Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

Seven weeks later …

I held up the test tube, marveling at the perfect homogenous mixture of purple fluid and black sparkles. With the stability of the toxin, Devryck was able to have some lighting installed throughout the lab, seeing as it didn’t particularly bother the uninfected moths we’d begun to study–the ones injected with a synthetic version of the purified toxin he’d taken from Andrea Kepling’s frozen sample. Turned out, the toxin he’d saved from her autopsy was still viable, which meant no more killing. Devryck had been able to replicate it, modify it in vitro, to produce a small supply that he planned to test on mice in the upcoming weeks.

“So pretty,” I whispered, before turning to him. “What do you plan to call it?”

“I was thinking Lilia’s Elixir would be appropriate.” Professor Bramwell stood off to the side, injecting the substance into the moth I’d named Hybris, for the annoying way it constantly flitted its wings against the glass for attention.

Multiple domes stood about the lab, housing a number of different test groups–all of whom I’d named. Moths we’d spent weeks observing, who’d once been paralyzed and were probably itching to break free from their cage to fly.

“I don’t know.” I carefully slid the tube back into its tray alongside the others. “Doesn’t feel right naming it after just me. How about BramLil?”

“No.”

“Okay, then, how about LiliBram? Oooh! DevLil? Sounds like Devil.”

“Definitely not.” Bramwell said, placing the fluttering moth back into its cage.

I playfully groaned. “Fine. If you want to name it after me, I’ll let you, I suppose.” I lifted another of the test tubes, studying the fluid inside that one, searching for any sign that it hadn’t combined properly after centrifuging. “You think this black rock is the reason my mother didn’t get sick with the swapped inoculations?”

“Considering the timeline you gave me, and Francesca having confirmed that she enjoyed the black rock tea from the apothecary, yes. I think it gave her enough resistance to avoid infection.”

“Not enough to keep Lippincott from reinfecting her, though.”

His expression turned somber. “I’m afraid not. I’ve since learned the effects of the tea wear off, if not consistently replenished.”

A shadow of despair hung in the pause that followed, and I quickly switched subjects. Conversations about my mother needed to remain surface. Anything deeper, and I’d slip into the dark space that terrified me. The shadows of my past that would forever dwell in the corner of my mind. I still suffered the occasional nightmare and hallucination of her, but her form ultimately morphed into something else—the root of my fears that took the shape, scent and sound of Angelo. “I can’t believe you move to clinical trials soon,” I said, switching the topic.

“Still a few months away, thankfully.” He tossed the needle into the sharps container and removed his gloves to wash his hands in the adjacent sink. “We’ve got a whole team to assemble and some details to work out before then.”

“Details shmetails. It’s going to be great. You’re going to be known as the doctor who reversed Voneric’s Disease. And who knows what else. There’s so much potential.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Perhaps it was his prior failures that weighed heavy on him, but the man refused to get excited. He’d taken one of the synthetic injections himself, a few weeks back, and in spite of his loathing toward the black rock tea, he drank it every night. Since then, he hadn’t suffered a single seizure. Not so much as a cramp.

I was practically bursting out of my seams with how incredibly well the black rock casteyon had stabilized the toxin. It made sense, though, the way nature offered a sense of balance. The only issue was sourcing the casteyon from the treacherous underwater caves. The Rooks had agreed to fund a team to collect samples of the element, but the deep ocean currents at Devil’s Perch still made it dangerous.

As a Rook myself, I’d since been given access to more of the sensitive information in the library, and I learned that the black rock had long been observed in the Cu’unotchke tribe–in their teeth, in the water they drank. It was where the black tea had originated, passed down to later generations. Unfortunately, they’d been branded evil by Dr. Stirling–wild animals that he’d taken to kidnapping and using to test his Stirlic acid, to banish the evil from their souls.

Ultimately, it wasn’t the Cu’unotchke tribe who’d attacked Stirling and Adderly, but the patients that’d been kept locked up and tortured. Those who’d become infected with the black worms–the devil’s serpents as they were called then. They went mad. Plundered and raped. When Adderly tried to stop them, they burned him and his men, the whole island, and then drowned themselves in the sea–hundreds of bodies washing ashore at what had become Bone Bay.

