Page 253 of Eldritch
“Wake up, Zevander! Wake up!” I shook him again, harder, my voice splintering beneath a wretched pain that threatened to tear me open.
Still, he didn’t move. Didn’t gasp for breath. His skin grew colder, his face, paler.
“No, no, no. Breathe!” I pounded my fist against his chest. “You promised! You promised you wouldn’t leave me!” I pressed my lips to his, forcing breath in his lungs. “Wake up!”
Hands fisting his tunic, I hauled his upper body just enough to lift his head and cradled him in my lap. My body shuddered with another sob, and I tipped my head back, the anger pounding through me in violent waves.
“Morsana! Give him back to me!”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
ZEVANDER
Zevander shot upright from where he lay on the ground and found himself surrounded by a field of silver-tipped, black roses. Bodies lay bloody and mutilated around him, as if he’d awakened in the thick of a battle. He frowned and looked down at his own hands, coated in blood and dirt. Beside him, lay Cadavros, unmoving, the pallor of his skin drained of life.
Movement in his periphery prompted him to turn toward where a willowy figure glided toward him. Long, black hair danced about her face, her eyes silver like the silky bands of moonlight that beamed down around her.
“Maevyth?” The slight blur in his vision sharpened into focus, and while she and Maevyth looked very much alike, the figure moving toward him wasn’t her.
“I’ve been waiting for you, my beloved.” She knelt before him and took his hand in hers, the startling cold jerking his muscles. “You’ve returned to me.”
Zevander shook his head. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“You are Deimos. And I am Morsana. We were in love once.” A sadness clung to her voice.
“Deimos was banished to sablefyre.”
“Yes. And he chose you as his vessel, just as I chose Maevyth as mine. So that one day, we would reunite. It is time for you to transcend. To cast off this flesh.” She took his face in her palms. “Kiss me and you will know.”
Before Zevander could stop her, the goddess seized his mouth in a frantic kiss. A cold detachment lingered between their joined lips.
It was wrong. All wrong.
Morsana broke away, her brows pulled together as her silvery eyes stared into his. “He does not kiss me back. He resides in you, but he doesn’t not want me.”
“He’s taken over my body, perhaps my soul, but he does not command my heart.”
Brows pulled tight, her lips twisted to a bitter snarl. “Then why should I return you to her?”
“Because you know the pain.” While unnatural for Zevander to be so tender toward another woman, a part of him reserved only for Maevyth, he somehow knew it would be the only way he could make her understand. “You’ve had your heart ripped open by brutal hands. And even if you threw me into the darkest abyss, tore me limb from limb, I would find my way back to her. If I had to crawl through the cold and hollow belly of death itself, I would find a way to return to her.”
Her eyes wavered with tears, and she placed a gentle hand against his cheek. “I will grant you until the time she transcends, when she and I will become one.”
“How will she transcend?”
“Through death. She is fated to die.”
As a mortal, Zevander knew his time with her would be cut short, but her words struck panic in his chest. “How?”
“Go now, Zevander Rydainn. We will meet again.” She faded, leaving him a dark void that swallowed him whole.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
ZEVANDER
“Give him back to me or I swear by all that is holy, I will awaken the god of disease and wreak havoc on both Mortasia and Aethyria!” Maevyth’s voice echoed in the dark space of Zevander’s mind, her words, the sound of her voice, like an anchor of light in darkness. A tight clench of his chest loosened its grip, as he gasped the first breath, and his body hurled back into consciousness.
“Who’s…selfish now?” he rasped then coughed, as the air slowly seeped back into his lungs. He opened his eyes, and a deep chuckle rumbled through his chest when he looked up to see her bent over him, the fury and determination that burned in her eyes, softening to a look of utter relief.
