Page 77 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

ZEVANDER

Z evander’s gaze swept over the scattering crowd, as they hid away into the small alcoves that lined the walls, clearing a path for the few who stood before an altar ahead, with a broken arc of flame alight behind them.

His eyes zeroed in on Maevyth, scanning her at a distance for any sign of injury.

He studied the platform where they stood, caught a whiff of seared meat that lingered as a faint odor.

The intent was clear, and his gaze snapped to the robed man who stood clutching an elaborately decorated crosier.

His attention lingered there, the man’s features weaving a hazy memory.

That face.

He knew it.

Holding the cross in front of the girl. Screams. Blood dripping onto the floor.

A sharp and writhing sensation uncoiled in Zevander’s chest, like serpents roused from slumber.

Rage was too simple a word for it. Too emotional.

What snaked through his blood was cold and predatory.

Starving. His pulse didn’t pound. It drummed, as his vision narrowed on the man, with the promise of wrath.

The man’s composure faltered when he seemed to catch sight of it himself. He took a step back. And another.

Zevander’s scorpion slinked back into his skin as he strode forward with purpose, like a violent storm tearing through the tomb. Hand already on the hilt of his sword, he moved before his mind even registered the action, tugging it free from its scabbard.

The arrogant tenacity the old man had worn moments ago dissolved into a look of fear, and he glanced around, undoubtedly searching for a place to hide.

But it was too late.

Before he could dash away, Zevander threw out his palm, sending the older man crashing into the wall at his back. His body barely had time to collapse, before Zevander’s palm was at his throat, the rage in his eyes promising a painful death.

“Please.” The older man shook in his grasp, beads of sweat trickling down his temples. “I don’t know…who you are, but …”

“You know who I am,” Zevander growled. “And I know you, Sacton Crain . You tried to take what’s mine .”

The man’s brows furrowed, and he studied his face, perhaps recalling his voice from a distant dream.

“I remember you well,” Zevander continued. “The way you tormented her. Cut away her hair and locked her in a cell like an animal. You called her the lorn , like some discarded thing. Oh, I remember every moment with the kind of clarity that should make you tremble where you stand.”

Sacton Crain’s lips gaped like a fish as he fought for words. “The…demon…when I…slept!”

Zevander let out a dark chuckle. “No. A demon collects your soul in exchange for a favor. I simply want to hear you scream in pain for what you did. Pricking her skin. Watching her bleed.”

“How …. How do you know this?” It was Maevyth who spoke, and the delicate quiver in her voice, like a stretched butterfly wing, dragged his attention away just long enough to see her standing alongside him, her eyes wavering with tears.

How badly he wanted to sweep her into his arms and hold her right then, but his anger hardened like steel around his muscles, and he tightened his grip on the man’s throat, taking pleasure in the way his skin reddened.

“I was there,” Zevander said tonelessly, not taking his eyes off Sacton Crain.

“That happened years ago. We didn’t even know each other existed,” she argued.

“I’ve known of your existence since I was a boy.”

She breathed a nervous laugh. “I didn’t exist when you were a boy.”

He peeled his attention away from the older man once more and spoke softly, in spite of the strain in his throat. “You called me Angel.”

Maevyth stepped back, her expression guarded, and she slowly shook her head. “You …. You’re …. It isn’t possible.”

“I saw visions in the blackness. You called me Angel. You begged me to take you away.”

She touched her fingers to her lips, just as she had when he’d kissed her that night, eyes brimming with a hesitant refusal to accept what he was saying. “I was sick. I heard voices.”

“You heard my voice. My voice telling you I would never let them burn you. It was my lips pressed to yours.”

A tear spilled down her cheek, and she shook her head more frantically than before. “No. No, I …” Her body shuddered, the tight press of her lips undoubtedly holding back the violent storm of emotions breaking across her face. “I suffered delirium. Voices in my head, and?—”

“ They told you these lies. But I assure you, I was there with you. I warmed you with my flame when they left you cold and shivering.”

“You should’ve perished alongside your mother,” Sacton Crain snarled. “Silver-eyed devil.”

When Zevander turned back to him, the man winced, snapping his lips together. The assassin had learned to hone his rage, to let it seethe and strike unexpectedly. He would know pain by night’s end, but not yet, seeing as the old man had just opened the door to questions.

“What do you know of my mother?” Maevyth asked beside him, and Zevander dared him to remain silent by curling his fingers into the man’s fleshy neck.

His eyes shifted away and back. “Release me, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Zevander smirked and slid his blade beneath the man’s chin, releasing him as asked. He might’ve accidentally silenced him with a quick jerk of his hand, if not for Maevyth’s gentle grip of his arm.

“No. Let him speak,” she said, and reluctantly, Zevander lowered his blade.

Gaze trailing over the tomb, Zevander met the frightened stares of the villagers, watching from where they remained hidden in their little alcoves. Not a single one bold enough to come forth.

Pathetic mortals.

“My mother, you knew her?” Maevyth’s voice shifted his attention back to Sacton Crain.

Sacton Crain glared back at Zevander as he rubbed his hand over his neck. “I did. Very intimately. She was a very quiet, but obedient, girl, until she began spewing her blasphemous stories. A heretic in every sense of the word.”

“And it was she who left me by The Eating Woods.”

“No. An acolyte left you there and never returned.”

