Page 65 of The Coveted
His eyes darkened. “I’ve treated you just fine, all things considered. Someone else in my position would’ve had you hanged the moment he found you. You live in luxury. I don’t think you can even fathom the jealousy of everyone in the castle once they discover my plans for you,” he spat. “Every action I have taken has been justified and of equal proportion to your treatment ofme.”
I gritted my teeth, looking away. He pulled his hand away from mine, hesitating for a moment as something flashed in his energy, nearly imperceptible. It was similar to what I saw lurking there when he killed the man who assaulted his wife. It was something… vulnerable, or evenwitch.
“You don’t like me very much, clearly,” he said, which almost made me snort with laughter. “And maybe part of that was my own doing. But everything is different now. You’ll see,” he repeated. His new favorite phrase.
I looked back to him, just in time for him to straighten and stalk out of the room, the door slamming behind him.
I pulled my knees to my chest, sighing in relief as Lucius’s dark energy left the room as he did. We were running out of time, and I would sooner die than be his Queen.
I made sure the gallery was empty when I arrived, slowly making my way to the so-calledHeretic Room. The way the statues came to life under my gaze never failed to send shivers across my skin. My eyes welled with emotion and a great longing. I moved to the artifact case at the far end of the room by the tall glass panel windows facing the gardens. The afternoon sunlight was warm on my skin, collecting in the red hues of my matching corset-style, fitted top and loose skirt that flowed around my ankles. The castle was just starting to come alive again; I had caught glimpses of many of the elites roaming the halls and out in the gardens on my way to the gallery. They had eyed me with lingering curiosity as usual, though I wasn’t sure if anyone knew yet that I’d been at the center of the mysterious mayhem from the night of the ball. Apparently, my ailment had caused all manner of technical difficulties and strange goings on, from a magickal power outage to unnatural weather patterns, to even black water coming through the plumbing. But, just like anything else that happened under the court’s nose, it was ignored or drugged away with power and elixir.
I winced, remembering the horror of Lucius’s pollution of my magick as I looked down to the stolen artifacts, really inspecting each of them for the first time. There weren’t any placards or explanations, and each was haphazardly placed on a thin white cloth inside the glass casing. There was a black bowl with the moon phases painted in gold just below the outer rim, a stunning ruby pendent whose magick awakened beneath my fingers pressed up against the glass, a quartz instrument that was long and pointed, a dagger engraved with symbols that felt terribly ancient and powerful, and what appeared to be a gold-encrusted, thick brown book of spells and rituals—as sacred and well-preserved as any holy book or seminal text. The swell of immense longing rose in this place, like the plea of great magick sentenced to die and rot away.
A shift in the energy directed my gaze out to the gardens, where Taryn now stood staring at me, her hands clenched at her sides. I could nearly sense her spitting red aura from here, as she craned her head to look behind me. I quickly turned, gasping at the sight of the sculptures. They were sobbing, pain racking through them that I could feel pressing against my own body like a weight. A woman clutched her child, and a man seemed to be cursing something silently, his stone figure shaking as his lips moved animatedly.
I hurried out of the room as the bodies reached toward me, pushing open the wooden door to the gardens. I glanced around just in time to see Taryn storming away to a cove of blossoming red trees.
I teleported, and in a blur of motion we were suddenly face to face. Her green eyes widened as she took a step back, her long, dark waves of hair whipping around her. I could feel the heat of her anger rolling off of her body in waves, blooming electricity in the air between us.
“Do youhaveto do that?” she flustered.
I crossed my arms. “We need to have this talk, and you’ve been avoiding me.” I begged her with my eyes not to run. “I think I know what you saw, now. Before the ball. You saw your real parents and home, before you were taken to the castle.”
Taryn raised a finger, her face contorted with rage. “As if you didn’t already know what I saw.” She straightened her back. “You’re so—soarrogant. Like you knew what this would do to me. And you never worried for one second that I’d go to the King. You just carried on like nothing had happened.”
“I wouldn’t say I wasn’t worried,” I said, parsing through her words. It was more like I’d been heavily distracted by balls, sex parties, and Lucius’s reign of terror. “Taryn, I know it’s a lot, and I’m sorry, I never meant—”
“And there’s this power, growing inside me like a cancer. I’ve never had a talent for magick, and I’ve never wanted it. Take it back,” she hissed, and her aura flashed bright white once more, just like the servants. They were all connected to me, and apparently now so was Taryn. We all strengthened each other by means I had yet to understand. It must’ve been similar to how Lucius fortified his loyal subjects with dark power.
I shook my head. “Why haven’t you gone to the King if you’re so angry with me?”
She hesitated, her lip twitching. “Because he would have killed us both, for starters.” She looked away, her energy cooling slightly. “I just want you to change me back. I’m sure you could wipe my memory or something, since you’re just so damn powerful.I don’t want it,” she repeated, her eyes faraway and fearful.
I reached out for her, but no sooner had my fingers brushed her arm when a voice sounded behind me.
“I hope you’re not fighting over me,” Sebastian said, palpable unease simmering just below the surface of his dimpled smile. He wore his usual baby blue color, bringing out the blue in his eyes and accentuating the cool blond tone of his floppy hair.
“We’re not,” Taryn snapped.
Sebastian’s face fell like a wounded puppy, and I had to bite back a smile. I could always count on Taryn to take people, usually men, down a peg. And Sebastian’s timing was as horrible as always. I wasn’t even close to convincing Taryn ofanything.
“Áine, I just wanted to, um, apologize,” he said, unbothered by Taryn’s presence for this awkward display. He scratched his head, not-so-covertly giving me a once-over. “My memory is a bit hazy, but I know that you left and I—well—ended up with…” He glanced at Taryn, something imperceptible passing between them as he cleared his throat. “You can really get lost in that place. But I am sorry if I caused any hurt feelings.”
I shook my head. “It’s really okay. No hurt feelings.”
“None?” he asked, his voice a slightly higher pitch as he searched my eyes. He was clearly disappointed by the notion.
Oh, dear. I wasn’t sure if Taryn coughed or laughed, but I assumed the latter. She shook her head at me and then gave Sebastian a pitying smile. “Not everyone can be wooed by your charms, Sebastian. But hey, we had fun, didn’t we?”
He frowned and then blushed. “I—”
“I think I can answer why Áine can’t bewooed,” a sinister voice spat, and just like that our little gathering went from awkward to awful. Nathaniel reached us, the dark, sour energy of Lucius now swirling around our huddle like a cyclone.
Taryn groaned. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
He straightened and smoothed down his black uniform. “Let me guess, it didn’t work out between the two of you?” He gestured between Sebastian and me.
Sebastian raised a brow, oblivious to the undertones of this current tension. It was reassuring that Taryn was shooting daggers at Nathaniel now rather than at me. I wasn’t sure how far he was going to take this tirade, and I also wasn’t sure if the moratorium on my use of power had been lifted yet by Lucius’s new plans, which left me in a precarious position to defend myself against Nathaniel’s predictable next words.
