Anathema (The Eating Woods, #1)

by Keri Lake

“The sting carries a poison that will ensure you never know pleasure again. Each time your cock fills with blood, all you will know is a pain that will have you begging for death.”

including the pelvic muscles. For the sexsell, it was a terrifying circumstance that made them exceptionally vulnerable. For the client, he could do whatever he wanted and manipulate their blood magic for as long as the high lasted. Most Johns paid for hours at a time, not only to take advantage of the tonic, but to allow it time to wear off.

For the depressed, the stressed, the physically tormented, she served as something of a tonic herself.

Pain eaters, her kind were called, as they literally consumed the agony with a particular touch, or kiss.

It was hell for Rykaia, whose mind somehow had to process all that grief and suffering, the aches and injury, the weight of which had prompted her to abuse tonics at an early age.

I noticed the way the skin had tightened around the wound like vanes to a rachis, giving it the appearance of a feather.

The lower part of my iris, ordinarily a deep, winter gray, had paled to an icy silver.

“Uncle Felix said you were actually dead for eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds. He tried to revive you.”

“It’s your penance. A life for death.”

“You see the dead. You hear them speak to you.”

“I also know that the delicate black rose doesn’t grow well in these parts. Our winters are far too cold for its fragile roots.”

“And what happens if this egg should hatch?”

“It begs the question … what happens when the dead return from the grave?”

Mor samanet, a whispered voice said through the darkness of his mind. Death awaits.

Ten piercings. An entire century of enslavement.

Even years later, when the commands of those vile women were nothing but a distant memory in his ear, he still couldn’t bring himself to stroke his cock. Not even when it begged for relief.

Harmless trysts, because there wasn’t a chance in seven hells he’d ever settle down with anyone. Even if he wanted the headache of a mate, and he didn’t, no Letalisz had ever been granted permission to marry.

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.

The day Branimir had held him by the throat was the day his scorpion sigil had first appeared.

“It’s true! Lilleven’s brother saw the whole thing. This girl is the anathema, a witch, and deserves banishment to The Eating Woods!”

“Do you …. Are you asking if I want you to let her go?” “We do not let Lyverians go.”

“The servant girl. A Lyverian. Moros had killed her, I’m sure of it.”

Life. So much unexpected life. From a young age, he’d been taught the mortal world was a dead and barren wasteland. A place no Aethyrian would ever dare to venture.

An egg, it seemed, but not one he recognized. The scales on the surface suggested some kind of raptor.

Long, black hair lay strewn about her pillow and plastered to her sweaty brow. Porcelain skin that carried the soft pink of a fever. Full, bow-shaped lips, slightly parted. Fucking beautiful.

He’d never been so taken by one of his prey.

Nothing came forth. As if his power refused to follow his command. It’d never failed him before. Had never hesitated to take life, however brutally Zevander had willed it.

He looked down to see one of his scorpions stinging him. Retaliating on him. The cursed flame attacking him, instead!

The little beast reminded me of a miniature dragon, like those that Grandfather Bronwick would tell me about from books he’d read to me as a child.

“You may have repulsive eating habits, but I’ll admit, you’re terrifyingly cute,” I spoke on the cusp of a whisper. “Adorrifying. And chaotic. I think I’ll name you Raivox.”

My thoughts wound to earlier, when I’d woken to the man in the mask holding the knife to my throat. I suspected, by the way he’d vanished so quickly, that it was nothing more than an illusion, much like The Banished Man I’d seen before him, and Danyra, the Lyverian girl. And if that was the case, it could’ve only meant that I’d begun to lose my senses.

that perhaps something evil had infected me.

“Blood given for blood taken. Can’t be undone now.”

“Your ties with the dead were eternal the moment you pricked yourself on the bone and sealed it with the blood.”

“What do the dead have to do with the raven?”

“They guide the soul to the after, and you share its blood now,”

“You walk between realms of the dead and living. ...

known, and the one that has remained hid...

“Is it a curse, or a gift? Some believe communing with the dead is as much a blessing as a burden.”

“It is in what they tell you. What they know of the other side.”

“There is no ridding it. The gods chose, and you are their vessel.”

A mortal. A weak fucking mortal had sent him furiously trudging back through the woods without the stone. He’d never encountered a creature in his life that he couldn’t turn to ash by summoning the flames, but somehow the girl managed to resist him.

Every detail of her face lingered so vividly in his thoughts, he wanted to carve them out with a blade. Visuals that sickened him as much as they intrigued him.

“Birds don’t eat cats. It’s the other way around.”

“No more pets, okay? We have to find something less traumatic for you to eat. If you insist on meat, perhaps I can see about getting some scraps from the butcher in town.”

“In spite of your macabre tendencies, you are ridiculously cute.”

Aleysia’s confession had branded her a sinner. Sinners were fed to the forest.

“Well, that was about as fun as stroking my cock with a gauntlet.”

“Are you implying I’m your great villain now? That I will bring about this end of days? You are mad.” “You will join Cadavros in his destruction. This much I know for certain.”

“Because I saw the Corvugon in this vision, also. And with you having fetched the final stone, I do not see how that is possible now.”