mythean arcana 06 - master of fate (9 page)

Aurora stared down at the wolf tattooed on Felix’s chest, trying to distract herself from the devastating knowledge that he’d searched for her after her disappearance. He’d cared enough to look for her. She’d known he cared, but the idea that he’d searched for her was more than she could think about at this moment.

So she studied his tattoos and horror turned her stomach. They were beautiful. Besides the wolf, there were whorls of vines, leaves, and prominent thorns decorating his skin, curling up from his wrists to his shoulders and down to where they met the wolf on his chest. It looked as if the wolf had been born from the thorns.

It was the scars beneath the lines that made horror well up within her. It was difficult to scar a Mythean. Their quick healing made it nearly impossible. It would have taken torture and dark magic to make scars like this stick. Had he covered them up with the tattoos afterward?

She swallowed hard, wanting to ask. But he wouldn’t want to answer. He’d brushed off her comments about how he’d changed, and she wouldn’t want to share such information either. 

So she pretended that the dim light hid the scars and said, “They’re beautiful.”

He stayed silent, but his muscles relaxed infinitesimally. He was still tense as a stone, but slightly better than before. She could feel his gaze burning the top of her head and glanced up.

The heat in his eyes made her heart jump. The dim light filtering in from the small window highlighted his full lips and the stubble on the lower half of his face. 

The air became hotter and heavier as she stared up at him. They’d once had something insanely hot between them. They could have it again.

His face was still a foot and a half above hers, but she leaned up, slowly closing the distance. Her heart began to pound in the sticky heat. Oh, how she wanted this.

He looked like he wanted it too. His lips parted slightly, his silver eyes flashing with dark heat. The air vibrated between them, tickling her skin. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of his hand reaching for her.

Yes. Touch me.

He jerked upright suddenly, the motion so fast and hard that she almost fell backward off the bench. His gaze shuttered as he climbed down faster than a sylph.

“No’ a good idea.” His voice was rough as he quickly made his way out of the sauna.

Then he was alone.

Shit.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Aurora shot out of bed, a scream building in her throat. She cut it off just before it escaped and pressed a hand to her chest, gasping. 

The dream. Always the dream. She was drowning in cold darkness until someone tore her apart. She shook her head and petted Mouse with a shaking hand.

Once she’d caught her breath, she got up and dressed, then grabbed her bag and headed out the door of the second bedroom that Felix had loaned her for the night. She glanced behind her at Mouse, who’d curled up again under the down comforter, her tail just peeping out of the covers. Mouse didn’t like the cold either.

“I’ll yell up the stairs when it’s time to go,” she said.

Mouse meeped and Aurora took it as confirmation that she’d come down when called. She found the kitchen empty but redolent of ham and eggs. Two covered plates sat on the stove—one small and one large. The stove was a big old iron thing that still radiated heat. She uncovered the plates to find identical meals in two sizes, both still warm.

A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. She walked out into the living room and called up the stairs, “Mouse! Breakfast!”

Like lighting, Mouse streaked down the stairs in a blur. She was up on the stove eating from the small plate when Aurora returned. Her purrs echoed loudly in the kitchen, no doubt from the warm stove under her paws as much as from the food. Aurora stood next to her at the stove, enjoying the warmth, and shoveled the food into her mouth.

It was good. Nice of Felix to make it, though he was clearly still avoiding her. She tried not to dwell too long on what his issue might be, though she found it poking at her mind pretty much every other second.

When they finished their meal, she used a little blast of magic to clean their plates. She should conserve it, because once the power was expended, it was gone and she’d have to replenish it from someone else’s immortal soul. Since Felix was so damn powerful, and hadn’t yet expressed a complaint over her power-sucking, she figured it was fine as long as she didn’t do it often. 

She rifled through her bag and found another jacket, along with a thicker hat and scarf. By the time she had them all on, she felt like the kid from that Christmas movie she’d seen with Esha last year, but after last night’s trip across the glacier, it was necessary.

“What do you say we go find our ride?” she asked Mouse.

The cat hopped down from the counter and preceded her through the living room and out the door closest to the barn. The sun was just starting to gleam over the horizon. Since it was late November so far north, it was past ten in the morning, and she was grateful. She wasn’t a summer dawn sort of girl. 

As she’d expected, she found him within. He was strapping skis and poles to the side of a snowmobile.

“Morning,” she said. “Thanks for breakfast.”

He grunted and stood to look at her. “We’ll head out soon, if you’re ready to go.”

“I’m ready.”

Mouse hopped immediately into the fluffy egg harness strapped to the front of the snowmobile seat and started to purr.

“So is she,” Aurora said.

A smile lit his eyes, but didn’t extend to his mouth. “We’ll take the snowmobile as far as we can. It’s too many miles to start skiing from here. But if you start to feel the power of the city, let me know. We’ll stop so it does no’ destroy this machine too. After that, we’ll head out on skis.”

“Good plan.” The skis were old enough that they shouldn’t fall under the soulceresses’ zap-anything-powerful-and-unfamiliar spell. It really was a clever protection charm. Her kind were smart. Reviled by all who knew of them, but smart. You had to be smart if everyone hated you.

