Page 3 of The Illuminated
“Same as usual. I can’t remember. Nor do I want to,” he said. “I left the castle for a couple of days, and then when I returned, he—” I looked up at him, only to see a strange emptiness in his eyes. “I don’t know. I was helping him with something.”
“Why does he keep so much from you if he supposedly trusts you more than anyone?”
He shrugged. “The only person Lucius truly trusts is himself. He keeps all of us in the dark, where he thinks we’ll be the most content. It’s all a mirage.”
I sighed, refusing to give this another thought, at least for the night. I just wanted to be here, pressed to Daelon’s chest with his arms wrapped around me like he was terrified to ever let go.
“I can’t bear to see you get hurt. Ever again,” he sighed into my hair. “I was so close to failing that test. To just killing Nathaniel and running off with you, and saying ‘fuck it’ to this hell we’re living in.”
“I know.”
“You don’t,” he said, his tone bitter. “Sometimes it feels like I have to destroy parts of myself in this place, just to survive. Like only the darkest, worst parts are being nurtured and grown. I’m scared I’ll wake up one day and I won’t even recognize the man I am, and even worse, that you won’t either.”
“That won’t happen.” I placed my hand over his heart. “I know who you are. The choices you make living under the burden of the King’s oppression and evil will never define whoyouare. Only whoheis. You’re the best man I know. You’ve sacrificed so much to be here for entirely selfless ends.”
Daelon was silent, and I couldn’t tell whether or not I’d convinced him. I only hoped my words had burrowed themselves into his mind, so that whenever he felt lost, he would remember what I saw in him.
“The tree,” he said suddenly. “I was so busy worrying that I barely questioned why Katherine’s tree had protected you like that. What was that all about? Or do you even remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” I recounted the entire interaction, except the bit about going to Amos for the map to the Akashic Records. “You knew her, right? What was she like? Do you know what happened to her?”
Daelon sighed, rubbing his temples. “It’s so hard to remember anything from that time. Not only because of how Lucius has concealed that era with such a thick, magickal fog, but also because I was so traumatized after my parents’ deaths and my abrupt entry into court life that I ended up blocking most of it out. I’ve blockeda lotof my life out.” He frowned, shaking his head slightly. “Lucius’s father, Gregory, was… cold. He was always working with the other lords, the ones that have since passed, on strategies for the so-calledwar. He never really trusted me, and he was really hard on Lucius. Katherine was different. She was always very quiet and thoughtful, like she was living in a world of her own creation. Her relationship with Lucius always seemed very strange, almost like he was taking care of her more than she was taking care of him. There was a tenderness there that I haven’t seen in him since.”
“Because of the abuse,” I said, remembering Katherine’s allusion to Gregory’s violence against her. It made Lucius’s rather cruel reaction to discovering a noble hitting his wife clearer. He’d seemed suddenly vulnerable, in spite of the whole pulverizing internal organs thing. I shuddered, remembering the sickening sounds that had made. Though, Lucius also once told me I reminded him of his mother because we were both weak, and then he’d threatened me withher same fate.So which version of the truth was more real?
“Oh,” Daelon said. “I didn’t know. Lucius never told me, but that makes a lot of sense. I know I must’ve spent nearly a decade with Lucius’s parents, from age seven to fifteen, I think. But I still know so little. It was like one day I was training to be Lucius’s personal bodyguard, a soldier for Gregory’s bidding, and then the next, Lucius was King, and all of the elders were just… gone. Most of what I remember was just me and Lucius… hanging out. Causing trouble. We were all each other had for a while.”
Now it was my turn to frown. I hated thinking aboutmyDaelon and Lucius, the literal embodiment of Satan, justpalling around. “Lucius was how old? Sixteen? That’s awfully young to become ruler of the entire witch realm, illegitimate or not. No wonder he still acts like an entitled teenager.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. As soon as I think I understand how he took the throne, all of my memories turn hazy and confusing, and it all fades away. But you have an Akashic key from Lucius’s mother now. I’m sure her side of the story will show us everything we need to know. We just need to figure out how to travel there.” He kissed my forehead, but the lump in my throat was back at the mention of what I couldn’t disclose.
I hated keeping anything from him, not after how long it took for me to understand his own lies and secrecy. Some of it, like his mental blanks when it came to fulfilling Lucius’s little missions, was still hanging over us.
I forced a smile and looked up at him. “One key from Katherine and one key from that servant. We’re so close. I can feel it. So close to all the answers. So close to freedom.” These psychic keys would apparently keep me from getting lostin the Akashic by showing me the exact moments in history I needed to uncover. I remembered the way Lucius had murdered the woman who gave me the first key, and my smile quickly turned back into a grimace.
Daelon nodded again, and in that moment, I could tell that neither of us truly believed those words, even as we let them cocoon us in a fortress of blinding hope and the kind of love imbued with grit and defiance. Like a wildflower that found a way to root, sprout, and shoot up between concrete cracks in the pavement, Daelon and I had claimed a space in this life that was just for us.
Chapter2
“You look like shit.”
“Good to see you too, Taryn,” I muttered, watching as she let herself into my chambers and plopped down on a tall white chair across from me. I was glad to finally be out of the infirmary and in my own space again.
I was sprawled out on the emerald green couch reading an ancient book of myths calledThe Lost Witches of Aradia.It was soothing to understand more about this culture, long before Lucius had arrived on the scene. Similar to stories back on Earth, they mentioned faeries, dragons, and shapeshifters; heroes, mentors, riddles, and quests; ancient races of witches that were now extinct or hidden; and many more fantastical creatures and places. On Earth it seemed obvious that these kinds of elements were all fiction, but in the witch realm I wasn’t so sure.
Right now I was reading a story about forbidden love between men from rival covens who were seemingly too different to get along, only to realize that they weren’t so different after all. In these tales, conflict between covens was met with disaster, while peace, unity, and understanding were met with rewards from the gods, spirits, and ancestors. What struck me the most about these stories was the reverence for everything in the natural world. Each blade of grass, each tree, each stone, and each gust of wind was treated as family. Everything in Aradia was not only an expression of magick, but also of sacred love and connection—between witches, the world, and the Divine.
This ethos seemed as fabled as dragons under Lucius’s reign.
“My tutor made me read that book when I was like twelve. Interesting, but the old ass writing made it so veryboring. I’m pretty sure Lucius banned it from the Kingdom, actually. Not sure how you found one that isn’t ash.” She brushed her long near-black hair behind her shoulders, her fierce green eyes regarding me in a way that was juxtaposed with the timid, conflicted energy that rippled out all around her. She wore a flowy, purple dress with a plunging neckline that cinched around her waist, giving her the classic sexy warrior goddess look she always aimed for.
I closedThe Lost Witches of Aradia, and I made a mental note to hide it back behind the other books on the shelf where I’d found it. Of course Lucius the dictator would burn books that revered theold waysthat had sustained peace for thousands of years. I knew from my anthropology studies back on Earth that some of the first people killed in war and conquest were the historians and the storytellers. Nothing dislocated and weakened a people more than erasing their entire sense of cultural identity.
I shook my head to bring myself back to the present moment. “I think you saved my life,” I said, remembering the way Taryn tackled Nathaniel to the ground after he’d ripped the blade from my stomach.
“Youthink?”
“Thank you,” I blurted.
