The scorned, p.23
The Scorned, page 23
Daelon looked at us in horror, his eyes darting between the two of us as we both knelt before him.
“Hello again, brother Judas,” Lucius said. “Don’t worry, I’m already envisioning the ways you can make it all up to me.”
Daelon’s eyes went wild, and I swallowed down my guilt. Instead, I let relief flood my veins as I watched Lucius take his wounded hand and feed Daelon a trickle of his blood. Daelon coughed and tried to rebel against his own healing, but Lucius forced the blood down his throat and made him swallow. I watched as the poison lifted like mist off of his aura, cleared out by the only banishment it would recognize—the blood of its master. His entire body lay clear again, healed everywhere except the gash on his stomach.
I took a deep breath, and I placed a hand over his self-inflicted wound. I closed my eyes, and I finished my mending.
“You’re not who I thought you were,” Daelon spat, and the words cut deep.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I am exactly who you thought I was.”
He looked at me like I had once looked at him. Like he’d never forgive me.
“You’re being quite rude to someone who just gave up her entire savior power ploy just to save you. You, a mere mortal with only a drop of power compared to hers.” Lucius’s face contorted with disgust. “Ungrateful indeed.”
I blinked away tears, the pull of unconsciousness stronger now more than ever.
I’m going to destroy him, Daelon. This is my path. This is why the power needed to be in my hands, all along. Don’t give up on me, I begged. I clung to this belief, blinded myself with it, even when all I heard in my mind was grandiose delusions over and over.
Daelon just shut me out, refusing to say another word. Two more guards appeared, along with a woman in a deep purple cloak.
I tensed, fighting against my waning energy as Angelina uncloaked herself and licked her lips.
“You were going to greet our new guests without me?” she whined. Her eyes landed on Daelon. “Well, isn’t he delicious. I think I’m going to have fun with that one.”
“No, you will fucking not,” I spat.
Lucius sighed. “You’ll have your fun tomorrow, at the ritual. I’m not in the mood for more games tonight,” he said to her. Then he turned to the guards. “Escort him to his new chambers.”
They cuffed him, and the paralysis spell broke. He struggled free of the two men’s hold to walk under his own power, with the guards flanking either side. He didn’t look back at me, but I watched him and sent him love through the ether until I had no more energy to give. I was more than happy to just see him strong and healthy again.
“What are you going to do with her?” Angelina asked, and I grimaced when I noticed that her lips were painted blood red. She grinned. “I’d love a taste.” Something told me she meant a taste of my blood more than my energy. She pouted, shadows circling her feet. Her power was no match for Lucius’s, as much as she apparently thought he owed her some kind of reverence. In a castle where pleasure and power were currency, Lucius was her superior no matter how terrifying she was or how the shadow magick first began.
I looked at Lucius and remembered all the things she’d said about him keeping me as a pet. I tensed up the longer he was silent, only relaxing when Lucius said through clenched teeth, “Like I have repeated numerous times, you will not touch her. What I do with her now is none of your concern.”
“Nathaniel,” he said, and Nathaniel nodded. “Keep an eye on her.” He nodded to Angelina. “You heard what I just swore. We’ll have to get creative. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Nathaniel looked annoyed that he didn’t have free rein to torture Daelon. Good. I couldn’t wait to deliver a bit of torture myself.
“You’re very spiteful right now for someone on the verge of collapsing,” Lucius whispered in my ear, reading my emotions through the bond. “Time to stand.”
He helped me back up to my feet, his eyes still drawn to my bloody shoulder. The corners of his lips angled down. “They turned on you,” he said simply, and I knew it was a calculated statement. He wanted me to lose myself, to run to my shadow for safety from this pain.
But he was right, and I was so drowsy. The already dark world went darker, and when I swayed, Lucius, King of the Shadows, caught me. The last thing I remembered was being lifted into the air, smelling the same mix of woodsy spice and winter berries that I had in the astrals, my head resting on his chest as I felt just the faintest tinge of warmth from his touch.
Chapter 24
My dreams were pitch black. In the void, there was nothing. No suffering. No striving. No yearning and fighting and clinging and losing. But with nothing to feel there was no point to it all. The void was not peaceful.
It was lonely.
The sound of clattering and commotion woke me. I struggled for a moment to realize where I was. I reached for Daelon, but nothing but sleek, cool bedsheets met my palm. My eyes opened, and I sat straight up.
“This is now the second time your blood has ruined a perfectly good set of silk sheets,” Lucius said, and I swiveled my head in his direction. He sat in the same dark leather chair that he’d been in the first time I’d slept in his bed.
I didn’t know what to say. Yesterday seemed like one never-ending nightmare, and the future seemed like much of the same. Until I found a way to destroy Lucius and his power.
Daelon had looked at me like he’d never looked at me before. And he still had no idea about the soul bond. I wondered if the whole island, my friends included, knew about it by now. Maybe they thought I had brought it upon myself, and that I was even more of a traitor than they’d previously thought. What if they thought I wanted to be his Queen? The idea was too much to bear.
