Daelon’s words built his coffin, and Lucius’s rage was dastardly. He exploded like a nuclear bomb, his cloud of dark energy gathering into something monstrous. I broke free from my bind and teleported, and Amos’s words rang through my mind like a call from the heavens.

  Lucius lost control, and the perfect storm finally settled into place. I shoved Daelon away just in time to receive the full force of Lucius’s power. All of my nerve endings lit on fire, scorched with pain as I suffocated in the thick black smoke. I fought it at first, a deeply ingrained struggle against death that was primal and instinctual, but soon a peace overcame me, and I felt nothing at all. I was in this blissful dark void for what seemed like hours and seconds both at once. Then a crack of light extended toward me, a scene at the top of a deep well that was filled with sound and color and life.

  It will feel like jumping into an invisible river. And you must let it carry you away.

  I surrendered.

  My body fell as my soul became freed from its physical tethers.

  But I wasn’t the only one who hit the floor.

  Chapter 17

  When the dust settled, I was still in the throne room. I brushed myself off and glanced around, but everything looked and sounded like a dream. No one looked my way. Because I wasn’t there.

  But my body was, albeit across the room. I watched Daelon scream at everyone to get back, to get away from me. He lorded over my lifeless body like a feral animal, with so much guttural devastation I had to look away. I watched as guards moved like shadows to a second body lying on its side, his hand outstretched and his piercing blue eyes wide open and void.

  Lucius. Why was Lucius dead?

  “Good fucking question.” Another Lucius manifested beside me. “We aren’t really dead though.” He shook his head, his eyes wild. “We can’t be. We’re immortal like our power.”

  I rolled my eyes. This was just my luck. I tried to reach out to Daelon, to let him know that I was okay—that this was always the plan—but he was as unreachable as a character on a television screen. I hovered next to him, surprised to find that Lucius’s magick had barely left a mark on my physical form other than some ugly darkened veins along my arms. My long copper hair fell around my shoulders, my eyes closed in a peaceful surrender. My lips and cheeks were a soft pink, my features relaxed.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” Taryn said, her eyes welling up. “You were supposed to tell him.”

  “You don’t have to say your every fucking thought aloud, Taryn,” Daelon spat, his voice raw and shaking.

  Lucius bristled. “What are they talking about? What have you done?” He raised an accusatory finger.

  “I haven’t done anything! You think I want to be trapped here, or anywhere at all, with you? You’re the one who caused all of this.”

  I was surprised to find that Lucius’s power was barely perceptible in this space. Whether that meant he was truly less powerful here in the astrals, I wasn’t sure. I knew the other planes had rules of their own, but it was still strange not to be able to feel the full brunt of his rage any longer.

  Daelon began to sob, and Taryn wrapped her arms around him as he held and rocked my lifeless body.

  “I can’t decide if this is horribly depressing or terribly boring.”

  “I thought you didn’t have emotions,” I muttered, but he was right. I was unable to watch Daelon’s suffering any longer.

  Lucius’s brows pulled together, something strange passing over his features. “I don’t.”

  I didn’t have the energy to figure out whatever the hell was up with him, especially not after he tried to kill the love of my life. Plus, I had a sacred map to follow, and Lucius certainly wasn’t invited.

  “Okay, then. Well, enjoy the afterlife,” I said to him.

  His eyes widened in terror. “And where the hell are you going? You can’t leave me. We have to find our way back.”

  “You work on that, and I’m gonna go do this way more important thing.” I stepped back, channeling the winds of travel to pull myself up to the higher realms.

  The world began to shift, but like a startled toddler clinging to his mother, Lucius latched on to me at the last second.

  We were cast out into an astral forest, the clouds above white and huge and far too close to the earth. They brushed up against the tops of the tall evergreens all around us.

  “Get away from me!” I screamed at him.

  Lucius straightened, his eyes darting all around before landing back on me. “Don’t speak to your King like that.”

