Gothikana: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

by RuNyx .

  Everything hurt.

  “Corvina!” the terror in his tone reached her somewhere deep down where she was still capable of one last rational thought. Somehow, she fought everything inside her and opened her eyes for one split second to look at him, just to take him in one last time, her eyes locking with those beautiful silvers.

  “The voices won’t stop,” she managed to whisper somehow.

  She became aware of him swinging her up in his arms as she began to murmur things she didn’t even understand, her eyes going blank, the voices in her head finally taking over.

  This was what Danse Macabre felt like.

  Chapter 29

  Vad

  A life without his violet-eyed witch was the scariest thing Vad could imagine, a possibility that had become too real in the one split second she had tipped over on the tower.

  He had loved his melancholy until she had touched him with her magic – with her shy looks that got bolder as she opened up to him, with the way she accepted his dark parts and filled them with her stars, with the tenderness inside her that somehow always soothed his jagged edges.

  And now he couldn’t imagine going back to the melancholy again, to being an endless night without the stars, to being a lone mountain without a castle atop it.

  He wasn’t a believer of anything beyond what he could see, but there had been something at work beyond his understanding that had driven him to her. Because what were the odds that the day blind Old Zelda had grabbed his arm had been the day this girl has been born. He didn’t believe in things but he was living the effect of them. It had been the same thing that had led him to look for Fury and find the violet-eyed paranoid schizophrenic with dementia at the Institute. It had been the same thing that had made him stop and glance to the left of the hallway where he’d seen her for the first time.

  Vad sat in the same hallway, elbows on his knees, eyes on the door where they had taken her through.

  He had been in the tunnel when that same indefinable something had urged him to get back to the castle. He had run, followed by an instinct he didn’t even understand, to the roof where two young people had already died.

  Wiping a hand over his face, he glanced at the clock, trying to focus on something other than the bone-deep terror he had felt when she’d started to sway close to the edge, her beautiful eyes glazing over, lost in a place he couldn’t go, her body seizing in his arms. He had taken her to the medical room where the residing doctor had given her a safe sedative while Ajax had called for the Squad Emergency chopper, allowing Vad to bring Corvina to the Institute where she would get the help she needed. He hadn’t lied to her when he said he would move mountains to make sure she was okay. But god, he hated owing the fucking bastard.

  “Mr. Deverell,” the small man he now identified as the famous Dr. Detta came towards him. Vad got to his feet immediately, his chest tight. He needed her to be okay. He really fucking needed her to be okay.

  “Let’s talk in my office,” the other man indicated a door to the side, and Vad followed him in silently, taking a seat as the doctor put some brain scans on a whiteboard with a backlight before sitting down.

  “I need to understand your relationship with her before I can talk to you, Mr. Deverell,” the doctor said, his tone grim.

  Vad didn’t like the tone. “I’m going to marry her someday,” he said. He would have fucking put a ring on her finger weeks ago had he not known she would panic. She needed the space to grow and find her own footing within the relationship and within her mind, or she would regret it.

  “That’s good,” Dr. Detta relaxed marginally. “Corvina is a very unique case, Mr. Deverell. Her upbringing alone makes her one of the most different cases I’ve seen in my forty-year career.”

  “What do you mean?” Vad was glad he was finally having this conversation with the doctor, though not the circumstances around it. Reading her file was one thing. Hearing her doctor’s analysis was something he needed if they had any chance of a future.

  “If you had asked me a few years ago if a paranoid schizophrenic could raise a child alone without damaging the psyche of the child, I would have said no,” the doctor began. “But Celeste Clemm not only raised Corvina all on her own, she was rational enough to make a living, home-school her, teach her everything she needed to be self-sufficient, all the while dealing with her own undiagnosed condition. It is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve heard. But then, maternal instinct has always been something understudied. It’s a very complex case.”

  Vad nodded, willing the doctor to continue, willing him to get to the fucking point and tell him she was okay.

  “Corvina is perfectly fine for now,” Dr. Detta said, sending air back to Vad’s lungs. The vise around his chest loosened slightly, his jaw unclenching.

  “She’s fine,” he breathed out in relief.

  “Yes, but she may not be in the future,” the doctor told him. “With both her parents as schizophrenics, she has a much higher chance going forward. My worry is mainly to understand how this unknown drug has affected her, if the auditory hallucinations on the roof were induced by it and if they could trigger her psychosis. There are too many variables around her for now.”

  Fuck.

  “We’ve put her in a medically induced coma,” Dr. Detta went on when Vad stayed quiet. “We’re flushing the drugs out of her system now. When she gets up, I’d like to monitor her for a month, just to be cautious.”

  A month.

  He stared the doctor in the eyes. “I’ll be staying with her.”

  The older man smiled. “There’s usually no provision for that, but I believe your presence would be a positive thing for her mind. Her brain scans are completely fine and physiologically, she’s healthy.”

  “Then why did she hear multiple voices at Verenmore?” Vad tilted his head, needing to understand what had been going on with her. “And the mirror incident?”

