The Coveted, page 27
“See? How little you really know about all of this. Ask anyone here in this castle and they will tell you about the cruelty of the older generation, with their backward and humanlike moral panics and general unpleasantness. They would have destroyed the realm if I hadn’t bravely stepped in and risked my life for the greater good. The high, unknown heavens chose me to rule—bestowing me with the greatest power the world has ever seen.”
His impassioned monologue fizzled out, and a strange expression flickered over his features as if he was realizing something important for the first time. I could’ve sworn he glanced at my lips, and his breathing steadied as his sickening energy stilled, like the hissing steam of a fire extinguished by water.
I straightened. “What if you, too, are on a path to destroy the realm?” I asked, keeping my voice calm but direct. “The magick you used to raise that witch from the dead ripped a hole in the astrals and unleashed those wolf creatures and—”
Lucius slammed his other hand against the wall, now casing me in completely. I jumped at the sudden noise, carefully raising my power in case I needed to defend myself. He took a deep breath in and closed his eyes, his chiseled features contracting and then loosening once more as he let out the cool breath against my skin. When his eyes reopened, he was stoic.
“I know what I’m doing, unlike you,” he said. “Stranger things have been happening in this realm since the dawn of time. Regardless, it’s none of your concern, and I don’t want to hear another word about it from you or the decrepit old mystic.”
Amos. Of course, he knew about what was happening to the realm. I vowed to go see him as soon as Lucius was done with me for the day.
“There, now don’t you feel better getting all of that off your chest?” he asked, remaining so close I could see white specs in his ice blue irises.
I could barely contain my scoff. “I feel fantastic, my King.”
He pushed back off the wall, breaking our heated, close-contact stare. “That’s what I like to hear,” he said, choosing to ignore my sarcasm like he ignored the rest of what I had to say. “I’m sorry I had to burst your adorable martyr-savior complex bubble, but to make it up to you, I’d like to send you off to Clarice to pick up the dresses I had designed for you.”
I fought hard to squash down the thought that this was yet another similarity between Daelon and Lucius, who apparently both wanted to dictate my wardrobe. “You’re placating me with pretty dresses?” I raised my brows, and he just laughed.
“Oh what, are you just not like those other girls?” he mocked.
I pursed my lips. Actually, I absolutely could’ve been placated by pretty dresses. Just not from him and not to make up for genocide and slavery.
He stepped toward me again, and I resisted the urge to swat his hand away as he lifted it to grasp my chin. “If you’re going to be my Queen, which, trust me—by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging to be—then I’d like you to dress the part. We can’t have another heretic space dress fiasco on our hands, can we?”
I squirmed under his cool touch, his energy nearly too strong to block out now, and he released me with a frown.
“I’ll go get those dresses, then,” I mumbled, begging internally for him to dismiss me. If he touched me just one more time, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from sending him flying through the tall windows to the gardens several yards below.
“Good girl.” His frown had already transformed into a smirk, his head slightly cocked as he regarded me.
I rolled my eyes, and I could’ve sworn I heard him utter a low chuckle as I teleported the hell away from him.
Fucking Lucius. I needed a shower. A hot, scalding shower to burn away his touch and his icy, winter pine and peppermint smell. And his lies. And his—
“Áine?” called a voice, interrupting my internal rage monologue as I stomped down the impossibly complex hallways toward Amos’s chambers. My long, silky green skirt billowed out around my ankles.
I spun around, my disposition clearly a little too intense as I took in the deer-caught-in-headlights demeanor of a nervous Sebastian. He held his hands up in a silent don’t shoot!
“Sorry,” I muttered, forcing a small smile. “I’m having a rough day.”
He cleared his throat and ran a hand through his cool, blond hair. His dimpled smile was hesitant as he took me in, his subdued aura displaying much more caution and nervousness than the typical playful eroticism I was so accustomed. “I’m just so glad to see you up and about after what happened with that horrible Nathaniel. I heard he was in the dungeons—and good riddance! Anyway, I’m just glad you’re okay, and I want you to know that even though it didn’t work out between us, uh, romantically, that I still care for you as a friend, and…” he blabbered on.
I struggled to focus, my frustration and irritability stirring up all sorts of chaos within my bottomless pit of magick. I needed some kind of release, and quickly. It dawned on me that technically speaking, Lucius had given me the general go-ahead to use my power at my discretion now that he was grooming me for royalty.
No wonder Sebastian was so nervous. He finally knew what I was capable of.
“Thank you, Sebastian,” I said, cutting him off as his words continued to spin and spin like a top. “I really do appreciate it.”
He cleared his throat again, giving me an awkward nod. “I just want you to know that you can always come to me for whatever you need. Whatever at all. It would be an honor.”