  I laughed, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I knew I looked nuts, which only made me laugh harder.

  Lucius just crossed his arms and tapped his foot. “What is so funny?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “You! You’re sick, Lucius. Terminally. You’re literally dead, and you still think you have some kind of power over me. Over anyone. It’s insane. I mean, what are you going to do if I don’t listen? Kill me?” I laughed some more, and the action made me feel as light as the warm spring breeze of this ethereal forest.

  “We. Are. Not. Dead,” Lucius said, clipped and slow like speaking to a child. “My power literally sustains the realm, and it lives on. I cannot be killed so easily. The dimensions are unstable, remember? We just need to find our way back through the cracks.”

  “Oh,” I said dramatically. “So you do believe in that now? I thought that was silly heretic logic? Where the hell is your resurrected witch, huh?” That was what tore the hole in the astrals in the first place.

  He pursed his lips. “You’re being very, very loud. It’s grating to my ears.”

  Then suddenly, he went white as a ghost—or whiter than a ghost, perhaps. His arms dropped to his sides as he straightened and seemed to adjust his gaze to something behind me.

  I narrowed my eyes then turned to see a woman who looked like a goddess of winter walk toward us. Katherine. Her fair cheeks were rosy, her eyes a piercing blue. She moved her long black hair behind her shoulders.

  “Now, now, Lucius. That’s no way to speak to your friends.”

  “Friends?” we both scoffed.

  “He basically just sexually assaulted me,” I spat. It felt good to finally be able to treat him like he deserved.

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s more than a bit dramatic,” he said, exasperated. “I barely touched you. And you loved every second of it.”

  “Because I thought you were my boyfriend, you arrogant perv!”

  “Boyfriend,” he spat out like moldy fruit. “Are you a thirteen-year-old human child?”

  “How did you even figure it out?”

  “Daelon’s plaything number two saw you both leave the deranged psychic’s quarters. Which is how I know you weren’t just fucking, you were also colluding to—”

  “Enough,” Katherine said, the authority of her voice sending us to silence. “You aren’t excited to see me?” she asked her son.

  He peeled his eyes from mine. “No, I’m not happy to see my dead mother,” he replied, burying himself deeper into the role of the petulant toddler. “Why aren’t you off in eternal peace where I sent you?”

  There it was. Lucius did kill his own mother. And she still held out hope for him.

  “Because I had some business to attend to,” she replied curtly, but her eyes were glassy with hurt. “Speaking of—safe travels, Áine. We’ll be awaiting your return.”

  “Safe travels?” Lucius uttered. “Where do you think you’re going? What is all of this?” He looked between the two of us erratically.

  “What on earth makes you think I’ll come back here to the two of you? No offense,” I said, raising a brow at Katherine and ignoring Lucius’s deranged rant.

  “Because Lucius is right. Neither of you can be killed in this way. Not permanently. It would create a power vacuum that could put the entire world in jeopardy. Right now, you’re both somewhere in between life and death, still retaining the power you were given,” she said, gesturing to me, “and the power you took,” she finished, pointing to Lucius.

  “That would’ve been good to know when I spent weeks thinking I was going to have to permanently die for this,” I muttered.

  Katherine shrugged. “It all had to happen as it did. And you never asked me.”

  I rolled my eyes for the millionth time. This family was truly something else. I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe that Lucius had to accompany me back to life, but that was a problem for another day in limbo.

  “Well, bye,” I said. The wind whistled through the tall evergreens, and the grass tickled my feet. It was like a scene from a fairytale. Spending eternity here wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Just not with Lucius. And not without Daelon.

  Lucius stepped forward angrily, but Katherine moved her hand through the air, twisting his shoulder back at an unnatural angle.

  “Ow!” He glared at her. “Why did that hurt?”

  “You and I are going to have a long chat,” she said, sending him down to his knees as he cried out in the pain he supposedly couldn’t feel anymore.

