The Coveted, page 9
“Would you still love me like this if I wasn’t who I was? I mean, if I wasn’t some kind of cosmic chosen one. I don’t know…” I trailed off, kicking myself for even saying this out loud. It made me feel strange, like I was as narcissistic as the evil Witch King.
But Daelon just smiled, kissing beside my lips and then shaking his head at me. “Yes, actually, I would. I love you, and I love the Divine that I can see reflected through you. It’s not about all that you have, Áine. It’s about what you do with it. How you handle it. You’re clever and strong, and you could definitely kick my ass, but you’re also the most compassionate person I’ve ever met. You heal little birds and get excited about snow, for fuck’s sake. I don’t know how the Universe works, but I have to believe it is because of who you are as a person that you were given this gift, not the other way around. Do you get that?”
I couldn’t help but smile. An immense wave of gratitude flooded through me, like my power agreed with him. I didn’t know what to say. I was just so thankful that I had him in my life—and that he didn’t actually betray me. I pushed that thought out of my head. “I don’t even know who to thank. For sending you to me.”
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing about you.” He brushed his thumb over my lips. “I think our parents would probably say to thank their Goddess. Maybe that’s something we’d do if we hadn’t been exiled so young.”
“Maybe. I wish I knew all the ways they worshipped and practiced magick. Even the things my mothers taught me feel so far away and lost now.”
“Lucius has worked hard to drive away that knowledge. It’s hard for anyone to remember these days, but I’ll teach you all that I remember. We’ll bring it all back, one day.”
“I’d like that.” My eyes welled up, overcome with loss. All of who we once were had been stolen from us. I could feel it slowly being erased, like a murky, fading dream. “Together,” I repeated, like I needed to hear it roll off my own tongue. It felt like an act of defiance, like the beginning of the revolution.
“Together.”
And we were kissing again, all-consuming and desperate. I was barely aware that he had scooped me up into his arms, our lips still locked as I wrapped my legs around his torso. Soon we were on his bed, the comforter below me as soft and puffy as a cloud—just as I remembered it.
“Oh god,” I groaned, hiding my head with my arm as Daelon tugged his shirt off.
"What?” He grinned down at me.
“Just remembering how I was last night.”
“I thought you were adorable.” He chuckled, low and gravelly, while pulling my arm away from my face. “Well, except when you were testing my moral code, which I thought was impervious to anyone’s charm… until I met you.”
“Oops, sorry,” I murmured, losing my train of thought at the sight of his toned body.
“I kind of want to make you feel even more sorry,” he growled. “Because you have no idea the things you made me want to do to you.”
“Oh, poor you,” I teased, and no sooner than the words had left my lips had he flipped me over onto my stomach. His hand was on my back, trailing lower until it found my ass, then lower—reaching up my dress and pulling down my panties with decisive quickness. His fingers traveled back between my thighs, and I gasped as they found their mark.
“Such a good girl. Already so ready for me.” I could hear the satisfaction in his voice.
Anticipation curled my toes, letting him remind me just how well he knew my body. He knew just what to say and just how to say it, where to touch me and when to go fast or slow, rough or gentle, when to give me everything or take it all away. Daelon wanted me to cede my power, and the rush I felt to give it over to him was like no other. I was often overwhelmed with my gift—this entire cosmic ocean of choices and possibilities—but with him I found a way to let that all go. During these moments when my body met his, he took all of the control. I needed him to.
I felt his lips against my neck, nipping at my skin softly as I moaned. “I want to see you,” I said softly. “Please.”
He unzipped my dress and flipped me over. “Of course, baby.” We smiled into each other as our lips met again, and soon I was out of my dress, and he was out of his pants. “You’re beautiful. Every. Single. Inch.” He kissed different parts of me after each word, like he was imprinting the message into my skin to live there forever. From the thin white stretch marks on my hips to the constellation of freckles on my left arm, from the parts of my body I celebrated to the parts I often wanted to hide, he worshipped it all.
Just as I worshipped his. He growled, soft and guttural in my ear, as my hand trailed from the taut muscles along his chest and stomach to down below, where I made it clear just how badly I wanted him. Now.
He wasted no time acquiescing. He eased into me slowly, a hand cupping the side of my face. His soft touches soon juxtaposed harshly with his thrusts. Each movement lay claim to my body, and I couldn’t help but cry out at his intensity. He smirked, putting a finger to my lips as he leaned down.
“Hush,” he commanded, and soon I was at war with myself as I fought to obey. He liked seeing me struggle.
“I can’t,” I whispered, barely aware I was even saying it. As he went deeper, more forcefully, sensation took over, and all I could do was think of him. His voice sounded like gospel to me now, and it was hard to believe that he didn’t put me under an actual spell. I’m not sure I would’ve cared if he had.
“I told you I was going to make you scream my name for flirting with someone else while wearing my gift.” He applied the softest of pressure to the vulnerable, sensitive sides of my neck, just enough to send me over the edge—just enough to make me feel like I was helpless to his desire. “You’re mine, Áine. Mine to protect, mine to love, and mine to give every ounce of the pleasure that you deserve.”