  Dr. Detta looked at him from behind his glasses. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Deverell. The human mind is extremely complex. She could have simply picked up subconscious cues that manifested when triggered by something. Her friend could have been slipping her small doses of the drug without her knowledge. Or maybe she actually heard ghosts. Who knows? We don’t have any hard answers, and we probably never will. I would count your wins, and let the past rest for now.”

  “But she can’t go back there now, can she?”

  He shook his head. “Not right now. Her mind needs to heal from whatever traumas it has endured and get stronger first.”

  Vad looked at the brain scans on the board, looking at her head without understanding it. “What about Mo?”

  The doctor waved a hand. “I think her brain made it up as a child to fill in for a parent who was dead and one who was not there mentally. From her accounts, Mo will probably be with her for the rest of her life, and I don’t believe that’s harmful. And one more thing, Mr. Deverell.”

  Vad turned to the doctor again, giving him his attention.

  “If you are to have a healthy future with her, you need to keep your eyes out for any signs of withdrawal or unusual behavior from her,” Dr. Detta told him something he’d already told himself. “Anything odd, you bring her here so we can get her under treatment earlier.”

  Vad got up and shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you.”

  Dr. Detta smiled. “She’s a very special girl, Mr. Deverell. You’re a lucky man.”

  Didn’t he know it.

  Vad walked out of the room and went to the end of the hallway, looking out at the sunshine and the cityscape.

  Verenmore had been his home for so many years, his dream, his ambition, his passion for so long. He had to make a choice between returning to the place he loved and lose the girl who breathed magic in his life or stay with her and lose the place that had driven him for so long.

  He stood for a long time, contemplating, trying to imagine his future without both.

  He would rather miss Verenmore tha
n miss her.

  And fuck if he wouldn’t miss Verenmore.

  Taking out his phone, one he kept but didn’t use at the castle, he called his accountant to get his finances set, and then called the Board, letting them know he wouldn’t be returning, ordering them to burn down that fucking tree.

  Then he walked to the room where the love of his life was sleeping, watching her fighting in her head, battles he couldn’t fight for her. Some, his soft little crow had to fight for herself while he just sat by her side, letting her know she was never going to be alone again.

  HOW IT ENDED…

  Vad

  They kept her for six months.

  But they didn’t let her see her mother in the same Institute, just in case it had an adverse effect on her recovery.

  Not until now.

  Vad sat beside her in the sterile room, silent, as she looked at her mother with hope in her eyes.

  Celeste Clemm stared back blankly.

  Vad remembered meeting her years ago, on his quest for purple eyes he hadn’t even known could exist. She had been dazed then, lost in her mind, but she had talked to him about her daughter, fleeting moments in which love had shined so bright from her eyes, it had made something cold inside Vad warm.

  She was worse now.

  “Mama,” Corvina gave her a tremulous smile, holding her hand across the table in the meeting room. “You remember Vad right? He came to see you a while ago.”

  Her mother didn’t respond, her schizophrenia and recent dementia keeping her lost inside her own head. Vad knew this was one of Corvina’s biggest fears, that she would end up like her mother, and she wouldn’t recognize him anymore one day.

  He was realistic enough to admit that it could happen. He also knew that if she showed symptoms enough to concern the doctors, he would move mountains to get her the help and support she would need, something her mother never got. And if someday, she truly did forget him, he would remain her mountain and keep her blooming with everything he felt for her. She was his, for now and for life, and if there was an afterlife, then maybe in that too.

  For now at least, her doctor was not worried. She still occasionally heard Mo sometimes, but it was rare. Her time at Verenmore had triggered her subconscious for some reason. Or maybe it hadn’t been her subconscious at all. Maybe she was a little otherworldly like Old Zelda had been. He didn’t know, and he frankly didn’t care. To a boy who had never had anything be his, Verenmore had been his everything for decades. That he had left it behind for her told him more about his feelings than anything else could. She was more important.

  “Mama,” Corvina stood up, walking to her mother’s side, going down on her haunches, two generations of beautiful raven-haired, violet-eyed women looking at each other. “Vad and I are together now. We came to see you for my birthday.”

  Her mother looked towards him, something maybe penetrating in her mind.

  Vad let her look her fill of him. The amount of respect he had for Celeste Clemm was extraordinary. How she had fought her family to give birth to her child, lost her love in the most terrible way, and still raised a daughter so full of love and heart and goodness while fighting with her own mind was a feat only the most loving, courageous woman could have accomplished. And Celeste might have given in to the voices in her head, but her love for her daughter still tethered her heart somewhere.

  “Birthday,” she muttered, and the smile that split Corvina’s face was worth the entire stay at the fucking Institute.

  “Yes, mama,” Corvina gripped her hands, her violet eyes full of love. “It’s my birthday.”

  Celeste kept staring at him. “Boy. Found.”

  “Yes, Celeste,” Vad finally spoke, addressing her mother. “I’m the same boy who asked you about her years ago.”

  “Boy. Safe.”

  Vad leaned forward, his words a promise he hoped would reach her and give her a modicum of peace. “Yes, I will keep her safe. You can rest easy now.”

