Marked By The Dark Professors;, Claimed By The Cursed Princes

The first time my brother coughed blood, he smiled and told me it was nothing. The second time, he collapsed into my arms, and by the third, the doctor had stopped pretending there was still hope for him.

"There isn't a cure," he said quietly, sliding the medical file across his desk. "Not in the ordinary world."

I stared at him, waiting for the rest of the explanation because surely he couldn't expect me to accept a statement like that without telling me what it meant. "What does that mean?"

"It means..." His eyes flicked toward the closed office door before returning to me. "There are places that study things medicine cannot explain."

I laughed, not because I found anything funny about what he was saying, but because sometimes people laughed when they were desperate enough to hear something impossible and didn't know how else to respond. "You're telling me magic?"

"I'm telling you," he replied, his voice firm despite the hesitation that had come before it, "that your brother is dying."

Silence swallowed the room. Ethan sat beside me, pale and painfully thin, pretending not to notice that our savings, our hope, and now our future had all disappeared inside one sentence. He reached for my hand, his fingers cool against mine, and I tightened my grip as though holding on to him could somehow keep the doctor from being right.

"I'm tired, Sable." His voice was barely above a whisper.

My chest tightened. "No."

"I'm tired of hospitals."

"No."

"I'm tired of pretending I don't know."

"You are not dying." The words came out sharper than I intended, but I couldn't bear to hear him speak as though he had already accepted what I was still fighting to prevent.

He smiled, and that gentle, heartbreaking smile only made me angrier because it was the same one he used whenever he wanted me to stop worrying about him. "You always lie badly."

I stood so quickly that my chair scraped against the floor. "There has to be something."

"There is."

Both Ethan and I turned toward the doctor. He hesitated before opening a locked drawer and removing a thick black envelope sealed with dark blue wax. There was no hospital logo or return address, only a silver crest pressed into the wax: six swords, one crown, and one eye. I stared at the unfamiliar symbol, trying to understand why a doctor who had just told us that medicine could do nothing for my brother was now reaching for something that looked as though it belonged in a story about forbidden magic.

"The academy?" I whispered.

His expression changed immediately. "You've heard of it?"

"Only stories."

Everyone had heard something about Blackthorn Academy. Children whispered about it like it was a haunted castle, a school where students disappeared, professors never aged, and nobody graduated as the same person they had been when they entered. Most people dismissed those stories as folklore, the sort of nonsense adults invented to frighten children into behaving, but the doctor wasn't smiling or treating the name as a joke.

"They're accepting applications," he said.

I frowned. "I thought nobody knew where it was."

"They don't."

"Then how do I apply?"

"You don't." He pushed the envelope toward me. "They invite you."

I looked down, and the sight of my name already written across the front made my stomach drop.

Sable Vale.

"I never applied."

"I know."

"Who sent this?"

"I don't know." His voice had become strangely careful, as though he were choosing each word before allowing himself to speak it. "It arrived this morning."

"This morning?" I repeated, looking from the envelope to him. "Before my appointment?"

He nodded, and my fingers trembled as I broke the wax seal. Inside was a single black letter, its contents brief enough to make the lack of explanation feel deliberate rather than accidental.

Sable Vale. Blackthorn Academy summons you.

Arrival: Tomorrow.

Failure to attend forfeits the invitation forever.

There was no explanation, no signature, and no indication of how the academy had learned my name or why it had chosen to contact me. Only one final sentence had been written across the bottom of the letter, and the moment I read it, the room seemed to grow colder.

Bring the boy.

Ethan looked at me, his expression changing as he understood what the words meant. "They know about me."

I looked back at the letter, my fingers tightening around its edges as I read the instruction again. No, it wasn't simply that they knew about Ethan. They knew too much, and I had no idea how they had learned anything about us.

We left before sunset. Our apartment took less than twenty minutes to empty because there wasn't much worth packing anyway: some clothes, my notebooks, Ethan's medication, and the framed photograph of our parents. I wrapped the photograph carefully and held it for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the faces I had spent years trying to remember clearly.

A fire had taken our parents when I was seven, or at least, that was what everyone had always told me. I remembered pieces of it, but whenever I tried to put those memories together, they became strangely blurry, like pages smudged by rain. I could never tell whether the gaps were the ordinary result of being a child when something terrible happened or whether there was something about that night I had never been meant to remember.

"Sable?" Ethan stood in the doorway, watching me with the patient expression he had worn far too often lately. "You ready?"

No, I wasn't ready to leave the only home we had left for a place that might not even exist in the way the stories described it, but I nodded anyway and tucked the photograph into my bag. "If this academy can save you, I'll crawl there if I have to."

He laughed softly, and for a moment, he sounded more like the brother I remembered before the hospitals and the coughing fits had taken over our lives. "I know you would."