“So, I enrolled in Advanced Biochemistry next semester.” A quick study of another test tube showed the same perfect mix as all the others. “I understand Professor Golding is a prick.”

“He is. Stay on top of your reading and you’ll be fine.”

“A bigger prick than you?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He shot me an unamused glance. “And I suggest you stay away from any other pricks, unless you’d like one gift wrapped under your tree this Christmas.”

I chuckled at that. “What if I need help?”

“You know I’m always available to you.”

I placed the test tubes back under the hood and turned to Devryck, who peered into his microscope. With quiet footsteps, I snuck up behind and slid my arms around him.

Never breaking his study, he grabbed one of my hands, holding it to his chest, fingers gently stroking mine. “You make it impossible to concentrate,” he said.

My other hand reached down to his groin, and I felt him jerk against me.

“Lilia,” he warned, but his cock hardened beneath my palm.

The teasing was fun, but no more than a game. A distraction from myself. Something dreadful still lived inside of me since the night I’d been attacked, and if I wasn’t engaged in something else, I’d see it sometimes in the shadows on the wall–beady eyes staring back at me, silently threatening to cut me into small pieces. The playful banter with Devryck kept it hidden and tucked away. Safe in its burrow.

Another minute, and he twisted around on his stool.

“So, this team you’re assembling, do I get to be on it, Professor?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips to his, smiling against them when I added, “I’m extremely flexible and work well with others.”

At the tight grip of my ass, I gasped. “There might be an opening that needs to be filled.”

“Oh, it definitely does.”

“This particular position isn’t a team effort, though. More one-on-one.”

“I can handle that.”

“You certainly can.” His teeth grazed my earlobe, and he pushed to his feet, backing me up a step. “Meet me in my office, Miss Vespertine,” he said, and turned toward the adjacent sink, where he washed his hands a second time. As he rinsed, he sent me a what-are-you-still-doing-there cock of his brow, and wearing a grin, I quickly padded toward his office.

Once there, I crossed the room to his desk and caught sight of something on one of the bookcase shelves behind it. Two small black frames each held a moth, and frowning, I rounded his desk, coming to a stop before them. Patroclus and Achilles had been etched into small gold plaques below each preserved moth. They’d passed two weeks prior, having completed their lifecycle. What had compelled him to keep them? The gesture was so wildly out of character for Devryck, yet adorable at the same time, that it brought a smile to my face.

A slight turn and I caught sight of something on one of the lab coats hanging on the nearby coat rack. Tipping my head, I squinted my eyes, catching the purple stitching just outside of the lapel. I tugged the arm of it, to find my name above the title, Associate Researcher. Smiling again, I ran my thumb over the stitched lettering that, as simple as it was, felt so official.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, I abandoned my examination and turned to face the door.

The moment he strode into the room, my heart kicked up like windswept leaves. The man looked like a walking thunderstorm ready to strike, as he rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt and glanced at his watch, the sight of him casting a burn in my thighs. “I have a board meeting in two hours. I need to kill some of this tension.” Having rounded the desk, he scooped me up into his arms, and our lips practically sizzled when he seized my mouth in a fiery kiss. A growling impatience rumbled in his throat as he set me down on the desktop.

“You kept Patroclus and Achilles?” I asked.

He planted his palms on either side of me and kissed me again. “Had to keep my first successful specimens. Naming them was brilliant, on your part.”

“I told you.”

“And I’m telling you to turn over and spread your knees,” he whispered.

As commanded, I twisted around on the immaculate desk, knees and palms pressed against its surface, as I stood on all fours.

Hands reached up under my skirt, all the way up to the waistband, and he pulled down the thick tights I’d begun to wear since the temps had dropped. When he peeled them over my naked ass and halfway down my thighs, he paused. “No panties?”

“Panties are for the modest,” I said with a smile, lifting my leg to allow him to slide them down over my knees.

A devilish grin slanted his lips as he removed my boots and slipped the tights off entirely.

At the first brush of his tongue against my overly sensitive flesh, I arched like a cat, moaning with the welcomed intrusion. My ass twitched, fingers curled against the unforgiving surface of the wood, as he licked and sucked and drove his fingers up into me. Arousal leaked down my thighs, and he groaned, pausing to suck his fingers before plunging them back inside me.

“Why does the forbidden have to be so fucking sweet?” He dragged his tongue over the back of my thighs, lapping up every drop.

