Page 90 of Vasmora

“Vaelora,” she whispered, as if the name were familiar to her. What little color she had in her face drained. “The girl in the cave.”

Zevander froze, a sick churning in his stomach. “You saw her?”

A vision of the dead, he guessed. It wasn’t possible for Vaelora to have survived the suffering he’d been forced to listen to.

“She helped me escape. She died a horrible death.”

Zevander frowned, his mind rejecting the visual that sprang to his thoughts. “She threw you into that pit with those creatures?”

“Yes. It turns out they don’t like my blood, either.” She exhaled a shaky breath and turned away, that cold emptiness returning to her gaze. “There was another woman. I couldn’t save her. She also suffered a horrific …” Her face crumpled with emotion.

“Are you all right?”

Squeezing her eyes shut, she cleared her throat and nodded. “I have to be.”

There were questions that lingered in the air between them. Questions he wouldn’t dare ask. Now wasn’t the time for it.

She buried her face in her palms and let out a long exhale.

“What is it?”

When she lowered her hands, her eyes held a sliver of fear. “I want to lose myself in this. In you. But my head refuses to believe you’re here. I live that moment, watching you slip. Over and over. I wanted to believe that you’d lived, but …” Brows pinched tight, she shook her head. “It was too impossible. No one comes back from the chasm. That’s what I was told.”

“I’m here.” Zevander’s palms itched to draw her closer, to hold her until she clawed at him to let her go, but he wouldn’t.

She needed to breathe. To process. To reconcile. It was sketched in her expression, the way her lips tugged as if she wanted to break, but she snapped her gaze away.

“How? How did you survive?”

“There was a rock jutting out from the chasm.” Zevander lowered his gaze to his hands, could feel that scorpion necklace clutched there. The memories of her that his mind desperately grasped. “I hesitate to say I’d accepted my fate. I hadn’t, but there was no solution for me. Until Raivox appeared.”

Her eyes lit up for the first time. “He lives?”

“He lifted me from that chasm and brought me to Eidolon.”

The tearful smile on her face faded. “This was soon after you’d fallen?”

“Yes.”

Her bottom lip trembled, her expression brimming with sadness. “He came for me, then.”

Zevander frowned. “Here? You called for him?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t. The sound wouldn’t come forth.” She brushed her fingers over her throat. “Drefan told me they’d spotted him. They shot him out of the sky.” She pulled her legs up, tucking them against her body. “I don’t know where he is. If he’s alive or …”

“Don’t think about that right now. One worry at a time, remember? Let’s get that band removed.”

Lips pressed together, she nodded and wiped the fallen tears from her cheeks. “So, this Kael, do you trust him?”

“I’m fairly certain it was Kael and his sister that my father hid away from King Jeret.”

“Why?”

“Kael is his illegitimate son.”

“So, he should welcome us, then?”

Zevander exhaled a sigh. “My father also killed his mother.”