The invitation included no map or address, only a set of instructions that gave us a destination without explaining how we were supposed to reach it.

Wait where the old railway ends.

Midnight.

Come alone.

The abandoned station looked exactly like the kind of place people disappeared from, with broken benches, rusted tracks, no lights, and no trains. Fog rolled across the empty platform as we waited for midnight, and the longer we stood there, the more ridiculous our decision began to feel. We had left everything familiar behind because a mysterious letter had promised us a chance, and now we were standing in a deserted railway station with no guarantee that anything would happen.

Then every clock around the station stopped.

Twelve. Exactly twelve.

The fog thickened until the far end of the platform disappeared, and the abandoned rails began glowing beneath our feet. A train emerged from the darkness without making a sound. It wasn't arriving so much as appearing, its windows black and its metal body older than history itself, as though it had been waiting somewhere beyond the reach of ordinary time.

The doors opened, revealing an empty carriage. There was no conductor, no passenger, and no welcoming announcement, only the silence of a place that seemed to have been expecting us.

Ethan swallowed as he looked inside. "This feels like a bad idea."

"It feels like our only one."

I grabbed his hand, refusing to give myself time to reconsider, and together we stepped aboard. The doors closed behind us, and the train moved instantly, without acceleration or sound. One moment the station still existed beyond the windows; the next, it was gone, leaving no trace of the platform or the world we had just abandoned.

I leaned toward the window, trying to find something outside that would tell me where we were going, but there was nothing to see. Not darkness, which would have meant there was at least something beyond the glass, but nothing at all, as though the train was no longer travelling through the world I knew.

A woman in a gray uniform appeared without warning. I hadn't heard footsteps or seen a door open, and neither Ethan nor I had noticed anyone approaching. She simply existed inside the carriage, standing a short distance away as though she had been there all along.

"Miss Vale."

I turned toward her, still holding Ethan's hand. "Yes?"

"The academy has one rule."

I studied her face, searching for some sign that she was joking or trying to frighten us, but her expression remained unreadable. "What rule?"

She looked directly into my eyes. "Trust no professor."

Before I could ask what that meant, a violent jolt threw Ethan and me forward. The lights flickered overhead, and for one split second, every window reflected six men standing inside the carriage behind us, their attention fixed entirely on me.

I spun around so quickly that my shoulder struck the seat, but the carriage was empty. There were no men, no movement, and no sign that anyone had been standing behind us at all. When I turned back to question the woman, she had disappeared too, leaving only her voice echoing softly through the train.

"They've finally found you."

I barely had time to wonder who she meant before burning pain exploded beneath my collarbone. I screamed and clutched at my chest as blood soaked through my shirt, spreading across the fabric while something dark began to emerge against my skin. The pain sharpened with every passing second, and when I finally looked down, I saw a black mark blooming beneath my collarbone, spreading as though it had been waiting there all along for the moment it could reveal itself.

The pain didn't stop. It spread beneath my skin like fire searching for air, crawling from my collarbone across my shoulder and down my chest. I pressed both hands against it, but it felt as though the burning came from somewhere much deeper than flesh.

"Sable!" Ethan caught me before I hit the floor. My vision blurred as the black mark kept growing. It wasn't ink or blood. It looked alive.

The gray-uniformed woman appeared beside us as suddenly as she had vanished, but her calm expression disappeared the instant she saw the mark. "No..." she whispered, grabbing my wrist.

"What is it?" I gasped.

She didn't answer. Instead, she slammed her palm against the carriage wall, and a deep bell echoed through the train. Once. Twice. Then a third time. The train stopped so violently that everyone lurched forward.

"We're not there yet," Ethan said.

"We are now."

The carriage doors burst open, and cold wind rushed inside. Outside wasn't a station but an enormous mountain hidden beneath black clouds. At its peak stood the largest academy I had ever seen, its ancient towers disappearing into the mist while stone bridges floated between buildings that shouldn't have been connected. Hundreds of students in black uniforms crowded the entrance courtyard, but the moment I stepped onto the platform, every conversation stopped and hundreds of eyes turned toward me.

The burning beneath my collarbone became unbearable. Someone screamed, "Look at her neck!"

I looked down. The mark had climbed above my collarbone, and dark veins spread beneath my skin like twisted branches. Students began backing away, their voices rising in alarm. "What is that?" "Impossible..." "It can't be." "The mark..."

Fear moved through the crowd like wildfire. Not curiosity or surprise. Fear.

A bell rang somewhere above us, and the enormous front doors of the academy opened. Six men walked out together. Nobody needed to tell me who they were. The students immediately lowered their heads, and even the air seemed to change around the six men.