A ravenous greed throbbed in my belly, and I backed myself to his knuckles and circled my hips, desperate for more.

A tight grip of my throat lifted my chin, sealing off the air to my lungs as he held me steady. In and out, he pumped his fingers while squeezing my throat just enough that I could feel my pulse hammering against his palm. He withdrew his fingers on a wet sound and ran the pad of his thumb in small circles over my swollen and aching hole. “Do you need a proper fucking, Miss Vespertine?”

“Yes, Professor,” I breathed, my pussy clenching with his relentless teasing.

For the two weeks after Angelo’s attack, he hadn’t attempted to touch me that way. Part of it was my own insecurity over the scar on my face and the yellowing bruises across my body. I’d struggled to look at myself in the mirror without seeing those hateful black eyes and hearing Angelo’s promise to mutilate me. Devryck had told me that he’d wait until I was ready, and while he’d remained affectionate, even more so than before, he’d never gotten sexual–not even as I’d slept beside him. Not even the one time I’d broken down while showering, and he’d held my naked body against him. I hadn’t realized how much I’d yearned for that, how much I’d needed that level of closeness without actual sex.

In the weeks that’d followed, my wound healed, the bruises faded, and I no longer heard Angelo’s whispers. My desire for Devryck intensified, a hungry beast that twisted and curled with its appetence, until he’d finally caved. What followed was a craving for the man like I’d never felt before. It’d peaked that first night, from sundown to sunrise, when he’d taken me against his desk, the chair, and every wall of his office. We’d eaten, showered, and fucked away every horrible thought still lingering in my head.

I’d come alive, resurrected.

I’d felt beautiful, desired, whole again.

Yet, there seemed to be something looming between us. Something unresolved.

A sting smarted the cheek of my ass, and with a nudge of my hip, he urged me to step down to the floor. “Lower your face to the desk,” he commanded, and I did, feeling the hem of my skirt lift higher up the cheeks of my ass, giving him a full-on view of my needy flesh. It seemed to be his thing, staring at me before he took me. Part of me felt like he enjoyed the torment of having something he considered forbidden on display.

Palms flat to the desk, I stared toward the bookcase to the right of us, waiting as he visually devoured me in silence. I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth, the anticipation of his touch like sex itself.

Peering over my shoulder, I watched him unbutton his shirt, peeling it away from his shoulders, where a scar marked the bullet that’d plowed through him. He unfastened his belt buckle and sprang himself free, giving a few languorous pumps of that deliciously thick cock.

Still bent over his desk, I waited for his ruthless plundering. The rapacious desire we had for ruining each other. The tearing of clothes and scratching of skin. The biting and smacking, and filthy words that sank themselves in my head, erasing every hateful thought about myself that I stored there.

Instead, I felt him notch the tip of his cock at my already soaked entrance, drawing soft circles over my flesh. The maddening lust for his lechery had me feeling like I might combust from the tension, and I turned to rest my forehead against the desk, balling my hands to fists. Slow and lazily, he gave small thrusts–just enough to stir the desperation coiling in my stomach, until, at last, he pushed to the hilt, and a sound of utter relief spilled out of me.

A guttural groan rumbled in his throat as his hips drove into me on a rough thrust.

Yes. This was what I wanted. What I needed.

Pain zapped my scalp, as he gripped a fistful of hair and lifted my head from the desk. “Look how well you take my cock, Little Moth. You were made for me,” he said on a ragged breath, and he released my hair, gripping my hips in a way that felt possessive and dominating. A few hard thrusts had the shiny veneer burning my breasts as my body jerked across the desktop, and he pulled out on a wet glide. The absence of him had every cell in my body screaming with a voracious hunger.

I craned my neck to see him flicking his fingers, urging me off his desk, and he fell into his chair, his cock standing proud and threatening as he stroked the thick shaft.

I impaled myself over the monstrous fiend that’d tormented me so many times with his teasing, biting my lip while he filled me completely. As I pushed to draw myself back up his length, he held my shoulders, keeping me in place. Finger hooking my chin, he guided my face to his, those implacable copper eyes searching mine.

