Page 263 of Eldritch
There was no sound. No screams.
Only moments before, Zevander had stood before those beasts, fearless and monolithic.
A power carved in shadows and flame.
Immortal.
It was incomprehensible to me that something so strong, so formidable in my eyes, could be taken with such graceless simplicity as a fall. A stumble.
No. Not him. Nothim.
Sliding to my knees, I pressed a hand against my chest, my heart beating too fast, so fast, my lungs couldn’t grasp the air. “I can’t breathe.” Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply, and still the air came too fast, my lungs too tight, like my ribs had busted open to a raw, aching cold.
An unbearably sharp pain sank its teeth into my heart, and I gasped.
“Calm down, Maevyth.” Kazhimyr gripped my shoulder, but I batted him away.
“We have…to go…after him.” A numbing frost crept through my veins, my body shivering. I needed him to know he wasn’t alone in that darkness.
“There is no going after him. Nobody ever returns from Nethyria,” Dravien said, his words echoing through my head.
No return.
“And what is thisgrave misfortuneyou’re supposed to suffer if one of us dies?” Kazhimyr gritted out, their voices nothing more than noise around me. An irritating clamor that clawed for my attention. “Because I just lost two of my friends and I don’t see you suffering much at all.”
Dravien’s jaw ticced, his gaze locked on Kazhimyr’s. “I suppose that remains to be seen.”
Ignoring them, I stared down at my hands that still carried Zevander’s blood. Hands that were too weak to hold him. Too powerless. “I have to find him.” A sob tugged at my throat but failed to break free. “I’ll find him! I’ll find him and bring him back.”
“You can’t, Maevyth.” Kazhimyr pulled me close, but I pushed at him, refusing to let his words penetrate my skin. He gathered my arms and held me tighter. “He’s gone.” His voice broke as the pain seemed to rise into his throat. “He’s gone.”
“No!” I shoved at his chest, but he failed to move. “You’re lying! Let me go!”
He didn’t say a word, just held tight, refusing to release me.
“Let me go!” The fight inside of me withered and I collapsed to the ground. The sound that ripped from my chest was foreign, so laden with agony and heartache, I didn’t recognize it as my own. I screamed until my voice was raw and hoarse and empty.
Kazhimyr held tight as it tore through me in violent, shuddering waves. He stroked my hair. “I’m going to keep you safe.”
I tried to shove him away again, but his grip was unyielding. Strong. I didn’t want him. There was only one man whose arms held me safe. One who now lay at the bottom of a void.
And I wept for him.
Until my eyes burned and there was nothing left but a deep, suffocating throb in my ribs as my heart mourned for whom it was beating. And still I wept because I couldn’t bear the silence as I kept my eyes on that archway.
Watching. Waiting for him to climb through to me. To hear him curse and say something witty as he crawled out of that chasm. The same way he’d defied death so many times before. I longed for his smell—that delicious scent of leather and steel and something that lingered on the tongue with a molten sweetness. I needed his embrace.
But there was nothing.
I couldn’t taste. Couldn’t smell. Couldn’t feel.
He was gone.
Gone.
A dull and miserable ache settled over me, like the knot of a stitch had unraveled, and I’d only begun to come apart at the seams. The sharpest pain would come later, when I was alone and reality would tear the wound wide open with its blinding truth. For now there was still a shred of hope. A glimmer of expectation. If I waited there long enough, he might come back to me.
Please come back to me. You promised. You promised you’d never leave me.