“Why are we bonded, Lucius?” I asked suddenly. Who knew what condition I’d be in after tonight? The least I could do was get more information before I had to wrestle with my shadow for control.
“I’ve been asking that for a very long time,” he said. His eyes were stormy. He got up from the chair, set his book down, and rested his palms on the desk by the golden-curtained windows. His back was to me. “Everything inside me wanted you dead. Still wants you dead, actually. Everything except that one unexplainable pull of magick. You must be my Queen, so it all makes sense again.”
His powerful arms flexed, and I realized he was without his crown. His aura was warring, but I couldn’t make sense of it or his words.
He’d known about our bond for a very long time? “How long have you known?” I asked.
He turned back toward me, a strange vulnerability in his features. “Longer than appropriate,” he answered, in typical Lucius fashion.
What in the hell did that mean? “And you still want me dead?”
“No,” he answered, his jaw tensing. “But also, yes. You threaten my rule. You always have. I was supposed to be unmatched—that was the reality I constructed. But now that things have changed, we must forge a new reality.”
Shadows reached for me, testing the bounds of my power again. “You don’t want me dead. The shadows do.”
“We are the same,” Lucius said, anger in his tone. “I was bestowed this power because I was the only one worthy of it. Because I was the strongest and most cunning, more of a man at sixteen years than my father or any of his men in their lifetimes.”
He was the one who’d hinted multiple times that he was separate from what Angelina had funneled into him. Everything he said was so contradictory and confusing that it made my head hurt. It reminded me of when I’d seemed to injure his feelings wondering if he was just a vehicle for shadows with no soul left inside of him. I’m still me, he’d said.
“The heretics need to understand that rebellion is futile,” he said. “You cannot defeat me or destroy my power. It is eternal, and the uprisings are only making me and my armies stronger. You made the right choice, Áine. I know it stings to learn the truth—that the heretics are just as violent and ignorant as anyone else—but here with me is where you are meant to be. They wanted you just as weak as the rest of them. They were jealous of what you had, and I know they’ve only made you feel guilty for having any power at all. I’ve felt it, through our connection. They wanted you to feel like you were born a sinner in need of redemption, and I’m here to tell you that the only salvation you need is through yourself. There is no need for self-flagellation. You can finally be who you truly are, free of all that useless guilt and pain.”
I clenched a fist. “Your unnaturalness is ripping holes in the dimensions. Your rule is sustained by subjugation and cruelty. The reality you’ve constructed isn’t beautiful, Lucius. No one is free except for you. And what have you done with that so-called freedom?”
He bristled. “You don’t understand, Áine. This would have happened no matter what. It’s the natural progression of all mortal worlds. Earth is the same—you’ve seen it. Be grateful you’re not down in the trenches with the rest of them. The most unnatural thing is for you and me to be apart. We will restore balance. Our souls are tied together because they are perfect complements of each other. We were only kept apart because no one wanted us to assume absolute power.”
“Angelina?” I asked, ignoring the rest of his nonsense. There was hope for every world, and he didn’t have to continue the Order’s reign of terror. He’d chosen to. “Her story about why you wanted this coronation was far different.” I grimaced.
He shook his head, his eyes softening for a moment. “Don’t listen to her. I needed her chaos magick to understand how to work around the natural repulsion of our powers. She has an altogether different vision of the world, but she is still beholden to me. I can control her.”
“What is the spell that you’re casting? How do you know it won’t just destroy my power?”
Lucius shut down, his eyes going vacant. “It will all work out as it is meant to.”
My heart skipped a beat. Panic bloomed in my gut. “You don’t know what will happen, do you?”
“Of course I know what will happen,” he said. His voice contorted with passion and rage. “I am protecting my mate and defying the bestower of my power to do so. You have no idea what I have been put through to allow you to live and breathe.” Was the bestower of his power Angelina? Or was it still the high, unknown realms?
His raised voice made me shut down. A shiver ran down my spine, and I remembered all the times he’d choked and man-handled me with his magick.
“That was before,” he said, softer this time.
My eyes widened, realizing that he’d read the thoughts right out of my mind.
“I’m sorry, Áine.” His voice softened, and he looked like he had to force the words out.
Lucius wasn’t protecting me. He was protecting himself from me. How much of what he’d just said were lies? Was he lying to himself or just to me?
“I want to shower,” I said. “In a room of my own.”
Lucius’s lip twitched. “You may shower here. The servants are preparing us breakfast, even though you slept until mid-afternoon.”
I stood up, trying to pull down my bloodied sundress and cover as much skin as possible. Lucius watched me, his eyes skimming the length of my body.
I narrowed my eyes. “No. I want—”
He cut me off. “I don’t care what you want. You lost privileges for your own rooms when you seduced my Commander, ran away with him to enemy lands, and continued to plot and commit treason against your King.”
He wasn’t going to let me out of his sight. I needed to get to Taryn. I needed to find Amaya and the secret coven, and Amos too. Everyone who was secretly rooting for me needed to know that I was back to free them.
Lucius laughed, jolting me from my thoughts. “You’re still plotting, even now.” He cocked his head, an easy grin spreading across his lips. “If it wasn’t so endearing, I might think of creative ways to punish you for your continued heresy.”
