Page 117 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

ZEVANDER

Z evander’s hand shook as he held it outstretched toward the shimmering Umbravale—the only barrier that separated the two worlds.

He kept his hand curled to a tight fist but could feel the flame slithering through his veins, lashing at his palm for release.

He hadn’t summoned it. He’d refused, yet it had risen from its slumber.

“How maddening it must be, to possess an immense power that can be manipulated.” Cadavros stood alongside him, smiling. He hadn’t called on a glyph nor spoken a chant. The power the mage siphoned had come from somewhere inside of himself.

Zevander could feel it moving about, an invader in his blood. “How?” he gritted out, resisting the pull that tensed his muscles—a rigidity that sent a cramping ache deep into his bones.

He eyed his sword, out of reach on the ground.

“As I told you before, I had become infected by the amulet. The night of the Emberforge ritual, I infected you. And in doing so, I created a way to control you. And your flame.”

“The flame inside of me burns infection.”

“It is not a simple disease which inhabits your body, but an ancient malediction. A pestilent curse.”

“Why?”

“A boy should not possess the power of a god without a means to temper him. To control him. You possess an unrivaled power, but the body, the mind that houses it is nothing more than flesh and bones. Easily broken by skilled hands.”

Zevander gnashed his teeth, refusing to relent. He’d spent years at the mercy of vicious hands that longed to break him. Had pieced himself together through sheer will. He’d be damned if he’d let another attempt to control him that way again.

“I didn’t have the strength to reach you beyond the Umbravale. It was only in Caligorya that I could grasp that dormant power inside of you. But only a flicker. A mere sampling of what should’ve belonged to me.”

Caligorya.

Pressure throbbed in his skull, but he called propulszir to mind, desperate to keep from revealing the idea that sprang to life.

Cadavros laughed. “Do you think your petty glyph can keep me out of your head?”

But as the mage clawed at the thin veil of his thoughts, trying to work his way past the resistant glyph, Zevander could feel the shift of focus, the black flame settling inside of him.

Caligorya had been his refuge from General Loyce.

A means to escape her abuse. It’d always taken pain or elixirs to initiate, but Zevander had learned in his assassination training to slip into the dark state during intense interrogations.

It required a bit of trickery was all. He merely had to convince his mind that he was on the brink of death.

Elixirs made it easy, but another means was turning the flame on himself.

Essentially like holding one’s breath. He needed to call upon it himself and trap it inside his chest—a subtlety Cadavros might fail to notice, might perceive as resistance.

He felt the nudge to his mind as Cadavros fought to break through.

Zevander forced his thoughts out, turning his mind back to the flame, keeping his hand clenched.

As Cadavros meddled around his head, he let the flame simmer and boil inside of him.

Let it rise into his ribs where it twisted and curled inside its bony cage.

His heart hammered in his chest in a restless thud of panic.

His pulse hastened. Breath shuddered out of him as he fought to hold the flame inside, his scorpion once again stirring at his back.

Tighter his muscles held, his body shaking, sweat beading and dripping down his temples.

An inky blackness crawled in from the fringes.

“What are you doing?” Cadavros’s voice was a distant sound that barely reached him as Zevander slipped, deeper and deeper into that void.

Finally, he collapsed.