The Coveted, page 24
“You listen to me, you filthy heretic cunt. Whatever it is you’re doing, I will—”
I spun around, and with a hiss of exasperation I sent Nathaniel flying through the air with a shockwave of magick. Sebastian paled and stared slack jawed as he watched Nathaniel’s body crash into the ground and skid several feet through grass and dirt. Taryn, much to my surprise, followed me at a distance, but not before throwing up her middle finger at Nathaniel. It was just as satisfying watching him fall this time as it had been the first time, but I couldn’t focus on that for too long.
I rounded the corner of a tall, manicured hedge arranged in box-like patterns around various flowers, entering a more open area of the lawn. A servant was crouching and rubbing her ears, fresh linens strewn about on the grass all around her. Her aura reflected white back to me for a moment, and I knew she was one of the ones who helped me on Solstice.
“Are you okay?” I asked, and she nodded, relief flooding her features at the sight of me. She peered around me to Taryn, cocking her head. Before I could say anything more the piercing sound erupted again, transforming quickly into an animalistic growl.
In a flash of dark energy, Lucius had arrived in the air between the servant and me. He glanced at me, then took in the situation around me. “What in the heavens is—”
The growl sounded again, and we all glanced around for its source.
You need to leave, now, I said to the servant, who didn’t protest as she gathered up as many linens as she could and scurried away.
You too, Taryn. Something isn’t right, I forced into her mind. Go back to the castle.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she responded, much like a petulant toddler.
And in that moment a giant creature manifested in the distance, midnight black with a strange glow spreading out from its body. It was probably twice my height, with a wide, sturdy build. It had two hollow black spaces where eyes should be. Its fur was patchy and mangy. I supposed it looked most like a wolf than anything else, but with demon-like features, distorted like a television with a poor signal.
I knew in my bones that this thing had no place in Aradia.
Chapter 22
“What is that?” Lucius and I asked at once. He glanced at me again, his eyes lingering. “You—you’re in it. Your power. It’s… radiant.” Jealousy flew off him like sparks.
He yearned for possession of what he knew belonged to me, never to him. But unlike before, I didn’t see that he wanted me to hide myself away any longer.
“Yes,” I answered. “I don’t know how, but that thing isn’t supposed to be here. There’s some kind of tear between the dimensions.”
“That’s impossible,” he muttered. “It’s probably an attack. On me and my castle, by enemies. I will cast it away.”
The enormous beast hurtled toward us, its dark energy hauntingly familiar as it cast a glowing shadow with each bow of its legs. It snarled, and its jagged, pointy teeth clamped together.
Lucius stepped out in front of us, and Taryn and I moved to the left. I channeled furiously, constructing a barely visible translucent force field before the two of us. I tuned into the frequency I knew all too well—Daelon and his shield—willing it to manifest into tangible protection. I wasn’t nearly as good at defensive magick as Daelon was; my magick was much more geared toward the offensive.
Lucius’s hands glowed with black power, taking up an offensive stance himself. But as the creature reached us, it blew right past him, toward Taryn and me. It didn’t give Lucius a second glance.
Nevertheless, Lucius threw forth a shockwave of magick, knocking the beast off its feet before it could reach us.
“Taryn, seriously, get out of here,” I urged as I watched the lupine creature straighten. But Taryn planted her feet, her features displaying a confidence I knew was at least partially fake considering the fear I could taste from her aura.
Lucius pelted the beast with energetic daggers, but they failed to breach its skin. And the creature still paid him little regard. “I don’t understand,” he whispered, watching as the wolf stalked back toward Taryn and me. Lucius suddenly stopped his assault, nodding in my direction.
It only has eyes for you. Defend yourself, little witch, he said telepathically.
It lurched at us, gnashing its teeth. It bounced back off the shield I’d constructed, crashing into it over and over again until my defensive magick began to crumble. I raised my palms and yelled out as power channeled through me, colliding with the beast just as it breached my defenses. It recoiled. Violent spasms wracked through its muscles. I leaned into my intuition, and I could feel the newfound strength from beyond myself, from all the witches who’d been touched by my gift. Taryn, just by being here, was helping me—fortifying my every move, my every channel.
I called to the great beyond for a weapon, a chant escaping my lips that was foreign to my ears but familiar to my soul, and soon a golden bow manifested in front of me. I grabbed hold of it, and an arrow of white fire manifested at the ready, waiting for my command. Just as the wolf recovered, I sent the arrow, its blaze scorching to the beast’s very core as it thrashed about in agony. It looked suddenly like it was flashing in and out of existence, caught between this world and the next.
“Áine!” I heard Taryn scream, but before I could turn, I felt a heavy weight crash into me.
I would’ve screamed if all the air hadn’t been knocked out of my body, which was now pinned beneath a second wolf-like creature. A heavy claw scratched across my chest as it bared its teeth, cutting into my flesh. Only then did I let out a blood-curdling scream.
Look to your right, I heard Taryn’s voice speak in my mind, and I grabbed the arrow that had fallen with me, its flaming glow rekindling as soon as I plunged it into the creature’s black hole of an eye. It released me, and I scurried out from underneath.
