Eldritch, p.42
Eldritch, page 42
I mindlessly blinked up at him, searching for clarity in his eyes. Instead, I found nothing more than staunch resolution, and when he urged me up the staircase, I refused to move. Not before he answered my question.
“Lilleven’s murder had nothing to do with me?” I needed to hear his response. My heart and conscience longed to know that I wasn’t responsible for her death.
“No. I broke a very sacred rule and intervened.”
My breath hitched, and I stood silent for a moment. Relieved? I couldn’t properly label the feeling that moved through me.
Numb, I climbed a few steps. Paused. Climbed three more and paused again. “How?”
“I breached the boundary. I changed your fate.” He was quiet for a moment, and I glanced over my shoulder to see that he stood staring off, his expression more troubled than before, if that were possible. “You’re my mate.”
The words reverberated in my mind, and my knee buckled, but I caught myself before stumbling. I exhaled a shaky breath, my heart hardening at the ease with which he’d said it. “How is that possible, when I’m mortal?”
“The night I kissed you in that cell. The moment I crossed that boundary, you were chosen by the gods. Marked by Death.” His gaze shifted toward my shoulder, where I’d seen the glowing mark weeks ago while bathing.
I let his words sink into my skin like a dull blade. “Then, it wasn’t fate that brought us together. It was deception.”
His brows tightened. “I couldn’t let them burn you. I wanted— needed—the gods to know you were mine.”
The anger inside of me clenched down on my emotions, locking its jaw over my heart. “They longed to burn me for a crime you committed,” I snapped.
“And that is my only regret in all of this.” He advanced a step, and so did I, only backwards, keeping some distance between us.
“The visions you had, they hadn’t happened yet. Which means…had you not seen them, my mother might still be alive.”
He shook his head. “It’s true, I saw visions that hadn’t come to pass, but your mother wasn’t present in them. You still lived with your adopted family. The villagers still shunned you as they do now. What I did had no bearing on the events prior.”
“How do you know! What you did could’ve changed everything.” Tears prickled the rims of my eyes as I stared down at him. “You say the gods are cruel. Perhaps this is all punishment. Perhaps in another life, my mother wasn’t meant to be captured. Enslaved. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be the lorn!”
“I wish I could tell you that I was sorry for having interfered. That, had I remembered your face, I would’ve made a point to keep my distance. To let you live in peace. But I can’t,” he said through clenched teeth. “Knowing what you were to me, what you are, it would’ve killed me. I know that now. My selfish nature hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been apart from you.” Lips pressed to a hard line, he shook his head. “The gods have decided. Fate could change the path a thousand times over, but in the end, it’ll always be you and me. You are my mate.”
“Stop saying that.”
“You are. My mate. You’ve always been mine.” He reached out for me, but I pushed his hand away.
I didn’t want to be touched. Didn’t need his affections. I needed space, a quiet darkness to collect my thoughts. To understand what it all meant without the weight of his gaze on me. I needed to breathe. “I am no one’s.”
The restraint in his muscles, the way they shook, in spite of his stoic face, told me I’d struck a sensitive chord. A quiet rage swirled in his eyes, but he tamped it down. “You have every right to be angry.”
“I am angry!”
His gaze remained steady as he carefully set the sack of food onto the step and advanced toward me again. Before I could step backward, he grabbed my arm. “Take it out on me.”
Brows furrowed, I shook my head. “Have you lost your senses?”
“Hit me. Cut me. Whatever it is you need to do.”
More tears prickled in my eyes, and I wriggled my arm to break free of his grasp, but he tightened his hold. “I just need to be left alone.”
“I’m not letting you wander about this place while angry.”
“In case you missed it, I just found my father. I don’t need you stepping in on his behalf.”
He moved another step closer until his towering body eclipsed mine, and he held my arm pressed to his chest.
“Let go of me,” I warned. When he failed to move, I snarled and clawed at his grip. “Unhand me now!”
