Anathema (The Eating Woods, #1)

by Keri Lake

Cadavros.

Literally referring to the dead

His appearance was the result of having performed the Emberforge ritual on himself, the same ritual he intended for her son. A rite that only young children were believed to tolerate without any permanent disfigurement, seeing as they hadn’t yet gone through their Ascendency.

His figure represent his corruption

they ensured her poor child would never know his true power—because once the black flame entered the body, it destroyed all natural blood magic.

It was then that Lady Rydainn realized: in his attempt to harm her son, he’d somehow suffered pain himself.

Her sweet child had survived being cast into sablefyre–a fate that would’ve left any other a pile of ashes like the poor soldiers. Yet, he had survived. By the miracle of the gods, he’d been spared.

Why? How?

The Eating Woods never returned what was given.

Emotions I was forced to keep hidden for fear of looking possessed by evil, as girls were often perceived when they felt too much.

The men of our parish believed the birds to be an omen of death. They believed the same of me, too, so maybe I shared a kinship with the foreboding creatures.

my dress was the simple black that I’d been forced to wear since I was a child. At my throat, dangled the signature black choker bearing the trinity cross that the governor had long decreed I should wear as a reminder of the mercy granted by our Red God. The same symbol my father would have been wearing when he was slaughtered in the name of the Sacred Men.

The keep marking her as Other

Vonkovyan law dictated that unmarried women were not permitted to own property.

I sailed a disapproving frown at my sister, goaded by the lingering smile on her face. “Strange. He makes the distinction as if step implies he isn’t a relation, at all.” She shrugged, fluffing the curls that fell into lazy ringlets over her shoulder. “No blood relation.”

A hint of incest. . .true to gothic tropes, there's of perceived attraction between Aleysia and her step uncle.

The Sacred Men believed the end of mankind would arrive in the form of total destruction and complete blackness, and that The Red God would deliver them to the Eternal Light. They also believed the more sinners they thinned from our community, the purer their devotion.

“You’re peculiar, is all, Maevyth. And nothing invokes fear quite like the peculiar.”

The betrothal, no doubt. It was sickening that it took a suitor to spare my reputation, my future. How tragic that a woman’s worth equated to the depth of a man’s pockets.

The cursed Lord of Eidolon. A demon, they called him. Better that they knew him for the curse than the killings he carried out at the king’s behest. He was evil, after all. Only a soulless creature could take life so swiftly and easily as he did. No remorse. No emotion.

A distant voice chimed inside Zevander’s head. “Knees, Boy.” Cold stirred in his chest as the image of him on his knees flashed inside his head. “Open your mouth.” The flavor of ash and embers burned his tongue. “Now swallow.” His fists tightened, and Zevander squeezed his eyes shut on the horrible scene in his mind. “You belong to me, Boy, from this night on. And what hell you will suffer.”

He was the victim of sexual abuse as a child.

Life is what the scepter requires. The seventh bloodline might very well be mortal, a mere mortal, for all we know.” Dolion threw back another sip, his dark brown skin reddening by the moment, and he signaled for another drink from the barmaid. “No one knows entirely what, or whom, the seventh bloodline originated from. It’s a mystery that, to this day, baffles the magehood, but the moment it is reunited with the other stones, its true power will be known. And once in hand, I will possess the most impressive scepter in all of Aethyria. Far more powerful than Sablefyre.”

IS the 7th blooline Maevyth?

While he’d never bond with a woman, he did long to enjoy the pleasures of one without the memories of his past destroying it all.

Trauma destroys his ability to be with a woman

“You walk between realms of the dead and living. The world you’ve known, and the one that has remained hidden from you.”

“Wouldn’t you, in her position?” Moros asked, and I glanced up, mildly surprised, his comment dragging my attention from the rope that’d bitten so hard into my ankles, I could hardly wiggle my toes. “Surely, you would have, given your responsibility in the matter.”

“Yes. I suppose, to some, I am a monster. Let your sister be a lesson. Wild and unruly women have no place in this world. You’re meant to be tamed, or put down, if necessary.”