AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I gasped, and just as I moved to step back, my throat squeezed and dull pressure filled my head as the Spider cut my airflow. By the throat, he lifted me off the ground with my feet dangling in the air.
I choked, my vision growing dark for a moment before he dropped me. My knees folded and plunged to the ground. Skin scraped and bones ached, but the dizziness blurred all my senses other than the need to breathe.
Breathe. Even if the air smelled like scorched flesh and boiling iron.
Gagging with a violent shudder, I gripped the grass for anchorage and raised my gaze, only for the very air I struggled to breathe to leave me in a rushed whoosh.
The Spider watched me with wide, agonised eyes. A hand covered the lower part of his face and another… was inside his chest. His throat was an ashy-black colour as fire travelled up to his face that was beginning to open from the inside.
His skin was peeling back. And when I looked up in horror, I found myself staring at hismeltingbrain.
Through the widening hole in his chest, I saw the hand that was gripping his liquefying heart, the organ resembling its true appearance less and less as it dripped into a puddle of murky, darkening red.
Eon was behind him, eyes shut tight, jaws clenched together, head angled away like he didn’t want to see the sickening brutality he was causing. His tense body shook, and I stared, clamping a hand over my mouth to stop the horror that wanted to rush out of me.
The figure before me became unrecognisable, and then he was completely gone, vanishing into streaks of smoke, the ground he once stood on black and empty.
Maddening silence followed, the kind that made me realise just how big this world was and how small and defenceless I was in this land of savagery and suffering.
I rose slowly, looking at the way Eon trembled and breathed, like inhaling was an effort, like standing was taking too much out of him.
He collapsed to the ground, directly before the black spot where the other Spider had been before. With a gasp, I hurried over to him but stilled when I heard his broken breathing. My throat tightened again. I blinked, chest caving in because I couldn’t understand why Eon was hunched over the black spot, why his body was shaking and why he seemed to be in so much pain.
I tiptoed over to him cautiously, tears stinging my eyes as I tried to near him. Did the other Spider harm him? What was hurting him? What could I do to help him?
“Eon…”
Words died at the tip of my tongue when he quickly turned to face me, his eyes glistening with tears despite the fire that raged in them.
“Go,” he whispered, tearing his eyes away from me. When I didn’t move, he snapped his gaze to me again, a look in his eyes I had never seen directed at me before. “Go!Leave!”
I attempted to step closer to him, but suddenly Keleth was growling before me, snapping his jaws at me and digging his sharp claws into the ground as a warning. He was standing before Eon’s back, Eon’s back which was turned to me, preventing me from being near him.
He was protecting Eon fromme.
After another warning growl from Keleth, I signalled to Ayen to follow me. Wide-eyed and bleached of his usual colour, he stepped away from the tree and came to me, staring at Eon’s hunched figure with a look my naive self would have had before knowing Eon.
I couldn’t stay on his land anymore, not when he’d given me permission to leave.
Not when he’d forced me out.
As I jumped from his land with Ayen and Keia following me, a loud roar of pain echoed behind us. My chest constricted until I was gasping for breath. Each step I took away from him was a thorn jabbing into my heart and lungs.
Ayen stepped close to comfort me, but I shoved him away, anger and grief churning in chaos until I didn’t know why tears were rolling down my cheeks.
“It’s all your fault!” I screamed, shaking my head in disbelief when the reality of the situation settled on me. I couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t see clearly, a pain so strange and strong engulfing me until my lungs burned and ached worse than when that Spider had tried to strangle me to death. “You were seen and followed! It’s all because of you that my mate is suffering alone!”
Ayen paled.
Keia flew to me, waving her wings in front of me so she could look into my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything except Eon’s pained cry that reverberated inside my head. We were close to the portals, yet I couldn’t take another step.
How could I leave him like this?
“He s-saved me so many times!Been therefor me when Ineededhim, but I can’t evenstayand comfort h-him!” I whimpered, each breath a sharp pain striking my sides.
When my eyes met Ayen’s again, something ugly and wicked zapped through me. I charged at him, raising my claws to his throat as I shoved him against the trunk of a tree with my other hand on his chest. Even though they were small and not as vicious, I dug them close enough to slice his flesh if he even gulped.
He gasped, his green eyes widening. Whatever he saw in my eyes made him slowly raise his arms in surrender.
