Page 127 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

Something cold and hollow expanded inside my chest, but I didn’t bother to acknowledge it, as I slapped my palm across the barrier in search of a break.

I need to see him! “Please, gods!” A merciless wave of panic crashed over me, and I slammed at the unyielding wall with both hands.

Harder. Frantic. Grasping at hope with the same desperate tenacity as when I’d clutched his hand moments ago.

“I need to see him! Please let me see him!”

All that remained on the other side was the forest and the creatures that scampered toward the archway, before vanishing from sight.

There was no sound. No screams.

Only moments before, Zevander had stood before those beasts, fearless and monolithic.

A power carved in shadows and flame.

Immortal.

It was incomprehensible to me that something so strong, so formidable in my eyes, could be taken with such graceless simplicity as a fall. A stumble.

No. Not him. Not him .

Sliding to my knees, I pressed a hand against my chest, my heart beating too fast, so fast, my lungs couldn’t grasp the air. “I can’t breathe.” Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply, and still the air came too fast, my lungs too tight, like my ribs had busted open to a raw, aching cold.

An unbearably sharp pain sank its teeth into my heart, and I gasped.

“Calm down, Maevyth.” Kazhimyr gripped my shoulder, but I batted him away.

“We have…to go…after him.” A numbing frost crept through my veins, my body shivering. I needed him to know he wasn’t alone in that darkness.

“There is no going after him. Nobody ever returns from Nethyria,” Dravien said, his words echoing through my head.

No return.

“And what is this grave misfortune you’re supposed to suffer if one of us dies?” Kazhimyr gritted out, their voices nothing more than noise around me. An irritating clamor that clawed for my attention. “Because I just lost two of my friends and I don’t see you suffering much at all.”

Dravien’s jaw ticced, his gaze locked on Kazhimyr’s. “I suppose that remains to be seen.”

Ignoring them, I stared down at my hands that still carried Zevander’s blood. Hands that were too weak to hold him. Too powerless. “I have to find him.” A sob tugged at my throat but failed to break free. “I’ll find him! I’ll find him and bring him back.”

“You can’t, Maevyth.” Kazhimyr pulled me close, but I pushed at him, refusing to let his words penetrate my skin. He gathered my arms and held me tighter. “He’s gone.” His voice broke as the pain seemed to rise into his throat. “He’s gone.”

“No!” I shoved at his chest, but he failed to move. “You’re lying! Let me go!”

He didn’t say a word, just held tight, refusing to release me.

“Let me go!” The fight inside of me withered and I collapsed to the ground. The sound that ripped from my chest was foreign, so laden with agony and heartache, I didn’t recognize it as my own. I screamed until my voice was raw and hoarse and empty.

Kazhimyr held tight as it tore through me in violent, shuddering waves. He stroked my hair. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

I tried to shove him away again, but his grip was unyielding. Strong. I didn’t want him. There was only one man whose arms held me safe. One who now lay at the bottom of a void.

And I wept for him.

Until my eyes burned and there was nothing left but a deep, suffocating throb in my ribs as my heart mourned for whom it was beating. And still I wept because I couldn’t bear the silence as I kept my eyes on that archway.

Watching. Waiting for him to climb through to me.

To hear him curse and say something witty as he crawled out of that chasm.

The same way he’d defied death so many times before.

I longed for his smell—that delicious scent of leather and steel and something that lingered on the tongue with a molten sweetness. I needed his embrace.

But there was nothing.

I couldn’t taste. Couldn’t smell. Couldn’t feel.

He was gone.

Gone.

A dull and miserable ache settled over me, like the knot of a stitch had unraveled, and I’d only begun to come apart at the seams. The sharpest pain would come later, when I was alone and reality would tear the wound wide open with its blinding truth.

For now there was still a shred of hope.

A glimmer of expectation. If I waited there long enough, he might come back to me.

Please come back to me. You promised. You promised you’d never leave me.

A flash of his face—the sadness in his eyes when he must’ve realized there was no hope, no saving him—lingered in my head like a constant, pricking agony.

I rubbed the tips of my fingers over where his had slipped through them, desperate to recall the feel of his skin.

Those hands that’d held me, protected me, caressed me.

No, this is not real. Not real.

“Why?” I asked, staring off at that mesmerizing shimmer. “Why would he fall into the chasm?”

“He tried to burn the damned thing.” It was Dravien who answered. “The Umbravale rejects anything it perceives as a threat. Aethyrians true of blood and purpose .”

I recalled Zevander having told me that once and still, the reason wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t acceptable.

A skittering in my periphery drew my attention to a spider darting down Kazhimyr’s arm.

“Kazhimyr!” I shouted, pushing at his chest.

Seeming to notice it himself, Kazhimyr released me and flicked at his arm, sending the creature flying just a few inches away from us. “Fucking hell!”

Instead of scurrying off, it twisted around for Dravien. A white mist seeped from its face covering the leaves and vegetation in frost. It darted toward Dravien, but before it could reach him, I slammed my boot down and splattered its black guts.

Over and over, I stomped and grunted, tears in my eyes as all the rage of watching those wretched beasts come after Zevander tore out of me in a malicious attack.

I stomped until the guts of it were well stitched into the vegetation, and for good measure, I touched one of its legs, turning the damned thing to a pile of dust.

Then I stomped on the dust.

“Maevyth. I think it’s dead.” Kazhimyr reached for my arm again, but I shrugged away and crawled toward the barrier.

Zevander's words echoed in my head. Ones he’d said to me not long ago.

“Fate could change the path a thousand times over, but in the end, it’ll always be you and me.”

I crumpled into myself. Lifeless. Hollow. Broken.

