Page 26 of The Illuminated
“Fuck you.”
He frowned. Anger flitted across his features before dissolving. “You can say all manner of things, and I still won’t kill you.”
“Sounds like a fun game,” I said with little emotion. “I’ll play.”
He inched closer, and I grimaced.
“Your energy disgusts me,” I started. “And I am not your gift.”
“That first part has already been duly noted, and it’s clearly only because our power repels each other. But that will be fixed soon enough. The second part is a matter of perspective. How I see it, you were delivered to me. You have something I want. And I’ve now uncovered a way to use it. Isn’t it Heretic Logic 101 that everything happens for a reason? It sure seems like something wanted me to have you.”
“No. Your energy disgusts me because I can see all the remains of witches you’ve tortured and slaughtered within it. It disgusts me because it doesn’t even feel like you’re a witch—like you have any kind of a soul left. It’s just ever-expanding, hollow darkness and decay. Your mother thinks you—the you before you came into this unnatural power—is still buried in there. But she’s wrong. I see nothing but void.” Even as I knew the truth of my words, they came out monotonous and dry.
“This is not a fun game, after all.”
He grasped my chin, wrestling with his rage, the only emotion I was sure he felt besides paranoia and jealousy. But much to my surprise, he released me, then shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Why’d you try to kill yourself, Áine?” he asked like he was asking my favorite color. He also looked like he wanted a pat on the back for trying the whole listening thing on for size.
I shuddered, the floodgates of the last few hours opening back up. What I’d felt in the dungeons was as vast and deep as my ocean of magick, but it was all blood, pain, grief, hopelessness, and desperation.
“Daelon was right. I could feel their suffering like it was my own. And then it was my own. You wouldn’t understand because you’re a sociopath,” I spat. “To let those witches suffer like that.”
“Stop that. Enough of the crying,” he said quietly, wiping away at my tears like they were spiders crawling along my skin. “I’m sorry you didn’t havefunas I intended.”
I suddenly felt very sad for Lucius. But I also felt very sad about everything. The energy of Lucius’s underworld had the antithesis effect of elixir, but just as all-consuming. All I could feel was the very worst of the world and of myself.
I didn’t remember what I felt like before. The hope that had once bloomed in my heart had shriveled, and I wondered if it had ever truly been there at all. Maybe what I felt in that craze of suicidal desperation really was the truth. Maybe I was an experiment gone wrong, unfit to lead this revolution.
And Daelon. After everything Lucius told me, it was hard to believe our love was ever real at all. It was buried in a trench of mud and lies.
“When you’re my queen, you won’t ever have to feel this pain again. Nothing and no one will ever hold you back. You will be free.”
I curled into myself, yearning once again to melt into the earth and become one with the dirt and minerals.
Lucius inspected my wrist again and sighed. “Alright, little witch. Time to follow some directions.” He straightened up. “Sit up, now.”
There was no point to anything anymore. Let alone moving or following my enemy’s commands.
“Sit. Up. Or I will make you.”
I heaved myself to lean against the pillows behind me, my shoulders slumping. It was the best I could offer.
“Good.” He straddled me now, hovering above so as not to put any of his weight on my legs and the puffy fabric of my dress cloaking them. I know I should’ve shoved him away. But I couldn’t find the will. He grabbed each wrist and undid the strips of black fabric Daelon had tied to curb the bleeding, revealing two nasty wounds of raw flesh. “Heal yourself. I know you’re capable.”
He shifted off to the side, and I could feel his energy take the shape of someone who held all the answers. It was a dark captivation, and I was weak against its hypnotism. It held promises of deliverance, and this time, I listened. This jutting current of dark power swept me away in its guarantee of life without pain.
If only I did as I was told.
I stared down at my wrists, and something in me shifted when I began to channel. I healed my broken skin not because I wanted to, but becausehewanted me to. Because he was the only way I could escape this suffering, like a torch leading me from the depths of Hades.
“Now I need to get you out of this dress you ruined.”
He snapped his fingers and two servants appeared. Their heads bowed as they hurried into the room. They clasped their hands out in front of them, standing in wait for the King’s direction.
“Clean her up.”
Chapter9
