Page 37 of Hell Burns Between Us

The instant the name rose to his lips, it dissolved back into nothingness. Frozen in horror, he could only watch as the churning cloud surged towards him, devouring the space between them. The Grand Dukes, as one, held up necklaces, their arms raised in a synchronised effort to ward off the dark, swirling mass. Oleander's eyes widened in horror as the cloud did not dissipate; it shifted.

It was coiling towards him.

Before he could react, the cloud slammed into his mouth. The force of it knocked him backward, sending him crashing to the ground. His body went rigid, a scream frozen in his throat as he was utterly immobilised, his mouth wide open in a silent, eternal scream. The greasy shadow oozed down his throat, a viscous substance that poured directly into him.

The room seemed to collapse around him—space disorienting and warping. The Grand Dukes stumbled forward—shouting in surprise, their bodies contorted as some part of them was leached away by the shadow. Oleander’s vision blurred. His head throbbed with a painful pressure, his mind reeling as darkness claimed him, dragging him into an abyss.

How long he lay there, Oleander couldn’t say. Time felt meaningless. When he finally managed to stagger to his feet, the room was eerily quiet. The other Grand Dukes cast distrustful glances at him as they staggered away, hurrying out of the room. As if they too couldn’t stand to be in that mouldy cavern for one moment longer. His father left without a backward glance at him, carrying the empty basin from the table.

With unsteady hands, Oleander gripped the walls to keep from falling. He didn’t want to confront his father about what had happened. Didn’t want to speak of the suffocating darkness that had overwhelmed him. The demonesses were most obviously real and not some oddly named fantastical kind of magic, and the realisation of that filled him with disgust and self-loathing for having not accepted that truth sooner.

It felt like a nightmare—a terrible, horrific nightmare that he could barely grasp. So he shoved it to the back of his mind, refusing to acknowledge the shuddering tension still crawling under his skin.

He staggered up the staircase, the Grand Dukes passing him like ghostly shadows, all of them ignoring him. His head spun with the aftereffects of the ritual and the unrelenting sense of wrongness. When he finally reached his bed, he collapsed onto it, crawling under the covers with a sense of relief, as though somehow, beneath the warm sheets, he could forget it all.

His hand fumbled beside him for the tiny vial of sleeping draught Hemlock had once given him. A potion meant to calm him on nights when his anxiety was overwhelming. It was thick and sweet, like amber honey, a soothing balm for his frazzled mind. He drank it quickly, the liquid slipping down his throat and settling into his veins, easing the sharp edges of his thoughts. He pulled out Perine’s handkerchief, and he buried his face into it, letting it soak up silent tears that streamed down his face.

The potion wove comfort around him, his mind quieted, the whispering voice in the back of his thoughts fading into a dull hum. He didn’t know whether to be thankful or fearful that he couldn’t understand the words mulling around in his mind.

He curled under his blankets and let the nightmare of the ritual slip away. Sleep claimed him quickly. A deep, restorative abyss.

Perine’s handkerchief lay tear-soaked and crumpled under his head. He pulled it out, the top corner’s stitching had started to come undone—soon he’d have to fix it. Even still, he ran his thumb along the familiar threads, over and over until his heartbeat slowed and his eyes fluttered closed.

Chapter

Thirteen

PERINE WILDER

Oleander had been strange for days now.

Between lectures, he was normally curled inside window nooks reading worn mystery novels or knitting. Moreover, while he’d never been particularly engaged during said lectures, now he’d begun sleeping through them. Every time she caught sight of him recently, he was slumping down the hall; shoulders hunched and eyes sunken. A shadow drifting from place to place. Unmoored.

Yesterday, she’d finally grabbed him; snatched his long, wrinkled jacket in her trembling fists. She’d meant to ask if he needed help, except something in his eyes had alarmed her. So, instead she’d asked if he was hungry and if he wanted to grab a bowl of ramen with her? Oleander had been distracted, declining politely.

Politely!

That’s when she knew something was terribly wrong.

Compelled by some unknown force, Peri followed him every chance she had. Which is how she knew Oleander had been spending all his free time in the Library of Maledictions—a library Peri herself had rarely visited until now.

Rain pelted against the nearby windows as Peri once more kept watch over Oleander. She was biting her thumbnail at a table nearby, wrapped in a lopsided sweater Sia had woven her a few years ago, observing him from the corner of her eye. Waiting for him to notice her. Tell her off. Anything but the quiet, frantic studying he was doing.

Compared to the other libraries in the Acquirement Circle, this was the smallest. Nevertheless, the patter of the rainfall seemed to echo around the arched ceiling and gaping expanse of the room. The lamps of everlight that hung on the walls grew progressively dimmer, until their magic eventually flickered out, casting the room in wraithlike greys.

Besides the smattering of cracked wooden tables where they sat, the rest of the library was filled with rows of dark, endless shelves overflowing with decaying books.

She fished out a scarf and woollen hat to fight off a chill that had settled over her. She was meant to be researching the Cursed Bargain, but instead she found herself cataloguing every abnormality she had noticed in Oleander. The stitching on his right shoe was coming undone. A long smear of ashes or dirt was scraped along his collarbone, dipping under his shirt. His pants were a slightly different black than his jacket. His nails were dull and broken as if they’d long not seen a file.

She decided that if he wasn’t back to his old self by tomorrow, she’d search out Hemlock or even Wisteria to demand why the Hell they weren’t helping him. How had they not noticed?

Oleander fanned through pages of some old tome; stopping sporadically before he tossed the book behind him, grabbing another. Always, he was scratching more notes down in his notebook. His hair hung in loose, tangled curtains of dingy silver-blue around his face. He whispered to himself and then fisted his hair in his hands, before letting out some combination between groan and growl.

The grinding of Oleander’s chair against the cool marble floors broke the steady pounding of rainfall. His gaze snapped to her and her blood froze. His eyes were black.

Dark, as if he were filled with smoke from a great fire, trapped and twisting inside him. Smouldering.

Then he blinked, and they were silver once more. Only, he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes traced raindrops trailing down the high reaching windowpane, endless and dispassionate. Exhaustion weighed down his every limb. Peri stood, chancing a nervous step towards him.