Page 54 of The Illuminated
“I can’t decide if this is horribly depressing or terribly boring.”
“I thought you didn’t have emotions,” I muttered, but he was right. I was unable to watch Daelon’s suffering any longer.
Lucius’s brows pulled together, something strange passing over his features. “I don’t.”
I didn’t have the energy to figure out whatever the hell was up with him, especially not after he tried to kill the love of my life. Plus, I had a sacred map to follow, and Lucius certainly wasn’t invited.
“Okay, then. Well, enjoy the afterlife,” I said to him.
His eyes widened in terror. “And where the hell are you going? You can’t leave me. We have to find our way back.”
“You work on that, and I’m gonna go do this way more important thing.” I stepped back, channeling the winds of travel to pull myself up to the higher realms.
The world began to shift, but like a startled toddler clinging to his mother, Lucius latched on to me at the last second.
We were cast out into an astral forest, the clouds above white and huge and far too close to the earth. They brushed up against the tops of the tall evergreens all around us.
“Get away from me!” I screamed at him.
Lucius straightened, his eyes darting all around before landing back on me. “Don’t speak to your King like that.”
I laughed, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I knew I looked nuts, which only made me laugh harder.
Lucius just crossed his arms and tapped his foot. “What is so funny?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“You! You’re sick, Lucius. Terminally. You’re literally dead, and you still think you have some kind of power over me. Overanyone.It’s insane. I mean, what are you going to do if I don’t listen? Kill me?” I laughed some more, and the action made me feel as light as the warm spring breeze of this ethereal forest.
“We. Are. Not. Dead,” Lucius said, clipped and slow like speaking to a child. “My power literally sustains the realm, and it lives on. I cannot be killed so easily. The dimensions are unstable, remember? We just need to find our way back through the cracks.”
“Oh,” I said dramatically. “So youdobelieve in that now? I thought that was silly heretic logic? Where the hellisyour resurrected witch, huh?” That was what tore the hole in the astrals in the first place.
He pursed his lips. “You’re being very, very loud. It’s grating to my ears.”
Then suddenly, he went white as a ghost—or whiter than a ghost, perhaps. His arms dropped to his sides as he straightened and seemed to adjust his gaze to something behind me.
I narrowed my eyes then turned to see a woman who looked like a goddess of winter walk toward us.Katherine.Her fair cheeks were rosy, her eyes a piercing blue. She moved her long black hair behind her shoulders.
“Now, now, Lucius. That’s no way to speak to your friends.”
“Friends?” we both scoffed.
“He basically just sexually assaulted me,” I spat. It felt good to finally be able to treat him like he deserved.
He rolled his eyes. “That’s more than a bit dramatic,” he said, exasperated. “I barely touched you. And you loved every second of it.”
“Because I thought you were my boyfriend, you arrogant perv!”
“Boyfriend,” he spat out like moldy fruit. “Are you a thirteen-year-old human child?”
“How did you even figure it out?”
“Daelon’s plaything number two saw you both leave the deranged psychic’s quarters. Which is how I know you weren’t just fucking, you were also colluding to—”
“Enough,” Katherine said, the authority of her voice sending us to silence. “You aren’t excited to see me?” she asked her son.
He peeled his eyes from mine. “No, I’m not happy to see my dead mother,” he replied, burying himself deeper into the role of the petulant toddler. “Why aren’t you off in eternal peace where I sent you?”
There it was. Luciusdidkill his own mother. And she still held out hope for him.
