Eldritch, p.21
Eldritch, page 21
“I don’t know. I’ve not figured out all the history behind how I may have arrived here, but Dolion believes that I belong to a race of individuals who have gone extinct.”
“And who is Dolion?”
“A mage that Zevander was also holding captive.”
“Also?” Her brows knitted together. “As in, he held you captive?”
I winced at the question. How ridiculous it all sounded, even to me. If Zevander hadn’t followed me back through those woods, I’d have thought I’d imagined it all—Aethyria, magic, Zevander. “Yes, but not for the reasons you think. It was for my protection.”
“Of course it was. A man takes you captive, another man tells you you’re a descendant from an extinct race, and you just believe everything? Did you not sustain the bites of those wicked wickens?”
I hadn’t even arrived at the part about the bonewhip, or the whistle in my throat that called upon a massive dragon, or my blackened fingertips that could kill with a single touch. “Look, I told you it would be a lot. Perhaps this wasn’t the right time.”
“No. Perhaps it was. At no point would I come to my senses and believe this nonsense. You question my state of mind and Moros’s intentions, but you so easily find all this other malarkey perfectly plausible? You’re from Foxglove. You were born in Foxglove, Maevyth. I say we lock the doors and do not allow your kidnapper back inside when he returns. If necessary, I’m quite capable with a knife. Uncle Riftyn showed me—”
“Stop it.” The lingering stress of having to stay behind at the cabin weighed heavy on me, but I tamped down those frustrations for her sake. “You don’t understand, and I’m not expecting you to. I only wanted to tell you the truth of what happened to me. I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned you.”
“Oh, but it sounds like you did. It sounds an awful lot like you fell for your captor, while I remained terrorized by that witch of a woman!”
How dare she! I wanted to scream that she was the reason I was still stuck in this terrifying place, in this suffocating hovel, but I held my tongue on that point.
“I will not defend my loyalty to you. I have fought every day to return to you. Literally training to become stronger, so that I could properly protect you! So, I’ll hear no more—”
My words were cut short by the movement of something behind Aleysia, and mid-sentence, I slowly pushed to my feet.
Behind her, making its way down the wall, crawled a spider the size of a bird.
“What is it?” she asked, turning around.
“Aleysia, move slowly.”
From the bedroom, another large spider appeared—that one nearly the height of the door’s frame and as pale as snow.
“Oh, God. How did they get in here?”
At the corner of the room sat the burlap sack in which Zevander had wrapped the remains of the rabbit. He’d instructed me to burn it after he left.
The burlap wriggled, and out crawled a much smaller spider that scampered its way toward the bigger two.
“Aleysia, we have to go. Now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ZEVANDER
Past …
Zevander awoke to the scent of venison and warm bread, his mouth watering for a bite. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten meat that didn’t stink of rot. Years, maybe, but those delicious scents were unmistakable, stirring memories of home.
Across from him, the other members of the Gildona sat clustered around what must’ve been a feast, the way the smell of it overwhelmed his senses. One of the young men, likely Solassion with his blond hair and bronze skin, broke away from the others and carried a plate toward him. Zevander’s muscles tensed when the man sat down beside him, offering the piled food—venison and bread, just as he’d guessed, along with grapes, olives and figs. Delicacies he hadn’t had since before he’d arrived at the prison.
He cautiously accepted the plate, eyeing the scars scattered about the other man’s chest and arms, where he’d clearly been whipped. One particularly gruesome scar extended from the corner of his lips to mid-cheek. A golden band glinted across his throat, and it was then Zevander grew aware of the one at his own throat. He pressed his hand there, his mind refusing to entertain the memories of the day before, when someone must’ve fastened it on him.
“I’m Theron,” the blond said, popping an olive into his mouth.
Instead of responding, Zevander bit into one of the small chunks of venison on his plate, the delicious, savory flavor exploding across his tongue. For a split-second, he thought of his friends, starting their grueling workday with a bowl of slop, but those thoughts quickly dissolved with the flare of pain at his thigh and the memory of what had been done to him. He’d have given away his entire plate of food to return to the mines.
“You’re Lunasier.” It wasn’t a question, and Zevander didn’t like the way the man stared at his thighs. When he reached for one of the wrapped wounds, Zevander batted his hand away, glaring at him like an animal ready to bite. Theron gave an unbothered smile. “I was just checking your injuries. I’m the one who stitched your wound.”
He hadn’t even realized his wound had needed stitching.
Instead of prodding, Theron settled on the pillows, resting his elbows on his bent knees. “She views your defiance as a game. So long as you refuse her, she’ll continue to torment you. Do as she says, and you’ll gain her favor.”
“What makes you think I aspire to be her favored whore?”
His cheek twitched, as if he took the question personally. “You will find acquiescence is far better than her punishments.”
“I’d suffer a thousand lashes before I’d ever bow to her whims.”
“You’d prefer to return to the mines?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head and sighed. “There are advantages to being here. Comforts. When was the last time you had fresh venison in the mines? Freshly-baked bread, instead of the stale and moldy discarded scraps. Pillows, instead of rough concrete. Hot water for baths. You’re still a slave, whether you’re here, or in the mines.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinions of what I am.”
