mythean arcana 06 - master of fate (21 page)

Felix said nothing, so Aurora assumed he’d nodded. She’d forgotten how quiet he was with others. He wasn’t a big talker with her, but more so with her than with other people.

“How’s it going? Fix your mess yet?” Esha asked.

“Um, about that. I don’t think it’s my mess. Come on in.” She temporarily lowered the protection spell she’d placed on the door and gestured Esha and Warren inside. 

She went to the kitchen. Esha and Warren took a seat on her red couch and Felix leaned against the wall. Chairman Meow, Esha’s familiar, did a bad job of pretending to ignore Mouse. Aurora grabbed several beers from the fridge, handed them around, then took a seat in the armchair. “Could you conjure some doughnuts?” she asked her sister. “I’m starving.”

“Tapped out?” Esha asked as she waved her hand and a plate of frosted doughnuts appeared on the table.

She grabbed a pink one and shoved half of it into her mouth before saying, “Yeah. Used it all up frying a witch in 1664.”

“Oh, shit. What happened?” Esha asked.

“That portal is totally not mine. Maybe it started out as mine, but it’s been co-opted. The university can’t possibly throw me back in the aether for that, can they?”

“You’ll fix it, so it won’t be a question,” Esha said.

Aurora nodded and forced away the shiver of fear at the idea. She’d run before she’d let them put her back there.

“Tell me what’s happened,” Esha said.

Aurora told them the whole story of being sucked into the past. She glanced at Felix before she mentioned the Seer. He nodded his permission, so she continued, telling them of Felix’s torture and the Seer’s disappearance in 1705.

“The year you were imprisoned,” Warren said.

Of course he remembered. He had a vested interest, since his was the first soul she’d stolen. He hadn’t learned about her imprisonment and release until last year, however, and he’d been super pissed that she’d been “hiding” under his nose the whole time in a prison constructed by his colleagues. He wasn’t in the same department as the witch coven that had imprisoned her and had never revealed his soulless state to anyone. The witches had kept it a secret from everyone, though, for fear that another soulceress would try to rescue her. 

Warren and she had mended their bridge, though. Or… it was more like they’d constructed a bridge built of mutual love for Esha. If it made her happy, they’d get along.

“The year canna be a coincidence,” Felix said. 

“Unlikely,” Esha conceded.

“But I have no idea what the link is,” Aurora said. “I saw the Seer too, but didn’t recognize her like Felix did.”

“You were out of your mind crazy for a lot of the last half of the seventeenth century, though.” Esha grabbed another doughnut. “I mean, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs crazy.”

“Fair point.” A lot of that time was pretty hazy in her memory. “Have either of you ever heard of anyone like the Seer?”

“You don’t even have a name?” Esha asked.

“No,” Felix said. “In the late seventeenth century, she had a tower in the Alps that could negate a wulver’s power. It’s been destroyed, though.”

“That’s very rare. But still, without any more clues, it’ll be tough.”

“We think she might have three sisters,” Aurora said. “And one of them is called Amaris.”

Esha finished her beer and set it on the table. “We can ask around. Rather, Warren can ask around. People seem to like him.”

Unlike us.
Which didn’t bother Aurora a lick. It was only a bad thing when they needed help like this. Otherwise, Mytheans not liking her was pretty damned normal and she couldn’t be bothered to give a shit for anyone who couldn’t look past her species.

“I can go do that now.” Warren rose. “I’ll call you if I find out anything useful.”

“We should stay here until we have a plan,” Felix said. “The Seer hasn’t attacked my cabin before, but that does no’ mean she will no’ start. We’re protected here and close to information and a power source for you.”

Aurora nodded.

“I’ve got to go see someone,” Felix said. “You’ll be all right here?”

“More than. Esha and the Chairman will keep me company,” she said.

Felix nodded, then aetherwalked away.

“Any idea where he’s going?” Esha asked as she got up and helped herself to another beer from the fridge. She held up another and Aurora nodded.

“Thanks,” she said when Esha handed her the beer. “No idea where he’s headed. Maybe his brother? Is his brother still alive?”

“Malcolm? The warlock?”

“Yeah. Whatever happened to him? He helped us when we were in 1664.”

“He’s still alive, though I’ve no idea where he is. Left the university before I arrived. Scary motherfucker, though. All that power.” Esha shuddered, which was saying something, since there weren’t many Mytheans more powerful than a soulceress. “How’s it going with Felix? There’s some... tension there.”

Aurora stiffened. She’d never told Esha about Felix. But she was desperate for a second opinion. “We kind of have a history.”

Esha’s brows shot up. “Spill it. Now.”

“All right, all right. Chill.” She tried to start at the beginning, leaving out any sensitive details—like how his aversion to touch affected them in the bedroom, though she had a feeling Esha was able to extrapolate that fact. “So, now our souls are joined.”

“Yeeks. Well, that can’t last forever. Souls aren’t meant to dwell outside their original bodies. Not even parts of them.”

“I know.” But it felt so damn good. She should have broken the connection sooner, but she hadn’t been able to. She felt more complete when her soul was tied to his. She even thought that her desire to steal souls might have diminished. It felt too good to get rid of the connection, though she’d have to soon.

“So, Felix. You love him?” Esha asked.

Aurora gave her a death glare that could drop spaceships out of orbit. “No. Yes. I think so. But it doesn’t matter. It can never work.”

“Why?”

Aurora twisted her hands in her lap and bit her lip. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Yeah?”