“Do you feel that, Lilia?” He ground my hips against him, rooting himself so deeply it sprang tears to my eyes. We’d had sex countless times before, had fucked in nearly every position, but why, in that precise moment, didn’t it feel the same? Why, the second the question tumbled from his lips, did my heart pound in my chest, as if I’d anticipated his inquiry? As if I’d thought it at the same time.

As we sat wrapped around each other, breaths hastening with need and desperation, something clawed inside of me. It begged me to turn away from him. To push off and curse him. Twisting and writhing in my gut with a furious determination to break away. An unfamiliar intruder that hooked itself into my belly and climbed its way to my ribs.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Why does it feel different?”

He ran his thumb over my scar and pressed his lips to the jagged surface. “Tell me what feels different?”

I focused on the foreign pressure blooming in my chest. The way he held me. The freedom and security, and our heated bodies entwined together like two flames.

Soulmates.

It was his eyes. The way he was looking at me. The feelings he stirred inside of me with that obnoxious gleam of reverence.

No.

I pushed against his chest, but he held me closer, digging his fingers into my hips, refusing to let me go. His hands climbed beneath my shirt, to the column of my spine, where he pressed me against him.

The monster scratched at my ribs, punching at my bones for escape.

“Say it.”

“Just fuck me already,” I snapped, frustrated for reasons I couldn’t tell him.

“Is that all you want? A quick fuck? You know I can give you that, but I think there’s something inside of you that craves more.”

How could he have known that? How could he have possibly known the hungry shadow, the vacuous hole that longed to eat my heart?

“I feel it, too,” he said, as if reading my mind. “It’s inside of me. Burning like a fever I can’t shake. It’s a spiteful, prideful anger that refuses to admit the truth.”

“What truth?” I asked, my voice shaky. Nervous.

“That I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

Through an irritating blur of tears, I chewed on his words, savoring them. How strange that I felt so different. Stronger. More confident because of him.

As many times as I’d had to look at the scar Angelo had left, Devryck made me forget it was there. He somehow infused courage into my most discomposed moments, when the world felt more foe than friend. “Why do you have to make me cry?”

“Because I know there’s a truth inside you, too. One you refuse to admit, but I want you to say it. Say it to my face.”

“I can’t.”

“What are you afraid of?”

I shook my head, a swell of panic rising up into my throat and yearning to break free on an angry bellow.

Teeth clenched, he gripped my jaw. “What are you afraid of?”

“That the universe will hear it, too! And it’ll steal you away.” The wobble of tears broke, skating down my cheek. “I wanted to say it to you so badly that day at the ocean, when you were slipping away from me. I was screaming inside my head. Tell him! Tell him before it’s too late. But I couldn’t, because I knew if I did, you’d be gone forever. And now? Now it feels cursed. Like I’m carrying a cursed secret inside of me that I can never say aloud.”

His brows came together as he pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m not going anywhere. You and I? This? There’s no escaping it. Doesn’t matter how fast you run, or how far you get, I will always be inside you just like this. In your bones and in your blood and in your head. It doesn’t matter what you tell the universe–what secrets you spill. Nothing can change what we are, what we’ve become.”

It was there, on the tip of my tongue, begging to be said, as I imbibed his confession like an addict. “I want to tell you. I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but my heart feels too hard. Too guarded. And in some ways, I’m glad, because the harder I am, the less I feel, and the less I feel, the less everything hurts.”

“I know that feeling well.” He brushed his thumb across my cheek. “You and I are the same, Lilia.” A gentle kiss to my scar and then to my lips. “I know the demons of your past still plague you. I know you see Angelo sometimes when you wake in the middle of the night.” His brows came together in a tight frown. “But he will never hurt you again, Little Moth. I will bleed out every one of your demons until you feel safe.”

God, was it possible to desire the man any more than I already did? “I don’t see them when I’m with you. I think they’re afraid of you.”

“As they should be.” A darkness shadowed his eyes with the threat.

“It’s when I’m not with you that scares me, though.” The forbidden words tickled my tongue, begging to be cut loose. I dared myself to say it. To put the curse out into the universe and risk everything that had brought me happiness these last few weeks. “I love you. And I don’t think I can stop loving you.” I leaned forward to kiss him, but hesitated, uncertain if I’d confessed too much.