The first was tall and silver-haired, wearing a long black coat. His sharp gray eyes landed on me first, cold and measuring. Professor Ashgrave. Beside him stood a broad-shouldered man with dark hair streaked with silver, authority radiating from him without effort. Professor Kael. The third looked younger than the others, almost gentle until I noticed the sadness in his eyes. Professor Lucian. The fourth wore an amused smile that looked entirely out of place. Professor Rhys. The fifth had tired eyes that made him seem permanently haunted. Professor Dax. The last adjusted his glasses as though none of this concerned him at all. Professor Wren.

None of them spoke. They simply stared at the mark on my neck.

Then Ashgrave took one step backward. Not from me, but from the mark.

"I said it would return," Dax murmured.

"No," Kael replied sharply. "It cannot."

Lucian looked as though all the color had drained from his face, and Rhys wasn't smiling anymore. Wren stared at me with unsettling intensity, as if I were an equation that had just rewritten itself.

Ashgrave finally spoke. "When did it appear?"

"About five minutes ago."

"Who touched you?"

"What?"

"Answer the question."

"No one."

His eyes narrowed. "That's impossible."

"I'm telling you the truth."

The professors exchanged silent looks, and no one seemed willing to say what they were all thinking. Ethan stepped forward, his voice strained with worry. "My sister needs help."

Nobody looked at him.

"Please," he said again. "She's in pain."

Kael finally shifted his attention to him. "Who is he?"

"My brother. He came with me."

Ashgrave's expression hardened. "The invitation was for one person."

I pulled the letter from my pocket. "It literally says, 'Bring the boy.'"

Kael took it, and his face changed. For the first time, genuine confusion crossed it. He handed the letter to Wren, then to Ashgrave. Each of them read the same sentence, and each reacted exactly the same way.

"I never wrote this," Ashgrave said quietly.

"I didn't either," Kael replied.

"Neither did I," Wren added.

Rhys looked up. "So who invited them?"

No one answered. The silence was worse than any explanation.

Ashgrave folded the letter. "The invitation is invalid."

"What?"

"The academy did not issue it."

Anger cut through the pain. "You think I forged it?"

"I think someone wants you here."

"I don't care who wants me here!" I shouted. "My brother is dying!"

The courtyard became silent again. I grabbed Ethan's trembling hand, fighting to keep my voice steady. "The doctor said only this academy could save him."

Kael's jaw tightened. "This academy treats students."

"He isn't a student."

"Then admit him!"

"We cannot."

"Why?"

"Because rules exist for a reason."

I laughed bitterly. "So that's it?"

No one answered, and my grip on Ethan's hand tightened. "You let people die because of rules?"

Lucian took a small step forward, but Kael raised a hand to stop him. "We're sorry."

"No." I shook my head. "No, you're not."

The words came before I could stop them. "If you were sorry, you'd help."

Ashgrave looked directly at me. "You cannot remain here."

For a second, I thought I had heard him wrong. "What?"

"You will leave the academy immediately."

The words echoed across the courtyard, and gasps spread through the students. Expelled before classes had even begun, before I had even entered the academy.

Ethan squeezed my hand. "Sable..."

I looked at the six professors one by one. Not one of them looked pleased, not even Ashgrave. They looked afraid. Afraid of me, afraid of the mark, and afraid of something none of them wanted to say aloud.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I'm not leaving."

Kael's voice became dangerously calm. "This is not a negotiation."

"It is if my brother dies."

Two guards started toward us, and the students moved farther back. I stepped in front of Ethan, refusing to let them get near him. "If you want me gone," I said, "you'll have to drag me out."

The guards were only a few steps away when the academy shook. The ground rumbled beneath our feet, and stone cracked across the courtyard. A deafening roar exploded from somewhere deep beneath the mountain, shattering every window at once.

The six professors spun toward the oldest tower, and Ashgrave's face turned white.

"No..."

A second roar shook the academy. This one sounded almost human.

Then an ancient voice echoed through every corridor, every classroom, and every stone wall. It was so old that it seemed to come from the mountain itself.

"The Second Child has returned."

Every professor froze. Then, for the first time since I had arrived, all six of them knelt before me.

No one moved. Not the guards, not the students, not even me. Six professors, men powerful enough to silence an academy with a glance, were kneeling before me, and the mountain itself seemed to hold its breath. The ancient voice had faded into silence, but its words continued echoing inside my head. The Second Child has returned.

My heart pounded. "This isn't funny," I said, but nobody laughed. I looked at Kael first. He had the bearing of a king even on one knee, yet the certainty that had filled his face moments earlier was gone.

"What is happening?"

He slowly raised his head. "I wish I knew."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I expect you to believe nothing until you see it for yourself."

Ashgrave stood first, his expression unreadable again. "The evacuation begins now."