I cocked my head, realizing that his energy now tinged red for reasons completely unrelated to sex. It was desire—desire for what my power meant and what it could do for him to be so close to it. It was exactly what Taryn had first warned me about; the lords and ladies could smell what I had, and they thirsted for it. It suddenly felt very lonely to realize Sebastian’s kind words might have nothing to do with me as a person and everything to do with me as an opportunity.
“Thanks,” I said, perhaps a little too curtly. My gift as a clairsentient, or energy reader, wasn’t always helpful or fun. It never had been, especially on Earth. There was a good reason people didn’t want their every proclivity and emotion known to all, and there was nothing worse than seeing someone’s true, hurtful feelings about me slithering in their depths like venomous snakes.
Sebastian didn’t seem to notice my tone as he smiled, opening his mouth to speak and then closing it again. He gave his head a little shake. “Well, I’ll let you get on with it. I hope your day starts to improve. I know mine has,” he said suggestively before walking away.
When I reached Amos’s chambers, I was somehow even more erratic than I’d been before, but I was careful to glance around and make sure that no one saw me enter. Lucius would still be suspicious if I was caught visiting someone like Amos, who swam in the depths of the old ways even as he held no real power of his own.
“Áine, come in!” he exclaimed before I could even knock. “Thank the high realms you’re still with us. The universal energy was in such disarray that dreadful night, but oh! I see you’ve found more friends in the servant’s quarters. I felt their sigils of protection—see them on your skin like invisible ink.”
I listened to his soothing, upbeat voice as I watched him clear a place for us to sit on the floor. He carefully placed a couple of purple cushions on the carpet, lifting a platter with a tea kettle and two cups to sit between us. His white beard was tied together by a decorative silver chain with a swirling circular pendant, his face wrinkled with smile lines. Today he wore a loosely fitted magenta tunic and billowing pants, again resembling an old-school hippie who’d probably protested Vietnam. It was always nice to see parallels between the human and witch domains. Mystical old dudes were a universal archetype, I supposed.
His hand shook slightly as he filled the colorful ceramic mug and passed it to my outstretched fingers. The warm steam tickled my nose with chamomile and peppermint. “It’s been so long, child. You’ve changed and learned so much since last I saw you.”
The last time I’d seen him was when we’d astral projected together, where I learned that I could go anywhere in the world, and even create worlds of my own, unburdened by my physical body.
“How have you been? I know Lucius has been visiting you often these past couple weeks. Did his visits have something to do with the resurrected witch?” I asked.
He smiled wearily, his eyes closing. “I’m as good as I can be in this place, just happy to serve my purpose.” He paused. “I’m bound from telling you about my meetings with the King, as I’m sure you’ve suspected. But that’s okay, because you and I have our own clandestine matters to attend to, don’t we?”
I’d grown accustomed to the inconvenience of Lucius’s many binding spells that held all important truths hostage. Today, I barely gave it a second thought, my anger at the King transforming into excitement and blind hope. Soon those binds would be broken, and everyone would know exactly who Lucius was and what he’d done.
“We do,” I said, and I couldn’t help but mirror his serene smile. “Katherine told me you now know the way to the Akashic Records.”
He took my hands in his, and I gasped at the whirlwind of energy that began to encircle us like a cyclone. It weaved through the bare bones of my physical body, speaking a truth to my unconscious mind for later retrieval like the keys I’d been given so far.
“You already had the will, and now you have the permission. You will be guided there from the astrals when you’re ready.”
“Sounds easy enough,” I said. He released my hands, and his esoteric map took root. This all seemed a little too easy, actually. “But why was it so imperative that Daelon didn’t hear this?”
Amos sighed, his chuckle nearly musical. “No human or witch is permitted there while still attached to their physical form.”
“Hence the astral projection,” I said slowly, not understanding what I was missing from this equation. Follow the mystical map, use the keys, and download the truth that Lucius had hidden, breaking it free from its binds…
“No, no, my child. Astral projection is for the living. It’s the projection of souls to higher planes of existence, but their consciousness never fully detaches from the physical form. It just travels, still connected by an unperceivable silver cord. The living are not equipped to receive the Akashic in its true totality. They receive bits and pieces, channeled through magick or intuition, to help them on their way. To visit the tangible Akashic Records before one’s time would be a grave cheat, and the Goddess would never allow such a perversion.”
“Then I don’t understand,” I lied, the words a desperate attempt to draw a line in the sand between me and inevitability. My heart soared and pounded in a way that was deafening.
Amos clutched my hands once more.
“To travel to the Akashic Records you need to die.”
I hope you enjoyed a look inside the exciting third book of The Lost Witches of Aradia series. CLICK HERE to keep reading The Illuminated, The Lost Witches of Aradia Book 3, releasing March 2022.
Maggie Sunseri, The Coveted
