Page 162 of Eldritch
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. “Youkilledmy 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 outhis 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.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
MAEVYTH
With my head lost in thought, I paid little attention to the jars I stuffed into the well of my dress I made by gripping the hem of it. In my periphery, Zevander gathered jars into his cloak, as well, both of us silent. We’d left the tomb without incident, the villagers likely too frightened to approach the five of us. Aleysia had guided Corwin and Father to the upper level of the temple, to get the two men settled into their rooms, and I would’ve joined them for the opportunity to catch up with Father, but I couldn’t focus on him just yet. Not when a mire of thoughts still hammered through my head, and my fingers prickled with Sacton Crain’s death.
We planned to stay one more night at the temple, and I was grateful for the opportunity to sleep. If sleep would bother to come, at all.