My blouse was torn around my shoulder, blood darkening the red fabric and dripping down to my right hand. I managed to stand, just in time to see a huge bird-like creature dive from the sky in a flash of grace and beautiful, long white feathers. Like a cross between an angel and a giant falcon, it descended upon Lucius, claws at the ready. It was not alone, as four more circled above it in a circular formation. They all had the same faint glow, this time more silvery-blue in color, just like the hue of astral bodies.
I reached up energetically, shocked to find that unlike the wolves, their energy was warm and inviting, like an extension of my own. They were protectors, but they were still in a world they didn’t belong.
A hand landed lightly on my uninjured shoulder, and I felt the cool shield of Daelon’s presence like a blanket of security and comfort. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, and he removed his touch and quickly moved to Lucius, who was fighting off the astral falcon. Nathaniel had finally joined us, glaring at me as he moved with Daelon to help the King.
Daelon chanted, building an invisible force above their heads as each bird dove and gnashed at Lucius. The two wolves had flickered out of existence, back to whatever astral hell they’d escaped from.
I limped toward the King, my knee slightly out of alignment, and Taryn rushed to my side. I could barely feel an ounce of pain in this headspace of pure power and creation.
Don’t hurt Daelon, I commanded the birds, and I could feel an unspoken understanding flow from me to them. Their claws and beaks were making short work of his defense, their whitish energy carving cracks into Lucius’s darkness.
“Nathaniel, where are you going? We need you to summon your paralysis and fire spells,” Daelon said, the strain in his voice raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
But Nathaniel teleported before me, and soon a bird had plucked Daelon from the ground and tossed him away from Lucius.
“Nathaniel,” Lucius bellowed, striking a bird from the sky and blasting it out of the realm with a bolt of black lightning.
“I told you I would prove to you their affair. They are plotting against you, my King,” Nathaniel yelled over the commotion. With a curse he sent Taryn into a state of paralysis before I could stop him, her body hitting the ground hard.
Lucius was caught between watching us and fighting off the astral creatures, and just as Daelon stood up, I understood Nathaniel’s plan. Daelon was now right in the center between his King and me.
And in that moment between confusion and realization, Nathaniel plunged a blade into my stomach. My ears rang. A surprising burst of adrenaline coursed through my blood as it began to pool in a damp circle across my abdomen.
“What in the everlasting fuck, Nathaniel,” Lucius growled, and a bird took the opportunity to scratch deep into Lucius’s shoulder. The sound of his animalistic yelp chilled the air around us.
My vision became blurry. I sunk to my knees, trying to remember if it was good or bad to remove a knife lodged in one’s stomach. Bad, right? I cursed. Tears sprung to my eyes. My ability to feel pain was back with a vengeance, and I suddenly felt very, very human for the first time since I’d arrived in this realm.
“Help our King or help the girl. Your choice,” Nathaniel challenged, his voice distant and deafening all at once. He knelt down beside me, his eyes showing nothing but pure spite and triumph as he reveled in my bleeding out.
“I will have you killed for this, you stupid fool,” I heard Lucius answer. “Get back here this instant and help me, Daelon. I know your allegiance.”
But I heard it in his voice. He was questioning it. I looked to Daelon, who’d never looked more pained and conflicted.
Don’t you dare help me, I called out to him. It was finally my turn to put him in his place. I will be fine, but neither of us will survive if you disobey Lucius now. Don’t let Nathaniel win.
I couldn’t focus. I needed magick. I needed healing. I tried to channel but Nathaniel’s hand was suddenly over mine that clutched the dagger, and I screamed as he yanked it from my stomach just as Taryn tackled him to the ground, kneeing him decisively in the groin.
Come to me, a new voice sounded, and I couldn’t tell if it was aloud or in my mind. I just knew its pull, like a current of magnetism, a riptide of energy from the east. It beckoned me forward as I clutched my stomach, humming to me a tune I’d heard somewhere long ago. I fought my way forward, one step at a time, past the rows of red rose bushes and toward the cherry blossom tree at the edge of the gardens. Its branches turned and swished through the air, a strange iridescent field of magick extending out in a circle, beckoning to me. I sensed it spelled safety.
I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t see if Daelon had made the right choice or if Taryn had subdued Nathaniel or if Lucius had shot those feathered angels from the sky. I looked forward to the cherry blossom tree, the Queen’s tree. I walked until I couldn’t any longer, and then I crawled. When I could crawl no longer, I dragged myself, one fistful of grass after the next, leaving a trail of oozing crimson in my wake.
But the shimmering circle opened up and swallowed me, the branches of pink blooms shaking out in welcome. I reached out a slick hand, and as my skin and blood met the pale base of tree bark, the humming rose louder.
I found myself sitting on a bench facing the cherry blossom tree, and soon a woman with long, straight black hair and piercing blue eyes joined me. She had cool-toned, pale skin, her lips and cheeks a rosy pink. She was stunning, somehow both impossibly delicate and strikingly fierce. She looked like a goddess of winter and snow.
