Page 126 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

MAEVYTH

Twenty minutes earlier …

T he moment Kazhimyr carried me through the boundary, I squirmed and clawed for escape.

“Let me go!” I screamed and he finally set me on my feet.

Twisting around, I bolted for the archway where I could see Zevander on the other side of it.

Beyond him, the gigantic spider that’d attacked only moments ago had turned to stone, and I exhaled a relieved breath, watching Ravezio crawl from beneath it.

“Come on, Zevander. Hurry,” I muttered, watching the two of them smile as they made their way toward the archway.

Ravezio froze in place, his eyes wide with panic.

Kazhimyr surged to my side. “What is he doing? Come on!” He smacked his palm against the watery shield, and while it flickered, it didn’t give. “Hurry!”

A figure stepped through the flames and dread twisted in my stomach as Cadavros slowly approached.

“We have to go back.” Pushing at the boundary was futile and a paralyzing helplessness tremored beneath my skin. “We have to go back right now!”

A battle of flames ensued and my breath hitched every time Cadavros slung his flame at Zevander.

“Where’s the scroll!” Kazhimyr patted at his trousers, his eyes wide and panicked. “Where’s the scroll? I need to find the scroll!”

The stranger named Dravien at the other side of him rifled through his cloak and I frowned.

“What is it? What are you doing?” My limbs trembled as I held my palms pressed to the barrier.

“I need the scroll to go back through!” Kazhimyr kept on with his search for it and I turned back to see Ravezio suspended in the air, his arms outstretched.

“Oh, gods.” The words shook from my throat, as his clothing tore away from his body.

“No. No, no, no.” Kazhimyr pounded his fist against the barrier. “Ravezio! Ravezio!” He twisted around to where Dravien patted and rifled.

“I must’ve dropped it somewhere!” Dravien sank his hands into his pockets. “Fuck!”

A gut-wrenching outcry ripped from Ravezio’s throat as his scales were torn away from his body.

Terror burst through my chest, gripping my lungs.

Beside me, Kazhimyr collapsed to his knees and the sound that tore out of him rivaled the painful cry of his friend on the other side. He pressed his forehead to the barrier and his body shook with a sob. “Ravezio!”

Tears blurred my vision when Zevander collapsed beside him, the expression on his face tearing at my heart.

Kazhimyr let out a roar of anger, hammering his fists against the cruel, shimmering wall that refused to give. But it was too late.

Ravezio was gone.

Zevander charged for Cadavros and the agony in my chest tightened. Swords clashed and clanged as they fought each other, Zevander’s skills far more honed than his enemy’s.

Cadavros swung out at Zevander, his strike weak, as the grip of his sword—minus the three fingers I’d dissolved—faltered. Zevander parried with a powerful strike that knocked the mage backward with fumbling steps, bringing him closer to the Umbravale.

The fight lasted only minutes before Zevander gained the upper hand, standing over his opponent whose back faced us.

Cadavros shook his head, weakly raising his sword. “Deimos wasted his power on you. A foolish boy! You could’ve been king! All of Aethyria would’ve bowed to you!”

“You must’ve forgotten your history, old man,” Zevander rasped through heaving breaths. “Deimos didn’t long to be king. He longed for Morsana.”

“Yes,” the beastly man hissed. “And that is precisely why he perished in the flames. He was weak for a woman! Just like you!”

“Why show me visions of her?” In spite of his obvious exhaustion, the slouching of his muscles and contractions of his chest, Zevander held his sword steady.

“I misjudged. I thought you longed for more than your pathetic life. Instead of conquering kings, you cowered for the love of a woman.”

Zevander pressed the tip of his blade to Cadavros’s throat. “I cower for no one. Man, king, or god. ”

“Killing me will unleash the plague,” Cadavros taunted. “Go ahead, if you love her so much.”

Zevander sneered. “She’d kill you herself if she were here.”

I would’ve laughed at his remark, true as it was, if my body weren’t locked in a state of panic.

“Get to your feet. I’ve no intention of killing a man on his knees,” Zevander ordered.

“Fucking hell, he’s going to unleash a plague on Aethyria!” Kazhimyr shouted beside me. “What is the chant!”

“I can’t remember!” Dravien growled.

A frantic tension slithered beneath my skin turning my muscles rigid as the two bickered beside me.

“How dare you.” Cadavros rose to his cloven feet. “I am a high mage who wields the power of two gods!” The fury in his voice shook the barrier.

