Page 45 of The Illuminated
“Your father won’t be pleased to hear you’re with one ofthem,” a woman spat from the stairs. “Now that we know who you are, we will let you leave. We will not touch you.”
“Father? I don’t have a father,” I said dumbly, but soon Daelon was pulling me away, out of the building and into the street, past glaring witches with auras riddled with the desperation of addiction and the cruelty of their way of life.
I barely paid attention to our surroundings as we passed restaurants and bars, humans spilling out into the street, laughing and speaking in various languages. I was suddenly very jealous of their ignorance.
Chapter14
“What the hell was all that?” I asked, my whole body buzzing from the magickal exertion, adrenaline, and the sheer chaos of all that just occurred.
Daelon sat down in a chair by the fireplace, but I was too jittery to sit.
His shoulders were slumped, his head hung slightly as he looked to me. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Okay, let’s start with the fact that you knew exactly what your little spy mission was about. You said it to the man. That he’d drunkenly told witches—I assume connected to Lucius—about an unconquered coven. You knew all along, and you just went along with it? You were prepared to torture him for information that would lead to more of the same genocide that killed our parents?” The pitch of my voice had shifted up, the weight of my words just too much to bear.
“I don’t remember!” he said, exasperated. “When Lucius tells me what to do, the knowledge just disappears. Until I do it. Then I report back, and it’s all gone. It’s in the past and it doesn’t exist anymore.”
I wanted to scream. “How can you say that? That the past doesn’t exist? The past is everything. It’s at the core of all that we are working toward. I just can’t believe you would ever do these things—that youhavebeen doing these things, all along.”
“Well, maybe that’s on you,” he said, rising from the chair. The vein in his forehead throbbed. “I’m the Commander of the Guard and Lucius’s most trusted comrade. I told you I’ve been forced to do horrible things to survive. All I did before I met you was evil things for an evil king. If I didn’t comply, my cover would be blown. I’d be dead, and so would you. We never would have met, and the moment Lucius found you, he would’ve killed you.”
I didn’t know what to say. He was right but it still felt so very wrong. When he said he’d done horrible things to survive, I just never imagined it would be betraying his own kind. Maybe thatwason me.
“Do you think Lucius erases your memory?” I asked as he nervously ran a hand through his hair.
“Who else? He doesn’t want me to know the horrors of what he’s done and will continue to do. He doesn’t want any of us to know.” He shook his head. “You don’t believe me.”
“No, I do believe you. But what if it’s more complicated than that?” I approached him cautiously, the air between us fiery and turbulent.
“Complicated, how?”
“What if you don’t want to remember?”
“Well, yeah, of course I don’t want to.”
I watched him closely, as confusion turned to anger then to understanding like flipping through an emotional catalogue. I sat down on the leather couch, breathing deeply to calm the tumultuous waves of my power.
“You’re shaking,” Daelon murmured, moving to kneel down in front of me. He took my unsteady hands in his. “I wouldn’t blame you for changing your mind,” he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him over the roaring of the waves.
Despite the comfort of his touch, and the way his shielded aura still felt safe and grounding—likehome—all I could see was the level of anger and disgust he’d directed at me, and the way he’d toyed with the blade, flipping it around between his fingers before using it on his victim…
“You’ve never spoken to me that way before,” I said. “Like I was nothing to you but a liability.”
He winced like I’d hit him. “I don’t—I’m so sorry. I don’t think that and never have.”
I’d never seen him this upset, this heartbroken, and I couldn’t help but feel his pain as my own.
I blinked away a tear. “I haven’t changed my mind. But if we are going to work through this, you need to go with me to visit Amos to try and overcome the blackouts. Because your alter ego was a real prick. And what Lucius is putting you through cannot be psychologically healthy. I can’t get through this with you if you keep suppressing all of it and pretending it doesn’t exist.”
He stared up at me for a moment, and I didn’t hide my anger at his hesitation. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do anything. That man you saw—it wasn’t me. I’m sorry you had to see any of it.”
“Daelon, we’re partners. How could I not see all sides of you? If you continue to hide from me, we’re doomed.”
We aren’t doomed, I repeated to myself over and over. We would get through this. We had to.
“But what I’ve done… what if it’s unforgivable? What if I don’t deserve to be a part of the world you’re building?”
“Thatwe’rebuilding,” I snapped, but his words rang out in my mind in an echo, and I knew they would haunt me for a long while after this conversation.