  It was refreshing to see him hurt.

  But it was time for me to finally learn the truth.

  I stood in a windy desert, and the sand was as white as snow. The sky above was a swirl of purples and pinks, the sun a bright red orb.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing!” I screamed after some aimless wandering, trekking through the tall dunes as my white dress billowed out around me. Apparently costume changes were a fun side effect of astral travel. I knew I was heading in the right direction, but I wasn’t sure how. It was just inside me, like a bird’s internal map that led them south for the winter.

  I wished Daelon was here.

  “Need company?”

  I stopped, full-body shivers running across every inch of my skin.

  “Mom?” I asked, turning. “Mom?” I laughed, and it quickly turned into a sob.

  Momma Celeste and Momma Jane were dressed in white like me, glowing and vibrant. Celeste’s light blond hair was long and straight, and Jane’s wavy dark locks fell around her shoulders.

  I ran to them, and they wrapped their arms around me as we all cried. They smelled exactly like I remembered, a soothing mixture of lavender soap, springtime, and warmth.

  “How are you here?” I squeaked, staring at them intently as if they would fade away at any moment.

  “The how is elusive. But the why is because you needed us to be,” Jane said.

  “I don’t even care how,” I said as Celeste wiped the tears from my cheeks. “I’m just so happy to see you again.” The last time I’d seen them was when Daelon accidentally killed me for a couple minutes, and they’d stood with the rest of the coven and performed a sacred ritual to give me strength. I’d never really known how real it had been, but now that I was dead myself and doing just fine… anything seemed possible.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Celeste said, running her hand through a lock of my hair.

  “We are so very proud of you,” Jane added. “You are everything we knew you would be and more. Everyone is rooting for you. You have the whole Universe on your side.”

  I beamed. “Are you at least happy? Wherever you came from?”

  They both smiled. “Don’t you worry about us. We’re just sad we had to leave you so soon.”

  “Now, let’s get you to the Akashic Records.”

  They offered me their hands, and we stood in a circle as the sand formed a cyclone all around us.

  “Goddess, grant Áine the truth,” they chanted in unison.

  The sand settled, and we now stood before a huge building that resembled a kind of Ivy League library. It was light gray with Greek styling consisting of grand, white columns and rows of granite steps leading to the entrance. It was the most massive building I’d ever seen.

  “Can you come with me?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Will you be here when I return?”

  Jane smiled sadly. “We need to say our goodbyes here.”

  “But I have so much to say. So much to ask.”

  “Everything you need is already inside you, Áine,” Celeste said. “Have faith. You are made up of everything good in the world. The witches who lost their lives to the Order and to Lucius have all poured their hope and power into you. We’ve all been guiding you, helping you along this arduous path. You are never alone, even when you feel like you are.”

  “We will love you for all of eternity. This is not really a goodbye,” Jane said. “We are so grateful you’ve had someone to protect you when we could not,” she added, smiling softly.

  They each kissed my forehead, and I still had so much to say and didn’t know how to say it, so I just whispered, “I love you.”

  And they were gone.

  Chapter 18

  The whole world stood still and quiet as I approached the tall white marble doors, jumping when two gladiator-looking guards appeared, blocking the entrance to the building.

  “Do you have keys for the knowledge you seek?”

  I nodded. A small pouch manifested in the palm of my hand, and it held three literal, golden keys. I frowned at the contents as I realized one key was from Katherine, another was from Willow, but I didn’t recall receiving the third.

  “Welcome,” one of the guards said. “May you find the knowledge you seek.” The door behind him swung open, revealing a short woman with a thin frame waiting for me just inside. Dark brown hair fell to her shoulders, and wide-rimmed glasses framed her amber eyes.

  “Dr. Bordo?” I asked, confused. Of all the things I expected the Akashic Records to be, a university library with gladiator guards and one of my college anthropology professors was not it.

