Arcane Dropout 6 by Edmund Hughes

Author:Edmund Hughes [Hughes, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-27T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

When Lee could see again, Eliza was gone. The cellar was a charred mockery of its former state, and the Masterson wine collection had been culled by half. He fell forward onto his knees, slamming a punch into the floor, fury unabated.

“Lee!” cried Tess. The barrier blocking the stairs had left along with the Unavowed Queen, and Tess rushed through it in her ethereal state, pulling him into a pointless, chilly hug.

“I’m alright,” he muttered. “Eliza escaped.”

Tess was shaking and she shook her head, wiping away ethereal tears. “It doesn’t matter. I thought she was going to… I thought you’d…”

“It’s her,” he said, in a quiet voice. “She’s the reason why you’re…”

He couldn’t finish that sentence, and he told himself it was because he didn’t know what the right word was. It all came back to Eliza, back to his mistakes. Back to the fact that he’d never been straightforward with her, never really seen her until she’d become a monster.

“It’s okay,” whispered Tess. “She can do whatever she wants to me. I just don’t want her to take you away.”

“No, it’s not okay!” he snapped. “It’s not okay…”

Xepher’s body was still splayed across the cellar floor, though it, like much of the rest of the room, had been scorched by Lee’s holy fire. It wasn’t until Tess poked a tingling and very much ethereal finger against his lip that he realized he had another nosebleed. He wiped it away and stood up, ignoring the sudden head rush accompanying the movement.

“Lee,” whispered Tess. “I’m worried. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“I’m fine. This is nothing.”

“I don’t just mean your abilities and the nosebleed.” Tess folded her arms, her face scrunching itself ugly with worry. “Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help me.”

“Maybe it would,” he said. A sickening sense of certainty lurched in his gut. “Eliza said she was sapping away at your soul… because of me. Maybe if I were dead—”

“Shut your mouth!” Tess punched him in the arm with a fist. “Lee Amaranth, don’t you dare say things like that!”

“What? I’d come back as a ghost. Probably…”

He took hold of her hand and pulled her into his mystic stream. He had to keep his arms around her, ready to steady her body against his. She had no feet to stand on anymore. Lee supported her, hugging her against his chest as Tess wrapped what was left of her legs around his waist to make bearing her weight a bit easier for him.

“Eliza is doing this to you as a way of getting to me,” he said. “She said she’s sided with the Order of Chaldea as well, though I’m not sure if she was telling the truth.”

“What?”

A new voice came from the stairs, that of his sister. She stomped down into the cellar, arms outstretched to pull him into a hug, only stopping when she caught sight of him embracing Tess.

“Eldon,” she said. “Oh, God. I thought you might be… there was so much blood upstairs.”

“Plenty of blood down here, too,” he said.

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