“Give me your anger. I deserve it.”
Tears slipped down my cheek, and I wriggled again. I pushed him, but he didn’t move. Like steel, his body remained unyielding. “You should’ve let me choose.”
“Choose what? They would’ve found a reason to burn you for something. They never bothered to know your heart.” He drew a dagger from his hip and held the pointed end of it over his own heart. “Do it. Shove it into my chest.” He forced my palm over the hilt. “I’d sooner suffer the pain of this blade than see the hate in your eyes.”
More tears slipped down my cheeks, and I shook my head, wriggling my hand free of it. “No.” I refused because, as much as the images of what could’ve been tormented me, as much as it angered me to know that I had been punished for something he’d done, deep in the marrow of my being, I still cared about him.
Even if his confession had turned the entirety of my world upside down, I still couldn’t bring myself to hurt him for it.
As he sheathed the blade, I turned to head back up the staircase, but he gripped my arm again.
“Let me go.”
“No. I will never let you go. I’m not sorry that I claimed you for myself. I will never apologize for that. But I am sorry for what you’ve suffered as a consequence.” The first flicker of pain crossed his face, and I knew he was telling the truth. “I never wanted to see you suffer.” His remorse was clear in the way he couldn’t bring himself to look at me. “You don’t have to forgive me. But know that I would fight the gods and suffer their fury all over again to spare you from death.”
“I’m confused, Zevander. I don’t know what to feel. I need to sort my thoughts.”
He stared for a moment, his jaw set. “Fine. Sort your thoughts.” Had I wanted to pull away again, there was little chance when his palm curled over the nape of my neck and his mouth came to mine. Fingers closed in a tight fist around my hair at the same time that he wrapped his other arm around my back, pulling me into him—a silent proclamation of possession and need. His kiss held nothing sweet, nor gentle. It was raw and blistering, reminding me that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t walk away from him. That, no matter how furious I might’ve been over his confession, he’d acted for, not against, me.
I wanted to shove him away. To inflict the pain I felt right then, but my hands moved on instinct, gripping the front of his tunic, yanking him closer. With wet and hungry lips, I kissed him back, until the world around me disappeared and I couldn’t breathe. Only then did I shove him away.
Dragging the back of my palm across my mouth, I stared up at him, eyes challenging him.
He leaned in again, and I threw out my palm, pressing it to his chest.
Like a predator denied his prey, he swept his tongue over his lips, holding himself mere inches from my face. “Do not imagine there’s anywhere you could go, anything you could possibly say, to keep me away from you now, moon witch. I remember everything, and I will not lose you again.”
Swiping up the sack of food, he strode past me, up the staircase.
Rain pelted against the stained-glass windows, as I sat hunched in the front pew of the temple, staring down at the faint strip of moonlight slicing through the darkness. A memory hooked itself into my mind, pulling me back to the night before I was due to burn for Lilleven’s death. I recalled staring at a sliver of light from a distant torch that’d carried into my cell, mesmerized by its flickering shadow. Watching for the errant movement that indicated a presence. A glimpse of the angel whose lips had burned across mine like fiery brimstone. Not a kiss of the heavens, but one of sweet perdition. Molten as boiling holy water that’d scalded my insides, cleansing my sins and transcending me from that cold, wet cell.
A moment of reverence before my body would be disintegrated in shame by hungry flames and scornful eyes.
I remembered how, as the hour had drawn near, it was his deep, soothing voice that I’d desperately yearned to hear. The one I had convinced myself belonged to an angel sent to protect me. The only one I knew Sacton Crain would fear.
Zevander’s voice.
An hour passed, as I sat contemplating the reasons I should’ve hated him. Instead, I found myself reminiscing about the last couple of months. All that we’d suffered together, and how much my life had changed. The world had gone to hell, but there were moments that I wouldn’t have traded for so much as a glimpse of what might’ve been.
