Page 90 of Eldritch
The girl lowered her head, and clearly trying to stave off tears, she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Now!”
Her muscles flinched at the command, and the brewing anger from before lashed inside of Zevander like a strike of lightning in his blood. She unfastened her cloak, letting it fall to the ground behind her, and as if she were familiar with the command, she pushed to her feet, turned away from him, andunclasped the dress at the neck, allowing the back to fall open. Leaving the expanse of her flesh exposed. She held her dress to chest, presumably to keep it from falling off her, and closed her eyes.
The guard sneered as he took a step back, unfastening the whip at his hip. “Five lashings for defying my command. Two extra for lying to my face.”
She didn’t say a word in response, as if resigned to her punishment.
He licked his lips, letting the whip unravel to the ground.
Zevander’s muscles tensed at the sight of it, and an image flashed through his mind.Arms bound to wood. The taste of blood on his tongue. Skin cold.
His pulse hastened. The image of what must’ve been a punishment he’d suffered while his mind was lost in Caligorya flickered in his thoughts like a nightmare. He turned away. “No, no, no,” he whispered to himself. “Don’t do this. I don’t want to see it.”
A loud crack echoed through his mind, and the outcry that followed struck his nerves like a tuning fork. Teeth clenched, he balled his hands into tight fists, his muscles shaking with tension. He opened his eyes, to see the girl had fallen to her knees, a bright red streak of blood stretched across her back.
A furious animal clawed inside his chest, the rage blurring his vision. Short, ragged breaths stuttered out of him, as he fought to rein in the urgency to tear through the soldier’s armor and rip him to bloody shreds.
The soldier drew back again, and like a crack of lightning, the whip came down across her back in another bloom of red.
She cried out again. “Please…I’m…I’m sorry!”
“Who were you talking to?”
“No one. I swear it.”
Another crack of the whip, and she sagged forward on a plume of upturned dust as her body collapsed. “I’m…not lying.”
Sneering back at her, he struck again, the vicious snap biting into her delicate skin, a deeper red streak than the last.
Her scream echoed around Zevander, cutting across his chest like a jagged blade.
“Who were you talking to!”
“Tell him,” Zevander said through clenched teeth. “Tell him the truth.”
“An angel. I was talking to an angel.”
The soldier laughed. “An angel. So, you lied, after all.” Without warning, he struck her again. And again. “Where is your angel now?”
As he drew back for another crack of the whip, Zevander stepped between him and the girl, and as the leather sliced through the air, he caught it like flames across his palm. Snarling, he wound the whip around his hand, drawing the soldier closer. Closer.
Brows pulled tight, the soldier snapped his gaze to the whip and back to the invisible entity tugging at him. He dropped its handle, while Zevander held on tight to it, and took a step back.
Zevander closed his eyes, and the first glyph that came to mind was the one he’d learned most recently.
The flame.
He held out his palm for the flickering black fire.
“What is this? What is this witchcraft?” the guard said, fear and panic shimmering in his eyes.
Zevander thrust his hand forward, and a beam of fire shot from his palm, catching on the guard’s tunic and armor. He’d never seen armor catch alight before, and eyes wide with intrigue, he watched the violet glow of the flame dance over the metal, gnawing at the surface as if it longed to bite through and consume the soldier.
The soldier’s outcry echoed through the trees, and he patted at his flaming garment. When he pulled his hand away, two of his fingers had burned to ash that carried on the wind. The guard screamed as the fire caught, and he dropped to the ground, rolling back and forth across the dirt.
Zevander let out a bitter chuckle while watching him panic, as he frantically tried to smother the flame. He’d never taken pleasure in the torment of others, but his pain, his suffering, felt justified. As Zevander watched the man’s struggles, a strange elation stirred in his chest. Satisfaction. The kind of punishment he couldn’t inflict on his own tormentor.
