mythean arcana 06 - master of fate (26 page)

Mouse found her place by the fire and Felix followed, kneeling down to build it for her. Aurora smiled, then went to the fridge to grab a beer for the shower. If today was any kind of day, it was definitely a beer in the shower day. She glanced at the clock. Or night. It was after seven.

She must have slept for hours. It didn’t take her long to perk up in the shower and she was grateful to wash away the misery of the day. It might only be symbolic, but it was all she could manage at this point. She sipped her beer and tried to banish the miserable memories, but it wasn’t until she clasped a hand around the aether stone Felix had given her that she felt any better.

A sense of contentment immediately washed over her. She hurried through the rest of her shower so that she could join him. By the time she made it out into the living room, her flat was redolent with the scent of pasta and marinara.

“You cooked?” she asked.

Felix turned from the stove, looking handsome as hell in a T-shirt and jeans and holding a spoon coated with sauce. “No’ sure I deserve that credit. I just dumped the jar in the pot. Same for the spaghetti. I figured you could do with a wee bite.”

“Thanks! That’s more than I can do.” As much as she loved the conveniences of the twenty-first century, she’d focused most of her attention on learning about electronics. Cooking had not been something she’d tried to master yet.

Gratefully, she took the bowl of pasta that Felix handed her. She was finding it harder and harder to look away from his face. From his silver eyes and full lips to the dark stubble at his chin, he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. She’d thought so when she was younger and she still thought so now.

She took a seat on the couch, tucked into her spaghetti, and watched Mouse sniff at the bowl Felix held for her. Watching such a huge man, his arms rippling with muscles and tattoos, offer a bowl of spaghetti to her cat made her heart pound.

Mouse stuck her head in the bowl and chowed down, so Felix set it on the floor.

“Does no’ have normal appetites, does she?” he asked.

“Nope. She’s a familiar, not a house cat. You’d have a hard time pawning that off on a Mittens or a Snowball.”

He grinned and joined her on the couch, his own bowl of spaghetti in his hand. It felt so good, so natural, to be sitting here like this with him. She hadn’t ever really felt at home here in the last year. Sure, she was happy to live near Esha, but until now, this place had never felt like her own.

With Felix here, everything was starting to feel a hell of a lot better. She’d been looking for a life of her own ever since she’d escaped the aether. From fiddling with electronics to hunting rogues with Esha, she’d tried to find things that made her feel as though she belonged in this time and place. 

But it wasn’t until Felix sat next to her with his dinner that she felt the same sense of contentment she’d once felt around her mother. Like family.

The thought scared the shit out of her. How was she supposed to walk away from him when this was all over if it felt so good to be with him?

“You okay?” Felix asked.

Her gaze flashed to his. Shit. He’d seen her little freak-out. “I’m fine.” She set her empty bowl on the coffee table. “So, about the Seer. I don’t think we’ve fixed anything.”

“Agreed. My wolf attacked her, but I doona think it killed her.”

“It didn’t. I think I’d feel it if it had.” She rubbed a hand over her chest.

“What do you mean?”

“She stole part of my soul.” The words tasted like ash in her mouth. “The same woman who tortured you stole part of my soul.”

“What the hell?”

“Three hundred years ago, she used a demon blade to steal part of my soul. I’d heard of them but I’d never seen one before. Not until that night. It’s not like a soulceress blade. The soulceress blade just frees souls. The demon blade lets a non-soulceress steal a soul and transfer it to herself. They’re rare. Made of something the mortals call
obsidian
. She’d have had to make a pact with a demon to get it.” She scrubbed her hands over her eyes, trying to push away the image of the knife plunging toward her.

“Take your time,” Felix said.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. When I was tied to that table in her ice palace, seeing her triggered a memory. Something that I’d repressed or she’d buried with a spell, I don’t know. Whatever it was, I passed out and dreamed of that night. It was sometime in the seventeenth century, before 1682—I recognized the bedroom—and I woke to hear voices in my room. Women. They’d tied me up.”

“With souls?”

“No. Rope. It was definitely rope. The souls came later. But I know why she can control souls now. Anyway, the Seer said she was going first. She climbed on top of me and stabbed me with the demon blade. It felt like I was being torn apart from the inside. Exactly like my dreams. I think
that’s
what I’ve been dreaming about all these years. It hurt worse when she pulled the blade free, and then she stabbed herself. She was transferring the part of my soul she’d stolen with the blade into herself. That’s how she was able to control the souls. She has some soulceress power because she stole part of
my soul
.”

A Mythean’s innate power came from the soul. If one possessed a big enough piece of another’s soul, they could take their magical ability with it.

“We’ll get it back,” Felix said. “There’s no way in hell I’ll let her keep that.”

Aurora nodded, focusing her rage and pain on the Seer. They had to get it back. She was walking around without part of her soul. That bitch had not only taken it, she was now able to hurt her using Aurora’s own powers.

“What if your soul is what you’ve felt is missing?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Last night, you said you have no’ felt right since you started stealing souls. No’ even after Esha used the soulceress dagger on you to free them. You’re no’ still crazy—you’re just missing the piece of your soul.”

Shock streaked through Aurora, and recognition. It made sense. Of course she’d be missing the part of her soul that had been stolen. It made her feel off balance. “I’m just trying to fill the gap in my soul. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s not because I’m still power mad. Maybe I’m just trying to recover a piece of what I lost. Something vaguely like that happened to my friend Sylvi. Could it be?” If she could get the piece of her soul back, could she stop worrying about snapping and stealing Felix’s soul and going mad? She didn’t know how to process that. Joy, for one. But she hadn’t even thought it possible that they could have something real between them. Not as long as insanity dogged her heels.