“Remember that as you fall,” Zevander gritted out and as the mage raised his palm, Zevander lashed out first, sending him hurling backward on a gale of Aeryz.

My heart beat an anxious rhythm.

I couldn’t see where Cadavros had fallen. Only that he’d disappeared out of view.

Zevander collapsed to his knees, chest heaving, and I noticed a small patch of blood at his side where he must’ve been struck by a sword. He raised his hand again showing an intricate glyph glowing across his palm.

“ Zevander, hurry!” I said, too impatient at him remaining on the wrong side of the archway.

The barrier flickered and wavered.

Beyond him, just a short distance away, figures wisped toward his back, the shadows of a horde barreling right for him.

Not just a horde.

In the thick of spiders and the grotesque, humanoid monstrosities that rushed toward him flew those strange, wraith-like creatures that I’d seen crawling out of the spiders that’d chased Aleysia and I weeks ago.

“Zevander!” I screamed and as if he heard me, he glanced over his shoulder, toward them.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, facing the oncoming horde, and held his hands outstretched, just as Ravezio had stood moments before. “Come for me, Pestilios! I defied death for her. I’ll fight you and any other god who seeks to take her from me!”

My chest cracked like shattered glass, splinters of panic stabbing at my heart. “No!” I screamed, clawing at the wavering wall that separated me from him.

The creatures descended quickly, swarming him, clawing and snapping at him with sharp fangs.

Dravien yanked the scroll from one of the small pockets at his thigh. “I found it!” He one-handedly unrolled the scroll, the other hand against the barrier as he spoke a chant that I recalled from the night Melantha had granted me passage.

On the other side Zevander teetered at the archway, frantically swinging his sword at spiders and wraiths that surged over him like a vicious, black cloud. He stumbled backward, his body disappearing, just like that of Cadavros moments before.

“No! No!” I slammed my palm against the ward, and it slipped through. As I pitched forward, my body was yanked backward, and I tumbled onto my bottom beside Kazhimyr.

“Got him!” Dravien lay on the other side of me, his face contorted in pain and teeth clenched, half his arm disappeared into the flickering barrier. “He’s slipping!”

“Don’t let him go! Please!” As I collapsed to my knees on a shuddering breath, Kazhimyr yanked me away. “Please don’t let him go!”

“Fuck! He’s slipping!” Dravien’s face reddened, his muscles shaking.

“Hang onto him!” Kazhimyr scrambled forward and as he shoved his hand toward the barrier, it flashed and sent him hurling backward until his spine crashed against the tree behind us.

I dove for the edge of the archway and peered down at Zevander, dangling by Dravien’s outstretched hand.

Below him, gaped a bottomless black chasm.

A terrifying and vast void below his feet.

I scrambled closer to reach for his hand, but it was coated in thick blood that had his fingers slipping through Dravien’s.

“Hang on! Please hang on!” Tears and panic wavered in my voice, as I reached down to clutch his forearm, both Dravien and I grasping him.

An unseen force seemed to pull at his feet, as his body tugged unnaturally at my arm. A thousand unspoken words passed over his eyes when they locked onto mine, the expression on his face grim.

He slid further, my hand gliding to his wrist.

Teeth clenched, I blinked away the tears and dug my clawed nails into the ground for stability. “Don’t you dare let go! Please don’t let go!” I screamed, my voice echoing around me. “I love you. You hear me? I love you, Zevander Rydainn! You hold tight!”

“Through every…thread of fate, I have loved you. Please … live.” He let out a grunt and his hand slipped from Dravien’s. Then mine. A single brush of our fingertips like smoke across my skin.

Time slowed around me, my heart caught in my throat.

A heart-wrenching regret burned in his eyes as he fell.

Farther and farther away from me, his hand still reaching out as the abyss swallowed him.

He silently mouthed my name, but I couldn’t hear it over the pounding in my skull and the scream that ripped out of me as if my soul had been wrenched from my body.

A grip of my ankles hauled me backward, and Zevander slipped from view.

Dravien rolled over to his knees and peered down. “No!” He yanked back his hand.

Empty.

Gone.

The reality in those words didn’t sink in. The visual lingered in my head—his face, the fall—but my heart refused to let it in. I felt suspended in time. Frozen. The horrific truth swirling around me as a mist of confusion and disbelief. A hollow clamor of noise that I didn’t dare acknowledge.

“Zevander?” I crawled back toward the barrier, resting a trembling palm against the surface that wouldn’t budge. The image of him falling flickered through my head again. “No. No, no, no. Please.” Harder, I pushed, desperate to see him again.