Page 79 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

“No. I will never let you go. I’m not sorry that I claimed you for myself.

I will never apologize for that. But I am sorry for what you’ve suffered as a consequence.

” The first flicker of pain crossed his face, and I knew he was telling the truth.

“I never wanted to see you suffer.” His remorse was clear in the way he couldn’t bring himself to look at me.

“You don’t have to forgive me. But know that I would fight the gods and suffer their fury all over again to spare you from death. ”

“I’m confused, Zevander. I don’t know what to feel. I need to sort my thoughts.”

He stared for a moment, his jaw set. “Fine. Sort your thoughts.” Had I wanted to pull away again, there was little chance when his palm curled over the nape of my neck and his mouth came to mine.

Fingers closed in a tight fist around my hair at the same time that he wrapped his other arm around my back, pulling me into him—a silent proclamation of possession and need.

His kiss held nothing sweet, nor gentle.

It was raw and blistering, reminding me that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t walk away from him.

That, no matter how furious I might’ve been over his confession, he’d acted for , not against, me.

I wanted to shove him away. To inflict the pain I felt right then, but my hands moved on instinct, gripping the front of his tunic, yanking him closer. With wet and hungry lips, I kissed him back, until the world around me disappeared and I couldn’t breathe. Only then did I shove him away.

Dragging the back of my palm across my mouth, I stared up at him, eyes challenging him.

He leaned in again, and I threw out my palm, pressing it to his chest.

Like a predator denied his prey, he swept his tongue over his lips, holding himself mere inches from my face. “Do not imagine there’s anywhere you could go, anything you could possibly say, to keep me away from you now, moon witch. I remember everything, and I will not lose you again.”

Swiping up the sack of food, he strode past me, up the staircase.

R ain pelted against the stained-glass windows, as I sat hunched in the front pew of the temple, staring down at the faint strip of moonlight slicing through the darkness.

A memory hooked itself into my mind, pulling me back to the night before I was due to burn for Lilleven’s death.

I recalled staring at a sliver of light from a distant torch that’d carried into my cell, mesmerized by its flickering shadow.

Watching for the errant movement that indicated a presence.

A glimpse of the angel whose lips had burned across mine like fiery brimstone.

Not a kiss of the heavens, but one of sweet perdition.

Molten as boiling holy water that’d scalded my insides, cleansing my sins and transcending me from that cold, wet cell.

A moment of reverence before my body would be disintegrated in shame by hungry flames and scornful eyes.

I remembered how, as the hour had drawn near, it was his deep, soothing voice that I’d desperately yearned to hear. The one I had convinced myself belonged to an angel sent to protect me. The only one I knew Sacton Crain would fear.

Zevander’s voice.

An hour passed, as I sat contemplating the reasons I should’ve hated him.

Instead, I found myself reminiscing about the last couple of months.

All that we’d suffered together, and how much my life had changed.

The world had gone to hell, but there were moments that I wouldn’t have traded for so much as a glimpse of what might’ve been.

The hum of a winged insect brushed past my ear, and I swatted at it, annoyed to find a fly perched on the edge of the pew.

More flies landed beside it, all of them curled into themselves, twitching.

They suddenly stilled beside me, like the flies that occasionally died on the window ledge back home.

White mist expelled from my lips, and it was then a terrible cold burrowed into me.

“Warmth never touches this place.” The soft feminine voice drifted across the room like smoke, and my body froze.

I twisted around and found a woman sitting at the end of the pew, bathed in an ethereal light that divided her from reality.

It illuminated the many crosses that’d been brutally carved into her skin, and the gaping wound at her throat.

Long, black hair lay in matted strands against her shoulders, and the tattered dress she wore hung limp from her body.

When she turned toward me, my heart caught in my throat.

Her features were so distinct, I couldn’t bring myself to believe what I was seeing.

“Who are you?” My voice trembled, throat tight, because I damned well knew the answer.

Her lips pulled to a sad smile. “You ask, but you already know.”

“Mother?” I swallowed past the lump in my throat, my eyes dry and burning with the threat of tears. “Am I dreaming?”

“I can’t be sure. But if you are, I suspect we only have a few moments.”

I blinked away the blur of tears, trying not to look at her throat that spoke of her violent death. “Are you in pain?”

“Not anymore. Are you?”

Emotions swelled inside of me, and I shook my head. Did the dead recognize the living? Did they know of the boundary separating the two?

“I tried to save you.” Wet, rheumy eyes stared back at me. Beneath the grime and bruises, she was beautiful. Exactly as I’d have imagined her. “He never intended to let me keep you. The moment he knew I was with child, he promised to destroy you.”

Carefully, I slid closer to her, wanting to touch her before she faded.

“It warms me to see you, Daughter. To know you are safe and loved.”

Could she see the love? Was there clarity in death? A shrewdness that escaped the living?

“Perhaps you might visit me again?”

“Hmmm.” She turned away, a sad smile crinkling the corner of her eye. “I’m weary. I’ve roamed for so long, and I yearn for rest. Seeing you will allow me to slumber in peace.”

I gave a tearful nod. “I curse the gods. I curse them for taking you away from me.”

Even in death, her eyes held a warmth when she turned back to me. “Do not fault the gods for the fate they’ve chosen for you. And do not mourn what was never meant to be.”

“But what if it was? What if something, or someone, changed it?”

She smiled and shook her head. “If there’s one thing death has shown me, it’s how little we know of life.

Fate is not a flitting rope, but a knot that grows tighter with time.

Bound by twists and loops not easily unraveled.

The change you speak of was fated. The gods diverted your path, yes, but it returned you to the place you were always meant to be.

Grieving this spectral image in your mind does nothing.

Do not let it steal the beauty of what is and what you’ve become. ”

“This? I should’ve known you, Mother. You should’ve been a part of my life.”

“I am a part of your life, child. Your heart is my own, forged by Death’s cold hands and winter’s breath.”

“A heart that grows colder and more hardened as I age.” I turned my fidgeting hands over for the blackened fingertips and that ungodly glove that reminded me of my aberration.

I had so easily taken life with these hands that no longer looked like my own.

“I am neither good, nor pious, Mother. I long for your soft words to temper me.”

“My precious daughter. You were not meant to become a delicate flower, but the frost that wilts the vine. It is your strength in a world that seeks warmth and frailty in a woman. Steel your bones, and do not bend, or break to their will. Accept what you are and what you will become.”

“What am I to become?”

“Vindicated.”

I reached out to touch her face, and a branching cold crawled up the length of my arms to my chest. My lungs seized, the air in them waning, and I slipped into the blackness.