Page 81 of Eldritch
“Is she expected to do something brilliant?”
Alastor’s eyes shimmered with an unmistakable expression that had Zevander frowning. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”
“You are far too past your prime to notice such things.”
“She will age like all mortals, and ripen like fruit waiting to be plucked.”
Zevander grimaced. “If that is your intent, then I’m no longer interested in these lessons.”
Alastor shot him a disapproving look. “She doesn’t exist. It is the finite nature of mortality that intrigues me.”
The girl let out a growl of frustration, and her abrupt movements knocked her off balance. She teetered on the stool as if she might tumble back.
Zevander lurched forward to catch her, stopped short by the firm hand on his shoulder.
“You must never touch her. No matter what.”
Thankfully, she managed to regain her composure and climbed down from the stool.
“Why?”
“As I’ve told you before, it is forbidden. To breach the liminal boundary of Caligorya and touch a being that hasn’t yet been born would have catastrophic consequences. It opens the barriers of fate and allows the gods to interfere.”
“They interfere, anyway, so what does it matter?”
While the girl kept on with her searching, Alastor’s gaze trailed her every movement, as if her banal chores were something to behold. “Even the most powerful are bound by laws that they can never break. Unless they’re broken for them,” he said.
“But I touched a cup that hadn’t yet been crafted. A tankard of mead that had yet to be fermented.”
“The inanimate bear no consequences, as far as the gods are concerned.”
“How does a single touch open the gateway for the gods?”
Alastor finally broke his stare on a huff. “You will do as I say without question.” From the pocket of his robe, he pulled a flint striker and placed it on the table.
When the girl twisted around, she plucked it up and knelt before the hearth. Quick strikes failed to produce the spark she needed to light the flame, and the girl groaned as she kept trying.
“Do you remember the last glyph I showed you?”
The last had been a complicated symbol that he’d failed to grasp by the time he’d awakened. Even then, he struggled to remember all the finer details of it.
“Barely,” he responded, his focus shifting from the glyph itself to the girl, noticing far more than the intrigue of her mortality. How curious, the way her long, dark hair fell about her slim shoulders. Her skin, like a beautiful alabaster against the stark black of her dress and choker. She held the striker with delicate, manicured hands. Hands that left him wondering if they were as soft as they looked.
A flash of General Loyce’s hands grasping for him slipped through his thoughts, and Zevander grimaced, the humiliation rising to his cheeks.
“Pay attention,” Alastor said, and with the same orange flame as before, he drew the ancient symbol he’d last shown him into the air.
Its soft glow was as mesmerizing as the last time Zevander had studied it. A circle of intricate symbols and lines, some of which pointed to tinier symbols outside of the circle—at least a half-dozen with their own complicated shapes. “It’s too much. There’s too much detail in this.”
“Focus!” Alastor barked. “It is the most important power you possess!”
“The flame?”
“Yes. Now, commit this glyph to memory.”
While he appreciated the distraction from the horrors of General Loyce, he loathed the lessons with Alastor. Hated the reminder that the only power he possessed was in dreams. That each day with the general seemed to be counting down to hisown demise. “There’s no point! It’s useless outside of Caligorya. I have no power. These lessons with you are futile.”
“Are they?”
