The scorned, p.9
The Scorned, page 9
Did Wren see it? Did he know? What did he know? Paranoia as thick as the Shadow King’s coiled around my lungs, filling me with burning fear.
“The shamans are sending Aurora Aurea’s best healers to see what they can do for Daelon tomorrow morning,” I said. “I know you think nothing can be done, but I still want you to come.”
Wren’s aura flickered with the first tinge of uncertainty I’d ever seen in him, so faint it would’ve been easy to deny. It was quickly overcome with those soft healing greens and browns, the colors of the mighty Icieran forest.
He nodded and looked back into the ocean. “I’ll be there.”
Chapter 9
“You want to let Lucius show you Angelina’s origins, don’t you?” Daelon asked later that night while we sipped tea in the living area. We sat in two white chairs stitched with forest green ferns by a window.
He didn’t even mention how long he’d slept—he’d just asked when training began with the same authoritative air of the Commander of the Guard. When I told him he could train tomorrow, after the healers saw him, relief washed over his features. He loved hearing about everything I saw with the Aurora Aurea warriors, and the light in his eyes was nearly enough to cover up the heavy weight of illness that shrouded the bed like smog.
“I don’t want him to show me, but I do want to see it,” I said. “I’d rather do it myself. But I’ve looked in the astrals before, and in my meditative ocean, and there’s nothing at all attached to her energy. Nothing that will channel through.”
Daelon sighed, dragging a hand across his face.
“He can’t truly harm me, not when we’re both detached from the physical. I feel like this is important,” I said. “We need to know how this all started—what happened back in her coven that made her this way.”
“What if nothing made her that way?” Daelon asked. “Or at least nothing anyone had any control over. Can’t people just be born evil, imbalanced with too much of the world’s darkness?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s what I used to think of Lucius, before we knew he was a monster created rather than a monster born. It just feels like there’s more. She created this mess, so she might be the key to ending it.”
“But Áine, she didn’t create the Order. The Order already existed before she joined them. She just made them more powerful, more ruthless and cruel, and she funneled all that shadow magick into Lucius.”
“She let herself die just so that she could see her magick crumble the world into darkness.” I paused, staring out the window to the street lit up by fairy lights. “It sounds like revenge, Daelon. Revenge against the world.”
He watched me warily, no doubt already imagining Lucius and me together and everything that meant.
“But you’re right. We can’t trace every thread of the tapestry back to its roots,” I continued. “We might be able to trace hers, though, and I know in my soul that it will help me understand the big picture.” My eyes welled up, suddenly overcome with the helplessness and confusion I was so accustomed to. “I just—I need to understand it all. I can’t make this choice right now. Not before trying to learn more about these shadows, about Aradia, and about myself.”
Daelon’s features softened. “Come here,” he whispered.
I set down my tea on the windowsill and crawled into his lap, curling into him. I clung to the safety of his shield, nearly begging his energy, his scent, his half of our broken soul bond to infuse me with the certainty and strength I needed right now.
“We’re running out of time,” I said, and the words spun us backward through time, all the way to the beginning of us. Back at the cabin before Daelon’s betrayal, inside the castle where we hid a treasonous secret and my life was no longer a guarantee, in Iciera when Lucius hunted me while the land’s liminality hung in the balance, and now with poison coursing through Daelon’s blood—we were always watching sand sift through the hourglass, letting the world prove to us repeatedly that nothing lasted, everything changed, and if we wanted to live, we had to fight.
Something inside me stirred, something I was ordinarily quick to push back down. This time I let it surface.
It’s futile. Violence is the only way to stop him, and yet violence only strengthens him. We’re all delusional, all living in a fantasy world where the powerless actually have a shot at changing the world with love. Now it’s time for self-preservation. Or maybe revenge, any chunk of it we can manage to chisel out of this cosmic clusterfuck. Or maybe it’s time—
I listened to my shadow until I couldn’t any longer, trying to regard her with curiosity just as Wren advised. But her nihilism left an unpleasant taste in my mouth, and I was terrified of what she was going to suggest next. The way she scoffed at using love to change the world made me hurt for her. Is that really how some hidden part of me felt about the world?
Faith, remember? I tried, and I could taste her skepticism immediately. I attempted to repeat some of the things Wren had said to me at the end of our session, when he advised me to practice affirmations that countered my limiting beliefs. We can have everything we want. There is no scarcity. We will not always have to fight for our survival. There are things that last, things we can hold on to.
She laughed at me.
“Áine?” Daelon asked. “You’re not talking to him, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said you should do it,” he said. “I believe in you. Your intuition has never led you astray. I hate the thought of you having to spend time with our enemy. But if it means you will find answers that will help you, help all of us, to bring him down, then I think you should exhaust all opportunities.”
“I know it will still be risky, and I know it doesn’t make sense he would offer to help me. But if it’s true that he just wants to be closer to me and try to manipulate me, then that’s fine with me. As long as we can also use the opportunity to get something we need,” I said.
Daelon’s grip on me tightened, tucking my head beneath his chin. His fingers made slow strokes through my long strands of hair. I expected him to say more, to do more to try and dissuade or caution me, but he didn’t.
