Page 31 of The Discovered
“I thought I killed you, too.”Just like my mothers. I thought I’d caused their murders because of my selfishness, disobedience, and thirst for power. But if they already knew they were going to die… if I was always meant to come into this power, and everything had happened exactly according to some grand plan, then I was absolved. They said I was meant to save them in a different way. Now it was up to me to figure out how.
We lay in silence for a beat, and I could feel an intensity bubbling up around us.
“You didn’t fail me. Please don’t blame yourself.” It felt natural to be in his arms.
He chuckled in a way that was devoid of humor. “My cosmic purpose is literally to protect you, Áine.”
The hairs at the back of my neck pricked up at his tone. I wanted to lift his hand to my mouth and kiss it.
“It must hurt to speak so please stop doing it. I can’t bear to see you in more pain,” he said, softer now.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I lied, “that much.” I looked down at our intwined fingers. A vein bulged in his forearm, which was unsettling, considering the action that just strained his muscles. I frowned and shook the thought away. “I’m sorry for trying to seduce you,” I blurted. After this experience, I needed everything to be out on the table. “When you didn’t want to… you know.”
Very eloquent, Áine,I chastised myself. God this was humiliating, yet again. I just wanted to put it all behind us.
Daelon nearly snorted. “Is that how you saw it?” he scoffed. “I thought you said your actions were due toStockholm syndrome.” The tone of his voice changed, revealing once more that that comment had cut deep.
“That was a joke!”
“Oh.” He was silent for a moment. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I mean, don’t be ridiculous. I just didn’t want to take advantage of the situation.”
I drew my brows together. It seemed I had misread that night in a completely different way than I’d originally thought. Heat rose to my cheeks, replaying his words in my mind. So, hehadwanted me.
Now what?
“Oh,” was all I could manage to say. I shivered as he unclasped his hand from mine and stroked through my hair just above the ear. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” I asked, veering quickly into a new conversational direction. I couldn’t shake that image of my mothers, looking so proud of me in their white dresses that blew in the ocean breeze.
“Occasionally.”
“I’m not sure that’s something one believes inoccasionally,” I laughed.
Daelon’s fingers paused in their brush through my hair. “I believe in what I experience. There are plenty of witches who believe in such things and claim to have seen them firsthand. But how can I trust in them? Two people can experience the same event and recount it completely differently.”
I picked up on the embedded double meaning. “Fair point.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I saw my mothers. When I was unconscious. Or at least I think I did.”
Daelon sighed. “Maybe you did. It wouldn’t be any less meaningful either way, would it? If it wasreallythem, or some other form conjured through their energy and memory. I don’t know.”
I wasn’t sure, either. I thought it would mean less in that I would like to see my mothers again, when it was my time to die. But if death was final and I snuffed out of existence, I guessed I wouldn’t be conscious anymore to be disappointed.
“It’s like that Mark Twain quote. Where he says he isn’t afraid to die because he was dead for billions of years before he was born and had not suffered the slightest bit of inconvenience from it,” I thought aloud.
“I quite like that,” Daelon said, wrapping his arm back around me. I felt him move closer, his breath warm on my neck. “But can we stop talking about death, please?”
“Right. Yeah,” I laughed nervously.
But the line of thought wouldn’t loosen its grip. What I saw on that beach felt just as real as this moment. It lit something inside me that I knew would guide me for days to come, like I was being pulled through this life by an invisible thread—one that tied me to my mothers, our people, that place, and a power that was universal—magick that yearned for the completion of something I had yet to understand. My mothers wanted me to trust that one day I would. I would understand everything.
“Can we talk about whoever the hell it was that I provoked?” I asked, expecting yet another wall.
Daelon sighed, confirming what I already knew. “We can. Soon,” he promised, and I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Even after we’d almost killed each other, there was still this barrier between us, one that he was entirely unwilling to break down. And I was tired of being put off.
We lay in silence, and my mind traveled to that beach until Daelon pulled me back to him again.
“What was that dream about, Áine? The one that made you blush and get all cagey?” And just like that, playful Daelon was back, his thumb stroking my palm.
