Page 102 of Eldritch
“Miss Bronwick,”he whispered in a ghostly voice.
Something gripped me from behind, and I spun around on a scream, my blade pressed to Zevander’s chest.
Wearing a guarded expression, he froze. “Easy there, Cutthroat.”
I craned my neck back toward where I’d seen Moros just moments before, only to find empty shadows.Not real. Exhaling a forced breath, I lowered the blade, muscles sagging. “Sorry. This place sets my nerves on edge.”
“Did he harm you, this Moros? Touch you, at all?”
I shook my head. “I escaped before he inflicted any harm. I don’t even like to imagine what my fate might’ve been, had I not run into those woods that night.”
“Don’t think about it.” He dragged his thumb down my temple, and God, the relief of him, of having him near when I was scared, was a balm to my soul. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ZEVANDER
Past …
Zevander swallowed back the revulsion rising to his throat as two female servants rubbed gold clay over his body, covering his fresh scars with a metallic sheen in preparation for the Golden Bacchanal. All he’d gleaned about the event was that it centered around some kind of tournament and drew in a number of nobles and dignitaries. A few other slaves stood about the room, like him, servants covering their naked bodies in gold shimmer.
Arms outstretched and shackled, he shuttered his eyes to the unnerving strokes of the servant’s hands that left him wanting to crawl right out of his own skin. Touch, no matter how gentle, had become a defilement, an unwanted feeling he equated with the general’s abuses. A discomfort more consuming than the hunger that clawed at his stomach right then.
“Look how your body responds to my touch.”The general’s words echoed in his head, and Zevander grimaced, turning away.
Still, those words lingered, along with the memories of bites and tugs, clawing and punching, when he’d refused to comply with her demands.
One of the servants spread the clay down his back, reminding him too much of his last whipping. The way excruciating pain always followed the general’s soft caresses, a deception of her otherwise gentle hands. He’d become proficient in anticipating the first strike by reading her cues. A brief pause. The curl of her fingers and shift of her grip. The change of her breath and mocking tone of her words.
It’d become ingrained in his mind to expect the same from any form of touch.
Violent thoughts clouded his mind, while the servants’ palms glided across his body, everywhere, and all at once. As they kept on, he closed his eyes, and a visual of General Loyce with eight arms sprang to mind, touching and groping him, slowly making her way lower, down his hips to his thighs. His pulse hastened, his body tense, breaths shallow. Stomach constricted, he let out a grunt, digging small crescents into his palms with a tight fist. Even if there was no malicious intent from those touching him right then, he couldn’t tear his thoughts from the nightmarish things he’d endured, the times when he hadn’t managed to escape to Caligorya for unknown reasons. When he’d been forced to suffer her breathy moans and naked body pressed against his.
He opened his eyes to banish the general’s face from his mind.
One of the servants—a Solassion woman with long blonde locks and dark sepia-toned skin—who he’d come to know as Vaelora, smeared the clay over his chest, but he caught the few lingering glances from her.
His mind hooked itself into the distraction of it, and focused on her, his curiosity took root, pulling him away from the panicchurning in his muscles. Each time their gazes met, she quickly looked away.
“If you’ve something to say, say it,” he finally said.
She turned to the other three servants, giving them a nod that they somehow understood to be a dismissal, and the trio immediately removed their hands from his thighs and back, to Zevander’s utter relief, and sauntered away.
Once they were out of earshot, she turned to face him. “This is your first Golden Bacchanal.”
“It is.”
“Are you aware of what it is?” she prodded.
“Only vaguely. Enlighten me.”
“You’ll be taken to the general’s rotunda room. They say it was where the pantheon—all the higher and lesser gods—would meet in ancient times. These days, the general uses it to host highbloods.” Her brows came together as she rubbed clay over one of the more gruesome scars on his abdomen. “There will be other servants there, who will feed you wine and food laced with potent elixirs, but do not consume them. It’s important that you stay alert.”
“Why?”
“Because I need you to pass on a message for me.”
“Why would I do that?” A deep ache of hunger churned in his stomach; he hadn’t eaten since earlier that morning, and the portions had been exceptionally smaller than the usual abundance of food.