“Hello, Áine. I’m Katherine, the Queen Mother. I’ve been waiting for you to finally visit me. We came close once, before your lover interrupted.”
“Daelon,” I said with a smile that quickly faded into a frown. “How did I get here? I don’t remember.”
“That’s all right,” she said with a slow grin of her own. “I always wanted to know what it felt like to be in love. The closest I got was with the birth of my son, gazing down at his full head of black hair and his blue eyes…my eyes, my mother’s eyes, and her mother’s before her. I finally knew love at first sight, over and over again, every day from then on,” she reminisced, her eyes glowing with the same dreaminess as her smile.
“You didn’t love Lucius’s father?” I asked. I tried to remember again why I was here, speaking to a woman I knew was long dead. But every time I got close to the answer I was met with a floaty feeling, like everything was okay. Like I just needed to listen and be still.
“I thought I did. When we were younger. But love is not violent, I was told too late,” she said, her face falling. “He was a cruel man, incapable of love. But my son was. Oh, how he loved his mother,” she said, a tear falling from her electric blue eyes. She pulled my hands into hers, holding my gaze deeply and urgently. “I know the trouble he has caused. The destruction. But you have to understand what lives underneath.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through. But your son is responsible for countless deaths, including my own mothers’. So much suffering, and all for power. Power that’s destroying the realms and all natural magick. He’s the very opposite of love,” I said. How could she defend a single part of Lucius or his actions?
She shuddered, and I could feel the deep wounds of pain embedded in her mournful blue and green aura. “I’m so sorry. I know I failed, but I can help now. I’ve been waiting for so long to give you this key. It will grant you access to what you need to see most in the Akashic Records.” Her voice was so lyrical, like the melody of a windchime in an autumn breeze. It captivated me, letting me forget my anger so easily.
“Why can’t you just tell me?”
She closed her eyes, and they started moving rapidly beneath her eyelids before she opened them once more. “I can’t remember. Or I can’t say. It’s a knowledge that’s been banished and erased. But you cannot erase anything from the Akashic, you see. It holds everything that ever was or ever will be.”
“That’s right,” I said with a frown. My head was floaty, my body a radiant, painless being of light. “I knew that.”
“You’re losing your grasp on the physical. I must send you on your way.” She let something travel from her palms into mine, and I felt the key root itself somewhere deep in my magick, just waiting for the right lock.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked. She was there in the rubble. She stole Daelon from our homeland while it crumbled into ash all around her. How could she now be on my side?
“I was so lost, then. Beaten down, or at least everyone thought. I’m helping you because you need me to, and it is the right thing to do. And,” she paused, my vision growing blindingly white around the edges. “Because I still believe in him, perhaps in a way only a mother can, but I do. The truth deserves to be seen in all its facets and rays, and the truth will deliver us all from this cold nightmare.”
It will free them from the dungeons. Free them from servitude. It will wash away the blood from each plot of charred land. It will wrap us all in the blinding divinity of quilted community, stitched smooth hand by wrinkled hand. It will bathe us in the cool water of something greater than all witches, all humans, all beings everywhere, that goes by a different name in each native tongue, that guides us through this life and the next, that dances and cascades around us in moments of transcendence, and it will sound like a great hum. We will reach our tired limbs toward it—that tiny sliver of truth bathed in darkness—and it will grow and grow, like the crest of a tall wave.
I came back to my physical body, the sound of angry voices clashing through the air.
“It’s my bloody mother, playing tricks from the dead,” I heard Lucius say from beyond my heavy, heavy eyelids.
An excruciating wave of pain erupted from my stomach and rippled throughout every part of my body, and my world became nothing but agony and darkness.
“The dagger was spelled. She’s not going to heal herself,” Daelon’s panicked voice broke through.
“I’ve got her,” Lucius murmured. “The field is down now.” And I was lifted into the air like a sack of flesh and bones. “She’ll live.”
Something like a thin wooden rope tickled and wrapped around my wrist, and Lucius cursed.
One more thing, lovely Áine, Katherine said softly in my mind. You’re ready to go to the Akashic Records. Amos knows the way, now. But only you may hear it. No one else. Especially not your lover.
“Insufferable tree,” Lucius muttered, his fingers casting aside the branch that had coiled along my skin, and my connection was lost along with my last hope of consciousness.
I hope you enjoyed The Coveted. Keep scrolling for a free bonus scene from Daelon’s POV, as well as the first few chapters of The Illuminated, The Lost Witches of Aradia Book 3.
Note from Maggie
Interested in reading Daelon’s perspective of the first time he saw Áine in the human realm? It’s all kinds of sweet and tortured and conflicted and endearing—just what you would expect from our favorite Commander. All you have to do is CLICK HERE and sign up for my newsletter to get your free story.
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Also, keep scrolling to read the beginning of The Illuminated, The Lost Witches of Aradia Book 3, releasing March 2022. Or purchase The Illuminated by clicking here.
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