Page 101 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

“Of dragons.” Carefully running her finger over the vein that Aleysia had cut herself on, she smiled. “We’ve not seen one for centuries.”

Allura, the bone scribe I’d met in Aethyria, had told me only those who’d lost their senses would attempt to mount a dragon.

As much as I didn’t particularly care for the woman on first impression, she certainly knew how to stoke my curiosity. “I didn’t think that was possible. How?”

“In time. First, we must exorcise your sister.”

“Exorcise. You are not going to even attempt?—”

“Maeve, it’s all right.” Father placed a firm hand on my shoulder and gave a slight squeeze. “She does not mean it in the same sense as Sacton Crain.”

“You will not speak his blasphemous name in my house again.” The woman’s lips twisted with disgust.

Father lowered his head. “My apologies, Priestess.” He turned his attention toward me. “They are going to attempt to remove the infection.”

“How? Is that possible?”

The priestess waved a hand and spun away from me, her dress flowing behind her. “It is the will of Morsana. Not mine. Not yours. If she has no use for her, she will return her.”

“Return her?” I rounded the cauldron after her, in which something bubbled around bones sticking up over the top of it. “What does that mean?”

“Maevyth, you must trust her,” Father urged behind me. “Aleysia will die, otherwise. She will become one of those repulsive monsters.”

“Trust her? I don’t even know her!” A shock of pain struck my temples, and I screwed my eyes shut, wincing at the throbbing ache. As I stood alongside my sister’s bed, I noted the easy rise and fall of her chest. “Morsana is death. Will Aleysia die?”

“From death, we rise.”

My gaze shot to Zevander and back. “And him?”

“His injuries required sedation, but he lives. He also bears the mark of infection, though I cannot detect it inside of him. His blood is warm and his scar is telling, but nothing moves within.”

Bones still aching, I hobbled around Aleysia to the Zevander’s bed, and as I knelt on the floor alongside him, I noted the gashes and bruises on his face, and the gouge at his shoulder where his tunic was torn from what looked like a bite.

The wound had been packed with a green substance, a salve, I presumed.

He breathed, though. His chest moved up and down, and that was all that mattered to me right then.

“What do you mean by moves ?” I asked, gently brushing the hair matted to his forehead.

“The infection moves in the blood. A curse that lives inside the body. He is not like us, though. His blood burns.”

I hesitated to tell her what he was, but in the event he might wake and set his scorpions loose, I thought a friendly warning might be in order. “He’s not from these parts.”

A knowing smile spread across her face. “Of course not. He is Aethyrian. I would guess Nyxterosi, but his skin tone is a bit darker than most.”

“How do you know this?”

“As I said. In time. Let us attend your sister first.” As the priestess sauntered toward my sister, I remained at Zevander’s side, watching her lift Aleysia’s dress from the black gash at her ribs. To my horror, it seemed to have grown since the last time I’d seen it.

Father stood over me, keeping his gaze cast toward the floor.

“Do you remember anything? Our travels here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not much. Only that I woke to Corwin shouting at the Lyverians, who of course, couldn’t understand him.

It seems they didn’t realize you and Zevander had gotten trapped under all that rubble when the church collapsed.

The pain in my leg was unbearable, though, so I don’t recall having been lucid for long.

I can’t bring myself to look beneath the bandages. Whatever remains isn’t much of a leg.”

“I arrived later, then?”

“You and Zevander, yes. Somewhere along the way, Corwin apparently found a way to convey his worry, and they sent two of their men after you.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Corwin smiling back at the woman who’d mended him, the two of them laughing at something. “I’m grateful he didn’t give up on us.”

“And I’m grateful, too. To you. To him.” Twisting back around showed him nodding toward Zevander. “I’ve never seen someone so brave. He fought valiantly against those creatures.”

He’d fought them up until his magic had grown weak, and still, he’d continued to fight until the church had collapsed on top of him.

Threading my fingers in his hand, I gently ran my thumb across Zevander’s brow, where the usual furrowed lines there had disappeared.

A grip of panic squeezed my chest as that horrific outcry of pain echoed in my mind, and I glanced around, desperate to banish it from my head. “These people…they’re Lyverian.”

“Yes. They occupy small villages throughout the mountain. They must’ve sedated us. That journey would’ve taken quite a few days.”