A firm hand gripped my nape, preventing my retreat. “I will never reject you, or turn you away.” Lips pressed to mine, he held my face so delicately in his hands, as if I were something too precious to grasp tightly. “I have lived a lifetime in death–a cold existence in an endless void. Never feeling. Never knowing the warmth of touch. Every unfulfilling breath a suffocating reminder of how hollow I’d become. It wasn’t until you came along and cast the first ray of light that I felt a pulse of life. A pull that I couldn’t resist.” He thumbed the seam of my pressed lips. “Don’t ever hesitate to touch me, Lilia. You’re the only one who can. It was you who dragged my heart from this insensate slumber. And it’s you for whom it beats now.” Sighing, he stroked his hand down my hair, brows pulled tight. “It’s a fucking wreckage, though. Scarred and caged by ravaged bones. But it belongs only to you.”

Passion burned across my lips with his kiss, and he unbuttoned my shirt, slowly peeling it down my arms to my elbows, where he gathered the fabric around my wrists at my back, holding me captive.

“You’re mine, Lilia.” Eyes on mine, he bent toward me, flicking his tongue over my stiffened nipples. “And I am yours.”

When he finally released his hold, I threaded my fingers through his hair, drawing a tight grip in my palm. “Mine,” I whispered.

Strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me against him. What began as a lazy thrust quickly heightened with fervor. Powerful hips drove into me as he fucked me hard. Mercilessly. I dug my fingers into the deep grooves of his muscles, letting him plow into me like he was searching for God in every moan that escaped me. He fucked me so deeply, fresh tears sprang to my eyes.

The intensity of the man lashed out at me like a bolt of hot lightning, electrifying the air around us. I was breathless and panting. Deliciously defiled.

My body tautened, and what sounded like a cross between a sob and relief shook from my throat. Both of us slick with sweat, he held me tighter, those deep, guttural sounds in his throat telling me he was desperate to climax.

I threw my head back on a flash of light and cried out, shattering in his arms.

His climax followed, sending jets of warm fluids up inside of me, and boneless, I rested my scarred cheek against his scarred shoulder, the malicious marks where both of us had been branded monsters.

He shuddered around me, his arms shaking at my back.

When I dared to lift my head, his eyes held the glint of promise beyond that euphoric exhaustion, as he stared up at me with heaving breaths.

I stroked a hand across his dampened forehead, studying the adoration I refused to see before. The veneration of a powerful man. One the monsters in my head feared the most. It was in that moment, I believed him when he said he belonged to me. Like a vast ocean claimed by a single grain of sand.

My dark sea. The mystifying depths that both captivated and terrified me.

For so long, I struggled to accept and give love. I’d become jaded. Stingy. Untrusting. And because I so rarely relinquished a piece of myself to others, it hurt worse when it was stolen away–the times when the world reached its greedy hand into my life and tore away the pieces of what I loved most. I’d come to learn that at the heart of life was suffering, and pain was an inevitable consequence of love. A slow gnawing ache that began the moment we dared to admit what it was. The shadow behind every adoring glance. The anguish that punctuated those fleeting moments of peace.

Love was also a sickness. An incurable disease. The kind that crawled inside the muscles and bones, and persisted long after death. As much as I wanted to bury the love of my mother, to harden myself so I wouldn’t have to face the crippling truth, I couldn’t. Burrowed deep into the roots, it blossomed from the wounds of my broken heart, tearing through the stitches that burned with memories of those who’d tried to hurt me. Sometimes, the pain was too much to bear. But sometimes it felt good, because it meant that I was capable of feeling something.

I glanced up at the plaque on the wall–the one I’d noticed my first day working in the lab.

Mortui vivos docent.

The dead teach the living.

I hadn’t come to Dracadia with any notion of falling in love with my professor, or Death, as some had referred to him. Perhaps that was the nature of the world, to take so cruelly, then swoop in and blindside us when we least expected it. There was an implicit truth in the dead teaching the living, though. It was my mother, my refusal to accept her death, to accept what the world had taken from me, that had brought me to Dracadia in the first place. And it was there that I’d faced death head-on. So smitten, I fell in love with him–his abrasive heart and blood-stained hands. The dangerous and erudite professor, with fiery eyes and cold steel flesh. We hid away in shadows, stealing kisses under midnight stars. He taught me passion and courage, and to seize what I wanted by the teeth.

And in return, I taught him to feel again.