Page 58 of The Coveted
After what felt like an eternity, I was laid on a cloud of plush bedding, where I writhed in pain and clutched at the sheets. Someone cried out, and it took me a long while to realize it was me. I felt a weight on my arm, soft touches on my skin, and when I opened my eyes, I was, again, somewhere else, and Daelon wasn’t with me.
I was in the clearing in the dark, barren forest, where a stone altar shone with a blackened beam of power. I could see underneath visual reality, where a layer of energy vibrated and moved through every inch of the material.
“It seems we’re connected somehow, for the time being,” a deep voice boomed, and I watched as a figure with black hair and a golden crown approached the altar.Lucius. He carried what looked like a tan and purple urn. The energy that fluttered around the vase was dark and potent like his, but to a much lesser degree. I saw its power breathe in and out like a plume of darkened purplish smoke.
Suddenly the clearing came to life, fire erupting in a circle around the perimeter. Lucius was casting a spell, and I knew that it was as unnatural and destructive as whatever spell was cast at this altar many years before. This place was rich with a suffering that cut deep into my heart, like a theatre of torture, genocide, and apocalyptic thirst for ultimate dominion.
“This will help us,” Lucius said, and I knew he was speaking to me. “Helpyou.”
I couldn’t respond, as I wasn’t in the astrals or in the physical. I wasn’t sure where I was, actually. It was like a vision or a dream, or maybe a hallucination. I was just thankful I couldn’t feel the burning sickness of his power working its way out of my insides anymore.
The hallucination grew distorted now as a great swell of power rose up at Lucius’s direction, like a haze of pitch black—as dark as a sky without stars. The altar shook under the weight of the urn, and soon it tipped over and spilled out soot, similar to what I’d thrown up earlier.
I strained to see through the dark static of power, my vision growing weak from the effort and the magick that pulsed through the air. Thunder crashed against my eardrums, and a piercing scream sent dread to my core. The bright yellow, nearly full moon illuminated a figure taking shape from the ash as it rose and swirled, and in a pang of horror I realized that the ash had been witch remains.
Lucius was raising someone from the dead. Someone who shouldn’t be here. Someone who didn’t deserve to be back in the witch realm—oranyrealm. He was breaking one of the most sacred truths of all of existence, and I could only imagine what this meant for the fabric of the dimensions that already hung in precarious balance.
We have to stop him!I screamed into the void, but was met with silence. There was nothing I could do, the figure becoming more and more witch-like as Lucius channeled. I was forced to watch as his face contorted under the weight of his cosmic undoing, his raised hands shaking with magickal release. He cried out in an unearthly bellow, forcing life into the corpse of a woman with slightly wrinkled, dark brown skin and long braids that hung off the sides of the altar. She wore a long, plain black dress.
I screamed and screamed inside my own mind, praying to any god or goddess who would listen to stop him. But when her chest rose, I could feel a crack grow in the structure of the realm, and I knew that there was no coming back from Lucius’s unbridled recklessness.
My consciousness was thrown back into Daelon’s bed, where I still clutched his comforter in my fists. I had to force myself to unclench my jaw. Tears escaped my eyes unchecked.
“It’s all wrong. We’ve failed.I’vefailed. He’s going to drag us all down with him,” I hissed in horror, the words tumbling out of me like a rockslide.
Daelon held me close, his chest to my back as he traced circles onto my arm. “You’re just hallucinating again, sweet girl. It’s okay. You’re safe. We haven’t failed.”
The nausea was back and strong, and when I lurched forward all I threw up was a cloud of pure black magick into the air. Too weak to do much else, I just sunk back down in Daelon’s arms. “No, I’m not hallucinating. Isawhim. In the clearing with the altar… he raised a woman from the dead.”
“What altar? Who was the woman? Áine, he can’t raise people from the dead. It’s impossible.”
“He has an entire realm under his control! Everything about him is impossible and unnatural. But I saw it… I felt it. It’s tearing a hole in the realm, just like Seraphina told me.” My voice shook with a sudden coldness.
“Let’s get you under the covers,” Daelon coaxed.
Why wasn’t he listening to me?God, I was freezing. All I could do was submit as he covered my shaking body. It felt like ice was trapped in my lungs and heart, pumping the cold throughout my veins.
“Áine, I’m—I’m really worried about you,” he whispered into my hair. “You’re so pale. I’ve never seen anyone this sick before.”
I turned to face him, pressing my cheek into his chest as he wrapped his arms around my shivering body. He was warm, but not nearly warm enough. This couldn’t be how it ended. No. I would survive this. I had to.
“Okay, hold on,” Daelon whispered, pulling back from me. The look on my face must’ve been pitiful as he pulled his body heat away from me. “It’ll just take a second,” he murmured, his features contorting with pain.
I nodded, my teeth chattering violently as I watched him undress down to his boxers. I begged my power to warm me, but it was cold and silent like an extinguished fire. Everything about me was weak, my body and limbs as heavy as lead.
Daelon crawled back in bed with me and pulled me against him. He felt so much warmer now, and I sighed into his skin as he held me tightly. “Better?”
All I could do was nod.
“I wasn’t supposed to do that,” I whispered after a few long minutes of silence. “He said he would kill me if I didn’t. But now I’m worried it’s going to kill me anyway.”
I was also worried that I would’ve done it without the threat—that there was a part of me, deep down under layers of denial, that yearned for that indescribable high. For power that was immutable. An end to all suffering. And it was a part of myself that I feared more than anything else in this world.
“It’s not going to kill you,” Daelon snapped, his tone sharp enough to chase the thought away before it took root. “I just don’t understand what he was thinking. He’s up to something—something horrible, and something involving you—and it frightens me.”
“That makes two of us. He’s actually being… accommodating toward me. Treating me like some kind of equal, or at least a potential equal. Even if he doesn’t actually believe it. He wants to ruin my power with his own,” I said, feeling my energy continue to drain as I worked through the last twenty-four hours’ events. It was… a lot. “I—” I trailed off, giving up and wiggling as close to Daelon as I could possibly get.
“Shhh. Just rest. It’s okay. I feel your power dimming,” he said quietly. “It’s never been so dark.”
