Page 72 of The Illuminated

But from the void came the light from a wavering lantern, held by an apparition whose hips swayed lightly as she moved. She was cloaked in azure—the kind of blue found in tropical waters or in the feathers of a bluebird—charged with the power to drive away an icy winter.

“Howdy,” the voice said. “Let’s get y’all someplace warm.”

Then the voice became a song—a song that had traveled across oceans, through valleys and up mountains—buoyed by melodies that swelled and contracted and harmonies that intertwined like the primordial burst of consciousness from which the Universe arose. It melted through ice, and it lit up the darkness of the void from within.

For only the hopeless may enter the land of Iciera.

Back in the void, there was nothing. But soon that nothingness expanded into voice, and it was deep and commanding, as mesmerizing as the delirious poison of a predator ensnaring its prey with paralysis. From still waters of a peaceful surrender, it arose…

Hello Áine, he said.I may not know where you are… yet. But you are marked by me. Forever. I am eternal, so I can wait as long as I need for my Queen to return. The longer it takes, the more lives will be lost.

There is already so much blood on your hands, and I have a feeling that by the time you give in, it will be enough to fill oceans. All because of your selfishness, your adolescent idealism and indignation.

You might think you are nothing like me, but you’re wrong. You are exactly like me. You would be nothing if I hadn’t taken the throne. You would be powerless, purposeless, and, well, boring. You owe your entire life to me. All of it. Even your childish love with my weak, corrupted brother.

You might think you know who I am and what I’ve done, but you have no idea. And you won’t ever, not until you taste the full brunt of power that courses through my blood—that which is stronger than all the conquered covens combined—and that strength cannot be denied. I built in one decade what the old ways hadn’t managed to do over centuries. I brought those savages into modernity, into true power and freedom from their silly superstitions and made-up gods that exist only in the dreamworld.

You are not the hero of this story. You wish to drag us all back down into the dark ages, where we had to beg for scraps from an uncaring, chaotic, unforgiving universe. In the world you could build with me, we would never feel pain. Never face death. Never lose anything or anyone ever again. I might even let you find a solution to the dungeons.

But you can’t accomplish any of your heretical dreams without me. Nothing you could ever do will be strong enough to face my armies, my cities, and my magick that will only continue to grow and expand. There is nothing I won’t do to grow stronger, even if it means I have to murder everyone you have ever known or loved.

I will torch the entire realm looking for you. And once I’m finished, I’ll move on to the next. Come back of your own accord, my lost lamb. And submit to your shepherd, your only true equal. Because without me, you will achieve nothing. The realm your traitorous mothers knew is dead and gone. You and I, together, is the only way to alter the future of Aradia.

Amos has already seen a vision of your ultimate submission. You will be crowned before me on bended knees. Daelon will be there to witness it, and I believe that will be the sweetest punishment for a betrayal that not even I had the imagination to conjure. Would you like to hear more of this vision? Because it ends with us in my bedroom, where I—

I awoke with a start. I was buried underneath thick blankets, my naked body sprawled out against what felt like a fur rug on hard flooring. A fireplace roared to my right. The smell of mouth-watering spices wafted in the air, and my stomach growled in response.

I swallowed. My brows drew together in momentary confusion before I sat up all too quickly. Spots swam in my vision, threatening to subdue me once more. But I blinked them away, looking around frantically.

The sight of another body beside me, his thick brown hair and rigid jawline peeking out beneath the pile of blankets, offered greater relief than I’d ever felt before. I lay back down and crawled closer to Daelon, touching his bare skin and feeling his warmth, hearing his heartbeat and his breathing, and watching the fluttering of his eyes.

“Daelon,” I said, lightly shaking him.

He opened his eyes, sleepily blinking before he regained his full consciousness. “Are we in the heavens?”

“You’re in Iciera, actually. But I like to think of it as my own little slice of heaven,” a husky female voice answered from another room. It was accented in a way I’d never heard in Aradia, similar to an American Southern drawl but sharper, crisper. “I had to undress you so you wouldn’t turn into popsicles in those frozen clothes. Figured you’d understand.”

I ignored the voice and the accompanying aura of warm, autumn colors. I knew we were safe. I knew we had made it.

“We’re alive,” I whispered.

“We’re alive,” he repeated back, and I didn’t think either of us had smiled so wide in our entire lives.

He pulled me to him, kissing my hair and then my forehead, my cheeks and then my collarbones and back up to my lips. I had never felt so warm, and I only grew warmer still as I melted into him, the love of my life, my partner in the revolution that had only just begun.