Page 40 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ZEVANDER

“ W hat is the point of this?” Zevander glanced around the small cottage kitchen, noting how strangely primitive it seemed, with its pump for a sink, and hearth oven—the kind only found in the poorest parts of The Hovel.

The girl he’d been shown the few times he’d slipped into Caligorya during his abuses, the one Alastor seemed determined to make him empathetic toward, stood on a small stool, rifling through the cupboards for a flint striker.

Each visit to Caligorya seemed to mark a progression of her age, and Zevander estimated her to be about sixteen, or so. Only a few years younger than himself.

“Pay attention,” Alastor said beside him, staring back at her.

“Is she expected to do something brilliant?”

Alastor’s eyes shimmered with an unmistakable expression that had Zevander frowning. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”

“You are far too past your prime to notice such things.”

“She will age like all mortals, and ripen like fruit waiting to be plucked.”

Zevander grimaced. “If that is your intent, then I’m no longer interested in these lessons.”

Alastor shot him a disapproving look. “She doesn’t exist. It is the finite nature of mortality that intrigues me.”

The girl let out a growl of frustration, and her abrupt movements knocked her off balance. She teetered on the stool as if she might tumble back.

Zevander lurched forward to catch her, stopped short by the firm hand on his shoulder.

“You must never touch her. No matter what.”

Thankfully, she managed to regain her composure and climbed down from the stool.

“Why?”

“As I’ve told you before, it is forbidden. To breach the liminal boundary of Caligorya and touch a being that hasn’t yet been born would have catastrophic consequences. It opens the barriers of fate and allows the gods to interfere.”

“They interfere, anyway, so what does it matter?”

While the girl kept on with her searching, Alastor’s gaze trailed her every movement, as if her banal chores were something to behold. “Even the most powerful are bound by laws that they can never break. Unless they’re broken for them,” he said.

“But I touched a cup that hadn’t yet been crafted. A tankard of mead that had yet to be fermented.”

“The inanimate bear no consequences, as far as the gods are concerned.”

“How does a single touch open the gateway for the gods?”

Alastor finally broke his stare on a huff. “You will do as I say without question.” From the pocket of his robe, he pulled a flint striker and placed it on the table.

When the girl twisted around, she plucked it up and knelt before the hearth. Quick strikes failed to produce the spark she needed to light the flame, and the girl groaned as she kept trying.

“Do you remember the last glyph I showed you?”

The last had been a complicated symbol that he’d failed to grasp by the time he’d awakened. Even then, he struggled to remember all the finer details of it.

“Barely,” he responded, his focus shifting from the glyph itself to the girl, noticing far more than the intrigue of her mortality.

How curious, the way her long, dark hair fell about her slim shoulders.

Her skin, like a beautiful alabaster against the stark black of her dress and choker.

She held the striker with delicate, manicured hands.

Hands that left him wondering if they were as soft as they looked.

A flash of General Loyce’s hands grasping for him slipped through his thoughts, and Zevander grimaced, the humiliation rising to his cheeks.

“Pay attention,” Alastor said, and with the same orange flame as before, he drew the ancient symbol he’d last shown him into the air.

Its soft glow was as mesmerizing as the last time Zevander had studied it. A circle of intricate symbols and lines, some of which pointed to tinier symbols outside of the circle—at least a half-dozen with their own complicated shapes. “It’s too much. There’s too much detail in this.”

“Focus!” Alastor barked. “It is the most important power you possess!”

“The flame?”

“Yes. Now, commit this glyph to memory.”

While he appreciated the distraction from the horrors of General Loyce, he loathed the lessons with Alastor.

Hated the reminder that the only power he possessed was in dreams. That each day with the general seemed to be counting down to his own demise.

“There’s no point! It’s useless outside of Caligorya.

I have no power. These lessons with you are futile. ”

“Are they?”

The scene shifted, and all at once, Zevander stood in the stone castle he’d known his entire life.

Home.

Frost expelled from his mouth, and a chill crawled over his skin as he glanced around the dark foyer.

