Eldritch, p.10
Eldritch, page 10
“It’s the hearth,” I said coldly. “And my frustration. I’m warm.”
“You must be incredibly warm on the inside for such rosy cheeks.”
The amusement in his voice sharpened my annoyance. “If you insist on trying to draw me in with your teasing, then I’m going to busy myself with a book.” I lifted the book and feigned a smile before setting it back in my lap.
“And I’m afraid watching you read will only leave me with a longing to slip away again.”
“Are you so desperate for gratification that the banality of a woman reading stirs your loins?”
“I find you irresistible with a book in your hands. I’d venture to say it’s a rare woman who’d make the effort to learn spells and …” He lifted a second book from the small table beside the rocking chair. “Unusual mortal rituals.” He frowned, lowering it back down.
“Not many women are permitted to read. In fact, it was against the laws of the parish.”
“And yet, you learned anyway.”
“My grandfather insisted on it. He always said a well-read woman is a beautifully fearsome creature.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
“He was.” I smiled at the memory of him sneaking books into the house for me. “I was fortunate to be raised by him. For the time that I was given.”
“Well, how is this for a bargain …. I’ll wear proper attire, if you agree to read in private.”
“You’re truly affected by that?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Like your grandfather, I was raised to admire the beauty of an intelligent woman.”
“Rykaia reads, as well?”
“Rykaia reads, but she prefers fairytales of princes and maidens falling in love.”
“And you find that silly,” I said flatly.
“I find it impractical.”
“You don’t believe in love,” I countered.
“I’m skeptical of enduring love. It seems fleeting and fickle, which makes me question the point.”
I crossed my arms. “Please elaborate.”
He huffed and slowly nodded. “Imagine a storm on the sea. An unparalleled force, both powerful and…consuming. So utterly enthralling, it sweeps you out into the depths without your awareness. And at first, all is bliss. The waves, the exhilaration,” he drawled in a lazy cadence. “You’re so blindly smitten, you hardly notice the black abyss creeping toward your feet.”
“And what is this black abyss?”
“Disappointment.” He stared off toward the hearth. “The realization that what you thought was ecstasy was actually love’s demise.”
“You don’t trust love. Which must also mean you shun the Aethyrian idea of fated mates.”
His eyes sharpened in a way that left me questioning the truth of that. “Is that what you’ve gleaned from my cynicism?”
“I think you’ve read the wrong fairytales.”
“And how do your storybook maidens fare?”
“Well, first of all, they’re not fools who swim in a storm. And secondly, they don’t fear the abyss, however vast it may be. That bliss you described is what matters, even if love itself is fleeting. Its worth isn’t diminished by impermanence. Sometimes it’s best not knowing what lies below.”
His lips twitched, eyes narrowed on mine. “I fear you’re challenging my cynical nature, moon witch. Perhaps one of your spells.”
“Or maybe somewhere deep in the pitch blackness of your jaded heart, you actually believe in fairytales, after all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to find a quiet, private, place to read.”
CHAPTER TEN
ZEVANDER
Past …
Zevander brought the sledgehammer down hard, shattering the glittery black rock into small shards—the ore of a dead vein that would be melted down and used for weapons. On rare occasions, they managed to chip away small chunks of vivicantem, which they were forced to turn over to the wardens, or risk unimaginable punishment.
Sometimes even death, depending on the size of the rock.
The unforgiving heat blazed across his back, his muscles glistening with sweat. Not long ago, he could barely stand the Solassion sun so long, nor lift the hammer in his hands that he now wielded with ease. His once scrawny frame had doubled in size, his muscles far more accustomed to the grueling labor. He stood on the edge of boy- and manhood—old enough to possess the steel lines of a man’s face and the wisdom of nearly two decades, but still too young to have lived through the kind of atrocities he’d seen during his time in the mines.
“Slow down, you exuberant cunt. You’re making us look bad.” Ravezio, his cellmate, hiked his hammer onto his shoulder, his chest rising and falling with exertion.