It was several minutes before either of us spoke.
“Áine,” Daelon said, so quiet at first that I barely heard him.
“Yes?”
“Don’t choose me.”
“What?” I lifted my head to peer into his eyes. Moisture pooled there in one instant but was gone the next.
His fingers stilled, and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t choose me,” he said. “That’s an order.”
Daelon’s words haunted my dreams.
In the first dream, he collapsed during training, too weak to continue. I watched him die as I cradled him in my arms, and then I made the whole world collapse into a starless void.
In the second dream, he died in his sleep. I awoke to limp arms weighing down my body, screaming when I saw how wide his eyes were, how wide and empty and lifeless…
It’s a dream, Áine. Follow my voice back up to the surface.
I broke free from the nightmare realm, anchoring myself to the voice that had all the answers and no uncertainty, he who had braved the world’s shadows and had no fear. If he was protecting me, then nothing could ever hurt me again.
I opened my eyes. The sky above was a soft blue, and under my body was a quilt on soft grass. My face was slick from tears, and it took me several moments to understand that the man who’d rescued me from my dreams was not a beacon of safety. His blue eyes were not a source of eternal calm, the angular planes of his face not a sign of fortitude. His black hair was devoid of a crown, and his dark clothes were stylish but not royal.
I sat up and stared at him as I remembered these things, and Lucius, the Shadow King, had never looked more surprised and hesitant. I realized his hand was over mine, and I jerked back from his touch. The strange moment between us shattered into glass shards like the ones we levitated and put back together in the castle gardens.
“You woke me up,” he said. He stared forward, toward a tall oak tree and a narrow stream that bled clear water through the astral landscape. Wildflowers and grasses reached up toward the sky as wind gently brushed them this way and that.
This place was so peaceful, so serene, that I struggled to hold on to the reality of the mortal realms below or the frantic pull of my ego. I also almost didn’t notice the black char of the grass near Lucius’s outstretched feet at the edge of the quilt.
Lucius watched as his magick continued to edge slowly outward and pollute the grass with darkness. The full brunt of his power was dimmed in this realm just as it had been before. I could see into his aura clearer now, taste the shame and disappointment that yearned to be felt.
I hate when that happens, I heard in my mind, as clear as my own thoughts. But it was Lucius’s thought, and it sent my heart racing. This was not a good development.
I pressed my hand on the quilt, one second away from getting up and walking away, when he spoke.
“You don’t have to, you know,” he said. “Make a production out of it, pretend you have nothing but hatred for me and storm off. No one else is here. We can just sit.”
I opened my mouth to say a hundred angry things, a thousand spiteful, mean, enraged words, but none made it past my lips.
“You hate when that happens?” I asked, gesturing to the grass burnt by shadow, and Lucius jolted as if I’d struck him.
He stared at me for several moments, his lips slightly parted as shock made his eyes go wide. He regained composure and shook his head. “Yes, I do.”
I was just as surprised as he was, but I kept it off my face. I was shocked not only by my ability to read one of his thoughts, but also the notion that he did not in fact always enjoy the inherent destructive force of his power.
At the jolt of panic, my mind traveled back to the nightmares, and rain fell from the sky in fat drops. Anger was soon to follow, and lightning struck.
Lucius shook his head. “You don’t have to, not yet,” he said. “Stay here, just for a moment.”
Though his power was muted, its ability to lull me into a daze was still there, waiting for me to let him in, to wash it all away. And I was so tired of the fear and anger that the thought of taking a break and existing in a place that knew only everlasting peace, weightlessness, and pure spirit felt like a wash of relief.
Lucius watched me, his eyes roaming across my face and down my body that was clothed in a blush pink dress before traveling back up again.
“Is it difficult to pretend to be something you’re not?” I asked.
“I was going to ask you the same question,” he answered.
I surprised us both when the storm clouds dispersed, the rain dried up, and I lay back down on the quilt that had somehow remained dry. Lucius lay next to me, not daring to make physical contact again.
In the pure astral realm, it was easy to forget the perils of mortality. Here, it was all formless, all pure creative potential. Lucius was right. I could stay here, if only for a short time, and I could bathe in this feathery light moment like it was all there was.
Is that what Lucius was doing too? Or weirder by far, did he bring me here just so that I could find a calm escape?
“I woke you?” I asked.
“Yes. You always wake me when you’re in pain.”
“You caused this pain.”
“I know.”
We were both silent for a moment, unattached to the instinctive pull of our consciousnesses back to form, back to struggle and strife.
“How is he doing?” he asked, slowly turning his head toward me as I continued to watch the clouds pass by.
I refused to meet his eyes. “Do you still love him?” I asked, unable to stop it, not here when everything was safe and separate from the mortal games below.
Even still, neither of us answered each other’s questions, because we were not yet souls free to roam the dimension of the spirit. We were the two most powerful witches in the universe, and we were at war.
My question was less about Daelon and more about love itself, and Lucius knew it. Because when I was in the astrals, it was easy to see that the whole of it all, the fabric that kept all these lives and lands and dimensions held together and solid, was composed by love. Creation itself was an act of love, love for existence and form. Could Lucius see it too? Was he capable of feeling such a soul-deep thing?
