The Discovered

by Maggie Sunseri

I quickly backtracked, scrambling toward the ocean where the sand was more stable. I whipped my head around to look right and left as I went but saw no one. Fog began to roll over the sand, making it impossible to see very far in either direction. I stood with my back to the waves, my feet rooted in the more solid, damp earth.

  The sky darkened, similar to the white candle when I learned someone was using magick against me. The blackness crept out over the blue until it had been completely obscured. I turned to the water, which had become murky and clouded. The waves grew violent and erratic.

  Face me. The voice boomed.

  I knew whom it belonged to, and I felt his ice-cold energy snake around me. His presence was suffocating, as if it ran contrary to my very existence. I resisted his command, my hands balling into fists at my side, but this turned his energy wild and volatile. A force reached out for me, compelling me to turn against my will.

  There he stood, again shrouded in black to conceal his true appearance.

  Coward.

  He hovered back in the mist at first. When he stepped forward, so did a crowd of fifteen or so others dressed in black uniform. They did not conceal their faces, which appeared human rather than the demon-like glamour their leader had used before. I couldn’t make out specific features, but most were men, relatively young and in good shape. They all stood just a step behind the man who hid from me—the man who reeked of death and decay.

  What do you want from me? I asked him telepathically.

  I took a step back and cried out when boiling hot water lapped at my heels. I jumped forward, casting back a glance at the water that was now waveless and bubbling. My power erratically danced all around, preparing for a fight.

  I want you to know your place, he answered.

  I glowered. I would not be intimidated. Fuck you.

  He was quiet for a moment, then burst into laughter. The others were silent, looking to him for a moment before joining in, sneering at me.

  “You are alone. Do you see anyone here on your side?” he said aloud, breaking the telepathy I had grown accustomed to in dream and meditative states.

  I realized it must be because the people backing him up couldn’t hear us speak to each other in that way. I stayed silent, reaching for the power that rose up within and around my body. I focused on everything opposite of his energy—on the natural, the calm, the bright, the good—and used it to fortify my energy field as Daelon had taught me. I needed to shield myself from potential attack.

  The group looked up at the sky, and my eyes followed. The blue had resurfaced and began to ripple out over the dark in a silent battle for supremacy. I looked back to the crowd and couldn’t help but feel the corners of my lips turn up at their confusion and shock. They looked to their leader for guidance on how to react.

  It didn’t seem like he was used to being challenged, and he dropped his shroud of darkness to reveal the devilish face beneath. His lips contorted into a snarl. I knew his festering skin and demonic features were merely a glamour, but I couldn’t deny it was effective in making my stomach drop. It was creepy as hell.

  The group looked less intimidating now that the sky was lighter, and I noticed their formation was asymmetric in an otherwise completely orderly layout. While they all stood behind the leader, the man closest to him on the left side stood a step above the rest. He had dirty blond hair and an angular nose. There was a gap on the leader’s right side.

  “Cute trick,” he snarled. “Is that the best you can do?”

  He bent down to touch the earth, and with a crack, the sand began to diverge and pour into the center of the separation. The crevice shot toward me, deepening as it went. I took a deep breath to release my fear, and I bent down to touch the earth as he had, my palms melding into the warm, damp sand.

  Halt, I spelled to the earth.

  The crevice stopped, sand still tumbling into the divide. I stared at my attacker over the valley, our eyes locking and something dangerous passing between us. His people were silent, averting their eyes as he took a step forward.

  “Do you see this?” he asked, gesturing to the space on his right. “Who do you think belongs here?”

  Surely, he didn’t mean me. Puzzled, the intensity of my gaze faltered. I wasn’t sure what game he was playing, but it felt sinister. It seemed his end goal was to shake my trust in my own judgement and conception of reality. He wanted me to feel weak and alone.

  Something about his dark energy held an emptiness, something thirsty and unnatural. Maybe he thought he could use my power for his own gain, somehow, like an energy vampire. Whatever he wanted, I knew it was evil. And if he was indeed the enemy, then there was no doubt he was connected to my mothers’ deaths. My anger rose from that cavernous wound, the tide of my power flooding in and threatening to consume us all.

  It was at this moment I realized I’d lost control of my protective barrier, and he used that as his opportunity.

  You’re unfocused, and you lack control. That makes you easy to manipulate, little witch.

  The use of Daelon’s pet name drove me over the edge, and my power went spinning in every direction at the heat of my rage. I pushed a burst of whatever I could grab onto out at the formation, my intent murky but seething. I yelled as it flowed through me, hot and volatile like a tropical storm.

  It sent all but the faux devil flying backward into the sand. He smiled, revealing his pointy, jagged teeth.

  Hungry for round two, are we?

  With a flick of the wrist, he sent me levitating above the ground, where I thrashed around midair, struggling against his icy magick. Suddenly I couldn’t move, and I realized in a panic that I’d let him win with my lack of control over my emotions, yet again, just as Daelon had warned. I felt pressure on the sides of my neck, and soon I lost my ability to breathe.

  I bet it was better when Daelon did it, hmm?