Curious, he stepped forward in awe as he remembered every detail of the castle, every weathered stone and crack.

Where the shadows hit the walls and that comforting scent of his mother’s perfumed oils that lingered in the air.

He strode away from Alastor, up the staircase to the bedrooms, in a desperate search for his mother, and found her curled up with Rykaia on her bed.

Young Rykaia, who had only turned eight years old when he’d been sent to prison, had become a young woman, nearly the size of their mother. Her face had matured in a way that hurt his heart.

He’d have thought them dead, if not for their constant shivering. “Is this real?” Zevander asked, and as he reached out to touch his mother, Alastor grabbed his arm.

“The rules still apply. You’re not to touch. As for whether, or not, it’s real, that is the gods will, not mine.”

Zevander turned to the fireplace that had long burned out and strode toward it. Kneeling, he closed his eyes, desperate to remember the glyph Alastor had shown him earlier that would call upon the flame. “Let me see it once more.”

“No. Focus.”

Grinding his teeth, Zevander clenched his eyes shut again.

He brought to mind the first outer symbol—the tiny one at the top of the circle, with its strange swirls and lines.

The image glowed inside his thoughts, and he turned his mind to the second image to the right of it. Each line and circle and curve.

Rykaia shuddered a breath behind him and let out a whimper, breaking his focus.

He growled and thought back to the first symbol, starting over again. The second. Once established in his thoughts, he moved on to the third, the fourth, fifth and sixth. His hands shook with impatience, as he forced himself to remember the symbol in the center of them.

There were lines he couldn’t recall. Complicated intricacies.

“They’ll die, if you don’t give them warmth.”

“Then, show it to me!” Zevander snarled back at him.

“You must remember it yourself. It’s the only way you’ll learn.”

“And if this is real…if they die, I will find a way to kill you.”

Alastor laughed. “Have you so little confidence in yourself, boy?”

“There are too many details in this glyph. I can’t recall every one of them.”

“You can, and you will. Close your eyes.”

It was only desperation that goaded him to follow the command.

“Place your hand on your chest and trace your scar with your finger.”

Zevander had been told his whole life never to touch his cursed scar. His father had believed doing so would awaken its evil. But his father wasn’t there. He was dead, and his mother and sister might very well follow him into the afterlife.

Zevander placed his finger to the scar and traced the shape of the ruined tissue there. As if painting the image in his thoughts, he could see it then, the shape he palpated burning in his mind.

Strange, that he’d worn the glyph on his chest since he was a baby.

As he traced each of the symbols, he held the visual in his thoughts. Heat slashed across his palm like a white-hot blade, and he opened his eyes to a flickering black flame sitting on the flat of his hand. A surge of victory swam through him, and he let out a hysterical sound.

“Yes. Yes!” Alastor knelt beside him, eyes wide with fascination. He scooped some of the fire up and carefully placed it onto the kindling in the fireplace. Flames lashed out, and it exploded into a blazing heat, giving the room a violet glow.

Zevander turned to see his mother and sister shivered less, no longer expelling white mists of breath, as if the fire had instantly warmed them. “You can summon the flame, too?” he asked, mesmerized by how quickly it caught on the logs.

“I can bend it to my will, but no. Only you have the power to summon it. You are the only person in the world to achieve such a feat.” A look of pride sparkled in the older mage’s eyes, reminding him of his father.

“For centuries, mages have puzzled the possibility of such a thing. When you leave the prison—and you will—promise me you will practice summoning this glyph. You will master it, until calling upon the flame is as natural as speaking your own name.”

Biting back a smile, Zevander nodded. “I will.”

“Good. Your next lesson will be pairing the flame with your prodozja.”

“Pairing them? Is that possible?”

“It is the very reason you were gifted the arachnid. Right now, it exists as a useless shadow. A figure of intimidation. But imagine if it could be destructive ?”

Zevander didn’t want to admit how terrifying the thought was. That he could possess a power so dangerous and deadly as a scorpion with black flame.

Thankfully, it would remain confined in Caligorya.