The courtyard exploded into movement. Professors shouted orders, students ran toward the dormitories, and guards rushed to secure every entrance. Within seconds, what had been a silent crowd became organized chaos. Ethan grabbed my arm. "Sable..."

"What?"

"I think they're scared."

"I noticed."

"No." His grip tightened. "I don't think they're scared of you."

A crack split the courtyard, and everyone froze again. It ran from the center of the stone square to my feet, with black light leaking through the opening. It wasn't fire or smoke. It was something darker, something alive.

The mark beneath my collarbone burned again, and the black light answered. It rose from the crack like hundreds of glowing threads, every one of them rushing toward me.

"Sable!"

Lucian reached me first, pulling me backward just as the black light exploded from the ground. The force knocked students off their feet, windows shattered across the nearest tower, and the academy bells rang wildly without anyone touching them. When the light faded, I was still standing, unharmed. The black threads had stopped inches from my skin, circling me as though they were waiting for permission.

Ashgrave stared. "It recognizes her."

"No," Wren said quietly. "It obeys her."

A frightened murmur swept through the students. "She's controlling it." "She's cursed." "She's a monster."

I clenched my fists. "I didn't do anything!"

The threads vanished instantly.

Kael looked around the courtyard. "No one leaves alone." He pointed toward the professors. "Ashgrave, Wren, seal the lower chambers. Dax, search the east wing. Rhys, clear the dormitories. Lucian..."

His voice softened. "Take Miss Vale."

I blinked. "Take me where?"

"The safest place in the academy."

Ashgrave immediately objected. "No."

Kael met his eyes. "We don't have a choice."

"We don't know what she is."

"We know exactly what she is."

The words came from Dax. He hadn't taken his eyes off me. "We've just spent three hundred years praying she'd never come back."

Silence fell.

Three hundred years?

I stared at him. "What did you just say?"

He realized he'd spoken aloud, but it was too late. Kael cut in quickly. "Enough."

"No," I snapped. "It is not enough." I stepped toward them, my anger growing with every unanswered question. "You invited me here."

"We didn't."

"You called me the Second Child."

"We didn't."

"You just said you've been waiting three hundred years."

Again, no answer.

The anger I'd been holding back finally broke free. "My brother is dying!"

Every head turned toward Ethan. "He doesn't have three hundred years!" I walked straight up to Kael. "If you're going to keep treating me like the answer to some ancient nightmare, then tell me what is happening."

Kael looked at me for a long moment before answering quietly, "I can't."

"You won't."

"There are things you're safer not knowing."

I laughed bitterly. "My life ended the moment I got on that train."

His jaw tightened. "You don't understand."

"Then explain it!"

"I can't."

The mark burned, harder this time, and pain shot through my chest. I gasped as Lucian caught me before I hit the ground. His hands were surprisingly warm.

"Easy."

"I hate that word."

"I know."

The pain eased slightly, and I looked up at him. His blue eyes were fixed on the mark beneath my collarbone, not with fear but with grief, as though he'd seen it once before. He whispered something so softly I almost missed it.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

His eyes lifted to mine. "For not saving you."

Confusion replaced the pain. "We've never met."

His face went pale, and he immediately stepped backward. "I..."

He couldn't finish.

Ashgrave noticed. So did Kael. A look passed silently between the professors, and I knew Lucian had said something he shouldn't have.

Kael made his decision. "Lucian."

"Yes."

"Take Miss Vale to the east wing."

Ashgrave turned sharply. "Absolutely not."

"The room has remained sealed for three centuries," Kael replied.

"It was sealed for a reason."

"And today that reason returned."

Ashgrave looked ready to argue again, but instead he closed his eyes briefly and nodded once.

Students began whispering again. "The east wing?" "No one's allowed there." "That room is cursed." "They're putting her in that room?"

I looked between the professors. "What room?"

No one answered.

Lucian gestured toward the oldest tower. "Come with me."

"I want Ethan with us."

Kael looked toward Ethan. "For now... yes."

Relief washed through me. At least we wouldn't be separated.

As we crossed the courtyard, I felt hundreds of eyes following us, filled with fear, curiosity, and hatred. Not one friendly face.

Halfway to the tower, I glanced back. The crack in the courtyard had closed as if it had never existed. Only one thing remained. In the exact spot where I had been standing, a single black flower had grown through solid stone.

Dax stopped walking, and his face lost all color. "No..."

Ashgrave followed his gaze. For the first time since meeting him, the cold professor looked genuinely shaken.

"What is it?" I asked.

Nobody answered.

Dax walked toward the flower as though he were approaching a grave. He knelt beside it, then whispered one name.

"Iris..."

The flower opened.

And from somewhere deep beneath the academy, a young woman laughed.