“And I mean no insult. I’m the one who mends the wounds of those that defy her orders. I’d simply like to avoid having to sew together your ravaged flesh.”
“Sorry to disappoint. There will be plenty more wounds. Thanks for the food, but leave me alone.”
His lips thinned. “I’m not permitted to leave you alone. In the event you take your life.”
“Then, I’m shackled to you, as well. Fucking brilliant.”
“Could be worse. I could be an orgoth.” Theron snorted a laugh, and while Zevander might’ve also laughed at that, he couldn’t summon so much as a twitch of his lips—the rage inside him was too thick. “If you insist on challenging her every word, at least let me offer something. From his pocket, he pulled a tiny ampoule of purple liquid that he held up for Zevander.
Reluctantly Zevander let him deposit it into his palm.
“It’s a powerful elixir. Eliminates the pain and heals. Spill it into your wounds and you’ll be floating on a dream.”
Zevander sneered. “Is that how she commands you to do as she wants?”
“Your cock will be useless. Humiliating for her. And in time, she may even grow bored of you.”
“Do you speak from experience?”
Clearing his throat, he turned away. “It took a while to grasp, but yes. She’s found other uses for me.”
“Mending wounds.”
“Don’t imagine that anyone here enjoys their punishments or sleeps so soundly at night that they can’t recall the horrors of what she’s done to them. Most die within the first month. Either self-inflicted, or like you, they refuse to break. Those of us who remain must learn how to bend. How to choose our grief. The weight of a chain grows heavier with time.”
Zevander ground his teeth. “I will not break, nor bend to anyone.”
Lips pressed together, Theron pushed to his feet, lingering a moment longer. “Mor samanet,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a Solassion phrase often spoken before heading into battle. It means death awaits. I pray you survive, my friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ZEVANDER
Present day …
Afeeling of dread palmed the back of Zevander’s neck, bringing him to a halt on route to the village.
He looked back in the direction of the hovel that had shrunk too far in the distance to see.
Maevyth?
Instinct gnawed at him to return to her, as the final moments just before he’d left flickered through his head, and the worry he’d seen in her eyes lingered in his mind like a sliver. Perhaps an omen, if he were more astute.
He glanced back toward the winding, uneven path ahead that was scarcely discernable beneath the freshly fallen snow, which stretched toward the dark silhouette of Foxglove in the distance. “Fuck.”
That kernel of unease expanded in his chest, hardening into a cold realization that something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Abandoning his journey, he turned back for the hovel, trudging over his own tracks in the snow.
“Mor samanet.”
The same voice he’d heard the day before in the woods reached him, and Zevander scanned his surroundings—the steeply sloping hills that met the remnants of a decayed wooden fence at either side of the road. Twisted, skeletal limbs of barren trees loomed over the ever-present fog that lingered across the path, but there was no sign of anyone.
No movement.
He kept on toward the cottage, passing a long-abandoned watermill and its visibly rotting footbridge, and again his senses flared. He reached for the sword at his back as he caught a scent on the wind. Oiled leather. A faint whiff of smoke and ash.
A glint of gold from his periphery alerted him to movement, and Zevander spun, unsheathing his blade, just missing the deadly lash of his attacker’s sword that whizzed past his head.
Donned in a hood and mask that obscured their face, they lunged again, and Zevander threw himself sideways to avoid a jab to his guts. Zevander parried with a clang, mentally noting the stance and skill of his opponent. The precision of each movement. A trained killer, no doubt.
They circled each other like mirror images, swords at the ready. The spectral figure pivoted, and their blades clashed, steel against steel, sparks flying as both of them attacked with a series of well-timed strikes.
Zevander could’ve easily believed his opponent had studied his own movements, the way he almost seemed to anticipate them.
The scorpion at his back shifted and skittered across his skin, begging to be cut loose, but Zevander tamped it down, had intended to save whatever blood magic he had left in the event he encountered more of those spider mutations. A plan he began to reconsider as he stared back at his enemy, searching for a weakness.
Zevander deflected another cunning strike and countered with a jab toward his opponent’s chest, but the stranger managed to side-step in time.
Like fighting his own damned shadow.
“Who are you?” Zevander snarled before lunging forward again. His blade was met with a rattling clang of opposing steel.
The stranger riposted, aiming for his midsection that time, and Zevander lowered his sword in time to block the deadly strike.
He sent a powerful blow to his enemy’s chest, throwing him backward. It was just enough for Zevander to press him back against the nearby tree, pinning him to the trunk of it with his sword at the stranger’s throat.
“Who are you!” When he tore away his opponent’s mask, Zevander’s breath hitched, the grip of his sword loosening with shock.
Blond curls of hair. Blue eyes. The scar at the corner of his mouth.
Theron?
A casket of memories cracked open inside Zevander’s head, in a cacophony of voices that spoke all at once.
No. It couldn’t be. His head swam in memories he’d long locked away. Memories he didn’t dare ponder in the face of a threat.
