Page 15 of The Discovered
You’re weak. I can feel you struggling and grasping for control that you will never obtain… you might as well give up now.
My vision went blurry as I suffocated, and I could make out a figure like the one from the woods—the outline of a man—but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
Then I heard Daelon, and I had never been so grateful to hear his voice.
“Come back to me,” he said. “Come back to the room. See it in your mind.”
I envisioned the glass paneling and the hardwood floors. I was draining rapidly. I saw Daelon’s sharp jaw and dark eyes. I grabbed onto the sound of his deep, commanding voice, using it as an anchor to pull myself up from the abyss.
My eyes fluttered open to find Daelon over top of me as I lay on the hard floor. He pressed rhythmically on my chest as I choked on water, turning my head to the side as I coughed it up. After I had hurled half an ocean, I finally started to breath in unadulterated oxygen.
“Goddess above, Áine,” Daelon muttered, breathing hard. “Are you all right?”
“Um, I guess so,” I managed to sputter, still gasping. “How…” I trailed off, trying to piece together where I just was and how something within my mind ended up happening to my actual body.
“Like I said, Aradia is highly malleable and sensitive to energy. There often isn’t a clear separation between our consciousness and material reality, especially when this dimension begins to blend with the astrals. It’s hard to explain, but that’s not important right now,” Daelon said softly, his brows creased as he gazed down at me. He looked terrified, scrambling to build up his usual composure again. “Where were you? I thought I told you to focus on something manageable.”
Was he seriously scolding me right now? And what the hell were the astrals?
“I did,” I snapped. “But then I lost control of it. It was an ocean, but the water was also energy, and I just got swept up in the whole world’s anger. I was doing so well at first.” I shook my head, struggling to even comprehend what had just happened. “Are you sure you didn’t slip me LSD? DMT? Shrooms?”
Daelon drew back, as if I’d mortally offended him. “I would never drug you,” he hissed.
“It was a joke, jeez.” I sat up, still trying to catch my breath as I hugged my knees to my chest.
His eyes softened, blinking at me. “Right. Well, witches don’t really need drugs to trip.” He shrugged. “You can’t be taking on the whole world’s anger, Áine, at least not yet. Baby steps.”
“It wasn’t exactly intentional.” I paused, remembering my encounter within the dark side of the energy. “There was someone there, I think. In the anger. He told me I was weak.”
Daelon looked away for a moment. “Strange,” he said. “It could be anything, really. A part of yourself, another metaphor, or someone you’ve met or will meet. If you saw this person, or thing, only in your anger then I would steer clear. It’s nothing good. I’ll help you with defensive tactics soon.”
I opened my mouth to say that I’d felt this being before—within my dream and out in the woods—but Daelon cut in again.
“You thought of your mothers, didn’t you?”
I swallowed. “Yes. I saw the day they died. When they somehow spelled my bracelet to send me away before I could save them.” My voice cracked a little, and I looked away.
Daelon nodded, reaching for my hand and giving it a squeeze. He looked unsure of himself. I accepted the gesture with a small smile. I noticed something familiar in his eyes, if only for a moment, but I couldn’t quite place it.
This experience had lessened my anger toward him, as I realized it may have more to do with my deeper trauma than Daelon. I may not have known much about who he was, but I knew he didn’t belong in that darkness. All the witchy intuition I had wanted me to believe he was an ally, despite my doubts.
“Will you tell me more about yourself?” I asked. “Like where did you come from? How did you know I was in trouble?”
He was quiet for many long seconds, and I almost wondered if he would say anything at all. “I’m an orphan. I was taken in by some questionable people, and I’m a witch trainer of sorts. I felt your beacon of power when you saved your friend, and like I said before, I justknewI had to help you. It was instinct, like it was a part of some kind of higher purpose. I don’t know how to explain it. As a shield, I knew I could keep you concealed from the people who wished to do you harm, as well as teach you how to wield your power constructively.” He lowered his voice once again, which was strange considering it was just us. “And I know that your enemies are my enemies.”
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I said, reaching for his hand slowly like he had done for me. He looked at my hand over his pensively for a moment. “I want to trust everything that you say. But I don’t know how to yet. At least not completely.”
“I know. It’s just hard to tell you certain things about myself because I fear it would trigger that anger within you, and it should be obvious now you’re not equipped to deal with it all yet. You’ll find that our stories run very parallel.”
He peered out the glass paneling, which made me realize it was pouring down huge droplets of rain, flooding the earth. I wondered idly if that was my doing.
Probably.
“And it’s hard to explain how I got here. Like I said, it was instinct—like a force beyond my rational understanding, built into the fabric of my DNA. I still don’t quite understand it. You needed me and I came. I knew that you were special, that you were brought into existence to bring hope back to this realm, to right the wrongs committed against both of us. You feel that don’t you?”
I was taken aback at how vulnerable he looked in this moment, staring out at the storm. His voice was low and conspiratorial, as if we were planning a coup, and his words mirrored my mothers’ in ways that didn’t seem all too coincidental.
“Yes,” I sighed. “I feel it.”
