Page 68 of The Illuminated
But now it was day, and my power was back in full swing.
Daelon swept my hair behind my shoulders, studying me again like I would disappear at any moment. His hands stilled, frowning.
“What is it?”
His fingers brushed over my ear, and I winced at the sting. “Are these… teeth marks?”
“He actuallybit me?” I reached for my ear, running my fingers over the dried blood. Sometimes what happened in the astrals affected the physical, and it seemed like that was Lucius’s intention.
Daelon bristled, his features twisting into something primal. “He’s dead,” he hissed. “Maybe not today, but soon. And I would love nothing more than to be the one who does it.”
“It’s a long line, but I’ll see what I can do,” I said softly, letting my hair fall back to cover up the mark of Lucius’s creepy games. “For now, I need you to be focused. Once we’re out of the forest we can jump, but I don’t know what’s going to be waiting for us on the other side in the King’s City.”
Daelon looked away, and I could tell he was internally cooling himself off with his best grounding techniques, just as he’d taught me. Then he effortlessly scaled the earthy side of the cave, pushing himself up and out with brute strength as he grunted from exertion.
It was rather hot.
“Hands, Áine,” he instructed.
I tiptoed, grabbing on to him as I awkwardly flailed my legs for footing on the tree roots. It wasn’t pretty, but I made it out. The light of day was blinding after our complete submersion in darkness, like the sensitivity of a massive hangover.
The forest was much different now that it was alive, no longer blackened and barren. It was mossy and green even under the cool bite of winter, thick with tall trees with huge branches that reached for each other, forming a canopy. It was alive with magick, with an aura of its own that was a beautiful collage of oranges, yellows, greens, and browns. It owed its life to me, and to Lucius it owed its death.
A branch reached down from high above us, pointing us in the direction we sought.
“Thanks,” Daelon said, grinning at me in childlike wonder. “If they can talk then they can hear me, right?”
“It would stand to reason,” I laughed. For a brief moment we were like kids living out a storybook fairytale, the magick of the realm finally presenting itself to us in all its glory. This was the world my mothers showcased in their bedtime stories. I’d always figured there were embellishments, but now I wasn’t so sure.
The moment was short lived. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sight of a fallen guard, impaled by a spiky tree branch jutting up from the earth. Her mouth and eyes were wide open, her blood pooling in a circle from the middle of her back.
Daelon pulled me away before I could stare any longer at the gruesome scene, but we were next met with an equally disturbing image of a guard face down in a creek, and then another guard with a vine wrapped tightly around his neck as he sat up against a tree. His face was twisted in a grimace, nearly purple.
“Remind me not to piss off any trees,” Daelon muttered.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d walked, but it must have been hours. I kept my eyes glued to the ground directly in front of me, lest I see any more of the forest’s revenge killings. I also had to be careful not to trip over the impractical maxi dress I’d died in, grateful its long sleeves shielded me from the crisp air. Birds called and small animals made faint noises as they scurried across the ground and into the brush. I could’ve sworn I’d heard the sounds of high-pitched laughter, but it dissolved as soon as I’d tuned in.
Then a different kind of atmosphere permeated the air—that of a city—and the forest began to thin out as we grew closer. The collective energy of a land filled with witches was even more powerful than earthly metropolises, and the swarm of auras and energy hit me like a tsunami before I shut it all out. I needed to concentrate.
We turned in a silent goodbye to the ecosystem that gave us safe passage, and it wordlessly sent us the same. Trees shifted and bowed as we stepped into the open air. Before us now was a city that looked surprisingly European. Buildings were a mix of cream, peach, and blue tones as they reached up toward the sky. It all seemed a lot cleaner and more natural than that of earth, with stone and glass in their structures rather than steel or concrete. It wasn’t really the dystopia that I’d imagined either, at least not from our viewpoint on this grassy hill that sloped down into a tall, black fence that separated the forest from the city. I’d expected more smog, smoke, and palpable evil.
That wasn’t at all what I beheld. This eco-friendly, conquered capital of the witch realm seemed shockingly normal. In these early hours it was starkly quiet compared to an earthly city, with no cars, trucks, or ambulances cutting through the fresh morning air. I’d been so tunnel-visioned in Aradia, bound to the suffocating castle walls of my enemy, that I realized I had no idea how the majority of witches lived. I’d been given a snapshot of recent history in the Akashic, but even that hadn’t revealed much about the realm as it was now, not to mention the seemingly complex sociopolitical layout of Aradia before the Order rose to power.
Just like at the end of my stay in Daelon’s cabin, I suddenly felt very ignorant to the reality of the realm I was ordained to restore. As Daelon and I paused for a moment, catching our breath at the top of the hill, my heart clenched with the reminder that in a matter of minutes we would be free to learn everything—about this realm, about our parents’ coven, and about each other.
In Iciera. In our newfound liberation.
I reached for Daelon’s hand, and our eyes locked as my fingers brushed his before intertwining. I didn’t know what would await us down below, but for the first time since I’d arrived in the castle, I knew that we both actually believed that this was the moment we’d been waiting for. We could finally cross the barrier from hiding to fighting, and the thick smog of hopelessness would lift as the dark night of the soul gave rise to the light of day.
“You ready?” Daelon asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t help but smile even as so many things were left uncertain, and so many trials, battles, and losses lay ahead. All I could taste now was the sweet air of our victory, air that was wholly unpolluted by Lucius’s repulsive energy for the first time in ages.
Daelon grabbed me suddenly, pulling me in for a deep, breathless kiss as his hands tangled in my hair. It ended too soon, and I had to force myself to move my hand from the sharp curve of his jaw as he pulled back.
“We need to move,” he whispered, but I could see it in his eyes—that blind faith powerful enough to defy death.
We carefully maneuvered down the sloping hill, now standing before the iron fence that separated the forest and castle from conquered Thora. The fence was spelled with a powerful electrical field. Lucius couldn’t have angry peasants demanding his head on castle grounds, after all.