“Good to see you again, old friend.” The smile on Theron’s face, cruel and mirthless, didn’t match the last image of the young man Zevander remembered. “Centuries haven’t changed you much, have they? Perhaps all those grapes and wine you were fed by high-blooded noblewomen.”
His muscles hardened again, jaw tight. “You’re a long way from Solassios,” he gritted. “What do you want?”
“It isn’t what I want. It’s what she wants. It’s always been about what she wants.”
“Loyce?”
His lips twisted as if the sound of her name was as equally revolting to him. “Who else would’ve sent me to the damned mortal lands?”
“It’s a shame she sent you to your demise.”
“It’s a shame you underestimate me.” Like a whisper, he vanished, and Zevander’s blade bit into the bark of the old tree.
An unnerving cold palmed the back of his neck.
“Mor samanet,” the voice whispered again.
Zevander swung out with his blade, spinning around to find nothing there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ZEVANDER
“What is the point of this?” Zevander glanced around the small cottage kitchen, noting how strangely primitive it seemed, with its pump for a sink, and hearth oven—the kind only found in the poorest parts of The Hovel.
The girl he’d been shown the few times he’d slipped into Caligorya during his abuses, the one Alastor seemed determined to make him empathetic toward, stood on a small stool, rifling through the cupboards for a flint striker. Each visit to Caligorya seemed to mark a progression of her age, and Zevander estimated her to be about sixteen, or so. Only a few years younger than himself.
“Pay attention,” Alastor said beside him, staring back at her.
“Is she expected to do something brilliant?”
Alastor’s eyes shimmered with an unmistakable expression that had Zevander frowning. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”
“You are far too past your prime to notice such things.”
“She will age like all mortals, and ripen like fruit waiting to be plucked.”
Zevander grimaced. “If that is your intent, then I’m no longer interested in these lessons.”
Alastor shot him a disapproving look. “She doesn’t exist. It is the finite nature of mortality that intrigues me.”
The girl let out a growl of frustration, and her abrupt movements knocked her off balance. She teetered on the stool as if she might tumble back.
Zevander lurched forward to catch her, stopped short by the firm hand on his shoulder.
“You must never touch her. No matter what.”
Thankfully, she managed to regain her composure and climbed down from the stool.
“Why?”
“As I’ve told you before, it is forbidden. To breach the liminal boundary of Caligorya and touch a being that hasn’t yet been born would have catastrophic consequences. It opens the barriers of fate and allows the gods to interfere.”
“They interfere, anyway, so what does it matter?”
While the girl kept on with her searching, Alastor’s gaze trailed her every movement, as if her banal chores were something to behold. “Even the most powerful are bound by laws that they can never break. Unless they’re broken for them,” he said.
“But I touched a cup that hadn’t yet been crafted. A tankard of mead that had yet to be fermented.”
“The inanimate bear no consequences, as far as the gods are concerned.”
“How does a single touch open the gateway for the gods?”
Alastor finally broke his stare on a huff. “You will do as I say without question.” From the pocket of his robe, he pulled a flint striker and placed it on the table.
When the girl twisted around, she plucked it up and knelt before the hearth. Quick strikes failed to produce the spark she needed to light the flame, and the girl groaned as she kept trying.
“Do you remember the last glyph I showed you?”
The last had been a complicated symbol that he’d failed to grasp by the time he’d awakened. Even then, he struggled to remember all the finer details of it.
“Barely,” he responded, his focus shifting from the glyph itself to the girl, noticing far more than the intrigue of her mortality. How curious, the way her long, dark hair fell about her slim shoulders. Her skin, like a beautiful alabaster against the stark black of her dress and choker. She held the striker with delicate, manicured hands. Hands that left him wondering if they were as soft as they looked.
A flash of General Loyce’s hands grasping for him slipped through his thoughts, and Zevander grimaced, the humiliation rising to his cheeks.
“Pay attention,” Alastor said, and with the same orange flame as before, he drew the ancient symbol he’d last shown him into the air.
Its soft glow was as mesmerizing as the last time Zevander had studied it. A circle of intricate symbols and lines, some of which pointed to tinier symbols outside of the circle—at least a half-dozen with their own complicated shapes. “It’s too much. There’s too much detail in this.”
“Focus!” Alastor barked. “It is the most important power you possess!”
“The flame?”
“Yes. Now, commit this glyph to memory.”
While he appreciated the distraction from the horrors of General Loyce, he loathed the lessons with Alastor. Hated the reminder that the only power he possessed was in dreams. That each day with the general seemed to be counting down to his own demise. “There’s no point! It’s useless outside of Caligorya. I have no power. These lessons with you are futile.”
“Are they?”
The scene shifted, and all at once, Zevander stood in the stone castle he’d known his entire life.
Home.
Frost expelled from his mouth, and a chill crawled over his skin as he glanced around the dark foyer. Curious, he stepped forward in awe as he remembered every detail of the castle, every weathered stone and crack. Where the shadows hit the walls and that comforting scent of his mother’s perfumed oils that lingered in the air.
