Page 30 of Anathema

Rykaia lay passed out in his arms while the clank of chains rattled, and the door swung open into the grand darkness housed within. Halfway back to the manor, he’d had to place a sleeping spell on his sister to keep her from screaming and trying to escape.

A biting cold swept over him, the castle lacking in warmth and welcome. The flame of a candelabra drew his attention to the staircase, where Vendryck, loyal servant of the manor, descended toward them. Lanky as he was, he lifted Rykaia from his arms with ease, her long silvery hair caught in a tangle.

“Lock her in,” Zevander ordered as he handed her off.

“Yes, My Lord.”

Zevander slipped his hand into the pocket of his leathers and retrieved the vial of vivicantem Dolion had given him, which he handed off to the servant. “She will need a dose when she wakes.”

“Of course, Master.” Vendryck gave a nod and carried her up the staircase toward her room. Having denied her the stimulants meant she’d likely go through her fits, as he called them. The last bout she’d suffered had nearly destroyed half of the castle’s east wing. She could be as violent as a tempest, and sometimes Zevander had to restrain her to the bed. Other times, keep her confined in the dungeon, if she’d really gotten on a kick. He hated having to do that to her, but he’d always made every effort to keep her comfortable.

Groaning, he rubbed a hand down his face and followed after them, toward his own chambers. It’d been days since he’d last been home, with his hunts taking him to the farthest reaches of Nyxteros. He longed for a good night’s rest.

Down the great corridor, he passed numerous portraits of ancient ancestors–going all the way back to the primordial Lunasier, the first of his bloodline. Unlike most Aethyrians, whose powers required the sun, theirs derived from both moons. Those cold luminous rays that ordinarily bathed his bloodline’s powers failed to rouse them from their slumbered state in Zevander. While he could still feel his bloodline sigil when the moons were high, he’d never be able to summon those powers, not after they’d been corrupted by his curse. His father had destroyed the proud Lunasier in both Zevander and Branimir, by offering up the blood of his only two sons like family heirlooms he’d been entitled to barter with, forever tainting their once honorable inherited magic.

He kept on toward the room at the end of the corridor and opened the heavy iron door that led to an elaborate bed with finely embellished silk dressings–a far cry from the stone bed he’d been forced to sleep upon in his youth, while enslaved to the Solassions. For reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, he sometimes longed for the hard and sturdy surface over the softness and comfort of his bed.

Right then, though, he didn’t give a damn where he slept, so long as he rested.

He removed his cape and cuirass from over the black tunic beneath, which was also made of leather, peeling the garments away and tossing them onto a rack built of anacitine–a bulky metal that attracted the magic in blood. En route back to the castle, he’d tossed away the stone of his shadowed attacker into the bog, and the scant drops of blood that remained on his clothing slithered over the leather onto the metallic surface, which absorbed it away, cleansing the garments of any evidence. The anacitine would contain the magic held in those drops of blood, effectively voiding its powerful charge.

From the satchel at his hip, he emptied the milk-white stone he’d gathered from his prey into his palm. Ten times the potency of what Dolion had given him in liquid form.

He strode toward an alcove in the wall and knelt before a small iron door, about a quarter meter in height, decorated in rusted silver. The Golvyn door. He knocked three times, as was expected, and the door was swung open by a pocket-sized being–half man/half rodent, with a long snout and beady squinty eyes. Though hairless, his ears, half the size of his face, and two long incisors gave him the rat features. He’d lived inside the walls of the castle since before Zevander had been born, through channels burrowed in the concrete that led to every room. Most castles included a Golvyn, though they were rarely welcome and often subjected to extermination spells.

“You called, My Lord,” he said in a nasally tone, gnashing his incisors. While mostly docile, Golvyns could easily snap if threatened.

Zevander handed him the vivicantem stone. The Golvyn had no use for it, as they didn’t require vivicantem like mancers, which made them perfect safekeepers.

With a nod, the Golvyn tucked it under his gangly arm and scampered back through the door, which slammed behind him.

Zevander pushed to his feet and made his way to his own private bathing room, a vast expanse of arched, stained-glass windows and dim moonlight. From where it’d been built, wedged between the west tower and the great hall, if the sky was clear and both moons sat high, he could see the caps of the Veritian Mountains in the distance.

He reached out a hand, and curls of black flames fell from his palm, dancing over the water’s surface, agitating the clear liquid beneath. Moments later, steam rose up from the flickering crests, and Zevander removed his trousers before stepping into the warm bath.

He leaned back against the curved, marble basin, letting the heat loosen his tense muscles, and closed his eyes.

Mor samanet, a whispered voice said through the darkness of his mind. Death awaits.

He shot upright with a splash of water and glanced around for the source of it, ears perked for the slightest sound.

Nothing.

What had happened outside the tavern, earlier, wasn’t the first time he’d been targeted for a revenge kill. While those who’d attempted it had so far been unsuccessful, Zevander wasn’t foolish enough to assume the ward he’d placed around Eidolon was completely unbreakable.

The same ward designed to keep Rykaia safe, as well, as much as she hated the castle.

And him.

At no further sound, he settled back in the water once more, the engulfing heat loosening his tense and aching muscles. He’d traveled to the northernmost reaches of Draconysia to Veneficarys in the south, in search of King Sagaerin’s prey, dispatching him swiftly before receiving word from Dolion that the sixth stone resided in Costelwick. His battered body needed recovery and rest.

As he lay breathing in the thick steam, his body hardened with a need he forced himself to ignore. One he hadn’t longed to entertain since he was an adolescent. Eyes closed, he exhaled and reached through the water, but at the nauseating twist of his stomach, he hesitated to stroke his hand down over the ten rods that pierced the underside of his cock, each one holding its own sordid memory. A time when he was forced, at too young an age, to entertain the appetite of the Bellatryx–a band of female warriors, half Solassion, half Zephromyte, who answered to the same Solassion king that’d imprisoned him and his father. The same king who’d ordered his father murdered in front of him when he was only a boy. The Bellatryx were violent women who enjoyed sadistic pleasures, and Zevander had been one of a dozen boys used for their entertainment.

His fingers skimmed over each steel bar, the metal carrying an enchantment to ensure he could never remove them. A promise that he’d never know anything but agonizing pain without them. As he’d grown into his manhood with each new decade, a new bar had been added. Ten piercings. An entire century of enslavement.

He’d been assigned to General Loyce, a brutal woman who’d been responsible for the deaths of three previous slaves before she’d gotten her hands on Zevander. The day she’d forced the first piercing, she’d sat fucking her own fingers, watching him scream in pain. Though each Bellatryx had had their own personal slave, a gift from the king, Loyce had enjoyed sharing Zevander.

Their moans echoed in his head, the phantom memory of their claws at his back, their teeth on his flesh raking over his skull with a vicious enmity.

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