Page 11 of Anathema

One hard shove knocked the prisoner onto the ground at the other side. As he scrambled to his feet, the guards blocked the archway, preventing his escape, their sharp rods pointed at him. One of them sneered, jabbing at the man with his bayonet.

Everything moved slowly and fluidly, as if I were under water.

A nudge from my left drew my focus to Lolla, who asked if I was alright. Beside her, Agatha wore a repulsed expression.

With my muscles seized in shock, I couldn’t form a single word.

The silence shattered beneath a gurgling outcry.

The Vonkovyan guards broke away, opening the view of the prisoner on his knees, blood oozing around the guard’s rod impaling his chest.

An invisible force yanked the banished man backward, into the depths of the woods.

A guttural cry of terror echoed from the forest, and an object flew through the archway, landing at my feet.

As I stared down at the five stars and moon on the man’s degloved hand, my breathing hastened, the view shifting around me.

Blackness filtered in.

CHAPTER SIX

MAEVYTH

“That had to be the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Aleysia dabbed a cold cloth against my temple, as I sat in the parlor of the mortuary and watched a small crowd mingle. Much of the parish had apparently departed after the ceremony, but about half a dozen women stayed behind. Agatha’s few acquaintances from town, undoubtedly on the hunt for gossip about the bedeviled Bronwick girl who’d passed out. And looking to buy the morumberry oil that I should’ve been selling in the kitchen right then.

Seeming to catch onto my preoccupations, Aleysia sent a quick glance over her shoulder, toward the women who gawped at the two of us. “Don’t mind them, the gossipmongers.”

“They look at me as if I just crawled out of a grave.”

“Well, youdolook a little peaked.” The smile on her face faded when I didn’t reciprocate. “You’re peculiar, is all, Maevyth. And nothing invokes fear quite like the peculiar.” Gentle strokes of the cloth calmed the clammy pangs of shock still gurgling in my chest. “Though, I do wonder what language that was.” Through the chaos still swirling in my head, Aleysia’s comment snapped me back to the moment.

“What? Who?”

“The prisoner. When he grabbed you, he spoke strangely. Some are calling it the devil’s tongue.”

“He spoke … Vonkovyan. What do you mean? He said–” I paused, not daring to say the words aloud, for fear that she might’ve thought me crazy. I’d heard those words clear as day, though.

“Unless he was talking in reverse, that was not Vonkovyan. It was entirely unsettling.”

A flare of cold danced across my arm where he’d touched it. How couldn’t she have understood his words, when they were so undeniably clear? Worse, how could he have possibly known what was written on the back of that letter?

“Maevyth.” Agatha’s stern voice snapped my attention toward where she hobbled alongside a tall, husky man with graying hair. Perhaps in his fifties, or so. He wore a tailored burgundy brocade jacket, and a matching high-neck waistcoat with all the trimmings that told me he came from wealth. “I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Moros.”

Introduce me? Agatha never introduced Aleysia, or I, to anyone who mattered. She considered the two of us a burden and an embarrassment. A roadblock to high society. “He’s recently returned to Foxglove Parish,” she kept on. “He owns mining companies stationed in the Sawtooth Mountains and Lyveria, but his family is here.”

I didn’t bother to ask what he mined. After the events of earlier, I had little energy to care. Reluctantly, I pushed to my feet to greet him properly, but he rested his palm against my shoulder.

“No need, dear. That was quite a horrific event earlier. I regret that you had to bear witness to such a thing. Rest, rest.” One small squeeze of my shoulder, and he released me.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Moros.”

“The Moros name is a staple here in Foxglove. A good family name.” Agatha gave an approving nod, as though she had any awareness of what made a good family.

I feigned a smile, less impressed by that bit of trivia. Names meant nothing to me, as I meant nothing to most. But also, I was suspicious. Because …. Why should I care?

“Aleysia, would you mind assisting Lolla in the kitchen?” Agatha offered an uncharacteristic adoring glance toward my sister, further stirring my suspicions.

“Lolla despises me being in the kitchen with her,” Aleysia challenged.

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