Olivia’s emerald-green eyes were wide and glossy as her gaze moved from his bare chest up to his face.
“Oh, Jonas,” she whispered. “Timotheus was right.”
“What is this mark on me?”
She drew in a shaky breath, then closed her eyes with forced calmness. She raised her chin slightly and looked him directly in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He was about to say “For what?” when the image of Olivia blurred and darkened at the edges.
Jonas didn’t remember falling, but he felt the rough floor against his face for a brief moment before unconsciousness claimed him.
CHAPTER 7
LUCIA
THE SANCTUARY
Before Timotheus’s large and shining image vanished from the tower, he asked Mia to accompany Lucia inside. While all other immortals kneeled before her, their heads bowed, she nervously followed the Watcher to the base of the elder’s residence. A door in the surface of the tower, invisible to her until she was only an arm’s reach away, opened before her.
The tower itself was fifty paces in circumference and bare of any furnishings on the ground floor. Bare of anything except smooth white walls and a mirrored floor that matched the ground outside. She followed Mia into a room so small that she knew she could nearly touch each wall if she stretched her arms out to either side of her. Lucia eyed the opaque crystal doors uneasily as they slid shut.
“Can you speak now?” Lucia ventured. “Or are you still under Timotheus’s spell?”
“I can speak,” Mia said, her voice hushed. “And in the short time we have together, I must urge you to be careful.”
Lucia searched the immortal’s face, frowning at her troubled tone. “What do you mean?”
“We needed the prophecy to be true, to be proven, and you’ve finally arrived. Yet I now worry that what happened to Melenia, whatever Timotheus did to her, the same could happen to you. Be careful with him. No matter what he might tell us, we no longer trust him.”
Lucia grappled to find the words to speak, to ease Mia’s mind that Timotheus didn’t harm Melenia, that the elder had chosen her own fate by being greedy, malicious, and bloodthirsty, but the crystal doors slid open before she could say anything at all.
They were no longer on the ground floor. Lucia stepped past the doors into another white room, this one easily the size of all her palace chambers combined. From the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the room, Lucia could see the entire city—the mirrored square, the intricate maze of crystal buildings, and the rolling green hills beyond the gates.
Lucia turned only to see the barest glimpse of the girl before the doors shut behind her. She rushed back to them, pressing her hands against the smooth surface and trying to pry the doors open again.
“How did you get here, Lucia?”
Timotheus’s voice made her freeze in place before she slowly turned to face him. Across the room—and no longer a flat, two-dimensional projected image—stood the last immortal elder.
She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved to be in his presence or awed by the magic she’d witnessed today. “I’m sure you’re surprised to see me here, but—”
Timotheus raised a glowing hand and, flicking his wrist to his right, sent her flying sideways with great speed. She hit the nearest wall, hard. Though her feet were now firmly on the floor, she found that she was stuck there, an invisible force pressing her up against it.
Timotheus then raised his hand again, his eyes narrowed to slits, and her feet left the ground. Her throat constricted, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
“I don’t know what dark magic you used to travel here,” Timotheus growled, “but did you honestly think you could just stroll into my city and murder me? That I wouldn’t try to defend myself? You’re more of a fool than I already thought you were.”
“N-no!” Lucia struggled against the invisible choke hold he’d trapped her in. “That’s . . . not . . . why . . .” She tried to get the words out, to explain herself, but she didn’t have the breath to speak.
His expression held no kindness at all. “You already made your plans for me very clear in your dreams. Still you know nothing, child. You would rather believe a monster’s rant than your own eyes and ears. And now you’ve put me in quite a predicament. My fellow immortals believe you to be the salvation for which they’ve waited a thousand years. Little do they know you’re nothing but a disappointment.”
With the shreds of strength she still possessed, Lucia summoned her own magic. Clenching her fists, she conjured fire, the blazes jumping high from both of her hands as she glared at the man who’d just thrown her around like a rag doll. Remembering Alexius’s most important lessons, she placed all her focus on absorbing rather than resisting Timotheus’s magic. With a mighty heave, she inhaled the air magic that held her to the wall, and as the grip on her throat began to loosen, she found that stealing this immortal’s magic was nearly as easy as smelling a fragrant rose from the Auranian palace courtyard.