Page 95 of Anathema

“And if she’s not, you’re the fool who starves for nothing.” The flat tone of his voice ground at my nerves.

“It’s called empathy. Something you lack entirely.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows against his muscled thighs. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten the three men who tried to violate you. I’m the fucking empath who killed those men. For you.”

I snorted at that and shook my head. “How was it you who killed them, when I specifically recall a scorpion the size of a small village doing the job?”

Zevander flipped his hand over, palm up, and a cloud of black smoke seeped up from his skin, morphing into the shape of a scorpion that sat in his palm as a living creature.

A sharp breath escaped me, and as I took in the oddity, every hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “What is this?”

“This? It’s magic.” He flipped his hand over, the scorpion following the movement, scampering over his knuckles, and I watched in horror as it burrowed itself beneath the skin on the back of his palm, leaving behind a small imprint of itself on the surface that mingled with the dark flames. The ink looked as if it’d been burned into his flesh. “And this is my curse.”

“You …. You killed them?” I shook my head harder, still trying to puzzle how any of it was possible. It wasn’t possible. “I didn’t ask you to kill anyone.”

His gaze lowered, presumably to the choker at my throat. “No. You pray to a god that doesn’t listen, and you’re shocked when he doesn’t come to save you.”

“And what are you? The good and benevolent passerby who stalks the night for rapists and murderers? What were you doing there?”

“Good and benevolent.” He sneered. “I have little care for others in general, but less so for mortals.”

I ran my tongue across the back of my teeth. “Why is that?”

“You’re pests,” he said, his voice thick with repulsion. “Weak little rodents that infest and spread disease.”

“Then, why did you save me, if I’m so loathsome? Why bring me back to your home?”

The mask he wore made it impossible to tell if I’d angered him more. It seemed his eyes perpetually carried an edge of malice. “You serve a purpose. That is the only reason you’re still alive.”

“What purpose?”I’d heard of girls outside of Foxglove getting swept up to serve abhorrent purposes. Shackled to beds and forced to lie with countless men for coin. "What is it you want from me?"

“What I’m certain you won’t give freely.”

For the second time since I’d arrived in this place, I found myself wondering if I’d be brutishly violated by night’s end. My lip curled at the possibility of it, but before I could tell him that I’d sooner die than entertain such a thing, he spoke.

“You’re going to begin training in the morning.”

Senses slapped into a stupor, I double blinked. “I’m sorry, what? Did you say training?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of training?”

“We’ll begin with the basics. Focus. Calling upon simple glyphs.”

“Glyphs? As in symbols?” With the bowl resting in my lap, I rubbed my fingertips over the strange scar I’d shown Dolion earlier.

“Yes. It’s how magic works.”

Except I hadn’t come any closer to accepting the idea that I possessed magic since my conversation with Dolion earlier that morning.

“I am … thoroughly confused. You killed three men who tried to … harm me. Brought me all the way here, to your castle, imprisoned me, all so you could turn around and train me to learn glyphs?”

“You can blame Dolion for the illogics.”

“Why do I need to learn the glyphs? Will that help against the supposed mages who are after me?”

“Seems you’ve chatted with Dolion, after all.”

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