mythean arcana 06 - master of fate (24 page)

He followed her and started the bath while she went back out to the living area and fussed around. When it was full, he called, “It’s ready!”

She appeared in the doorway with two glasses of red wine. “Do you drink wine?”

“Uh, sure.”

“No?” She handed him a glass.

“I doona get out a lot. It’s mostly local beer for me. Wine seems to be for social events and all that business I have no’ really done.”

“It’s also good for watching reality TV,” Aurora said. “In fact, one might say it’s necessary.”

He laughed and sipped it. Not bad.

“Get in first. You’re biggest,” she said.

He climbed into the tub, bending his knees to fit. “Good thing you’re small.”

She climbed in and sat between his legs. He leaned back and pulled her up to rest against his chest. He felt brief discomfort, but it was far less than normal. He might actually be getting better. The warm water and the softness of her body sent a rush of contentment over him that he’d never known. 

Aurora sipped her wine. “So, this
thing
we seem to have between us. It’s casual, right? Just sex and catching up on old times?”

Her words hit him in the gut.
Casual?
“Hell, no. I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you in 1660. You’re it for me. I mean it. And I’ll do anything it takes to make that permanent.”

She stiffened slightly. He should be concerned about scaring her off, but he couldn’t help it. He’d wanted her for so long—thought she was lost for so long—that now he had her back, he couldn’t play it cool.

“I’m no’ letting you go, Aurora. No’ as long as there’s even a chance you want me back. Which you do.”

“It’s just... There’s so much standing between us. Our damage. You can’t touch and I have my own problems.”

“Nothing we can’t overcome.”

She turned and looked at him, her eyes dark with despair. “No, that’s the problem. They’re going to overcome me.” 

“What is it? We can fix it.”

“No, we can’t.” Her voice broke. “Esha already tried. Last year she freed all the souls I’d stolen, but the desire to keep thieving hasn’t left. I fight it every day. Twice now, I’ve almost stolen your soul. I came
so
close. If I do that, I’m back to where I was. Mad. One of these days, I’m going to snap. I can feel it. It’s been getting worse and I’m not strong enough to keep resisting. There’s something missing in me—I can feel it—and stealing souls is the only way to fill it. You can’t have a relationship with a person like that.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, panicked.

“You’re scared,” he said. But unease streaked through him. This was serious. And dangerous.

“Of course I am. And I’m smart enough to know that I’ve got a problem, Felix, and that there’s no cure.” She scrambled out of the tub and glared at him. “Getting too involved is dumb. For both of us.”

She stormed out of the room and he sat back. This romantic tub thing had not gone the way he’d planned. 

CHAPTER TWENTY

Aurora climbed out of bed silently, grateful she hadn’t awakened with a scream after another bad dream, and hoping not to wake Felix. After their fight last night, she didn’t want to discuss it this morning. 

The morning passed quickly. They showered and grabbed a quick bite, then welcomed their friends into the flat. Esha, Warren, Sylvi, and Loki were all dressed in winter gear and had brought six sets of cross-country skis, as they’d agreed upon yesterday. They’d planned to aetherwalk to a place on the glacier that was far enough away from the Seer’s headquarters that she couldn’t sense their arrival when their magic broke through the aether, then ski to her domain.

Then they’d sneak in or fight their way in and kill her. Aurora’s fingers itched to plunge a blade into her heart. After what that bitch had done to Felix, Aurora wanted her blood on her hands.

“Ready to do this thing?” Esha asked.

“So ready,” Aurora said. “I’ve wanted a piece of this bitch ever since I learned about her.”

Esha and Warren handed Aurora and Felix each a pair of skis, then everyone joined hands. The two familiars pressed themselves against their soulceresses’ legs and they all aetherwalked to the glacier.

Howling wind and snow hit Aurora in the face. “Damn, it’s cold!”

She struggled to snap her skis to her feet as the wind buffeted her. At her side, Mouse turned herself into smoke to avoid the elements. The Chairman did the same.

“All right, let’s go,” Felix said once everyone was kitted up.

They set off, pushing hard against the elements to make their way quickly to the Seer’s headquarters. Aurora, along with Esha, headed to the front of the group, far enough ahead that their soul-sucking power didn’t weaken their companions. It was one of the complexities of fighting alongside a soulceress, but the advantage was that they would weaken their adversaries as they came upon them.

Aurora’s nose and hands went numb despite the scarf and gloves she’d used to protect them.
This
was why she hated the damn cold. The memory of the aether shuddered through her. She pushed it out of her mind. She was
never
going back.

The ice mountains that contained the Seer’s lair appeared on the horizon. Almost there, and then she’d get a piece of the monster who’d hurt Felix. She wanted to tear the Seer’s head from her neck, though she should probably leave that privilege to Felix. But she wanted to get in at least a few hits of her own. Maybe a spell to make the Seer think her face was melting off.