After a while I sat up, disappointed to find that Lucius’s darkness had created a pit of black all around us, a crater that continued to bleed into the soft colors of the meadow.
Lucius also rose, and he looked from the burnt earth back to me, his aura flickering just a tinge of sorrow.
I reached out past the quilt and into the charred grass and closed my eyes. I channeled that feeling that was nameless and formless, beyond ego and reason, and I let myself bleed light from the sun and the moon and trillions of stars. The ethereal golden hues breathed life back into the void, closing back up earth’s wounds.
Lucius couldn’t take his eyes off me, a frenzy of confused feelings dancing in his energy. Feelings he shouldn’t be able to feel, feelings that didn’t make any sense to feel watching me mend what he destroyed. Then it all transformed to pure yearning and thirst, and it was so strong that it made my own soul parched for light.
“You’re beautiful, Áine. I’ve never told you that before, have I?” he said. But I’ve always thought it. Even when I thought I hated you.
The light backtracked, back into my wells of power, until I no longer saw it reflected in his eyes. His words sounded so foreign and wrong that I almost believed he’d been a dream version of Lucius all along.
He smiled, and it was just crafty and dangerous enough for me to concede that it was in fact the real Lucius. “I clearly haven’t, because you have never looked more shocked in your entire life.” He sighed.
“You just want what I have—the power you aren’t permitted to access,” I said, stumbling at first over the words. He frowned. “You just want to win, Lucius. Pretending to care for me, faking some kind of soul bond and disrupting my own with Daelon, going against your very nature to act like you’re now some wounded romantic is just a twisted tactic to get what you want. And it’s not me you want. It’s power,” I said. The moment was up, and my ego had taken back its shape. Lucius’s demented words had been enough to jolt me out of the astral moment of peace.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, frustration sparking his own bolt of lightning on the horizon. “You’re still so in the dark, Áine, and like I’ve said from the beginning, I am merely trying to free you. You can still be powerful when you are my Queen. In fact, you’ll be even stronger. I know that hurting Daelon has made you even more blind to the truth about me, but you have to understand that betrayal cannot go unpunished,” Lucius said.
Anger bled through the crackling clouds of his aura, and it was reassuring to see a more recognizable Lucius taking shape.
“Aren’t you tired of all this pain and suffering?” he continued. His sharp jaw was set, his eyes brewing authority as tendrils of shadow beckoned me into his web. “Of feeling so lost and confused? When you come to kneel before me, you will finally understand everything. Daelon will be healed, and you will never have to feel unsafe or weak again. You are looking for answers and guidance in all the wrong places. You are swimming upstream, against the strongest force in the universe.”
I clenched my jaw, our power now in a silent tug of war as I fought the urge to move closer, to let go, let go, let go…
“Us,” Lucius said, and his mouth was close to my ear now, his whisper soft and tickling.
I realized in horror it was the ear he’d bit and marked, and in a fit of rage I manifested a golden dagger out of a burst of fire. I leapt onto him, pinning him to the ground as I straddled his torso.
Lucius smirked. “Knife play is a bold choice when we’ve barely explored each other, but you’re so adorable when you’re angry that I’ll enjoy humoring you.”
Knife play? Was he insinuating I was initiating some weird, kinky shit with him rather than threatening him with actual bodily harm?
“Well?” Lucius asked, looking up at me with eyes brimmed with intrigue and hunger. I held the knife right over his heart, just as I had that night in the snowy woods. “Daelon isn’t here to stop you. So go ahead, if it’ll make you feel better.”
But it wouldn’t do anything. It would go right through him, or just wake him up.
“Aw, you don’t want to kill me, do you?” Lucius asked, raising a hand to my cheek.
I brought the knife down into his chest.
Chapter 10
Lucius gasped, clutching my hands where I’d buried the hilt. Blood poured from his mouth as he choked, and I quickly got off of him and rose to my feet. I wasn’t sure what I felt as I watched him cough and sputter and ooze blood. At first it just felt… strange.
Then I felt pure panic, a panic that arose from a place inside of myself I didn’t know existed. The most primal and instinctive urge I’d ever felt sent me back to his side, on my knees, placing my hands over his in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.
It was as if I’d left a piece of myself inside him, and I had to prevent it from leaking out. There was light in his eyes, I could see it now, still there and blinking at me. I couldn’t let it die.
I couldn’t let him die.
I removed my hands and stared at the crimson that slid down my wrists and arms. The panic was excruciating now, eclipsing all else. I could hardly remember where we were or how we’d gotten there.
I began to shake. I reached for my chest in an effort to curb the clawing sensation that had burrowed there. My hands were stained in blood. Lucius’s blood.
“Áine,” Lucius said, and I startled, dropping my hands. My eyes darted to his. “We’re in the astrals. It’s okay.” He wiped the blood from his mouth and pulled out the blade like it was nothing. With a snap of his fingers, he made all the crimson disappear. “I just wanted to put on a little show to see how you’d react.”
