this one artefact.”

“And I can’t access it properly,” I say, frustration leaking into my voice. “I can feel them there, all of them, but it’s like they’re behind a wall.”

“Because you’re trying to force it,” he says. “Ancestral magick isn’t something you can just grab and use. It has to accept you.” He holds the medallion up to the early morning light. “Every Well who has ever contributed their power to this is still in here, in a way. Their consciousness, their will.”

“So what? I need their permission?”

“You need their recognition.” He hands the medallion back to me. “They need to see you as worthy of their power. All of them. Every ancestor who has added their magick to this collection. Unanimous.”

“So not a democracy,” I grumble.

“Not in the slightest. One fails to approve, you lose.”

I close my fingers around the cool metal. “So, how do I get them to all accept me?”

“You have to make a choice. One choice that they all agree with.”

“And that would be?”

He shrugs. “How would I know? I’m not a Well, nor am I dead.”

“Well, fuck you,” I say. “So fucking helpful. And the dead part could be debatable.”

He gives me a sinister smile that shows his fangs, and I grimace. “I have given you what you required. It’s up to you now, Vex, to do the rest.”

I flip the medallion into the air and catch it. “Thanks, I guess.”

I turn to leave, hoping he will call me back and give me the answers, but he doesn’t. With a sigh, I leave his office and cast a small locator spell to lead me to Morrigan.

As it turns out, she is already in the library.