Normally, I might’ve felt self-conscious as our eyes locked while he spoke to me this way, but not with him. I couldn’t look away; I was utterly captivated. I felt waves of pleasure move through every nerve ending as I clung to the low tenor of his voice.
“You can’t come unless you scream my name,” he said, and I was lost. He leaned down, his hands now back beside my face. I was barely aware of my fingernails digging into his back as I did exactly as I was told.
Daelon came with me, both of us swallowed up by a shared moment of absolute ecstasy. We tangled ourselves in each other, holding on as if each of us was all the other had. Because that was how it felt now—us against the world. He lifted his head and planted a delicate kiss on my lips as we both gasped for air. He shifted with me in his arms so that I lay on his chest, our hands intertwined as our hearts had a chance to slow.
Chapter 8
“Are you okay?” he asked, and I had not a single idea of how to answer. It felt like I was floating, my limbs like jelly, and my mind completely wiped of anything useful. Daelon peered down at me, swiping my hair behind my ear. He chuckled, and I felt the rumble of it beneath my ear.
“Sorry, um, yes.” Nope, still no idea how to speak. Check back in later.
He kissed my hand. “You’re adorable. Especially when you’re screaming my name.”
I could only imagine the shade of red my cheeks were right now. That part felt like a hazy dream to me now, even if it was only moments ago. In this headspace, if Daelon said to jump, then I sure as hell was going to jump.
“I think you could get me to do just about anything,” I murmured.
“That could not be further from the truth, but oh how I wish,” Daelon sighed. “You’d be a lot more manageable if that were the case. But I love you exactly as you are, even when you are impossibly frustrating and defiant.”
I smiled. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to him saying those words. But reality had started to creep back into my thoughts despite my best intentions to pretend it didn’t exist. “Do I have to leave?”
Daelon sighed. “You can stay for now. Lucius should be preoccupied well into the morning given what he’s told me.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”
“Indeed, but at least his attention is away from you.”
Today’s insanity began to reemerge from the corners of my mind where I’d shoved it. “He wants me dead. I feel like my days here are numbered.”
“No, they aren’t,” he snapped. “That was just his jealousy talking when he saw the girl bow down to you. It was his greatest fears about your existence playing out for him. He knows you’re more useful alive than dead if there’s a deeper plot at play, which there obviously is. At this point, we are in a delicate race—him to find out who you are and you to find out who he is. But in order to do that, neither of you can make rash decisions.”
“It’s mutually ensured destruction,” I muttered. “Like the Cold War. Both sides in a convoluted, hidden race to gain the upper-hand.”
“Something like that. I must admit I wasn’t fully paying attention to that human history lesson.”
“The witches here act so superior to humans,” I remarked. “As if they don’t operate under the same motivation, vying for power and domination, just in different forms.”
“True, but it didn’t used to be that way, not for most of us. We used to be organized into mostly egalitarian communities, living as one with the land and finding ways to solve problems and depend on each other without centralized governing structures. There were bigger cities where things got more complicated, with some people losing their way and becoming seduced by greed and ego. But we were a mostly peaceful realm for almost all of our history. It made us pity humans, with their endless wars, slavery, bigotry, and division. We thought it was our ability to see the magick of the world that made us peaceful, but now I’m not so sure. Something changed and violence became a common tongue. A darkness took root, and now here we are, condemning the ways that sustained us for millennia and pretending that this kingdom was all there ever was and all there will ever be.”
“Do you think that darkness was some kind of evil?” I asked. It didn’t make sense to me how an entire realm could go from peace and harmony to destruction and ignorance in mere decades. There had to be something more at play.
“Amos says the concept of evil lets witches and humans off the hook for their own actions and complacency. But I don’t know, maybe evil is simply the power that arises from cruelty. From taking and stealing for the benefit of the individual rather than living in reciprocity and community.”
I thought about that for several minutes as I listened to his heart beat in his chest. I found myself recalling the story Daelon told me earlier to explain why energy stealing was against the law. “That parable… do people here really not see the obvious parallel between what happened when the man stole the painter’s gift and what is happening to this realm now?”
Daelon combed his fingers through my hair, sending shivers down my spine. “People are notoriously bad at drawing critical connections when it disrupts their entire worldview. Whatever magickal veil Lucius has over the truth doesn’t help with that.”
“What’s next?” I asked for the second time today, determination flooding back into my veins.
“We need to ask Amos about what the girl said—her strange message and her mention of what she called the Akashic Records. Maybe that’s the same place Amos says you need to travel to in order to uncover the past. I think our first step is figuring out whatever magick led to Lucius’s rise to power, so we know how to undo it. Lucius’s binding spell over history prevents even me from remembering anything about how Lucius took the throne. One minute his father and his men were in control, and the next Lucius was King and that was that. That time period is like a black haze. A void.”
“How strange,” I murmured. It still weirded me out to think that Lucius considered Daelon his brother. They spent most of their lives together, and not even Daelon knew the truth.