The hum of a winged insect brushed past my ear, and I swatted at it, annoyed to find a fly perched on the edge of the pew. More flies landed beside it, all of them curled into themselves, twitching. They suddenly stilled beside me, like the flies that occasionally died on the window ledge back home. White mist expelled from my lips, and it was then a terrible cold burrowed into me.
“Warmth never touches this place.” The soft feminine voice drifted across the room like smoke, and my body froze.
I twisted around and found a woman sitting at the end of the pew, bathed in an ethereal light that divided her from reality. It illuminated the many crosses that’d been brutally carved into her skin, and the gaping wound at her throat. Long, black hair lay in matted strands against her shoulders, and the tattered dress she wore hung limp from her body. When she turned toward me, my heart caught in my throat. Her features were so distinct, I couldn’t bring myself to believe what I was seeing.
“Who are you?” My voice trembled, throat tight, because I damned well knew the answer.
Her lips pulled to a sad smile. “You ask, but you already know.”
“Mother?” I swallowed past the lump in my throat, my eyes dry and burning with the threat of tears. “Am I dreaming?”
“I can’t be sure. But if you are, I suspect we only have a few moments.”
I blinked away the blur of tears, trying not to look at her throat that spoke of her violent death. “Are you in pain?”
“Not anymore. Are you?”
Emotions swelled inside of me, and I shook my head. Did the dead recognize the living? Did they know of the boundary separating the two?
“I tried to save you.” Wet, rheumy eyes stared back at me. Beneath the grime and bruises, she was beautiful. Exactly as I’d have imagined her. “He never intended to let me keep you. The moment he knew I was with child, he promised to destroy you.”
Carefully, I slid closer to her, wanting to touch her before she faded.
“It warms me to see you, Daughter. To know you are safe and loved.”
Could she see the love? Was there clarity in death? A shrewdness that escaped the living?
“Perhaps you might visit me again?”
“Hmmm.” She turned away, a sad smile crinkling the corner of her eye. “I’m weary. I’ve roamed for so long, and I yearn for rest. Seeing you will allow me to slumber in peace.”
I gave a tearful nod. “I curse the gods. I curse them for taking you away from me.”
Even in death, her eyes held a warmth when she turned back to me. “Do not fault the gods for the fate they’ve chosen for you. And do not mourn what was never meant to be.”
“But what if it was? What if something, or someone, changed it?”
She smiled and shook her head. “If there’s one thing death has shown me, it’s how little we know of life. Fate is not a flitting rope, but a knot that grows tighter with time. Bound by twists and loops not easily unraveled. The change you speak of was fated. The gods diverted your path, yes, but it returned you to the place you were always meant to be. Grieving this spectral image in your mind does nothing. Do not let it steal the beauty of what is and what you’ve become.”
“This? I should’ve known you, Mother. You should’ve been a part of my life.”
“I am a part of your life, child. Your heart is my own, forged by Death’s cold hands and winter’s breath.”
“A heart that grows colder and more hardened as I age.” I turned my fidgeting hands over for the blackened fingertips and that ungodly glove that reminded me of my aberration. I had so easily taken life with these hands that no longer looked like my own. “I am neither good, nor pious, Mother. I long for your soft words to temper me.”
“My precious daughter. You were not meant to become a delicate flower, but the frost that wilts the vine. It is your strength in a world that seeks warmth and frailty in a woman. Steel your bones, and do not bend, or break to their will. Accept what you are and what you will become.”
“What am I to become?”
“Vindicated.”
I reached out to touch her face, and a branching cold crawled up the length of my arms to my chest. My lungs seized, the air in them waning, and I slipped into the blackness.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
MAEVYTH
Ahard bang cracked through the void and hurled me awake with a gasp. Darkness surrounded me, and I sat up from the wooden pew, an ache in my jaw from the hard, wooden surface and moisture clinging to my cheek where I’d drooled. I wiped my sleeve across it, recalled dozing off earlier in the evening.
