Page 161 of Eldritch
“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 heardmyvoice. 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?—”
“Theytold 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 toSacton 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?”