  Her mother looked to Corvina, picking up a strand of her hair.

  “Raven.”

  Corvina began to sob, and emotion choked Vad’s throat, the wealth of connection and love between the two so palpable in the room he could feel it pulsing against his skin. Despite everything, Celeste Clemm loved her daughter more than he had ever seen anyone love their child.

  “I love you, mama,” Corvina choked, throwing her arms around her mother’s neck. “I love you so much.”

  Celeste tentatively wrapped her arms around her daughter, her violet eyes coming to Vad. “Raven,” she said again, right before her eyes went dazed and she checked out.

  Corvina finally let go of her, wiping her cheeks, and came around to him. “We’re leaving now, mama. I’ll come see you soon.”

  Celeste remained unseeing.

  Vad gathered Corvina in his arms and led her out into the corridor, the weather stormy outside.

  “You think we should wait for the storm to pass before we leave?” she asked, her eyes slightly red and swollen.

  Vad pulled her closer. “A few hours.”

  She nodded, her lips quivering, her shining violet eyes coming up to him. “I don’t want to forget you,” she whispered, gripping his jacket. “I don’t want to leave you alone, not like that.”

  The love for this woman, this slight, little woman who had touched him with her eyes and breathed magic in his world swelled within him, brimming, overflowing. He pressed a kiss to her trembling mouth, then kissed her cute nose ring that was one of his favorite things, a piece of silver on her.

  “Little witch,” he kissed her softly. “You’ll leave me when the roots of roses on your grave…”

  “Leave the roots of roses on yours,” she completed, having heard it multiple times over the course of the months, taking a deep breath.

  “Who am I?” he prodded, knowing this back and forth always eased her mind when she got scared.

  “My devil,” she murmured.

  “And?”

  “My madness.”

  “And?”

  “My mountain.”

  “Good girl,” he gave her the praise he knew she loved, and watched her cheeks flush.

  She pushed on her tiptoes, kissing him softly with her plum lipstick, making amusement course through him. He never understood her fascination of matching her lips to her clothes every day, but he loved tasting it, each one a surprise.

  “What will we do now?” she asked, her violet eyes hypnotic. She had sorcery in those eyes, and he was bewitched, besotted, begone.

  “Live,” he answered her, taking her out into a world that was nothing like the one they’d fallen in love in.

  …OR DID IT?

  Corvina

  “Eyes on me,” he commanded her and Corvina moaned, turning her head to catch his silver gaze as he pushed inside her from behind, his back pressed against her on the bed, rocking into her slowly early in the morning before he had to take Count, their two-year-old husky, out.

  They were in their winter home in the snowy mountains, a large cottage-mansion on land that belonged to the Deverell family line, not too far away from the place they fell in love in, even though they had never gone there again.

  It had been five years since that fateful night, five years since that Black Ball. It had been another Black Ball last week, and she got to know that for the first time in a century, nobody had disappeared. Maybe someone would they next time. Maybe not. She didn’t know.

  Vad had taken her away from there and never looked back, never made her feel that he wasn’t missing a huge part of himself. That castle was his, that mountain was his, and though he was still active on the University Board and kept himself updated about what happened there, he never once broached the subject of returning to her. It was the most selfless thing anyone could have ever done for her, to sacrifice something so precious for so long.

  Corvina looked down at her hand on the pillow, at the rings that now graced her finger, that beautiful amethyst he had given her year
s ago in the ruins sitting under a simple platinum band with ‘nevermore’ engraved on the inside.

  “Happy anniversary, Mrs. Clemm-Deverell,” he murmured to her as she clenched around him, her body his instrument just as it had been all these years.

  “I love it when you say that,” she smiled, feeling his lips on her shoulder.

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded.

  “I have a gift for you,” he told her, thrusting into her slow and deep, their bodies languid and pace unhurried.

  “If it’s the gift inside me, I’m very pleased,” she grinned cheekily, hearing his soft chuckle against her ear.

  “It’s got to do with that,” he told her, turning her over on her back and coming down on top as she wrapped her limbs around him.

  “I got the vasectomy reversed.”

  Corvina felt her eyes widen as her body froze.

  They had talked about kids someday, both of them fearful of what kind of genes they would pass on, if it would be worth it. It had taken a long, long time for them, and parenting Count, to realize they wanted a family, a big family, something they’d both never had.

  Corvina tugged him closer, kissing him softly. “Thank you.”

  Their fur baby barked from outside their door, begging for his dad to take him out.

  Corvina laughed. “You better wrap this up quick or he’ll find your shoe like last time.”

  That got him moving, her laughter dying as sensations took over, her husband of three years giving her pleasure just like he’d done on a rainy night on a dark mountain.

  **

  Count was napping, lazy dog that he was. Corvina had no idea when they’d adopted him that his favorite activity would be to find the nearest parent and fall asleep. As expected, when Corvina walked into his study later that afternoon, her heart warmed at seeing her man in glasses reading one of his student’s papers to grade and their dog lying on his stomach at Vad’s feet.