Page 22 of The Illuminated
I couldn’t do a single thing but sit in the little boat with the man who now fully embodied the King of the Underworld as it slowly moved across the eerily still water. Fueled by magick, rowing was apparently unnecessary.
After sitting in a seat across from me, Lucius smiled as if he’d won this round. “You’re shaking. Where’s your strength, little witch?”
I glared at him, cursing my body for not being impervious to fear. I conjured a glowing orb of light, letting it float out into the space between us.
“Afraid of the dark?” he mocked. When he was met with silence, he let out an annoyed sigh. “Nothing can hurt you when you’re with me.”
If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought Lucius was attempting to comfort me. But considering he was my sadistic mortal enemy, probably not.
“Did you model this after the River Styx?” I wondered aloud. Out of all the possible ways Lucius could’ve fashioned his world, he chose the darkest possible timeline. What a waste—to gain the power of altering reality and use it to create this hellscape.
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
I guess that made me Persephone, if we were following Greek mythology. The unwilling Queen of Hades. I struggled to remember how the myth went.
I carry a torch through the darkness, for all who ask.
Hecate. Hecate ruled over the border between the mortal realm and the underworld, and she lit Persephone’s path back to freedom.
I jumped when something next to us moved beneath the water—something I could’ve sworn had glowing red eyes.
Lucius laughed. “His name is Gregory. I named him after my father.”
Because they’re both monsters?I guessed but didn’t dare say aloud.
My relief from making it to the other side of the hellish river was short-lived, as Lucius helped me from the boat and guided me to a tall black gate hammered into the stone. Two additional guards stood on either side, armed with swords that emitted dark, cursed magick.
“My King,” they each said, barely acknowledging me.
The gates swung open.
The smell hit me first. Followed shortly by the screams.
Chapter8
Learning to control my clairsentience was a lot like learning to control my power. Teaching myself how to block out the intense emotions of others was crucial in the development my own sense of self and agency over my own feelings and aura. Without the ability to establish a boundary between my own energy and others’, I could easily lose myself. Which was fine at concerts or parties, where the pleasure of the room was intoxicating, alive, and thrilling. But not at funerals. Not in the wreckage of a tragedy or when danger lurked.
And certainly not in the pits of Hell.
I didn’t know how to block out the cyclone of visceral suffering that swarmed me like demonic locusts. I halted, but Lucius grabbed ahold of my arm and forced me forward. Rooms came into sight—rooms filled with grimy, broken witches. Row after row, these cells were crowded with dirty men and women trapped behind rusted metal bars. Some reached toward me, and some hurled insults. Some resembled animals gone rabid, foaming at the mouths with crazed eyes as they wrestled with invisible demons.
During our study abroad in Paris, Steph, Rena, and I had taken a tour of the catacombs—the cavernous underbelly of the city that was filled to the brink with row after row of skulls and bones all stacked on top of each other. This place was like that, but here the bones were covered with flesh, and they were screaming. They were clawing, gnashing, and crawling on top of each other.
I couldn’t block it out. The collective energy of these endless rows of tortured souls entered through my third eye and burrowed its way into my tightened chest and churning stomach, all the way to my very core.
“I can’t breathe,” I said, beginning to hyperventilate.
“Fuck you!” A feminine voice screamed, but I couldn’t look her way. I couldn’t witness this any longer. I kept my eyes forward, the desperate witches clawing, reaching, and yelling in my periphery.
“I hope your limbs get torn off one by one and fed to the Caorthannach!” A rugged, angry voice bellowed.
“Please, please!” another voice yelled. “Have you come to free us? I know you! Hey!”
The voices smacked into us like missiles, and the air was as thick as blood. I couldn’t get it into my lungs quick enough.
“You’re fine,” Lucius snapped, still dragging me forward, his hand now digging painfully into the side of my waist.
I gasped, touching my throat with a clammy hand as tears sprung to my eyes. I couldn’t stop the sob that escaped, which earned me a roll of the eyes from Lucius.