Another heavy thud, that one overhead, sent a startling jolt through my body, and with an upward glance toward the temple’s high, arched ceiling, I darted through the darkness, up the staircase to the corridor, where I slowed my steps on spotting Father and Aleysia outside Zevander’s door.
“Oh, there she is,” Aleysia said, the relief in her voice accompanied by a sharp exhale. “Thank goodness. I thought he’d thrown you across the room in there.”
I shook my head, closing the distance between us. “I’m fine. It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”
“What is he doing in there?” Father whispered.
“He…sometimes has fits in his sleep.”
“A sleepwalker?”
“Yes,” I lied, knowing it was far more complicated than mere sleepwalking.
Father sighed. “I’ve suffered myself a time or two.” He must’ve bathed at some point during the evening, leaving his skin far less grimy than earlier, and he’d found a clean tunic and trousers.
Feigning a smile, I placed my hand on his arm. “I hope we’ll have the opportunity to catch up, Father. But please, both of you, go back to bed. I’ll check on him.”
As they retreated, the tight hold of my worries unraveled.
Zevander’s shouts bled through the door, and with a held breath, I carefully pushed it open.
Furniture lay tipped on its side, and bits of broken glass crunched beneath my boots when I stepped inside the room.
“You will not tell her anything, or by gods, I will rip out your tongue with my bare hands!” Zevander threw open the door of the closet across the room, a dagger clutched in his hand. “Show yourself.”
“Zevander?” I called out softly so as not to startle him, but he didn’t respond. Didn’t turn to acknowledge me, as he tore across the room for the bed.
He raised the thick, wooden furniture as if it were weightless, revealing nothing beneath, and let it fall with a weighty thud that echoed through the room. Outside the window, a massive eye peered in—Raivox watching him. Or stalking him, as it seemed, the way his eye narrowed, following Zevander’s every move.
Zevander paced, muttering to himself, and spun around, his dagger outstretched. “Where are you? I can hear you whispering, you wretched cunt!”
Heart pounding in my throat, I inched deeper into the room. “Zevander, is everything okay?”
Still, he didn’t answer, but continued searching the room for whatever invisible thing seemed to be taunting him.
Outside the window, a guttural snarl uncoiled in Raivox’s throat and a white mist blasted against the window as he let out a grunt.
“Easy, Raivox,” I whispered, raising my hand to settle him.
The deep croaking and snarling didn’t cease as he visually stalked Zevander, perhaps sensing something I couldn’t.
I needed to break Zevander of whatever spell he was under, or he’d end up like one of those silver statues Raivox had crafted out of the spiders.
“Zevander!” I shouted, wincing at the rough tone of my voice, and at last, he spun around.
His pupils widened like inkblots on parchment, swallowing his irises.
Raivox’s snarling heightened to a warning growl, the scrape of claws against stone like shifting armor and grinding on my rattled nerves.
I let my gaze shift to the Corvugon only long enough to shake my head. Please, I silently mouthed, in hopes he’d understand. Raivox hissed and struck his beak against the window, taunting Zevander away from me.
Eyes like a void, Zevander ignored the threat at his back and stalked toward me.
The knife in his hand only stoked my fear, and I slowly back myself away. “Zevander, please. Raivox is watching your every step.” My attention flickered between the two, and I caught a lash of that silver flame strike the air through the window pane.
“I did not willingly give you my seed.” Zevander bared his teeth like a rabid animal. “You took from me. You took everything from me!” He charged toward me, and his palm caught my throat at the same time the wall crashed into my spine.
I winced as the pain spiraled up into my sinuses.
An ear-splitting roar shattered the window across the room, and still, Zevander didn’t so much as flinch at the clamor. Not even when a sharp breeze snuffed the hearth’s fire, nor when Raivox swiped his massive claw into the room, still too far away to reach the two of us. Pressure at my throat tightened, and through an explosion of stars, I watched stones bust away from the wall, as Raivox fought to get inside.