My face contorted with disgust.
“Luckily for you, I find your unwillingness to surrender one of your most beguiling traits. I would expect nothing less from my mate.”
“Ew, Lucius. Stop calling me that. We aren’t wolves,” I snapped.
“Your resistance of the bond is truly admirable.” He walked around the giant bed and closer to me as I backed away and crossed my arms over my chest.
My back bumped into the wall, and Lucius’s aura reached for mine like a siren calling to a vulnerable sailor.
“You won’t be able to push it down after tonight. No longer will we be forced apart. You will never be able to deny your fate again,” he said. He was too close to me now, boxing me in with nowhere to go. “You’ll never deny me again.”
I swallowed. My mind flashed to Daelon and what he’d said about Lucius’s sexual exploits. Lucius had always maintained that he’d never forced himself on witches. Was that really true?
Of course that’s where her mind just went. Probably the work of my brother, poisoning her against me, I heard Lucius think to himself.
Shit. We were reading each other’s thoughts again.
The fact that Lucius still thought of Daelon as his brother was actually kind of… sad. What must he have felt when Daelon turned on him? When Lucius had thought of Daelon as his best friend for two decades? No. It didn’t matter what he’d felt.
His blue eyes burned into mine. “You are safe with me, Áine.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, even as the bond rose up inside of me, feeding me nothing but warmth and relief that I was finally here, standing in front of him. Before I could stop it, a trail of energy escaped my body and went to his, disappearing into the shroud of darkness never to return.
Lucius raised his hand, and I gave him the slightest shake of my head. He dropped it back down to his side and nodded. “Let me unzip your dress.”
“No.”
“Fine.”
He stared at me a moment longer, the same relief echoing back from the void to sneak into my heart. He took a step back, and I escaped past him. I strode to the bathroom and turned back to study Lucius. He was still standing there, his head tilted toward the ground. The golden chandelier above twinkled, illuminating the ornate, kingly space that used to feel much grimmer. It looked like it had gotten a makeover, the dark furniture and bedding complimented by soft golden curtains on the tall windows, a ceiling painting that was serene and filled with images of nature and faeries. In fact, it looked an awful lot like the ceiling in the throne room the first time I appeared in court. In this space, there was now a blend of golden and black, of light and dark, of cold and warm. Had he changed the feel of his chambers for… me?
I turned back around and disappeared into the bathroom. It had been redecorated as well. No longer did it look fit for orgies. It was just as lavish but more feminine, with a deep spa bath that looked like it was made of white opal flecked with iridescent gold. The walls were brighter, the lights setting the tone of the room to a pleasant morning glow. The shower was still massive, but it had but one golden showerhead. I tried not to read into any of it. There could’ve been plenty of other reasons for a renovation.
I also tried not to read into my relief that I didn’t have to imagine how many other witches had used these facilities. Though, who knew what Lucius hid from me, even now? I was probably deluded to believe that anything had really changed.
I was not special. Not to Lucius, not in that way. I was only special to him because I resisted him, and I held power that threatened his rule.
I ran the shower and closed my eyes underneath the steady flow of warm water. I tried to make sense of everything Lucius had ever told me. I needed to know what was going to happen tonight. Maybe there was still time to prepare.
If I took his words at face-value, then it seemed like the ritual was going to make our bond even stronger. That would certainly be an obstacle. He also seemed to imply that it would make him no longer want to kill me, and our powers would no longer repel each other’s. The shadow magick itself clearly had a mind of its own, and Lucius thought it put me in danger. But the biggest question was: what would really happen to my power? What would happen to me, as I knew myself now? Was Lucius truly trying to free me from guilt and pain so that I could become more powerful, or was he trying to bend me to his will so that I would never be powerful again?
The second one sounded far more likely. He’d finally mentioned the uprisings, which meant they were on his mind. He wanted this revolution stopped before it had really begun. He wanted me to believe that the world could not be saved, that violence and dominion was inevitable, and that he had only protected the world from an even worse reality. Lucius and my shadow self had common goals: self-preservation, unhindered power, and a life without pain.
What did it mean that he now had feelings? That he wasn’t just a sociopathic psychopath with nothing witch inside of him? That his energy was no longer so repellent to me? Was it really that I was better at reading him now, or had he somehow… changed?
You’ll remember, Charlie’s little voice echoed.
There was something more going on. There was a part of my purpose that still felt out of my reach, and I knew it had everything to do with Lucius’s new rift with Angelina and the shadows. I sensed a weakness to be exploited, and I was determined to use it to my advantage.
No matter what happened tonight, I was going to end this war, once and for all. Even if no one believed in me, at least the Universe did. And I believed in Her.
There was a better world out there. There had to be. There was so much to hold on to, so much to hold close.
But then I remembered how my friends had treated me, unwilling to even let me speak. Wren and Jesco, the shamans, and all the rest. Even Ruth had seen something inside me she didn’t like, long before I’d made my choice. I thought of my forever, the man who was supposed to be my anchor in this turbulent sea, and I remembered the look on his face when he’d said I wasn’t who he thought I was.
