Page 4 of The Coveted
She sighed. “Look, I’m going to help you, okay? Mostly because I owe someone a favor, but also because I know if I don’t, you’ll be dead by morning.”
“You can say his name,” I said quietly, turning back to her.
“Can I?” she laughed.
I wrestled with my magick, willing it to calm and still. It wasn’t like my power had done anything it had promised thus far. All it had done was lead me astray. Maybe keeping my head down for now was the best option, after all.
“Okay,” I said, and it took all my strength to say it. I didn’t want anything to do with any of this. It felt like I’d already failed—already let my mothers down, and maybe even something higher than them—the vast web of connection and purpose I could feel immersed in my magick. I was forced into a foreign realm all over again, but this time I was in the belly of the beast, living among my enemies.
“There’s someone that wants to meet you. But we have to be sneaky about it, yeah?”
I nodded, curiosity getting the better of me. There was nowhere to go that was lower than where I was right now. At least, I hoped.
“Let me grab you something to wear that isn’t so…human. Also, you need to eat something if you want Daelon to leave us alone.”
I took my first steps outside my chambers since I’d been betrayed, Taryn at my side. My stomach was finally rid of its emptiness, and I looked more like myself. We walked down a long corridor, its ceiling high and vaulted like a medieval church. The halls were lined with candles and bathed in a golden hue, just as I had seen them in my dreams and astral projections.
I had been too distraught to notice it before, but now that I was moving, I discerned even the slightest bit of hope in the pit of my stomach. It was like a tiny seed of wisdom, newly rooted, or a whispered word of welcome from someone I could not see.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“You look less like shit,” Taryn said.
I snorted. I was growing accustomed to her style of communication. “Thanks.”
She returned a hesitant smile.
She’d lent me a delicate, black blouse with sheer, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a corset-style front, paired with a long, emerald green skirt with golden patterns along its hem. It wasn’t really my style, but it seemed to help me blend in. I was beginning to understand this wasn’t a t-shirt and jeans kind of place. The attire was a rather strange blend of modern and classic, like perhaps what actors in an aristocratic period piece would wear if they just wanted to dress up in high fashion without necessarily being historically accurate.
“Why is everyone staring at me?” I whispered as a couple of women walked by dressed in what I would imagine socialites wore to Paris Fashion Week. Their gazes bored into my skull.
Taryn shrugged and made a face. “What makes you think they’re looking atyou? Besides, you look hot, so that would be why.”
I could tell she was trying to make me feel better, but the more people who stared at me as we moved through winding, maze-like halls, the less it helped.
“I don’t think keeping your head down is going to help as much as I’d hoped,” she muttered. “They know you’re different. These vultures can smell it on you.”
I swallowed, remembering the energy vampires who wanted to suck the magick right out of me. Daelon had once said that where he was from, it was power that was used as currency.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a man asked, halting us in our path. He stepped out of the shadows of a doorway, and I immediately recognized him as the man Daelon and I fought on the beach. It was Nathaniel, one of Lucius’s henchmen—or guard, as Taryn said. He’d witnessed a rather intimate embrace between Daelon and me and then fought with Daelon, and I couldn’t help but intervene. After he tried to syphon my power for a high, I sort of kicked his ass, which led him to declare thatour time was up. I understood now that he was the one who convinced Lucius it was time to bring Daelon and me back to the castle. So, Daelon knew the whole damn time exactly what was happening, which made my blood boil once more.
Nathaniel was dressed in a black uniform, and his energy was overbearing, desperate, and on high alert. It was imprinted heavily with Lucius’s putrid power. I shut it out of my field of perception before it brought me down to his level.
Now I wondered if the core of Daelon’s aura—the only person’s I couldn’t read—felt the same. The thought made me sick. But then why were the parts he showed me so pure? So intent on protecting me? I couldn’t make sense of it, and it made me distrust my gifts, my intuition, my judgement, and myself.
“Oh piss off,” Taryn said, loudly and confidently.
Nathaniel looked me up and down like the others had, his eyes beginning to burn with hunger. His sandy blond hair was shorter than it was just a week ago, and his features were strong and sharp. “How are you still alive?” he asked. His tone was both mean and genuine at the same time.
“Are you questioning our King’s decisions?” Taryn asked with faux surprise.
A door slammed in the distance, and I could faintly make out laughter from around a corner. I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to my chambers if my life depended on it. It was like a labyrinth of passageways, forking off in new directions at each end.
“You know I would never,” Nathaniel spat. “We both know that you, on the other hand, smell like a heretic.”
I could feel Taryn’s energy shift into something violent. “Sounds like more questioning of our divine ruler’s judgement to me.”
His lip curled like a rabid animal, glancing at me. “Lucius and Daelon are celebrating their reunion, I’ve heard. Probably with orgies.”
