Page 221 of Anathema

Only the steady beat of Zevander’s heart at my ear kept me calm.

“We’ll return in the morning,” he said. “Hopefully there will be fewer of them then.”

Nodding, I clutched him tighter. While the thought of abandoning my sister’s search left a heavy ache in my chest, I couldn’t risk the possibility of something happening to either one of us.

My thoughts drifted back to the creatures I’d seen in the woods after I’d fought Elowen. What they would have done to me, had they caught me. Tearing into me with teeth and claws, or worse, attempting what Uncle Felix had tried back at the house. I flinched beside Zevander and nuzzled my face into his chest.

A gentle hand stroked my hair. “What troubles you?”

“You once asked me what I fear. I’ve since learned of another.” A shaky breath sputtered out of me, as if in that moment of calm, the trauma had finally found its home inside my chest. “Despair. I fear being so helpless that all hope is lost.”

“You’re not helpless. You’re strong, Maevyth. You fought, and you lived.”

A visual of lying beneath Uncle Felix, desperate and grasping as he tore away at my clothes, stabbed at my thoughts. “I was afraid. I reacted out of fear.”

“Fear inspires strength.”

“I didn’t feel strong. Not with Uncle Felix, or Agatha. Not with Elowen, or the creatures that chased me back to the cabin. I felt lucky, and luck eventually runs out. If those things come for us in the night—” A suffocating sludge of panic gripped my lungs, choking my words.

“I will not let anything hurt you.” Finger hooking my chin, he tipped my head back, his eyes glowing pools of molten lava. “I have killed in a variety of ways, Maevyth, but anything that dares attempt to harm you tonight will suffer the most violent of them all,” he said in a voice that was somehow fierce and chillingly calm at the same time. “Believe me when I tell you this.” His lips pressed to mine, and I clutched him tighter, letting him wind me in his web of safety. "They'd be fools to tempt such fate. Not a single creature would be spared when I burned it all to the ground."

“I never should have come back to this place. Never should have left Aethyria. I just want to go back to Eidolon.”

“I’m going to take you to Calyxar.”

“Will you stay with me?” I asked.

“Yes. The king will be searching for me. He’ll likely put me to death, or arrest me, for having abandoned my guard.”

I buried my face in his chest again, the remorse chewing at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have?—”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ve no desire to spend the rest of my life serving as a glorified nursemaid.”

The comment tugged a smile from my lips. “And so, you’d choose to be a glorified nursemaid to me? Watching over me all hours of the day?”

His lips curved to a smirk. “I’d quite enjoy watching over you all hours of the day.” He wrapped me tighter and kissed my forehead. “Particularly when your shirt is hiked up and your hands are bound. I’d never take my eyes off you.”

I thought back to that moment and the words that’d spilled out of me. “I don’t know what language that was. What I said to you.”

“You spoke Primyrian. The ancient language.”

I remembered Dolion had once said it was the language of the gods. It made no sense, though, particularly when I knew nothing of the Aethyrian gods. “How would I know it, let alone speak it?”

He exhaled a sigh and stroked his thumb over my cheek. “The mystery of you never ceases to intrigue me.”

The growls from outside had me lifting my head, and I peered through the dark window that showed nothing but the faint rays of moonlight. They were out there, though. Waiting. Pacing. “Do you think the ward will hold?” I asked, nuzzling closer to him.

He lifted his head toward the window, then lay back down, tucking his arm beneath it. “Hard to say. I suspect it’s the only way the old woman survived this whole time.”

“Those things … they’re terrifying. What is it that this Cadavros wants?”

Gentle strokes of his calloused hand across my arm sent a calm through me. “If it’s true that he embodies Pestilios, then he yearns for chaos and the power to control life and death.”

“Is it true that my blood could have prevented this? That the bloodstones are powerful enough to stop him?”

“It doesn’t matter, Maevyth,” he said, with a bitter amusement in his voice. “If preventing this plague means sacrificing your life, then I’ve no interest in saving everyone else. The whole world could perish of disease and famine, for all I care.”

“Some would call that selfish.” I traced my finger over the deep ridge in his chest.

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