Page 37 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MAEVYTH

B y the time dawn broke, Zevander had already dressed and had begun arming himself. Sometime in the night, he’d changed his mind and decided to venture to town alone. Insisted that I stay back at the cottage.

“Aleysia is awake now. We can travel to town together. Stay together,” I argued.

He sheathed his sword at his back and secured his bracers. “I don’t think your sister is prepared to go out there. I found her curled up in a corner, counting to herself, last night.”

I winced, recalling when I’d noticed her counting, as well.

And he was right—maybe she wasn’t fit to make the journey.

Except, I didn’t like the idea of him going alone after the strange episodes he’d had recently.

The dark circles beneath his eyes told me he hadn’t slept much the night before.

“Is something else troubling you?” I asked.

He paused in strapping on his boots, his brows coming together, before he kept on with the task. “Just don’t want to see anyone hurt.” He straightened and adjusted his baldric, staring at me as I held out his cloak.

“Neither do I.” To keep my emotions steady, I busied myself with straightening the wrinkles in his cloak and noticed something sticking out of the pocket. The scorpion necklace I’d worn the night of The Becoming Ceremony. It was only then I realized I hadn’t seen it in a few days.

I tucked it back into the pocket and stepped toward him, rising up to my toes to press a kiss to his lips. I didn’t care that Aleysia slept only a few meters from where we stood. I surrendered myself to the kiss, drinking in the security I felt in his arms.

When he finally broke away, I stepped back and placed my palm against his chest. “I don’t like this.

It isn’t right to make you go alone.” I glanced back at Aleysia’s room, and while it wasn’t her fault, pangs of irritation surged inside of me.

It was foolish to separate, and I hated being forced to choose between the two.

As if sensing my frustration, he gathered my hands in his. “If something happened to you, that is a hell I’d never escape. I’ll be fine. Stay here. Stay safe. And by the gods, do not leave this cottage. No matter what.”

Lowering my gaze, I nodded. Reluctantly. “You took my scorpion necklace?”

He shamelessly lifted it from his pocket, holding it in his fist, but didn’t bother to answer the question. Instead, he handed it to me.

I shook my head, shoving it back toward him. “No. Keep it. So you think of me. Think of what’s important and come back to me.”

“I don’t need a necklace to keep you at the forefront of my thoughts, Maevyth.” He slid the necklace into the pocket of his jerkin. “But I’ll keep it, anyway.”

“Good. Be safe. And don’t do anything foolish, like try to pick a fight with one of those things.”

“I’ll return before nightfall.” He pressed another kiss to my lips, brushing his thumb over my cheek, and strode out the door.

Through the window, I watched him cross the yard to the dirt path that led to the village, until he was nothing more than a black speck in the distance. Pressing my fingertips to the icy pane, I let out a forced breath. “Please stay safe.”

“So…it seems he’s more than just a friend.”

I turned around to find Aleysia standing in the doorway, looking a bit silly in her long, white shift over the trousers and worn boots I’d scrounged from the chest Zevander had found in the pantry days ago.

“I refuse to wear the Crone’s old shirts,” she said, as if sensing my scrutiny. “They smell of mold and onions.” She reached out, gripping the doorframe.

“Careful,” I warned as she started teetering to the side, and I rushed over to help her to the chair near the hearth.

“I still have a small bit of vertigo, it seems.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Is there still some of the meat?”

“I’m afraid not. Between the three of us, we finished it off. Would you like some apples?”

She crinkled her nose and waved her hand dismissively. “I’d rather starve than eat those godforsaken apples. That’s all the old witch ever fed me. Apples for breakfast, apples for supper. Apples, apples, apples.”

“She didn’t offer the stew?”

“Would you have eaten that repulsive slop?”

“Well, you can’t go completely hungry. You need your energy, so what will it be?”

“Tea. I’d love a warm mug of tea.”

“Fine.” After adding water to it, I put the kettle on the flame and added tealeaves to an infuser that I dropped into a mug I’d retrieved from a cabinet.

“So, how did you meet this beastly creature of a man?”

“Aleysia …” Gods, I didn’t even know where to begin. How to begin. “There is quite a bit I need to tell you. I just wasn’t sure if you were ready to listen yet.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s a lot to take in.” The kettle screamed, and with a mitted hand, I lifted it from the hearth, pouring it over the tealeaves.

She scoffed and raised her palms toward the hearth, rubbing her hands together and holding them out again. “Look around, Sister. What about this world is easy to take in these days.”

Sighing, I nodded, handing off her tea. “Okay, I’ll give it a try. When I stepped through that archway …” I hesitated, watching her look at me over the rim of her mug as she took a sip of her drink. “I stepped into another world.”

She lowered the tea from her face. “Another world,” she said flatly and let out a chuckle. “Okay, I shall play along.”

“It’s true. It’s called Aethyria. That’s where Zevander lives. And, it turns out, I have ancestors there.”

Her brows flicked upward. “Well, now, how is that possible when you were born on this side of the archway? Hmmm?”

“I don’t know. I’ve not figured out all the history behind how I may have arrived here, but Dolion believes that I belong to a race of individuals who have gone extinct.”

“And who is Dolion?”

“A mage that Zevander was also holding captive.”

“Also?” Her brows knitted together. “As in, he held you captive?”

I winced at the question. How ridiculous it all sounded, even to me. If Zevander hadn’t followed me back through those woods, I’d have thought I’d imagined it all—Aethyria, magic, Zevander. “Yes, but not for the reasons you think. It was for my protection.”

“Of course it was. A man takes you captive, another man tells you you’re a descendant from an extinct race, and you just believe everything? Did you not sustain the bites of those wicked wickens?”

I hadn’t even arrived at the part about the bonewhip, or the whistle in my throat that called upon a massive dragon, or my blackened fingertips that could kill with a single touch. “Look, I told you it would be a lot. Perhaps this wasn’t the right time.”

“No. Perhaps it was. At no point would I come to my senses and believe this nonsense. You question my state of mind and Moros’s intentions, but you so easily find all this other malarkey perfectly plausible?

You’re from Foxglove. You were born in Foxglove, Maevyth.

I say we lock the doors and do not allow your kidnapper back inside when he returns.

If necessary, I’m quite capable with a knife. Uncle Riftyn showed me?—”

“Stop it.” The lingering stress of having to stay behind at the cabin weighed heavy on me, but I tamped down those frustrations for her sake.

“You don’t understand, and I’m not expecting you to.

I only wanted to tell you the truth of what happened to me.

I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned you. ”

“Oh, but it sounds like you did. It sounds an awful lot like you fell for your captor, while I remained terrorized by that witch of a woman!”

How dare she! I wanted to scream that she was the reason I was still stuck in this terrifying place, in this suffocating hovel, but I held my tongue on that point.

“I will not defend my loyalty to you. I have fought every day to return to you. Literally training to become stronger, so that I could properly protect you! So, I’ll hear no more?—”

My words were cut short by the movement of something behind Aleysia, and mid-sentence, I slowly pushed to my feet.

Behind her, making its way down the wall, crawled a spider the size of a bird.

“What is it?” she asked, turning around.

“Aleysia, move slowly.”

From the bedroom, another large spider appeared—that one nearly the height of the door’s frame and as pale as snow.

“Oh, God. How did they get in here?”

At the corner of the room sat the burlap sack in which Zevander had wrapped the remains of the rabbit. He’d instructed me to burn it after he left.

The burlap wriggled, and out crawled a much smaller spider that scampered its way toward the bigger two.

“Aleysia, we have to go. Now.”