Two Lyverian men carefully lifted Aleysia up from the wooden bed, and I shot to my feet, following after them as they carried her into a domed room that reminded me of a cave.

I glanced up toward the black ceiling, where ravens perched on rafters. All around the room, pieces of bones hung from leather strings, and symbols had been carved into the stone walls. Candles stood about the floor, flickering as the guards lay Aleysia over a strange symbol etched into the floor.

The priestess approached, carrying an ornate vial and the jar she’d fetched earlier. She poured the jar of silvery fluid into the vial, where it shimmered in the candlelight. “Nihilisroot.” After handing the vial to Father, she swiped up my arm.

I wriggled in her grasp, but she gripped tighter, digging her nails into my bones.

The moment she yanked back my sleeve, she drew in a sharp breath and ran her thumb along the feather-like scar at my arm. A flicker of recognition flashed over her face, and her mouth tightened as she lowered her gaze.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she answered, but the unfocused look in her eyes, as if her mind had slipped into unsettling thoughts, said otherwise. Before I could question it, she pressed her nail into my forearm, and I flinched, recoiling as she broke the skin.

“Ouch!” I growled.

Keeping a tight hold on my arm, she squeezed the blood until it dripped down my arm, and flicked her fingers toward Father, who handed off the vial to her.

The delicate glass glided up the length of my forearm as she caught the blood inside.

Once satisfied, she released me and carried the vial to Aleysia.

I thumbed away the fresh bulb of blood that gathered at the cut but frowned to find there was nothing there beneath. Not so much as a puncture left behind.

At Aleysia’s side, the priestess nicked her own skin, adding her blood to the vial with mine.

A cold sensation slithered beneath my skin as she stood over my sister, holding the vial toward the watchful birds.

A quiet chant filled the room as she spoke in a language I recognized as old Lyverian.

Rustling drew my attention to the ravens, who seemed restless, shifting on their perches and flapping their wings.

The more she chanted, the more unsettled they seemed.

The bones around the room began to sway from their skinny ropes, clattering as they hit one another.

One of the birds swooped down from its perch and slammed itself into the wall.

It stumbled around on the ground, then managed a few flaps of its wings, enough to lift its body into the air, and flew straight for the wall again.

Over and over, it rammed itself, headfirst, blood splashing where it bashed its beak and skull.

Horrorstruck, I so desperately wanted to help the poor creature, but it flew again and, that time, didn’t get up from where it’d fallen.

“What is going on?” My voice echoed the distress pulsing through me.

The priestess lifted the bird’s dead carcass and shook the blood over Aleysia, chanting more words. She then knelt at Aleysia’s side, and my heart hammered in my chest as I watched her pour the vial of motley fluids into my sister’s mouth.

Aleysia’s body jerked, and her eyes shot open, revealing black orbs as she lay convulsing and gagging.

“Aleysia!” I sprang toward her, but the two Lyverian men stepped in front of me. “Move, or I will turn you to dust!”

Neither seemed concerned, but remained there, both staring back at me.

“You will not lay one finger on them,” the priestess said casually, pushing to her feet. The men stepped aside, as she backed away until standing alongside me.

“What did you do to her?” I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, my muscles shaking as I watched her eyes roll back in her head. Blood leaked out of the corners of her mouth and trickled out of her nose.

“Your blood. Our blood. It carries the ichor of the goddess.”

Aleysia’s eyes snapped shut, and her body stilled once more.

“Death cleanses.”

The walls seemed to narrow, and my chest tightened. “You killed her?”

“If Morsana has no use for her, she will return her.”

The thread holding me together stretched thin and tight. Tighter.

Snap.

I spun toward the woman beside me and grabbed hold of her throat before I even knew what I was doing.

“I’ll kill you!” The rage inside of me hooked itself into my muscles and bones, so deeply, it didn’t even register that Father and two Lyverian men were prying me off the woman, not until one of them took hold of my hair.

Even once we were separated, I swiped out at her, wanting to gouge her eyes out of her sockets.

A strange clicking sound filtered in through the haze of red that clouded my eyes.

The men released me, and I turned to see something black emerge from Aleysia’s mouth. A leg. And another. The body of a spider scampered past her lips, across the floor.

“Oh, god!” The incessant thump of my heart pounded in my ear over the sound of that clicking, and I watched as two more spiders crept out of her mouth.

The ravens overhead swooped down, plucking them off the floor.

Consumed them.