  “Come in,” she said, and her voice was exactly as I remembered it back on Earth—high-pitched and cheery, like she woke up on the right side of the bed every day, effortlessly.

  “Alrighty then.” I stepped into the grandest library I’d ever seen. Books were arranged on spiral bookshelves, row after row from floor to ceiling. Some of them were flying about, shifting positions with each other. The architecture barely made sense, like a strange kind of dream.

  “Keys, please,” she said, outstretching her hand.

  I handed her the pouch. “So, um, you’re not really Dr. Bordo, right? Because I don’t understand.”

  “The Akashic Records takes different forms for all who enter,” she explained, heading toward a circular help desk in the center of the space. “The particular form doesn’t matter, but it must take some structure in order to make sense to humans and witches. It would seem that this Akashic Records fashioned itself from your experience with academia.”

  Finally, someone in the universe who answered my questions succinctly and completely, without riddles and mystical fluff. Thank the heavens.

  It was still very, very weird.

  “Why do I need keys?”

  “So you don’t get lost, of course.” She ushered me over to the desk, where she busied herself pulling out drawers and lifting out what appeared to be VHS videotapes. Why was my subconscious stuck in the wrong century?

  “A videotape for each key,” she explained further. “Let me show you what it would be like without any keys at all. Maybe that will help you understand.”

  I entered the space at the circular desk’s center, and she pressed the power button of an equally old computer with the Windows logo on the screen. Nice touch. Images flooded the interface, but as soon as they appeared, I was sucked into them, and the library fell away.

  Similar to the visions I saw in my ocean of magick, all of humanity and Aradia appeared before me. There was a man in a church, kneeling before a crucifix; a woman in a tall wheat field; a mother holding a child; all mothers holding all children; every country and every coven, at all points of time; depictions of every deity ever worshipped; atrocities of war, famine, and destruction; every act of abuse and exploitation; every philosophical, scientific, and religious realization and discovery; and every single being to ever walk any realm, to ever suffer, love, and breathe. All of these things were recorded here forever. Nothing was lost. It was all witnessed. It was too much information, making it impossible to focus.

  Even thinking about myself produced a slew of visions that had nothing to do with me and my life. I saw a flash of my mothers and my coven, but then I saw witches whispering in a city street, humans meditating, a man punching another, people screaming and fighting, people chanting and celebrating. I felt hope, I felt suffering, and I felt every other emotion that had ever been felt.

  So many voices, so many lives. They reached toward me like a heavy sigh, or a ripple that went on and on in an ocean that was infinite. And I saw all of these moments and souls like a giant tapestry, stitched together in a web of connection that was impossible to understand from one single place and time. It was only from this view, where I could see the whole, uninterrupted arc of existence breathe in and out, that I understood how a story told on Earth could echo through the centuries and into all other realms. Everything had a path to everything else. The paths were infinite, each thread connecting to every other. The sum of it all put together sounded like a great hum, and it looked like a blinding explosion of geometric light.

  I pulled myself back out into the library, letting form take back its shape.

  Dr. Bordo stood in front of me, smiling cheerily. I started as she came into focus.

  “Okay, yes, I get it now. Thank you,” I murmured, still reeling. “The Ocean of the Nameless and Formless…” I trailed off, not knowing quite how to phrase my question.

  Her eyes lit up with excitement, just like they always did when she was asked questions in class. “It’s like, pardon my pun, a watered-down version of the Akashic, yes! You see, all witches have access to this information, some more clearly than others. Your coven in particular wished to create a living, breathing representation of their insight, so they fashioned their rituals and magick around the oceanfront. The water became a kind of receptacle for universal wisdom. They were a very insightful group,” she said, smiling sadly and placing a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “Humans also have access. All living beings do. It’s the source of breakthroughs, inspiration, eureka moments, intuition… all the thoughts and art that seem to come from nowhere, the connections that suddenly make themselves known.”

 

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