Upon The Tainted Sorrow Book Novels & Stories

I woke up feeling b⁠ette⁠r than I had in days. N‌o​thing​ in m‍y li​f⁠e had magically fixed itself ove‌rnig‌ht—Conrad and I were‌ still wa‌lking on egg‌sh⁠el​ls. Sadie’s relationship was crumbli​ng‌ in​ real time, and the w⁠eight o‍f my own mis​t⁠akes with Stefa​n linge⁠red like a‍ bad taste.

All magic had a signature, even dark magic. As I continued to scan the room, moving through it carefully, I found a single book resting upon an old stone pedestal. The leather was thicker than the others, held together with ebony stitching that looked as dark as the shadows slithering about. Scratched onto the front were the words, “Liber Sanguinis.” Book of Blood... My gut told me this was the book I was looking for. The one that held the spell Kimberly used to bind herself to Jude. It was coated in a thick layer of that tar-like substance.

But now that she was a werewolf, she could move around without making a sound. I huffed. "It doesn't matter anyway. If he loved me he wouldn't have left me, no matter what." She sighed, "I'm still sorry." I nodded once and rested my head against her arm. It was nice to be comforted by someone. Dad wasn't good with sad feelings. He locked himself away from everything when he was sad, so he avoided people when they were sad. He just didn't know how to deal. "How long ago was this all arranged?"

I move around the stage to the front just as London comes in with his cue. "You know who I am," he sings in a drawling manner, "You know you want to give in. You think you've gotten rid of me?" "Well think again," he whispers. "No!" I sing, taking my cue, "You think you got me figured out? You think I'm all stars and rainbows! I'm a good girl, church girl, nerd girl! You make me wanna do unsavory things!" "Oh come on, little birdy, don't be like that! You know you're only gonna fall right into my lap. Think they got your back? Hell, you know that you're trapped. Just give into temptation, let my music fix that."

She lunged at me, claws sinking into my arm, pain spiking, blood gushing from me, but it didn't matter. I had her. The taint came almost willingly, suctioned down into my sorcery, forming a writhing mass at my feet. I shuddered from it even as it raced through me, not hurting me, but stirring my nausea again. I wished there was some way to wash my insides and knew I'd be taking a very long and very hot shower at the first opportunity. But I'd never be clean again.

"She was my soul." The profound regret in my veins didn't stay soft for long. As I turned my gaze back to the center of the pavilion, watching Rowan lean down to press a slow, deep kiss against Veda’s temple, the grief mutated. The sorrow curdled into a dark, toxic, and entirely unhinged obsession that flooded my system like a hot poison.

My hands shake as I stare at what used to be my back, its now a ruined mess of angry red ridges and thick, ropey scars crisscrossing like a roadmap to hell. ‘I’m sorry, Z. Because it happened before I arrived, there’s only so much I could do. The silver and wolfsbane made it worse,’ Zanthe’s voice is quiet in my mind, filled with a sadness that mirrors my own. She feels guilty, but this isn’t her fault.

Gray asks him, as we all take in the wreckage that was our camp. Strips of cloth and bent and broken metal, that just a few hours ago were tents, lay in tatters, skewered all over the ground. Tons of blood stains the dark brown forest floor. Torn pieces of bloodied flesh scattered across our campsite. I can’t help the sigh that escapes my lips. Luckily, nobody is paying any attention to me. “They’ll be okay,” Bo answers, his blue eyes dark with the reality of our current situation. “I’m just glad we haven’t been giving the new ones any wolfsbane. Who knows? Maybe they’ll learn to control it on their own.”

Thirty Eight Erik POV Damn the Tainted! A curse that was a prayer, a scream trapped in my own skull. The third human slumped against the alley wall, a pale, confused doll. Useless. The blood was thin, bitter, a fleeting trickle of water on a forest fire. It wasn't enough. It was never enough. Killing those Tainted had torn a hole in my very essence, a gaping wound of weakness that my own reserves couldn't close. I could feel the stores of blood I'd so carefully hoarded, meant to last me decades, now a ghost in my veins. I was burning through a lifetime of caution in a single night.

“Don’t let it close again…Vincent, please!” He lunged forward, slashing through the chains. Sparks flew and shadows shrieked. Each chain he broke writhed back into smoke. The journal fell to the ground, its pages flapping open. The words glowed bright red, like flames: “She is mine.” Vincent roared as he tore the pages away, but every page he ripped turned into smoke and returned to the book. The ghost's voice echoed around him. “You can’t destroy what rewrites itself, fox. This book is her life. Every scream, every scar, every betrayal is written in ink that never fades. If you burn it…you burn her name.”