She climbed on to the snowmobile behind Mouse and waited. Her gaze stayed riveted to Felix as he grabbed a heavy jacket from a hook on the wall and tugged it on. A woolen hat and gloves followed. 

He grabbed two helmets and handed her one, then shoved his down on his head. She could almost feel him brace himself before he climbed on behind her.

If she wasn’t mistaken, he seemed to have a problem with touch. He wanted her as much as he had in the past—she’d seen it in his gaze. But it was the touching that gave him pause. It never had before.

He was tense behind her, but she enjoyed the closeness anyway. In the cold dark of her aether prison, she’d thought of him all the time. Memories of him—her first and only love—had kept her a bit warmer. It hadn’t been the same man currently sitting behind her, but his younger self.

She preferred this one, no matter his damage. 

He twisted the key in the ignition and drove them out of the barn, hopping off long enough to close the doors. They set off at a quick pace across the snow. It glittered in the dawn light, an entirely different sight from last night. 

What had led Felix to make his home out in the middle of nowhere on a freezing island? It was the opposite of what she’d want. Especially after her time in the aether.

She shook the thought away. She shouldn’t be wondering about him. She didn’t want to fall for him more than she already had. There was too much that threatened a relationship between them. They were both damaged. Hers lurked right under the surface, ready to strike and tear them apart.

The wind didn’t cut so deeply this morning and the sun helped the air feel a little warmer. It turned the endless expanse of white into a glittering canvas. 

After a while, her skin prickled slightly. She’d been too focused on the cold and driving the snowmobile last night to feel it. Not to mention, she hadn’t been expecting it. But now it was distinct.

“Stop!” she yelled back at Felix.

The snowmobile came to a halt. They climbed off. Mouse followed, pouncing into the snow. With quick, competent hands, Felix undid the skis and poles and handed her a set. She struggled a bit with the unfamiliar objects, but she got them on.

“You might want to lose one of those jackets,” he said. “You’ll warm up when you’re skiing.”

She was loath to take off a jacket, but he was right. She unzipped and tossed it over the seat of the snowmobile. He picked it up and tucked it into a small bag attatched to the back of the snowmobile, then unhooked Mouse’s harness.

He fiddled with the straps, then held it up. “You can wear it like a pack and Mouse can ride along. Or I can wear it.”

Aurora’s eyebrows shot up. “Nice. Hear that, Mouse? Fancy transpo for you.”

Mouse approached him and snaked herself around his ankles.

“Normally she’d walk,” Aurora said. “Or if she was feeling lazy, turn herself into smoke and travel that way. It’s loads easier, since her energy is connected to the aether. But it looks like she’s going to take you up on the offer of a ride-along.”

Felix nodded and threw the pack on over his shoulders. Mouse leapt agilely into it. As when it was strapped to the snowmobile, her face peeked out the entrance hole. This time she looked backward. Aurora grinned.

Felix strapped on his skis and picked up his poles. “All right, let’s go.”

“Commence reconnaissance,” she said.

They set off across the snow. She was awkward as hell, but she watched him and mirrored his movements. His stride was powerful and long, but he held back for her. Her speed improved and she had to agree that this was easier than walking through the snow.

The tingling on her skin increased as they approached the soulceress city. They’d had to stop the snowmobile farther away today and only now was the city coming into view on the horizon. In the daylight, it loomed gray and menacing. It no longer looked like the strange wonderland she remembered from childhood.

Then, the city had been abandoned, but the buildings and streets had been magically protected by the souls of soulceresses who had not been able to leave. She and her sister had released the souls last year. Though the souls were now free, which was a good thing, their departure had had a devastating effect on the city. 

It now lay in ruins, their magic no longer preserving it, a gloomy shell of the place it had once been. The tall walls that surrounded the city were damaged and crumbling, as were some of the tall buildings within. It was a labyrinthine place, full of winding stone streets and walls of buildings that rose high into the air. 

When they were about half a mile away, the great stone walls loomed. 

“Do you feel that?” Felix called. Mouse had climbed partially out of her carrier and was leaning on his shoulder, peering at the city walls. Apparently Felix’s issues with touch didn’t extend to felines.

They were only a few hundred yards away now. She could see down one of the winding city streets where the wall had crumbled. Empty. Snow fluttered along the street.

“Yeah,” she said. “I feel it all right.” 

The magic that had made her skin tingle when they’d stopped the snowmobile was stronger than it had been, reaching farther out from the city. It had a different tone too, something so strong she could almost breathe it into her lungs. This wasn’t the protective spell the soulceresses had once placed on their city. It should be the magic from her portal gone haywire, if the university reports were correct. But it didn’t feel like hers. 

“Stop!” she shouted. “Something’s not right.”

The magic pulsed around her, dark and unfamiliar. Mouse meowed plaintively.

“Go back. We need to go—”

An unseen force grabbed her, enveloping her whole body as the world became a blur of color. She was pulled toward the great stone walls of the city at what felt like hundreds of miles per hour. She passed through a gap in the walls and flew down a street that had been decayed to rubble. It all passed by so fast that she could make out no details.

She had only a second to process that she had been dragged into the city’s great square before the aether pressed down on her and she was shot into the familiar darkness that would carry her to another location. Moments later, she tumbled to the ground.