Vindictive pleasure warmed her. She might regret stealing all those souls when she’d been younger, but oh, how she’d enjoyed wreaking evil magic against her enemies. This would be the perfect opportunity to do so again. She was going to enjoy every second.

Suddenly, the wind and snow picked up speed. Everything around her turned white until she couldn’t see anyone else.

“Hey!” she yelled.

Silence.

The wind nearly knocked her over.

She struggled to stay upright as she searched blindly for Felix and Esha and the rest. A hard force grabbed her around the chest, then her arms and legs. She was lifted into the air, her skis flailing. Her heart thundered and she screamed.

A sick feeling shivered through her, as though she shouldn’t be touching whatever had grabbed her. It just felt wrong. It felt like
souls. 

It was white everywhere. She thrashed, desperate to be free of whatever dark magic propelled the souls that held her, but she remained stuck. Whatever had caught her, held her fast. As a last-ditch effort, she gathered every ounce of power in her soul and forced it outward, a supernova.

There was a flash of light. Pain exploded in her head. Blackness took her.

Aurora struggled against the fog in her mind that tried to pull her back to oblivion. She had to wake up. Though she wasn’t sure why—she
had
to. Cold streaked through her veins. She tried to curl in on herself to stay warm, but she couldn’t move. 

Panic finally made her eyes flare wide. Bright white and blue light hit her from all sides. She gasped and squinted.

Ice. Ice everywhere. Great columns and spires, swirls and waves. Sun sparkled through from overhead, making it shine. It was an incredible ice cave that would have been beautiful if Aurora didn’t have the most terrible feeling pulling at her chest. It felt like her soul was trying to escape her body.

She wanted to curl up to keep it in, but her ankles and wrists felt frozen. A quick glance showed that shadowy white souls held her fast to the slab.

Fear paralyzed her. Souls shouldn’t be doing that. This was so wrong. Against every rule. Souls wouldn’t have any reason to interact with a live Mythean or mortal. Only the darkest magic could command them. 

She’d never wished so hard that her sister hadn’t freed the souls that Aurora had stolen. If she had them, she’d be able to wield unimaginable power and save herself. Nothing was as powerful as a soulceress with an army of stolen souls fueling her magic. 

But she had nothing. Just her normal powers, which were tapped out from trying to free herself from the first attack.

Frantically, she searched for Felix. The space was huge, with nooks and crannies and what she imagined were small chambers off the main room. The wind outside shrieked as it dragged through the ice crevices.

When her gaze caught sight of the figures on the other side of the cave, fear dried her mouth and made her heart try to jump out of her throat. Felix was held to a similar table by souls. More souls than held her. No matter how strong he was, he couldn’t break through them. No one could.

But it was the sight of the woman standing over Felix holding a black dagger, her wild red hair cascading down her back, that froze Aurora’s heart. That hair looked like flame against the blue glacier. The sight of her sent such terror and misery through Aurora that a scream tore from her throat and her eyes rolled back in her head. She passed out.

“Do it!” a voice hissed.

Aurora opened her eyes, her head pounding. Her wrists were held firm by what felt like rough rope. She jerked her eyes open, but her thoughts were blurry. The room was muggy and dark, save for the moonlight shining through the single arched window. The bed canopy over her head looked vaguely familiar.

Her mind was hazy, as if she were apart from herself, and she realized that she was no longer in the ice palace. She was in the bedroom of the house in which she’d spent most of the second half of the seventeenth century, when she’d been mad on the power of all her stolen souls. In fact, it
was
the seventeenth century. This house had burned down in 1682. She’d burned it down, actually. Though she hadn’t known why she’d felt compelled to do it.

She was inside her body and mind from that period, but she felt as if she were looking on from somewhere else inside her mind. Like she still had her present-day conscious but was also aware of her old thoughts from this moment in the past. This was the strangest dream she’d ever had. The old Aurora’s mind was a mess of thoughts and ideas and a constant headache caused by all the stolen souls trying to escape her grasp.

As she tried to adjust to the darkness and figure out who was talking—because this was a memory she did
not
have—her consciousness began to fade, melding back into that of old Aurora. She struggled against it, but the dream was too strong. It sucked her back in.

“Keep the spell on her bindings strong!” a feminine voice said. “I’m going first.”

Rage filled Aurora. Who dared enter her domain and imprison her? She jerked against the rope, hissing as it stayed tight. She gathered the power of the souls who fueled her, but before she could create a ball of flame, a figure leapt atop her.

She shrieked as the person straddled her. Wild red hair straggled around her attacker’s face as she raised the knife high overhead. Dark shadows danced around the woman’s head. Demon shadows.

This bitch had made a pact with a demon. Fear choked Aurora as she tried to throw a ball of flame at her attacker. The black blade glinted in the moonlight as it plunged toward her.