Page 56 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

ZEVANDER

Past …

T he quiet clank of chains echoed through the damp cell, where Zevander’s battered body hung limp from his binds like a broken marionette.

Arms numb, the agony of each shallow breath rippled through his bruised and aching ribs.

Wrists raw from his manacles, he ignored the biting sting of peeling skin each time he lost his footing, his muscles weak from dehydration, starved of food.

Punishment for having killed one of General Loyce’s beloved pets.

He couldn’t say for how many days he’d endured her wrath, seeing as the sunlight never touched the cold, gray stones of his cell.

Only shadows, and the kind of chill that wrapped itself around his bones.

She’d carved her loathing into his flesh with hot Venetox steel, ensuring that his scars remained, then left him to hang there bleeding out of his wounds.

In silence and suffering. Darkness and pain.

And those screams.

When they’d pulled him out of that pit and brought him back to consciousness, Loyce had forced him to listen to Vaelora’s distant screams. The gut-wrenching sound had gone on for hours.

Even still, he could hear her in his mind. Screaming for her brother.

Zevander let out a shuddering breath, as fresh panic wound through him all over again.

Eyes swollen from too many strikes to his face, he stared across the suffocating darkness, and from the corner of his dank cell, he watched an obscure figure with long, blond hair crawl toward him, her movements abnormally abrupt and unsettling.

What were once pale green eyes had blackened to something Zevander couldn’t bring himself to look upon.

“ You…let them…take me .” The deep raspy tone of Vaelora’s voice carried a malevolent edge that didn’t match the girl’s usually melodic timbre. “ You let them take me! ”

Desperate to banish her accusing words from his ears, he shook his head, a cold branching sensation crawling over his chest.

Not real.

“ Look at me! ” Her screams grew louder, a deafening sound that punctured his soul.

He slammed his head against the stones, and jolts of pain shot to his temples like lightning.

Get out of my head. Get out of my head!

The screams faded, but he didn’t dare open his eyes to the emptiness once again. That vacuous solitude was worse than any torture he’d suffered.

The first few days, he’d met each powerful blow, each slice of their blades, with unflinching defiance, but as time wore on, and his mind tormented him with the stages of Vaelora’s suffering, he became hollow. A shell of himself. He no longer had the strength to keep the darkness locked away.

It washed over him like a black squall, and he was ready to let it take him under.

He needed only to whisper for death, as near as he stood to that fragile threshold.

“ Angel .” The much softer voice emerged from the silence.

He opened his eyes, and a warmth he didn’t recognize in this place bloomed in his chest, as the sight of her swallowed the pain.

Her.

He took in her long, black hair, cascading over her shoulders like a liquid shadow. Pale, luminous skin, kissed by the moon. Winter-gray eyes that reminded him of home. Bathed in an ethereal light, she smiled back at him, like an apology from the gods. A gift he clutched tightly inside his mind.

“ Why do you suffer? ” That voice, so unbearably kind and gentle, nearly broke him.

He opened his mouth to answer, his throat too raw and dry from thirst. How was she here, in this hell?

“Are you…real?” he asked, his voice strained and rough. Through swollen eyes, he glanced around, only to find the same damp, stone walls as before—no indication that he’d slipped into Caligorya.

She smiled and reached out a delicate hand to stroke his cheek. “ I’m here .”

Zevander nearly collapsed from the warmth, and were his hands not shackled, he’d have held her there, letting it seep to the depth of his bones. “I waited…to see you…again.” Air wheezed in his lungs, like the rattle of coins in a tin cup. “One last time…for you.”

Sorrow flickered in her eyes, and she cradled his scarred and mangled face in her hand. “ You cannot give up, Angel. You must fight a little longer. ”

“I have…no fight…left.” Shame chewed at him with the confession.

“ You do. Beneath your suffering lives a flame that cannot be extinguished. A strength that will not break. This pain is temporary, but what burns within you is everlasting.”

Zevander lowered his head, jaw clenched as he held back tears. “The pain…is all there is.”

“ Then, embrace it. Do not let it consume you. Bend, if you must. And fight. Until they’ve taken all but your breath. ” A phantom kiss on his forehead brought his attention back to her, and like a fading star, she vanished.