He snapped out of a faraway daze and nodded. “Our next step is beating Lucius at finding our allies, because the more help we have, the more you stand a chance against him here, where he’s most powerful. Our parents and our people left a roadmap, split into all these pieces to keep it safe from discovery by anyone but us.”
“We just need to keep gathering all the pieces,” I finished. “But we don’t even know where to look.” What lay ahead of us felt so insurmountable, but also so certain. It required more faith than I felt I had.
“This last one found us. I think you do know where to look, Áine. You can see into people’s souls, for one thing. You can swim in that vast ocean of magick—all the power that was thought to have left this land—and it’s on our side. You’ve been receiving guidance from the very beginning.”
The tide of my power rose up in agreement, sending tingling shivers through the length of my body. It was a strange feeling to be so alone in this world and yet also connected to everything all at once. It was just the two of us, igniting a revolution, but it was also all who came before us. This land was speaking so clearly, but I could feel it wasn’t just the witch realm that was calling out, it was the human and the astral planes too. Like they were all bound together by the same fabric.
It was a multidimensional story told in different tongues, weaving a web of triumph and loss, oppression and uprising, cruelty and compassion, creation and destruction, all of these forces that chanted and echoed. I knew I was not the only one who heard its song. It whistled through trees, snuck through open doors, found itself in the hum of a servant or the grunt of a factory worker—it gathered up impressions of all of us in its wake, like a ball of snow down a steep hill.
This was our song. A song for all of us.
At first, I thought I’d awoken when I saw Daelon’s motionless body. His face was relaxed, and I found myself marveling once again at how innocent and vulnerable he looked in his sleep, when he had no walls to build and maintain. But as I reached out a hand to touch him, I realized my fingers were more translucent than they should’ve been, with a slight silvery glow.
I was in the astral realm again, where pure consciousness reigned, and everything was fluid. I still hadn’t quite figured out its rules and logic, and no one had really been able to explain it. It was a blend of dreams, imagination, magick, and materiality. I could travel to places that really existed on Earth and Aradia, but also places of myth and religion. Reality wasn’t quite as concrete as I’d once thought.
I’d fought an astral battle here; I’d possibly seen my mothers and our coven in the afterlife when Daelon nearly killed me while possessed by Lucius. I’d also been summoned to see parts of Aradia like Lucius’s castle or the clearing in the woods nearby, where a mysterious black altar told tales of death and destruction. The voices in my power told me to remember what I saw. It was an important part of the story.
The best part, by far, of astral projection was that I was completely untethered to my physical body, free to fly and move around just like in a lucid dream. Most of the time it felt like I’d been pulled from my body, either by Lucius when he was trying to scare me or my mothers when they’d been trying to show me something. Usually, witches had to consciously will themselves to project, and it was a rather difficult thing to do.
I glanced around at my surroundings, realizing there were certain things about the room that weren’t quite the same as in the physical. The mirror was black, the curtains were purple instead of grey… small differences.
Áine, Bringer of Hope. I have something to show you, said a young, feminine voice.
I sighed. Couldn’t I just fly around and explore just this once? This realm was supposed to be a spiritual playground, and all I’d ever done was go head-to-head with enemies and see a super creepy evil forest. Although, that time I’d seen my own immense power shooting up into the sky as white light was sort of cool. As was hanging out in outer space.
Do not be afraid. I’m going to bring you to me, so you can see. We are from the same coven.
That definitely piqued my interest, and as she reached out to me, I sensed that she was telling the truth. Energy couldn’t lie. A portal opened beside my bed, like a mirror made from blue light. I cast one last glance over my shoulder at my body nestled into Daelon’s before I was sucked through.
Everything went black for a moment, and then I opened my eyes. I was standing in front of a mirror, holding a candle and a jagged crystal, but it wasn’t me staring back. It was a woman with light brown skin, tight curls of black hair, dangling gold earrings, and a flowing green bohemian style dress. She bore a great deal of resemblance to my best human friend, Steph, who I missed so very much.
“I’ve cast a spell to let you see through my eyes, just for a short while. You need to see what we face here, outside of the castle and in the cities.”
I wanted to cock my head and contort my face in confusion, but I realized I didn’t have a body to move.
“I’m honored to have you with me, but please do not try to fight against my control of my own body.”
Oh, oops, sorry. This is new to me… obviously. I was so beyond wigged out right now. I fought hard against the instinctive wave of panic that came with residing in a body that was not my own.
She waved her hand. “I understand. You can leave whenever you want, but it’s part of my life’s purpose to show you this. Thank you for trusting me without knowing me. That is the only way our people have been able to survive.”
I’m here, was all I could manage to say. Was this what Daelon felt like when Lucius took possession of his body? Like he was just a bystander in his own mind? Well, I guess it was different since this was her mind.
What’s your name? I asked.
She smiled, and then she set the candle down on a dresser to our right. “I’m Seraphina. Again, I’m so glad you’re here. I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances, but I’m certain we will be reunited once the tides turn. If I survive, that is.”