Zevander smiled and dragged the back of his hand across his damp brow. “Isn’t any fault of mine that you work like a drunken tome rotter after a bucket of ale.”
Ravezio snorted and brought his hammer down on the rock, splitting it in half. “I’d prefer a lifetime of analyzing tomes over this shit. Bucket of ale included.”
“Don’t talk about ale. Last I had a sip, I was damn near young enough to sit on my granddad’s lap.” Kazhimyr, his other cellmate and a fellow Lunasier, added.
“Didn’t you share a drink with the warden last week? Does he make you call him granddad?” Ravezio shot a sneering grin back at Kazhimyr and winked.
Entirely unamused, Kazhimyr glared back at his friend and lifted his hammer between them. “Keep flapping your jaw, and I’ll shove the pointed tip up your ass.”
“Fucking hell, at this point, even that sounds exciting.”
Shaking his head, Zevander snorted and hammered away again.
Jagron, a hulking orgoth prisoner who’d been promoted to sector guard, passed them, giving a small nod to Zevander. Due to their size and strength, a number of orgoth prisoners got promoted to guards. After all, a contented and well-fed orgoth was far more obedient and less violent than one subjected to abuse and labor.
While he had no love for the guards, or warden, Zevander had learned over the years that working hard and minding his business meant more food rations and fewer punishments.
He nodded back.
Ravezio leaned in and lowered his voice. “Heard he killed Morthok in the grist.”
The grist, or Bone Grist, as prisoners sometimes called it, was a favorite pastime for the guards—a means of entertainment in their otherwise vapid existence. Prisoners were often pitted against each other in a fight to the death. With new prisoners arriving daily, the guards felt it was a necessary means of thinning the population.
Sometimes, guards even fought each other as a means of eliminating their enemies.
Another perk of working hard—Zevander was rarely forced to fight these days.
“Morthok had a mouth the size of these caverns,” Zevander argued. “Bastard’s lucky he lasted this long.”
“Still, shit way to go, having your throat ripped out.”
The creaking sound from behind alerted him to the water cart, and the mere thought of cold fluids had his mouth watering. When he turned, a gaunt, but familiar face greeted him.
At first, Zevander could only stare. His heart slammed against his ribs, the thud in his ears so loud, he could hardly hear the hammering around him. A twitch of his muscles begged him to approach, but he couldn’t move.
“Father?” Zevander frowned, uncertain.
He hadn’t seen his father since they’d first arrived, and the man who stood before him right then looked to have wasted away in that time, his bones sharp and peeking through his mottled skin. Yet, he offered a pained smile, his dark, sunken eyes appraising him.
As angry as he may have been at one time, Zevander’s heart ached at the sight of him. How small and frail.
“You look in good health. Strong.” As his eyes appraised Zevander, they seemed to land on the many scars he’d earned over the last few years. A rheumy shield in his gaze wavered as if he would cry right then. Strange, seeing as he was the very man who’d taught him to hide his tears as a child.
“Get your drink and stop wasting the day!” Warden Vicarek barked through clenched teeth.
It didn’t matter how hard Zevander worked, or what respect he showed the guards, it seemed he’d never find favor in that surly old bastard. Zevander almost wondered if he had it in for him, as much as he singled him out in punishments.
Eyes wide, his father ladled water into a tin cup, offering him twice his usual ration.
Zevander took in his state, as he stared back at him over the rim. “You’ve not eaten much.”
“Food is scarce amongst the elder crowd. Hard fought for and not easily won some days. Particularly when you’ve got a bad leg and the orgoths are scavenging.” His father ladled water for Kazhimyr and Ravezio, as well.
“Come tomorrow, and I’ll have bread.”
“I’d sooner starve than take from my own son.”
“I can get extra rations.”
“You’ve earned your place.” What little pride there was to be had in the prison, it gleamed in his father’s eyes right then. “That’s good.”
“Tomorrow, then.” Zevander handed back the cup, and his father gave a nod.
“Tomorrow.”