Aurora swallowed hard and looked at the far wall, then sucked in a deep breath. “When you stabbed me with the soulceress dagger to free the souls I’d stolen, I don’t think it healed me. I never went back to normal. I still have this… craving. To steal souls. At least once a week over the past year, I’ve come so close to taking the souls of Mytheans I come across. In the pub. At the shop. Everywhere.”

Esha’s face whitened. “Are you serious?”

Aurora’s stomach pitched. She’d wanted her sister to tell her it was okay. She nodded.

Esha shoved a shaking hand through her hair. “Jesus, that’s bad. That’s so bad.”

“So you’ve never felt that?”

“No! And you shouldn’t either.”

“I didn’t. At least, not before I took Warren’s soul. Then it’s like I snapped. I could go over the edge at any time. I’ve almost taken Felix’s soul twice already.”

“Oh, gods, Aurora. I see what you mean. This is dangerous.”

“I know. And I don’t know how to fix it. It’s not like there’s therapy for this.”

Esha shook her head, her gaze sad. “We’ll find a way. I don’t know how, but we’ll have to.”

Aurora nodded, her eyes burning with tears. This was as bad as she’d thought. Maybe worse. 

Felix aetherwalked to the barren hellscape that his brother now called home. The Glencoe mountains stretched out in front of him, treeless peaks topped with snow that blew in the harsh wind. The valleys stretched out below. It wasn’t so different from Iceland in the cold and wind, but the mountains made Felix’s skin crawl. Whenever he’d been well enough to crawl to the window of his cell in the Seer’s tower, he’d seen nothing but the snow-capped peaks of the Alps.

“Brother!” Malcolm’s voice carried on the wind.

Felix spun to see his brother descending the great stone stairs at the base of his castle—which was the only word for it. The desolate stone structure had three turrets, and a main hall stretched between them. It’d been built here gods knew when, but Malcolm had taken possession of it a couple hundred years ago. He’d used spells to hide it from the sight of mortal hikers.

“How’s your lair doing?” he asked, nodding at the hulking stone monstrosity behind his brother.

“Perfect,” Malcolm said, clasping him in a hard hug. “No one bothers me, so it’s fucking divine.”

Felix knew his brother didn’t like being alone as much as he said—certainly not as much as Felix himself did—but then, everyone deserved their secrets.

“Come in for a drink,” Malcolm said.

Felix nodded and followed his brother down the snowy pass to the great front doors. They opened when they neared, allowing the brothers to pass through, before closing behind them. It was magic rather than electronics, the way that Felix liked it. The main perk of his brother’s hideaway was that the magic inherent in the Glencoe mountain range helped Malcolm maintain control of his channel to the aether. He no longer needed the strength of the university because of it and had happily moved his base to the mountains.

They went straight to Malcolm’s library, a huge space in the largest turret. The room was open all the way to the top, some fifty feet above them. The main floor boasted chairs, a desk, and a bar. Books lined the walls all the way to the ceiling. Though there appeared to be four additional floors open to the space below, it was actually a gradually sloping spiral of bookcases and a wide continuous balcony that gradually inclined until it reached the top. It was dizzying to look up, so Felix kept his gaze on Malcolm, who stood in front of a crackling fire that scented the room.

“I need a favor,” he said as Malcolm handed him a Scotch.

“For Aurora.”

He raised his brow in question. His brother was no seer.

“It’s nearly the end of 2015 and I haven’t seen you all year. If you’ll recall, you visited me back in 1664 saying that you came from 2015. You were with a woman named Aurora. I assume you’re still with her.”

Felix nodded.

“She’s the woman you let yourself be tortured for?”

“How’d you know?” He’d never told his brother what information the Seer had wanted from him and he’d definitely never hinted at a woman.

“Protecting a woman is the only thing that will keep a man’s mouth shut under torture. Did your silence work?”

“In a sense. The Seer never found her. But she didn’t escape entirely. That’s what I’m here for. I need something from you.”

His brother’s golden eyes narrowed, no doubt sensing that Felix was about to ask for something big.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Felix returned to Aurora’s flat in the tower several hours later, just as Esha was leaving. The soulceress waved at him as she walked out the door. Her big black familiar gave one last longing glance at Mouse, then stalked after Esha.

“Do what you needed to do?” Aurora asked. She sat by the fire, her legs curled under her and the golden light gleaming on her hair. She was so beautiful it made his heart hurt.

“Aye.”

She raised her brows in interest, but he said nothing. It suddenly seemed faintly ridiculous, what he’d gone to do. “Has Warren been in touch with any information about the Seer?”

“He called about thirty minutes ago. No one knows anything distinct, but Lea, the historian, suggested that the Seer likely needs to be near her portal to keep it operational.”

“So she’s somewhere on the glacier.”

“Most likely. Maybe even in the soulceress city.”

Felix frowned. The city was a mess. All that fallen stone and those towering walls. There’d be thousands of places for her to hide. “It’d be damn dangerous to do recon there.”

“That’s what I was thinking. So we won’t go on foot.”

“What do you plan?”

“Loki, the Norse god of fire, lives near here now because he fell for a chick who lives and breathes this place. Though he goes by Logan these days. He can use flames to see other places in real time. With his help, we could do some remote recon of the soulceress city.”

Not a bad plan. Little to no risk. “He will no’ mind helping us?”

“Maybe he will, but I’m tight with his lady, Sylvi. So is Esha. And he’ll do anything for Sylvi.”