Page 124 of Eldritch
“I never imagined I’d be relieved to hear you say that.” She also slipped out of her dress, swapping it for one of the shifts in the closet, the action exposing the marking on her torso.
Both of us climbed into the bed beside each other.
Only the crackling of the fireplace filled the room, as I lay staring up at the ceiling. “Aleysia…have you not noticed the black veins on your body?”
“Have you not noticed the black veins on your lover’s face?”
“He’s not my lover.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know,” I said, a bit more defensively than intended.
“You don’t know if you love him? Or, you don’t know because you’ve never been in love?”
“I hardly know him.”
“You don’t have to know every detail of a person’s life to decide you give a damn about them. Answer this…if he were to fall prey to one of those spiders and you lost him, how would you feel?”
I thought back to the day when we’d trained and Zevander had gotten trapped beneath one. How much I’d panicked at the thought of it hurting him. “Devastated.”
“Then, it’s settled. You love him.”
“Don’t you think love is just a bit impractical, given our circumstances?”
“I think love is more important now than ever before. Love is what grounds us. Gives us hope. It reminds us that, even when the world is slowly crumbling away, love is everlasting. But what do I know? I’ve always been impractically in love.”
There had been times over the last few days when I questioned whether, or not, the sister I knew was still inside of her somewhere. This was one of the times I was certain of it.
Beneath the covers, I gathered her hand in mine and smiled when I felt her gaze turn toward me. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too. Perhaps you should go check on him? He’s awfully quiet.”
“You think he should be making a clamor in there?” I joked, but in truth, Zevander’s silence had come to be concerning tome, also. It was usually the times he was most quiet that he slipped into his head.
“Maeve, go check on him.”
I wanted to. Desperately. But I didn’t trust myself around him. With Aleysia having awakened, and having had no luck finding the vivicantem at Moros’s, I was more uncertain than ever. The likelihood of him having to return to Aethyria alone loomed over me. “You just want the bed to yourself, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about the black veins on your torso,” I said, ignoring her response. “Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know. I probably picked something up from that old witch’s house.” She rolled away from me, tugging on the covers. “I’m too exhausted to talk. And far too hungry to patiently wade through your questions tonight.”
“Fine. For now.” I turned over to face the closed door, my mind wandering back to our conversation, all while the ongoing silence from his room stirred my worry.
Go check on him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MAEVYTH
After a moment more, nibbling on my bottom lip, I threw back the covers and tiptoed toward the door. The corridor stood quiet and empty, lit only by the fireplace behind me, and darkened the moment I shut Aleysia’s door. I crept toward Zevander’s room, each step no more than a whisper of sound, and placed my ear against the thick wood.
Not a single peep bled through.
He could’ve been asleep.