The cells that housed the prisoners were nothing more than small caverns with three walls, one of which was a stretch of iron bars. Opposite the bars, yawned a completely open view, no wall obstructing the vast expanse of the Solassion mountains. A breathtaking sight, if not for the nauseating drop, the bottom of which wasn’t even visible from their height. They were known as the Cliff Tombs, seeing as it wasn’t uncommon for a prisoner to edge too close and fall over, their gut-wrenching screams a nightmarish echo. Those first nights in the prison, years ago, Zevander had worried that he might fall with his restlessness, and even tethered himself to the cell bars for a while.
He’d since learned to sleep quietly and still.
With one arm tucked under his head, Zevander stared out at the stars. He’d always remembered them being so much brighter back home. Or perhaps that was just a dream. He wondered if his mother and sister were staring up at them right then.
“Almost the Eventide Somnial,” Kazhimyr said beside him, where he lay on his own bamboo mat. Also known as Winter Somnial or the long slumber, it was a celebration of the longest stretch of night, when both moons crossed paths and all of Aethyria would be shrouded in darkness for seven nights. A celebration of the Lunadei.
A spark of hope when the world was too dark.
Zevander had always looked forward to the Somnial in the past. All the lights. The food. The gifts. The laughter.
Gods, he missed the laughter.
Here, the winter celebration was nothing more than seven nights of misery and heat, not a single flake of snow to know the season had even arrived. Only the extra ration of water declared the holiday in the mines. At home, those who worked laborious trades were permitted to stay home, and some generous masters even offered extra coin. As the days would grow darker in the upcoming months, they’d work just as hard by firelight, with only the blessing of that unbearable sunlight disappearing behind the moons.
“Do you ever make a wish on the stars?” Kazhimyr asked.
“No. Stars are too far out of reach to give a fuck.”
His cellmate chuckled. “What cynical thoughts you carry during this joyous time of year.”
The sound of rustling reached their ears, and both of them lifted their heads to where Ravezio, lying on the other side of Kazhimyr, was undoubtedly stripping himself beneath his threadbare blanket.
Zevander let out a sound of disapproval and lowered his head. “Godsteeth, tell me you’re not sleeping unclad again.”
“It happens to be good for you. I sweat when I sleep.”
“You sweat because you stroke your cock while you’re dreaming,” Zevander argued back.
“That is quite good for you, as well. Keeps the blood pumping.”
“Pump your blood somewhere else, yeah? The rest of us don’t want to hear it.”
Zevander snorted at Kazhimyr’s comment, staring up at one particularly bright star in the sky, wondering how much it’d stand out in the upcoming Somnial.
Kazhimyr sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for one night with a woman. My father had fucked half our village by the time he was my age. It isn’t right that we should be denied during our prime.”
Zevander couldn’t deny the urges he’d begun to feel from the time he’d first slipped into adolescence. Thankfully, he hadn’t yet reached the age of moon cycles, which typically began at the first quarter-century. A time when young Lunasier men grew exceptionally aroused.
And cranky.
The rut, some called it, but Zevander had never personally been exposed to understand those primal urges. He’d only heard the cries of pain and quiet grunts from cellmates who sometimes offered relief. “You’ve still got centuries of opportunity ahead of you.”
“You speak as if you believe we’ll make it out of here. We’d be the first, if we did.”
Zevander had heard the stories, had seen the older prisoners, including his father, wasting away. Yet, from the moment he’d set foot inside the mines, he’d had the unfounded belief that he’d, one day, see his mother and sister again. “Who’s cynical now?”
“Might the two of you shut your fucking flappers? You’re ruining the fantasy in my head.”
“What fantasy?” Kazhimyr asked, the curiosity in his voice a telling symptom of his first approaching moon cycle.
“Oh, she’s a beauty,” Ravezio mused. “Bright blue eyes, golden hair, and fair skin. Curves that tickle my palm, just thinking about her.”
“Fair skin? Then it isn’t any Solassion I’ve ever seen.” Not that Zevander had seen many Solassion women at all, aside from the Bellatryx who walked through the prisons on occasion. Solassions were simply known to have a light bronze complexion.