  I watched as his people rose up beside him as my vision blurred. In that moment, I knew he reveled in my humiliation. In my pain. In my struggle. He wanted to show off to his followers that I meant nothing. That I was nothing.

  A new voice broke through my haze as the darkness descended. It’s just a dream, Áine.

  Daelon.

  My body went limp.

  Chapter 12

  Daelon’s voice pulled me back into his bedroom, where I lay in a cold sweat, my heartbeat deafening and erratic as it boomed in my ears. I sucked in air and then coughed, grasping the sheets. Dizzy and disoriented, the face of the devil was still imprinted in my mind’s eye.

  “Áine,” Daelon murmured, kissing my knuckles. “Come back. You’re safe now, little witch.”

  I pushed myself up, those words reminding me of the fury I had just felt throughout every inch of my being. “It wasn’t just a dream. It was real, on some level. I felt it all.”

  Upon waking from normal dreams, it was easy to tell I had been dreaming, regardless of how real they felt when I was inside them. But with some of these nightmares, reality seemed to follow me from here into the dreamscape. I remembered suddenly what the mystic said in the mysterious castle. I never really found the opportunity to tell Daelon about that experience since he’d been so angry about my solo venture outside the house. Plus, it was just too strange to put into words.

  “What’s astral projection?” I asked.

  Daelon looked pensive as he turned on the bedside lamp and pulled me into his lap, running his hands through my hair. “It’s when your consciousness leaves your physical body and travels elsewhere. It’s quite difficult to do, and it can be dangerous.” he explained. “Where did you hear of it?”

  “When I escaped to the woods to meditate, I somehow got pulled from my ocean and into this castle. It was a place I’d seen before in my nightmares. There was this old man who seemed to sense I was there but couldn’t see me, and he said I was astral projecting. I had to find my way back to my body,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Daelon asked, his voice terse.


  I paused. What was with that tone? “You were so mad at me for going off on my own. I didn’t really get a chance to… and I didn’t think it was that important. I mean it was a medieval castle for god’s sake, so I thought it was some sort of weird metaphor from my subconscious.” I paused to look up at Daelon’s face, which was contorted with tension but quickly went blank and detached under my gaze. “Was it a real place then?”

  “What happened tonight?” he asked, ignoring my question.

  “I was on the same beach as before when I saw my mothers, but this time the man who pretends to be the Devil was there. He brought others, too—to intimidate me and to amplify the feeling that I was on my own. I was trying not to provoke him like last time and just work on my defensive magick, but he kept egging me on and… well… he attacked me.”

  Daelon stopped moving his fingers through my hair, and I felt him stiffen.

  “I lost control of my focus because I got so angry,” I admitted, feeling like I’d failed. It turned out I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was. “He got the upper-hand and…” I trailed off. I knew Daelon would take it hard.

  “And what Áine?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  I could nearly feel Daelon’s anger through his shielded aura. “He just… took control of me. He pulled a Darth Vader,” I mumbled, knowing he wouldn’t understand the reference.

  “Explain. Now.”

  I sighed. “Just some levitation and more asphyxiation. His favorite move, I guess,” I said quietly, bracing myself.

  Daelon took a sharp intake of breath. He carefully moved me off his lap and climbed out of the bed. His muscles flexed as he balled his fists at his side, his back to me. He walked to the far wall and in one swift motion, punched a hole right through it.

  “Kind of a Chad move,” I said, laughing nervously.

  “This isn’t something to joke about, Áine,” he hissed.

  Okay, now he was starting to genuinely piss me off. “Listen, I’m the one who keeps getting fucking attacked, so I don’t know why you’re taking out your anger on me… or that wall, actually… instead of explaining what the hell is going on,” I yelled, my voice faltering. I meant to sound a lot harsher than I actually did, with all of my frustration and confusion getting the better of me. Instead, I felt hot tears well up in my eyes.

  Daelon’s eyes softened, and he uncurled his fists.

  “It feels like I’m fighting a battle while wearing a blindfold,” I said, struggling to rein in the brimming tears. “Which may excite you, but they aren’t very practical for outside the bedroom,” I said, unable to stop myself.

  Daelon rolled his eyes, but I could tell a smile played at his lips. He walked back toward me, and I met him halfway to sit on the edge of the bed. I reached out for his right hand, which was red and bruised. I brought it to my lips as I looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the people who hurt you, and I want to destroy them.” He looked away for a beat. “I feel like I’m failing you.”

  “You’re not failing me. But I do need to know more.”

  He sat down on the bed next to me, burying his head in his hands. “Okay.”

  My heart rate picked up.

  “I think you’re right about the astral projection. It can be triggered unintentionally when you’re in an altered state of consciousness, such as while sleeping or in a deep meditation. It’s rare for most people, but others have a natural gift for traveling between dimensions. Or they just hold a lot of power or trained intensively for a long time to be able to. I think this last time though, you probably were summoned into the astral realm while you slept by Lucius, the man who has been attacking you.”

  Okay, so we finally have a name. We were making progress.

  “Who is he? Why is he so powerful?”

  “There are some things I wish I could tell you, but I literally, physically, cannot. I know how frustrating that must be. I’m trying my best, but there are magickal barriers at play,” he said wearily, staring forward. He lowered his voice. “I don’t know why he’s so powerful, but he sees you as a threat. He’s the enemy, Áine.”

