Page 77 of Eldritch
“I still have a small bit of vertigo, it seems.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Is there still some of the meat?”
“I’m afraid not. Between the three of us, we finished it off. Would you like some apples?”
She crinkled her nose and waved her hand dismissively. “I’d rather starve than eat those godforsaken apples. That’s all the old witch ever fed me. Apples for breakfast, apples for supper. Apples, apples, apples.”
“She didn’t offer the stew?”
“Would you have eaten that repulsive slop?”
“Well, you can’t go completely hungry. You need your energy, so what will it be?”
“Tea. I’d love a warm mug of tea.”
“Fine.” After adding water to it, I put the kettle on the flame and added tealeaves to an infuser that I dropped into a mug I’d retrieved from a cabinet.
“So, how did you meet this beastly creature of a man?”
“Aleysia …” Gods, I didn’t even know where to begin.Howto begin. “There is quite a bit I need to tell you. I just wasn’t sure if you were ready to listen yet.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s a lot to take in.” The kettle screamed, and with a mitted hand, I lifted it from the hearth, pouring it over the tealeaves.
She scoffed and raised her palms toward the hearth, rubbing her hands together and holding them out again. “Look around, Sister. What about this world is easy to take in these days.”
Sighing, I nodded, handing off her tea. “Okay, I’ll give it a try. When I stepped through that archway …” I hesitated, watching her look at me over the rim of her mug as she took a sip of her drink. “I stepped into another world.”
She lowered the tea from her face. “Another world,” she said flatly and let out a chuckle. “Okay, I shall play along.”
“It’s true. It’s called Aethyria. That’s where Zevander lives. And, it turns out, I have ancestors there.”
Her brows flicked upward. “Well, now, how is that possible when you were born on this side of the archway? Hmmm?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not figured out all the history behind how I may have arrived here, but Dolion believes that I belong to a race of individuals who have gone extinct.”
“And who is Dolion?”
“A mage that Zevander was also holding captive.”
“Also?” Her brows knitted together. “As in, he heldyoucaptive?”
I winced at the question. How ridiculous it all sounded, even to me. If Zevander hadn’t followed me back through those woods, I’d have thought I’d imagined it all—Aethyria, magic, Zevander. “Yes, but not for the reasons you think. It was for my protection.”
“Of course it was. A man takes you captive, another man tells you you’re a descendant from an extinct race, and you just believe everything? Did you not sustain the bites of those wicked wickens?”
I hadn’t even arrived at the part about the bonewhip, or the whistle in my throat that called upon a massive dragon, or my blackened fingertips that could kill with a single touch. “Look, I told you it would be a lot. Perhaps this wasn’t the right time.”
“No. Perhaps it was. At no point would I come to my senses and believe this nonsense. You questionmystate of mind and Moros’s intentions, but you so easily find all this other malarkey perfectly plausible? You’re from Foxglove. You were born in Foxglove, Maevyth. I say we lock the doors and do not allow your kidnapper back inside when he returns. If necessary, I’m quite capable with a knife. Uncle Riftyn showed me?—”
“Stop it.” The lingering stress of having to stay behind at the cabin weighed heavy on me, but I tamped down those frustrations for her sake. “You don’t understand, and I’m not expecting you to. I only wanted to tell you the truth of what happened to me. I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned you.”
“Oh, but it sounds like you did. It sounds an awful lot like you fell for your captor, while I remained terrorized by that witch of a woman!”
How dare she! I wanted to scream thatshewas the reason I was still stuck in this terrifying place, in this suffocating hovel, but I held my tongue on that point.