“She’s different. I don’t know who, or what, she is, but I dream of her most nights. Makes sleeping next to this snoring piss dribbler almost tolerable.”
Kazhimyr let out a grunt of irritation. “Be grateful I’ve been cursed a fucking spindling in this shithole, or I’d freeze your tongue and rip it out of your mouth.”
“Since your hands are useless, perhaps you might help me out.”
“Surely, you’re not going to let a scrawny Eremician speak to you that way,” Zevander jibed, chuckling at the two of them.
“Scrawny …? I’d knock him ass over applecart without missing a stroke of my cock. Be grateful my basilisk is tethered by these bands, or you’d make a fine stone statue.”
“Is that so?” The voice, like blades across his spine, had Zevander turning toward the entrance of their cell, where the prison warden approached.
In all the banter, he’d failed to hear them until they’d nearly reached the cell. Two guards accompanied the warden and headed straight for Ravezio. Muscles tense, Zevander sat upright, knowing all too well what would follow. The same harassment Ravezio had suffered on countless nights before.
“Not you cunts again,” Ravezio groaned, but he knew his Eremician friend. Knew he feared the punishment of the guards and worried for the day they’d decide to toss him over the edge of that cliff.
Both guards took hold of him, as the warden strode up, picking at his teeth with a long fingernail.
Eremicians had long been treated as nothing more than lowly animals. While their scaled skin, more effeminate features, and ancient markings were seen as favorable traits in the desertlands, the Solassion guards found them aberrant and revolting.
The ragged trousers he must’ve slid back on hung low at his hips, as Ravezio stood between the two guards, his arms stretched in their gauntlet-clad grasps. When threatened, spikes protruded from Ravezio’s scales, and one prick would render them dead in minutes. Not a blood magic trait that could be suppressed by the bands, but a physical characteristic of some Eremicians.
“Tell me something, Mician …” The stunted form of the word served as an insult, and Ravezio’s jaw tensed. “When you stroke your cock…don’t those scales fall off?” The warden scrunched his face, pretending to demonstrate, as he pounded the side of his fist against his other palm, and both guards holding Revezio laughed.
“Leave him,” Zevander warned, his voice like a low growl as he bit back the anger stirring in his gut. A bold request, given the warden loathed him as much as the Eremician.
Swinging his attention toward him, the warden sneered. “You remember what I told you, boy. All I have to do is say the word, and your father’s head will be crushed like a fucking melon.”
“It’s all right,” Ravezio chimed in. “These pot-bellied clods never take much, anyway.”
“Look at you, accommodating us with such grace. Like a woman.” The warden chuckled and glanced around. “Surprised none of you ugly bastards have tried fucking him. Bet he’s all warm inside, like a woman’s cunt.”
Ravezio wore his usual smirk. “Sounds like you’ve thought about it an awful lot.”
The warden snarled and donned a steel gauntlet, wriggling his fingers with a smile. He pinched one of the scales on Ravezio’s outstretched arm, tearing it away from his body.
“Ahhhh, fucking bastards!” Ravezio gritted his teeth, writhing in their grip as blood spilled out of the wound onto the ground. “Go on, then, have a taste of my blood.” Ravezio chuckled and licked the blood away. “I promise it’s delicious.”
Zevander ground his teeth so hard, it sent jagged flashes of light to the back of his eyes. He balled his hands to tight fists, imagining them crushing the warden’s skull, as the man had threatened to do to his father’s.
“Look at him laugh,” the warden taunted. “He loves it.” Taking hold of another scale, he tore it away like the first, and Ravezio shook, his eyes screwed so tightly, there was no doubt he was in agony.
“I have no family in this shithole.” Kazhimyr snarled beside him. “You want to crush my skull? Have at it. The sooner I leave this place, the fucking better, but by the gods …” He seemed to bite his tongue, all too aware that if he finished that sentence, there’d be consequences. There were always consequences.