  I sucked in a breath. The enemy. Lucius. I mulled over Daelon’s words, grateful to finally receive some of the truth but annoyed with these supposed magickal barriers.

  “The astral realm? Is it like the witch realm?” I asked.

  “No. It’s not as solid. It’s much closer in makeup to Aradia than Aradia is to Earth, if that makes sense. It’s not somewhere you can get to in your physical body. It’s a realm of pure consciousness. You can see things that are based in physical reality, but you can also see things that aren’t—or at least, they don’t exist in the human or witch realms. Everything in the astral realm is influenced by energy, beliefs, and thoughts. It’s a tricky place, and there’s still so much we don’t know and can’t explain,” he said, struggling for the right words. My brain already hurt. “The astral realm’s rules are hard to understand because they are constantly in flux, to a much greater degree than the lower realms. You can travel in your astral form to the Eiffel tower, but you could also conceivably travel to the Christian conception of Hell or to a planet that someone else dreamed up.”

  “Right. That is very… confusing.” What did that mean for the things I’d seen? What did that mean for literally everything I thought I understood about the fabric of reality? Yep, my brain really did ache right now.

  “I know.”

  “So, you can’t tell me more about Lucius because you physically can’t? Or because you don’t want me to go on a warpath, like you originally said?”

  I stared at him, and he pursed his lips and moved off the bed again. He ran his hands through his hair. When he turned to face me again it looked like he was concentrating very hard on something.

  “Stop using his name, please,” he said. “It’s complicated. Insanely, indescribably complicated. It takes a lot of my own power to shield us from him.” His voice strained. I could see the effort written all over his tense features. I had no idea that protecting me required him to use his gift on a constant basis.

  “He knows when he’s being talked about?” I murmured, lowering my own voice. I hated seeing Daelon in pain.

  He nodded. “It’s a real possibility. That’s how powerful he is. I don’t lie to you, Áine. I did, and still do, worry about you finding out the whole truth about our enemies and your purpose. You saw how he used both your emotions and your lapse in focus against you tonight. It could’ve been much, much worse. But I also want you to have all the answers you need, when the time is right. I’ll help with that in any way I can. Above all, I want you to be prepared for everything you have to face once we leave here.”

  This was a lot to process. I had never seen Daelon this… out of control. And despite the guise of anger, I saw flashes of fear in his eyes. He stared at me for several seconds in silence, and I watched as his features hardened back into a more determined and guarded appearance.

  He moved closer to me. “I will not let anything happen to you.” He stroked my cheek, brushing his thumb over my lips before dropping his hand back to his side. “You’re already up, so let’s get to work.”

  Despite my exhaustion from poor sleep and astral battles, Daelon had me doing exercises all morning to work through my anger and keep learning defensive strategies. He hadn’t calmed down from earlier, and his intensity was overbearing, to say the least.

  “Again, Áine. I feel how erratic your power still is. What if he were to kill me?”

  “Stop, Daelon,” I spat, opening my eyes. The fire beside us roared, the flames spitting and furious. “I don’t want to—”

  “You need to be prepared for the worst,” he insisted. “You need to learn to use your emotions constructively. Just think about the possibility and try to light this candle.”

  “I am not going to think about your death!”

  We carried on like this for a while. Daelon provoked me and then
asked me to channel my energy into far too simple of tasks. So far, I had scorched the carpet, exploded two apples, and sent Daelon across the room, which I had to admit, was mildly entertaining. He’d deserved it.

  However, I did see notable progress, in spite of his questionable methods. I was beginning to tap into my ocean of power quicker and more easily—to access different forces and frequencies without getting completely lost in my mind. I was detaching more and more from my impulses. I was uncovering my own methods for magick that worked with the source energy.

  I was learning how to separate my emotions from my magick so that I could finally stop closing myself off to the limitless possibilities at my fingertips. I contained so much, and my ego only got in the way. I was slowly but surely beginning to open up—to find the faith my mothers needed me to have in my purpose—the purpose I knew would save witches from the evil of this realm like Lucius and his companions.

  Lucius wanted to make me feel like I was alone, but in each burst of magick I felt my mothers, my people, and sometimes, I even felt everyone all at once. Daelon might have refused to tell me more about this enemy, but I could sense that Lucius’s powers were unnatural, cold, and lifeless. It was as though everything he had was stolen.

  It was he who was truly alone.

  “Daelon. I’m tired,” I said, after I was pretty sure I made it snow at least a foot.

  “I know, baby.” His eyes softened slightly. “But I have more planned.”

  “Damn this is a lot of snow,” Daelon muttered. He side-eyed me, an impressed smile on his lips. His hand was clasped in mine, which would’ve been endearing if he wasn’t practically dragging me along through the forest.

  I was thankful I had my black snow boots from last winter handy, as my magickal tantrum had snow up to my knees. I wore a chic red cape-like coat that Rena had talked me into, which she insisted gave me a ‘sexy, red-riding hood vibe.’ She was right.

  “I like this,” Daelon said, pulling at the fabric.