Page 202 of Vasmora

Raivox snorted hot steam and gave a slightly harder nudge that had Zevander stumbling forward.

He grumbled his annoyance, and when he turned away from the Corvugon, he caught sight of someone at the gate.

Seeming to notice it himself, the Corvugon took flight toward it.

Off in the distance, the figure spun around, as if to run, but the colossal bird swooped down, snapping him up into its maw, and turned back in the direction of the castle. Just before reaching the building, Raivox dropped the figure onto the lawn, right below Zevander’s balcony.

Giving him a perfectly clear view of the trespasser.

“Kazhimyr,” he growled.

* * *

Zevander stood across from his old friend, their eyes locked on one another.

“I thought you were dead,” Kazhimyr said, his voice edged in wariness. He shook his head when Zevander didn’t respond. “You fell into the chasm. I saw you fall.”

Zevander stared silently, searching him for signs of infection. Black veins. Black eyes. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought Kazhimyr to be perfectly healthy, given the way he looked no more than slightly malnourished, with his sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes.

Kazhimyr breathed a laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s possible I’m dead and this is purgatory. Facing your wrath and judgement would be justified, I suppose. So, let’s get on with it.” He held his arms outstretched. “Lock me in one of your dungeons.”

“I’m not allowing you inside.”

“It’s cold out here,” Kazhimyr snapped.

His hostility gave the first clue that something was wrong.

Zevander raised his palm, casting a circle of flames around him.

“I’m sorry.” Tears wavered in Kazhimyr’s eyes as he walked within the perimeter of the flame. “I tried to keep her safe. I went back for her.”

Maevyth. He must’ve thought she’d died back at General Loyce’s.

Zevander decided to keep the truth to himself. He didn’t know what Kazhimyr had come for, after all. Only that the bastard must’ve had balls of steel to show his face.

“You went back for her. The palace?”

“Yes. I saw what I presume was your handiwork on General Loyce.”

“Alive?”

“If you can call it that. Essentially, a torso.”

Zevander’s jaw shifted. He’d have taken pleasure in confirming her suffering, if not for the question lingering in his mind. “Did you offer her mercy?” he gritted out.

“I left her there for the charnelyths to feed on.”

Zevander ran his tongue across the edge of his teeth. Couldn’t shake the way Kazhimyr seemed to drift in and out of strange and familiar. Sounding like his friend one moment and something else in between. It must’ve been how Maevyth had felt about Aleysia. Why she’d been so torn. Except, Zevander had no reservations about killing his friend. One slip, and he’d have gladly shoved a blade down his throat. “And you traveled all this way, thinking I was dead. Why did you return to Eidolon?”

Kazhimyr threw his hands out and shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly. I felt compelled to come back here.”

“I’m sure you did.”

He paused his pacing and stared down at the ground, his expression lost to conflict. “I never intended to fail you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me back in those woods that you were infected?”

Amusement flashed across his eyes. “Would you have let me through? Or would you have left me to die on the other side?” Given the way his smirk faded, he already knew the answer.