As if I’d tossed my own heart into that chasm and watched it shatter.

“Well, well. What have we here?” a feminine voice said from behind, and as Kazhimyr muttered a curse behind me, I spared only a quick glance to find the blonde woman I vaguely remembered from The Becoming Ceremony.

At her back stood at least a dozen, or more, soldiers, all of them armed with weapons.

“Your vein…it was severed. We killed you.” Dravien’s voice hadn’t held so much as a tremble when he’d fought off those colossal spiders, but the words shook out of him right then and his face ashened as if he were staring into the eyes of death itself.

A white bandage wrapped at the blonde’s neck held remnants of dried blood—details I didn’t care to ponder as I turned back for the boundary.

“Bring me Melantha,” the blonde ordered and not even the mention of a familiar name could pull me out of my thoughts.

Whoever they were, whatever they did, it didn’t matter anymore. My world had already collapsed, and I was suffocating in the dust.

“That’s her. Maevyth. His beloved mortal.” A more familiar feminine voice spoke that time and it was only because she’d said my name that I glanced over my shoulder.

A horrifically disfigured woman, who looked to have an empty eye socket stood alongside the blonde.

Not the same Melantha I remembered.

“Godsblood, you’re…Melisara.” Kazhimyr stumbled backward, his voice strained with shock. “You hired me centuries ago to steal the mortucrux. Your brother was Cad?—”

“Silence yourself!” General Loyce spat back at him. “Or I will see to it that your tongue is cut from your skull. And you …” She turned her attention back to Dravien. “Oh what wonderful things I have in mind for you, my sweet.”

My mind screamed at me to pay attention. Stay sharp. There was a reason two powerful men like Dravien and Kazhimyr had suddenly grown quiet, but exhaustion weighed heavy on me. I couldn’t focus.

I twisted back for the archway. Completely disinterested in them.

“Bring the girl to me,” the blonde said behind me.

Kazhimyr growled and jumped to his feet, the abruptness of his movements drawing my attention back to them.

He threw out his palm and nothing but a white blur whizzed toward the two guards approaching me.

What looked to be snowflakes struck their throat and forehead, blood trickling where they’d hit and both collapsed to their knees.

Their skin turned an unsightly shade of blue, as if freezing from the inside out and one after the other, they fell face first into the ground.

Kazhimyr hurled an oversized icicle with a pointed tip through the air toward Loyce.

A short man, half the blonde’s height, stepped forward and threw out his palm.

The icicle melted midflight and fell like rain to the ground.

The strange man turned toward Kazhimyr, one eye covered in a peculiar purple eyepiece, while half his face was covered in what looked like melted silver.

Kazhimyr threw forth his palm again, but before he could summon his next glyph, he let out an agonizing cry and crumpled to the ground, his body curled inward and twitching.

Frowning, I pushed to my feet, frantically searching for whatever unseen entity had attacked him.

“Stop! Stop it!” A glance back at Dravien showed him locked in a rigid stance, his eyes screwed shut, as if he couldn’t bear to watch.

Whatever courage he’d mustered in the mortal lands must’ve remained trapped there.

I swung my gaze back toward the small man.

“Stop now or by the gods, I will send your limbs flying from your body!”

The blonde chuckled. “I’m dying to see that.”

With his palm still outstretched, the small man clenched his hand to a fist and smoke curled up from Kazhimyr’s wrists, leaving behind a skinny black band that looked like it’d been seared into his skin.

“Fuck!” Kazhimyr growled, shaking as he held his wrists close to his chest. “No!”

I summoned my bone whip and struck fast.

The guard beside the smaller man exploded around his armor on impact, the bits of meat and bone dropping in clumps onto the ground. The other guards backed themselves away with wide eyes, some cursing. Some laughing.

“Well, that was impressive,” the blonde said.

I drew back for another strike.

The smaller man extended his arm, and the bones snapped into his grasp, as he took hold of the other end.

Gasping, I nearly tumbled backward, but he gave a yank, pulling me closer and raised his palm.

A deep, burning sensation slithered through my veins.

I opened my mouth to call on Raivox but all that spilled out of me was a raspy scream.

White smoke curled up from my wrists, just as it had Kazhimyr’s, leaving a delicate black script behind, like the flames seared into Zevander’s skin.

The pain quickly subsided, my chest expanding with a deep breath. I dropped to my knees and rolled to my side, coughing. A lingering burn marked the black bands that remained.

“Where is Rydainn?” the blonde asked, sauntering up toward Dravien, who hadn’t moved a muscle to help us.

“He’s gone.” Dravien didn’t bother to look at her, his face paler than before. “He fell into the chasm.”

Fell into the chasm. Gone.

It was wrong. It sounded so wrong when spoken aloud. He couldn’t have died. I refused to believe it.

Tears welled in my eyes and I shot forward on hands and knees, slamming my hands against the barrier.

“Seize them,” the woman ordered, her voice trembling as if she were affected by the news. “I have a special punishment in mind for the girl.”

Rough hands wrenched my arm, and I spun around, gripping the soldier’s hand with my blackened fingertips.

Only, he didn’t crumble to dust.

He chuckled and held fast, hauling me to my feet. “Those pretty fingertips are going to be the first to go.”

The blonde strode up to me, her hands behind her back.

Gold flashed in my periphery right before knuckles struck my cheek with a bone-rattling crunch, jerking my head to the side on impact.

Pain shot to my sinuses and a throbbing ache swelled in my jaw.

Through the waver of tears in my eyes, I glimpsed the blood sprayed across the snow below me.

“I don’t believe my pets have had mortal flesh before.

I look forward to introducing you to them. ”