Page 13 of The Illuminated
“If whatever Lucius is planning comes to fruition before we can stop it… if I’m put into the position of choosing to go under his control and be connected to him in that way like before, so that my power becomeshis…I need you to know I won’t let that happen. I know he would use my power to dominate the realm completely, driving away all natural order and magick. Who even knows what that would do to the borders that are already weakened?”
Daelon pulled back, and beneath his cool air of authority I could see a crack forming in his shield. “What are you saying?”
“That I will choose death over becoming like him.” I watched as his face fell, his eyes teeming with hurt, with desperation, and with anger.
He cursed, taking a step back. “Stop it, Áine,” he hissed. “Just stop.”
The sound of footsteps sounded from around the corner, and I couldn’t tell whether or not they were approaching us or just passing.
Daelon closed his eyes, the vein in his forehead throbbing. “You need to jump to your room. I’ll come see you when I can.”
It seemed our list of unfinished arguments only grew longer, and my lie only increased the distance between us. The already tenuous stability of our relationship shook like an earthquake, held together by blind hope and a future that didn’t seem at all certain anymore.
My heart broke as I left him standing there, all alone.
Chapter5
Iawoke in the middle of the night alone. Clearly, Daelon never found an opportunity to visit.
Despite the number of troubling issues on my mind, I slept harder than ever, lost in dreamless exhaustion. I rolled onto my side, the heavy weight of reality bearing down on me. There was nothing worse than leaving that empty space of unconsciousness only to remember the horrors of waking life, where something had gone horribly, unfathomably wrong.
I knew I could go searching for answers. I could wade in that ocean of everything, its vast library of magick awaiting my call and direction. But I was scared of what I’d find.
The waves reached out nonetheless, and as my body relaxed, I felt myself float toward the sky, breaking free from material form.
Do you not trust us?voices called out.
I don’t want to die, I answered as I moved through the ceiling, up past the castle roof among the tall spires. The castle was massive from this vantage point. I’d been living here for weeks and still had seen so little.
No one truly dies, the voices said. There were too many individual tones to count, deep and high, masculine and feminine, and they rose and fell in melodic unity.
I willed myself out of the witch realm, up into the astrals. I didn’t care where. I just wanted to be away for a little while—to pretend things were different. To pretend thatIwas different.
Maybe you chose the wrong witch for the job,I said.Because I don’t want to be a martyr. I don’t want to sacrifice myself for the greater good. I want to live. I want to grow old and live in a community that feels like family. I want to love deeply and openly as many people as I can. I don’t want to die.
My spirit heaved, and the world shifted as if spinning on its axis, spitting me out into a place so beautiful I nearly forgot why I was heartbroken. The sky above was a luminous blue with fiery stars and constellations that appeared impossibly near based on their enormity. The ground beneath my feet was an opalescent white marble. I spun around, taking in the architecture that reminded me of the myths of Olympus in their grandeur. Like a mix between Greek and Arab architecture of the human realm, tall, white buildings towered all around me, domed and decorated with intricate geometric patterns with glass that somehow held every color in existence. I stood in the center of a network of paths lined with twisting columns made out of clear quartz crystal. Next to me was a fountain carved from the same, its water an electric lavender color.
“Áine,” a voice spoke, and from a cloud of mist a woman materialized to sit on the edge of the quartz fountain. She wore a crown made of long, golden spikes with a crescent moon shape facing upward at the top of her forehead. Long, jet black hair framed a face that was both wise and somehow ageless, with intense, dark eyes and olive toned skin. She was clothed in a dark purple dress that draped over her shoulders, cinched at the waist by a black chord that held a snake pendant and a heavy-looking golden key.
I sat next to her, drawn to the intensity of her purple aura that felt neither human nor witch. It was impossible for me to taste or parse through, seeming to contain every possibility of energy within its depths.
“It is not often I am drawn to a being who did not call to me,” she said. Her accent was intensely Greek, moving through me like a sacred orchestra of sound and melody. I had a difficult time finding my own voice.
“Who are you?”
“Hecate.” She neither smiled nor frowned, her expression holding a kind of certainty and magnitude that drove me to wordlessness. A space opened up inside of me that was deep with respect and reverence, her voice like a torch leading me through the dark caverns of the underworld.
“Like the Greek goddess?” I asked dumbly, awestruck and unsure of myself in this otherworldly plane. “You’re… um, real.”
“Greek to you, maybe, as someone who only knows me from human myths. I take whatever form is necessary. The root of me is beyond form altogether.”
Right.Becauseduh. Where was Amos? I felt like these two would get along well.
“You’re confused,” she said, without even a hint of condescension. She rose, and the sight of her ethereal figure held me in a trance. “Let’s take a walk.”
I had to force my astral body to match her slow stride down one of the forking paths. She moved like she was unattached to the ground beneath her, her long, purple robe billowing out in a train of fabric.
“Do you understand the principle ofas above, so below?” she asked.
