Page 32 of The Coveted
“Yes, my mother too, just as many of the older lords did, in the wars. That’s why the nobility skews so young.” He shrugged. “The Kingdom had to clear some of the old to make way for the new. We live in a much freer and more accepting society now. The older generation held us back.”
I drew my brows close, weighing his words. It seemed a strange reaction to his parents’ deaths, to say the least. He barely even glanced at the canvas as he moved a pencil across its blank space. A woman’s figure began to take shape, and with it an energy that felt familiar.
“They’d begun to behave more like humans than witches, in my opinion. With their rules and traditions. But the Divine chose Lucius and his vision, so now we are truly free. He is a fair and just king,” he said, looking over at me as his hand halted. It sounded like he was trying to convince me of something.
All of these lies stirred my anger, but I had to quell it. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about your history yet, but I’m eager to learn.” And that was the truth, at least.
“History is quite boring. I’d rather look to the future,” he said with a smile. Mischief danced in his hazel blue eyes.
My gaze was drawn to the windows overlooking the gardens again. My breath hitched as I noticed the view had shifted to reveal a completely different picture, as if the glass was now opaque like a television screen. The scene was the throne room, the night I drank elixir. It was a vision of me, staring up at the high ceiling where nude faeries danced and spun in spirals. The chandeliers’ light reflected in my green eyes, and my skin glowed. My copper hair cascaded around my chest, and my deep, red dress swayed. My right leg was exposed by the tall slit, and the fabric curved around my chest in flattering ways. What surprised me most, however, was the look of pure bliss in my eyes, an emotion I’d felt in its unadulterated form only a handful of times since my mothers passed. There was always a darkness lurking, quick to dampen any semblance of childlike joy. The raw happiness made me look like a completely different person.
I turned back to where Sebastian stood at the easel, and I blushed at the intense look in his eyes as he watched my reaction. “You’re painting me.”
“Yes. Is that all right?” His energy danced around me in alluring shades of pink, and it was, admittedly, very sweet.
I nodded, stunned by this gorgeous display of raw magick. Curiously, none of it was tinged with Lucius’s evil. The elite’s gifts were still connected to what their King sought to destroy—the true and natural sense of divinity and connection. If only they knew.
“Could I try?” I heard myself ask tentatively.
I’d wanted to remain cool and collected, closed off to Sebastian, the ladies, and nearly everyone else in the castle. But there was something inside me that yearned to connect, despite all of my anger and distrust. Maybe my path wasn’t to burn something else to the ground, to destroy just as Lucius had—maybe my way was through creation. This yearning burgeoned inside me, and I knew my power agreed. My mothers taught me that the way to salvation was not through vengeance, and this was a truth I struggled with each day. Especially as I learned even more of the Kingdom’s cruelty and imperialism.
“Of course,” he said, gesturing to the materials on the table in front of us. “Take your pick.”
I hesitated, but I remembered that art was a frequency just as anything else in my power. I just had to tap into it. I closed my eyes for a moment, digging past my usual channels of defense, aggression, or control, into a stream more intangible and wilder. Images flitted across my mind’s eye of humans and witches creating things with their hands, transforming the inspiration of their psyches into words, shapes, colors, and sounds. It was like they were reaching into a collective higher power not unlike my own, all of their art connected and consumed by the pull of the same current. A great pool of desires, experiences, and emotions. It was the exact same unity my magick held, where possibilities were limitless…
I picked up a brush, guided by intuition and expertise that was not my own. It was of those who came before me—those who held this talent inside themselves. I was merely borrowing. Soon I was painting on the canvas. My hands moved with a life of their own, commanding colors and shapes in a frenzy of channeling. I lost myself just as I did in battle, where instead of using magick, I became Magick itself—a container for that which was greater than me.
I was vaguely aware of Sebastian’s voice as I moved. “You have the gift too. Why didn’t you say?”
“Because I didn’t know,” I answered barely above a whisper just as a presence pulled me from my trance and back into myself.
“Whatever do we have here?”
A chill moved down my spine. The brush in my hand clattered to the floor. As I snapped out of my daze, I noticed several things at once. While one window still showed me gazing up in the throne room, another revealed a memory of my mothers, laughing in the tall grass of our Northern Irish village. I’d never painted anything before in my life, yet somehow my beginning brushstrokes were coming together into a soft approximation of that scene. Sebastian’s was even more impressive, his unfinished work already alight with an energy that sparked the same joy I felt in that moment, if only just a glimmer.
“My King,” Sebastian greeted with a bow.
It took every ounce of my strength to do the same. Lucius was dressed in his usual elegant black and gold, his light blue eyes eerily piercing. His golden crown rested perfectly on the center of his loose black curls.
“Who are they?” Sebastian wondered about my painting, unbothered by Lucius’s sudden presence. I recalled with disgust that they had apparentlybeen togetherbefore.
Ew. Ew. Ew, times a million.
“I don’t know,” I said quickly. “Just something that came to mind.”
“I’m glad you’ve been practicing your bow,” Lucius, said, stepping closer and bringing his sickly, curdled energy with him. “You’ll need it for tonight.”
“Oh, you were serious about that?” I muttered before I could stop myself. I was less than thrilled for my public humiliation session. Sebastian shot me a questioning look.
The King’s laugh actually seemed genuine, but it wouldn’t have been complete without its hard, mean edge. “See, Sebastian? I told you she wasspirited.Daelon sure seemed to think so, at least.”
He, yet again, wanted to get a rise out of me. I stared at him blankly instead, contorting my lips into a demure smile. As he approached, my section of the images in the windows snuffed out like an extinguished candle. I glanced down at the beginnings of my painting, gasping as the energy of nostalgia, innocence, and maternal love began to muddle and darken. I knew all three of us could feel the shift, and the Parable of the Coveter and the Painter rose to the forefront of my mind.
As Sebastian looked to the windows, to my painting, and then to me, Lucius’s gaze never faltered from mine. Within this one brief moment of clarity, worlds collided. My intuition had never been stronger as both men looked to me and then each other, and I knew that for just three short seconds, we were all thinking the exact same thing. Something that would never and could never be said aloud.
And thus, I was unsurprised when Lucius said, “Áine, could I have a word?” and underneath his pleasantries was raw paranoia and rage, covering up even the faintest appearance of fear.
For he, Lucius the All-Powerful, was just like the coveter. The man who wanted someone else’s power so much that he destroyed an entire realm for it. However, even as he peeled it from her cold, lifeless body, the magick was never his to wield, so it shriveled and changed until it became something entirely other than what he first coveted. He was left all alone in a barren and lifeless realm.