The warmth turned to cold and darkness swallowed the light.

He didn’t even know her name. He only knew her as the lorn.

Nothing more than a dream.

A shadow flickered on the edge of his vision, and Zevander snapped his gaze toward where a Golvyn scampered across the room, hiding itself in the shadows.

“Would you mind…fetching some…water?” Zevander’s voice had grown rougher, more gravelly. He hadn’t noticed the gnawing hunger in his stomach so much as the water that’d been withheld. “Please, Golvyn.”

Tiny hands held clasped in front of him, the Golvyn stepped into a beam of flickering light cast from a distant torch outside the cell. “Most wish to kill my kind on seeing us.”

“I grew up…with a Golvyn. I don’t…feel any malice…toward you.”

The Golvyn turned toward the bars of the cell, outside of which a bucket of water sat.

He skittered across the cell on all fours, toward it, and lifted the ladle hooked to its edge.

What Golvyns lacked in size, they made up for in strength, and he managed to awkwardly dip the ladle’s bowl into the bucket.

Water splashed over the edge of the ladle when he raised it over his head and carried it through the bars of the cell.

Tiny clawed nails scampered over Zevander’s skin, as the Golvyn climbed the length of his body and perched himself in the crook of his arm and shoulder.

He tilted the ladle toward Zevander’s mouth.

Zevander eagerly sipped the warm fluid, not even caring that it stank like rotten eggs. The fluids sank into the cracks of his dry lips, and he drank every drop.

Once he’d finished, the Golvyn climbed back down his body.

“Thank you.”

The rat-like figure gave a nod. “Food is hard to come by, or I’d share.”

“I understand,” Zevander said weakly. He’d already begun to suffer the hallucinations of too little vivicantem. Had already seen visions of Vaelora. Two nights ago, it had been his father who’d chided him, for allowing him to die. He couldn’t stand to see them anymore.

His head fell forward, the wet and matted strands of his hair tickling his mutilated face. For how much longer could he fight? How much more could his body withstand? Days? Hours? Minutes? When would he finally break?

The creak of his cell door hardly churned much reaction out of him anymore. Pain was inevitable with each visit. Expecting anything else was a cruel madness he didn’t dare to entertain.

Zevander kept his head forward, not bothering to give her the respect she demanded. Her black boots scraped across the concrete floor as she drew closer, another set of boots trailing behind hers, both of them coming to a stop just shy of where he swayed on his feet.

“Beg for mercy. And I shall grant it.” Her voice, deceptively kind, crawled beneath his skin like venomous snakes.

A weak chuckle beat through his chest, the ache in his jaw flaring anew. “I’d sooner waste my breath…commanding the same of you…than give you the satisfaction.”

“You long for death. Is that it?”

“I long for any place where I no longer have to hear your fucking voice.”

“No one escapes me. Not even in death. Now, tell me, who devised this plan? I know it wasn’t you, which is why you’re still alive.”

“You think so little of me, is that it?” Zevander sneered.

“I could have bound your arms and thrown you back into that pit. Watched my precious pets ravage you. But that would’ve been far too quick.

Too easy.” She held out her palm, opening it to show a curved, gold bar, with golden beads at each end.

“Years ago, I traveled to the far reaches of Eremicia and came upon a small village there, where young men were put through trials, to the death. Each trial they survived was celebrated with a piercing to their cocks. A painful procedure, but a reminder of their victory. Their manhood. The more piercings, the more victories, the more respect they earned. I found it fascinating.”

“Of course you did.”

“Today will mark your first victory of survival. And every decade, you will be given a new piercing.” She handed the metal bar to the person behind her, who strode up to Zevander, rounded his body, and took hold of his injured ribs.

Zevander let out a grunt, as the man urged him upright, to his mutilated feet. “Not surprising you’d make a bastard mockery of your story.”

“I call it inspiration. Each piercing will come with an enchantment. A promise that you will carry to the afterlife. After tonight, you will never know pleasure without pain. Love without suffering. You continue to defy me, but this is when I take everything from you.”

The man at his back yanked down the tattered loincloth Zevander had worn since the bacchanal, leaving him completely exposed.

And once again, he braced for the agony.