Page 39 of The Coveted
A crack in the earth expanded, water bubbling up from underneath to form a swiftly flowing stream. Flowers sprouted and bloomed, each more mesmerizing and perfect than the last. Tall trees shot up all around us, ripping through the ground in an eruption of movement.
“Infinite manifestation,” Amos murmured.
My cheeks hurt from smiling so broadly. I felt like a kid in a lucid dream who just learned they could fly. I guessed I could do that, too. “And it’s like this everywhere in the astrals?”
Amos shook his head. “You must give up your preconceived notions of logic, consistency, and laws if you wish to comprehend the high realms. Rules are malleable and constantly in flux. You can build more solid structures that cannot be so easily changed, just as you can in the witch realm, but it requires a great deal of power, time, and coordination.” He stared at me with urgency. “Many have lost themselves here, wholly forgetting their existence back in the physical. You must always stay vigilant and remember your ego. It will ground you and lead you home.”
I nodded. I could see why. This was no lucid dream. In fact, nothing had ever felt more real. I felt unbounded, unconstrained—like I was truly free for the first time in my existence. I shook my head. The people Lucius was torturing and murdering were very real, and so was their pain.
“A servant woman gave me some kind of key. She told me it would help me find the answers I needed in the Akashic Records, the place you said only I could travel to, where records of Lucius’s past are held. My mothers say you know how to get there.”
“Do I?” He wrinkled his forehead. “I’ve been searching and asking. Its name sounds so familiar, as if it’s written on a part of me that’s older than my body.”
I tried to be patient, but the whole speaking in profound riddles thing was feeling tired. Especially when so many lives were at stake. I sucked in a breath. “Maybe it’s here,” I said suddenly. “In the astrals.”
“Feel free to look for it. The Goddess was quite clear that you were the only witch who could travel there. If Celeste and Jane think I hold the map, I will work tirelessly day and night to uncover it.”
That sounded more like it. “Thank you.” I turned toward the babbling stream, its water a dark blue like the night sky. “Maybe I will look for it,” I murmured, but when I glanced back to Amos he was gone. Somehow his lack of so much as a goodbye didn’t bother me. I figured the tide of the great cosmic ocean had dragged him into their depths once more.
I laughed to myself, still mesmerized by the ethereal colors of pure creation.
Take me to the Akashic Records, I willed. I mean… it was worth a shot.
I teleported, but when the world came into focus, I was in a landscape of clouds. The ground beneath my feet was like white marble, and rolling white puffs of smoke, or maybe condensation, blew all around me. They glided across the land like ghosts. There was nothing but white above—an empty, bright sky. Or maybe the earth beneath me wasthe sky.
A black gate stood before me, several hundred feet tall. Beyond it lay nothing but more emptiness and clouds. It was so large that I could easily just walk through the gaps in the thick metal bars. So, I did.
And I was back to square one. Another meaningless gate stood before me, with more marble ground and billowing white mist beyond. I heard the message loud and clear. It would not be so easy.
It never was.
I sighed. At least I was finally in the astrals on my own accord, without any looming threats or enemies to fight.
Eiffel tower?I tried, and soon I stood before the distinctive iron structure. There were no tourists in sight, and the sky was dark. The tower shone golden light, and soon it sparkled and shimmered as it did every five minutes on the hour after nightfall.
When my human friends and I studied abroad here, I would come and stare at the Eiffel tower every night that I could, sometimes for hours on end. Each time it sparkled, I felt it light up something missing inside of me. A hole. A deep, dark pit.
As much as I’d denied it back then, I missed my power more than anything. My emptiness was a yearning for a home I’d never seen. Now that I had seen it, I was consumed by a different kind of yearning—a yearning that had transformed into an all-consuming need for balance and restoration, like the Universe itself had filled the pit inside my soul. My mothers filled it. Daelon and Amos, the woman who gave me a key, Seraphina, Taryn, the people in white—my coven—all flooded that space. As did the land—all land—and all witches who’d come before and all witches who lived and breathed. Everything. I was so full and whole now that I barely recognized who I had been in the human realm, purposeless and lost, trying desperately to convince myself that it had beenenough.
The landscape shifted as my power came alive, pouring out into the astrals like it was merely filling a container. I was in New York City. I was in the castle gardens, in front of the Queen’s cherry blossom tree. I was up amongst the cosmos, where I had never heard such deafening silence. It reminded me that sometimes nothingness was a great comfort. I was sitting on the branch of an old tree, its energy eclipsing with my own until I couldn’t tell where it began and I ended.
I was in the sand, before the Atlantic. Then the Mediterranean. The Baltic, the Pacific, the Nameless and the Formless. I was in every place, all at once, and I realized that every place was also inside of me.
I was Áine, the witch who lived among humans, who was madly in love, and who was still grieving the loss of her mothers. I was also Áine, the Divine’s gift to the world, keeper and protector of all that was natural, and the final hope for all realms.
The next couple of days dragged by without Daelon. I spent more time with Lucius’s favorites among the elite, so far unable to detect any energy that indicated disloyalty. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I was forced to implicate someone who was innocent. I still didn’t think the nobility were entirely free of blame in this whole cosmic clusterfuck, but I was coming around to Daelon’s point about them being more ignorant than malicious.
Taryn and I grew closer, even though she still struggled to understand who I was or why she was drawn to me. I spent more time with Sebastian in the gallery, dodging his attempts to seduce me. I could lean on the excuse that I was recovering from a brutal breakup only so much longer. Painting was cathartic, at least—a relaxing break from the intensity of court. Lucius watched me like a hawk, as did Nathaniel, but so far, my determination to keep a low profile had been successful.
“Let’s go, Áine,” Taryn whined, launching up from the red couch by the tall windows of the gallery. “I want to get in and out of there before Christine shows up.”
Sebastian eyed her wearily but set down his paint brush, then turned to me. “Here, I want you to have this now that it’s finished,” he said. He took the painting of me in the throne room from the easel and placed it in my palms. His thumb brushed against mine.
The painting’s energy was intoxicating, like that moment of pleasure and awe emanated from his masterful brushstrokes. I smiled genuinely, drawing out his own dimpled grin. “Thank you.”
I’d scrapped the painting of my mothers after Lucius polluted its energy with his evil vibes. Now I was painting the field from the astrals, where a bright yellow, ringed planet hovered in the deep blue sky, and the grass was an unearthly green. I realized halfway through that trying to capture the scene in this realm was futile.
“Um, weird,” Taryn muttered, glancing at my work.
