Page 25 of The Illuminated
I found the will to move, finally, and I shifted to my side so I could watch the two men talk. It felt more like a movie than real life.
Lucius sneered. “I feel like I did more than enough listening when she was begging me to kill her and crying like a madwoman aboutall the sufferingfor what felt like eternity.”
Daelon’s eyes focused on me as I turned toward him and Lucius. But at Lucius’s cold statement, he threw his hands up in the air. “Well then I don’t know what to tell you. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not sure you are capable of giving her what she needs right now.”
Lucius laughed, but his amusement quickly ran dry. “And you are?”
“I brought her out of the last sickness you caused,” Daelon said, far too angrily. This should’ve worried me, on his behalf, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel a single thing. “So yeah, maybe.”
Lucius stepped closer to Daelon. “If there is even a single, tiny part of you that still thinks you hold a claim over her, you need to tell meright now.Because if I find out that any part of that business at the cabin was real, let alone if it persisted here inmy castle, and you didn’t tell me…”
“I told you a part of it was real. The sexual side of things… got out of hand. But she hated me after what I did, and I would never betray my own brother by attempting to reconcile with his future Queen.”
Lucius glanced at me, his head cocked to the side. “So eerie. Can’t tell if she’s awake or asleep. Her heartbeat is so slow.” He turned back to Daelon, took in a breath, and put both hands on his shoulders. “Let’s stop this fighting, once and for all. I know you would never betray me. But I also know you aren’t entirely like me, either. You feel things. And I wonder if her power could have a similar pull to her lovers, just as mine does. Like an enchantment.”
Daelon quirked a brow. “You think she enchanted me?”
He pulled his hands back. “Maybe not on purpose. She and I are above this world. We are ill-suited for anyone else, not in any true way.”
“But you think you might be suited for each other.”
Lucius shrugged. “We’ll see. She was my gift, was she not? From the high, unknown realms that gave me my crown?”
Daelon just stared back, something shielded flickering in his dark eyes.
It was official. Lucius was truly beginning to believe his own lies. Everything in his dark reality was carefully constructed to legitimize his reign, but up until now I’d figured he at least knew the truth, at his core.
“Shouldn’t we call Abraham? To make sure she’s healing properly?”
“No,” Lucius snapped. “Why do you think I had you clear out the halls? We can’t afford for anyone to think she’s crippled by madness or melancholia like my mother.”
“Is she still bleeding?” Daelon asked, taking a step closer to me before Lucius stopped him.
“You are dismissed. I can take over from here,” he said, and there was something layered in his words that I could tell Daelon really, really didn’t like.
Please tell me you’re okay.
I let his words wash over me like a wave, but when they receded, I was still empty and barren like Lucius’s evil forest had once been.
Áine, please, he begged.
The desperation in Daelon’s voice only deepened the abyss. But the part of me that wanted to live, that wanted to stitch the pieces of myself back together, forced me to answer him.
I don’t know. Find the coven that practices in the shadows. Taryn will show you the way.
As Daelon exited Lucius’s chambers, I turned away from Lucius, unable to look at him and the icy web of cruelty that extended past his body to wrap around me like tentacles. They whispered reminders of the dungeons, of my inability to save anyone, of my immense cosmic failure to do anything more than sit around with the devil in my pretty dresses and have sex with a man who lied to me and betrayed me at every turn.
I jumped when fingers gingerly lifted my arm, turned it over, and then placed it back.
“You’ll be fine, despite your best efforts. Aren’t humans always killing themselves? Why didn’t you learn a more efficient method during your time with them?”
I heard the decisive padding of footsteps as Lucius circled the bed. He spread himself out beside me, facing me. It was the first time I’d seen him without his stupid little crown. He brushed his hands through his thick black hair, his insistent blue eyes narrowing.
“I know you’re still in there,” he said. “You’re being all self-righteous and plotting little heretic spells against me to free the sad, pathetic dungeon prisoners.” He pouted mockingly.
I ignored him, staring at him blankly.
He reached out a finger and poked my cheek. When I smacked it away, he smiled and said, “Aha!”