Maevyth stood thoughtful for a moment. “Then, she didn’t abandon me.” Her brows furrowed as she lifted her gaze to Sacton Crain. “It was you. You ordered the acolyte to banish me to the woods.”

Sacton Crain’s eyes slid to Zevander, who stood plucking his thumb on the sharp edge of his sword, but he didn’t bother to answer the question. His silence spoke for him.

“My mother was Vonkovyan?”

“Lyverian.” He spat the word like it was a rancid taste in his mouth. “Nothing more than a slave.”

Zevander’s hands burned with the urge to watch blood sputter out of him, to see his eyes grow dull as death crept in.

“A slave?” The sadness in Maevyth’s voice was the only sound capable of breaching the steely hatred pulsing through Zevander.

“Worthless,” Sacton Crain added, so comfortably, as if Zevander had no intention of hearing him beg for his life.

Teeth grinding, the assassin leaned into him, watching the fine hairs on his cheek stand upright. “Do you remember what I told you all those years ago? What I whispered in your ear as you slept?”

Sacton Crain’s lips quivered.

“ Mor samanet . Death awaits. Fate has not been kind to you, old man.” He could’ve burned him alive, or sliced a blade across his throat, but both options would’ve been far too quick. Too merciful. Zevander stepped back, holding his palm up, upon where a scorpion emerged from his skin.

Watching him succumb to the venom, a much slower death, would be far more satisfying.

Sacton Crain’s eyes bulged, his breaths turned ragged. The old man’s ego, bloated for far too many years, shrank in a single whimper. He’d gotten a glimpse of what it was like to feel small and powerless. Terrified.

“No. Let him go,” Maevyth commanded, to Zevander’s disappointment, and he frowned back at her. “He spared me. Whether out of fear, or mercy, it doesn’t matter now. None of this matters now.” She swept her gaze over the surrounding tomb. “I’m finished with this parish. With all of them.”

Zevander turned his attention back on Sacton Crain and ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth.

“You live only by her mercy. Had I the choice, your organs would burn to liquid, and I would laugh as you screamed in pain. Remember this. Remember that the girl you tormented spared your life.” With the tip of his sword, Zevander made one quick slice across the man’s cheek, and he flinched, placing a trembling hand over the blood seeping through the fresh wound.

Zevander smirked and followed after Maevyth through the quiet tomb, sensing the cowering eyes watching them as they headed for the exit, with Aleysia and the other two following behind.

“At least your mother had spirit!” Sacton Crain’s laughter held an edge of cruelty and madness.

Zevander couldn’t help but chuckle. Surely, the man must’ve lost his senses, taunting the gentle hand that’d yanked him from death’s chasm.

A few steps ahead, Maevyth ground to a halt and turned around.

“She fought up until I sliced the blade across her throat and watched her bleed out. You, on the other hand, are meek and as flat as aged parchment.”

Aleysia shook her head. “Oh, Maeve, if you don’t?—”

“Hush, Aleysia.” Tipping her head, Maevyth stepped closer to Sacton Crain. “You killed my mother?”

“I had no choice. One look at you, and I knew something evil resided in her.”

Maevyth circled back toward the old man, and as Zevander turned to follow her, she placed a hand against his chest. “No.”

Once again, he stood like a leashed attack dog.

He would’ve ordinarily been inclined to ignore her command and carry out his vow to kill him, but as much as he yearned to watch the man suffer at his own hands, he acknowledged that it was Maevyth’s vengeance.

Her tormentor. Her pain. He had no right to take that from her.

At first, she stood quiet, seeming to absorb the old man’s words.

“You could’ve remained silent, and I’d have thought you spared her, too, somehow.

I’d have praised your mercy, however rife with cruelty it may have been.

But you wanted me to know. You wanted me to know of your brutality and hatred, didn’t you? ”

A smug expression curled his lips, and he merely tipped his chin up, as if answering her was beneath him.

“You call me meek because I showed you mercy? You equate forgiveness with weakness?” Her beautiful silver eyes held a shine, betraying the unwavering strength in her voice that called to Zevander’s heart.

From as far back as his first visit to Caligorya, when he’d heard the man speak to her so condescendingly, Zevander had longed for that spark of rebellion in her.

“Why didn’t you burn me all those years ago?”

Again, his eyes flicked to Zevander and back, but in spite of his quivering lip, he snarled. “I should’ve. I wished I had. How much better our lives would’ve been for it.”

The steel of her gaze faltered. “I tried to be good. All I ever wanted, my entire life, was to feel accepted by you. By the parish. Nothing special, or exceptional. I could’ve been invisible, so long as I could stand alongside the rest of you.

I never asked for anything more than your kindness, and all you could spare was sufferance,” she said through clenched teeth, the tears spilling onto her cheeks.

Zevander longed to steal her pain, but he remained still, watching her true power bloom before his very eyes. No longer a meek and gentle rain, but a raging storm.

A goddess in the flesh.

She stalked toward him with the smooth, calculated glide of a sword drawn from its scabbard, each step closer like a deadly promise. “You could’ve remained silent, and I’d have left you in peace. Instead, you chose death.”

Flesh disintegrated to ash where she took hold of his arm, and Sacton Crain’s eyes popped wide as an invisible gorge swallowed his body. Across each limb and his bulbous torso. Until all that remained was a pile of ash on the metal platform where others had burned.