“It makes sense. Stop running, Aurora. This is the answer.”

“If it is, then we have to get my soul back. What does she want, though?”

“I think I know what she’s planning. She was trying to use the blade on me. Her creepy little demon yelled
stab, stab, steal.
”

“Demon? Like, full demon?”

“Too small. I doona think it was the one she got the blade from, if that’s what you’re getting at. It dinna seem to be capable of that much higher reasoning. It was like a pet.”

“A mutated familiar.” The Seer hadn’t been born a soulceress, so she didn’t have a normal familiar. But the soulceress magic had probably manifested one.

“That was no cat.” 

“Familiars can be other animals. There’s a witch with a marmot.” Aurora snickered, but she actually kind of liked the marmot. The fat little thing was partial to pink frosted doughnuts. “So she wanted part of your soul.”

 “Either the wulver or the timewalker half. I’d guess timewalker. Those other women in the stone circle in 1664—they’ve got to be her sisters. They looked just like her. She mentioned something about bringing them back and thinks she can do it using my timewalker abilities.”

“Of course. They’re a team. The others must have died at some point. One sister—Amaris—she’s a witch. Maybe the only one with any magical power. The Seer had none until she stole mine. In my room that night, she said,
I’ll go first
. The others were going to take the rest of my soul.” The idea made her ill. They could take it all and leave her a shell. She’d never even be able to find her afterlife.

“Why didn’t they?”

“The transfer of the soul can cause a burst of magical energy. It knocked us out. The Seer’s sisters don’t have a lot of magic themselves. If they’d been stronger Mytheans, they might have stayed conscious. I woke first because I was strongest and must have escaped.” If only she’d killed them when she’d had the chance. But the memory was hazy. She must have repressed it to protect herself. “I vaguely remember returning to the house and burning it down. I was angry and afraid, though I didn’t know why. I was fairly insane by then. If they wanted the rest of my soul, they never found me.”

Suddenly, a terrible thought occurred to her. “Why did she torture you, Felix?”

He hesitated. 

Did he not want to say? “You’ve got to tell me, Felix. Because I think I know what it is and I don’t like it. What did she want?”

He hesitated, his gaze in the distance, then spoke. “She wanted me to help her kill a member of my old clan.”

He was lying. No question. It was in his eyes and the way his fist was clenched. “You’ve never been a good liar, you know.”

His gaze darted to hers. “What? I’m no’ lying.”

“Yes, you are. You didn’t even look at me when you said that. I know you. I can tell when you lie. And I also think I know what she really wanted.” The idea made her stomach turn. “Quit trying to protect me and tell me.”

“I told you. It was about my old clan.”

“No, it wasn’t. Respect me enough to believe I’ll handle the truth.”

Despair crept into his gaze. “I doona want you to have to handle it. Or handle anything. I want to make your life better.”

Tears prickled in her eyes. “I already know what she wanted. I can guess. She wanted to know where I was, didn’t she? She wanted the rest of my soul. Because I’d burned down the house and changed location, driven by my fear and insanity, she couldn’t find me. But she was a seer. She knew you and I had been close.”

The truth was clear in his eyes. He jerked his head in the affirmative.

An honest-to-gods boulder hit her in the chest. She’d known what he was going to say, but hadn’t wanted it to be true. She’d prayed he’d tell her something different.

“And you said you had the information. But you never gave it. No matter what she did to you.” She wanted to hug him and hit him.

“I’d been looking for you ever since I returned to our village and you were gone. I’d finally just located you—through the help of another seer, actually—when she captured me. She seemed enraged that she couldn’t find you with her own vision.” 

Aurora sucked in several breaths, trying to calm herself. All his suffering then, all his suffering now... It was all because of her. If she couldn’t get the piece of her soul back and she snapped, how much more would he suffer?

“I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to blink back tears. “I had no idea.”

“I dinna want you to. And doona be sorry. Damn it, you’re my mate. I should never have left you to go save my brother. You needed me more, but I dinna realize it. Protecting you is what I’m supposed to do. What I
want
to do. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

“Your mate?” Like, the one his wulver soul had chosen? She knew a little bit about the phenomenon, but had assumed it didn’t apply to him since he was a mixed-blood.

“Of course. I’ve told you... You’re it for me.”

Gods, he was so handsome. This hard, brutal man, who’d suffered decades of torture for her, clearly meant every word he said. Her heart thudded. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Felix turned toward Aurora, taking in the stunned expression on her beautiful face. Had she truly never realized that he meant to be with her forever? He’d been trying to give her time, but he could no longer hold back. 

This morning, seeing her bound to the ice block and the Seer with the demon blade in her hand—he’d known true fear. It’d only been compounded when he’d seen Aurora’s still form in the infirmary bed. He couldn’t take it slowly anymore.

“When this is over,” he said, “I want you to come live with me. Or I’ll come live here. Wherever you want.”

“What? You love Iceland.”

“Nay. I chose to live there because it’s near the soulceress city, where I have some of the strongest memories of you. Now that you’re back, I no longer need it. I want to be with you.”

Her jaw dropped. “What? Are you serious?”

He reached out and cupped the back of her head. “Deadly serious. I want to make this work between us.”

“That’s not a great idea.”

“Why no’?”

“I still have that little issue of wanting to steal your soul, remember? What if it’s not because the Seer stole part of my soul? What if we can’t get it back?”

“We will. You need to stop pushing people away, Aurora. Stop pushing me away.”

“It’s hard! I’m scared, Felix. We’re both broken and I don’t know if our broken edges can fit together.”