Soulceress (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 2)
Read Soulceress (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 2) Online
Authors: Linsey Hall
Tags: #happily ever after, #Celtic, #Fate, #worldbuilding, #Paranormal Romance, #scotland, #Adventure Romance, #Demons, #romance, #fantasy, #fantasy romance, #Sexy paranormal, #Witches, #Series Paranormal Romance, #hot romance, #Series Romance
STOLEN FATE (THE MYTHEAN ARCANA 4)
SOULCERESS
Linsey Hall
DEDICATION
For my parents, who’ve always supported me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so much to all of the people who put their time and effort toward helping me with this story. As always, thank you Ben for helping me create this book. Emily Keane, for reading every story I’ve written, no matter how busy you are. Thank you Jon McGough, for always being quick with the medical advice. And to Doug Inglis and Veronica Morriss for your help and support when this particular story hit a rough patch. Thank you to Carol Thomas for reading this story and always being there for me.
Thank you to Valerie Hayward, Shelley Bates, and Jena O’Connor for various forms of editing. The story is much better because of your expertise. And thank you to Simone Seguin for writing wonderful back cover copy.
Thank you to my beta reader, Charisma Cassidy. I appreciate so much that you volunteered your time and expertise to help make this story the best it could be, especially the epilogue.
Dear Reader,
Warren and Esha’s story has a special place in my heart, as does the secondary hero, Chairman Meow. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Happy reading,
Linsey Hall
CHAPTER ONE
“Can you repeat that?” Warren Campbell asked, his head buzzing.
“The witches are losing control of their prison.” Cadan, his friend and colleague, looked grim. “They think the barrier will break within the week.”
“A week?” Warren’s stomach pitched.
“Aye. The only prisoner is too powerful to contain any longer. A soulceress called Aurora.”
Aurora
. The name made the blood pound so hard in his head that his eyes throbbed. He hadn’t heard anyone speak of her since she’d stolen his soul more than three hundred years ago.
“You all right, mate?” Cadan asked.
Warren blinked and met his friend’s dark gaze. He was spacing out—back to the past when he’d fucked up his entire life.
“Aye.” He shook his head, then surged to his feet. He had to get his act together. “I’ll go see them and figure out how we can help.”
“I’ll come too.”
“Ah, doona worry about it. You’ve done enough by telling me.” More than that, he didn’t want Cadan to know the truth about him. Closest friend or not, the fact that Warren was a monster without a soul was something he didn’t want to share.
“Aye, well, you know the witches. Prideful lot. Won’t seek help ’til it blows up in their faces.”
Which made his job a hell of a lot harder. As the head of the Praesidium, the security division of the Immortal University, it was Warren’s job to keep things like this from happening.
Intent on doing so, Warren strode out of his office and down the beautiful old hallway of his building on the university campus. Cadan kept pace with him, ignoring Warren’s assertions that his help wasn’t needed.
Cadan was a Mythean Guardian, as the warriors who worked for the Praesidium were called, and was tasked with protecting the individuals most important to humanity while keeping the dangerous Mytheans like Aurora in check. He was also his closest friend and nosy as hell.
Which meant he was right on Warren’s arse as he strode through the great atrium that marked the entrance to the Praesidium’s building and pushed out through the heavy wooden doors.
“You’re acting damned strange. What the hell’s the matter?” Cadan asked as they descended the stone stairs leading to the cobblestone courtyard.
Warren ignored him and focused on the stone buildings rising on all sides of the courtyard, their gray faces dour on this
dreich
day. The sun couldn’t beat its way past the heavy gray clouds, and it suited his mood just fine. He strode across the courtyard toward the rolling green hills surrounding the main part of campus. The witches kept to themselves in cottages near the forest. Private, but still within the protection of the university.
“Seriously, mate, what the hell is wrong?” Cadan demanded. “You look like death.”
Where would he start? With the fact that the soulceress who owned his soul and could use it to power her own evil magic was the one who would be released? Or perhaps with the deaths he’d caused that had landed him in this mess? That everything he’d worked for was about to come crashing down around his head? That he lacked any humanity at all?
No. He’d kept those secrets for years and would continue to keep them. The life he’d created here at the Immortal University wasn’t perfect, but it was something good he’d worked hard to create out of the ashes of his past.
Aurora might have made him into a soulless monster, but he’d tried to do good with his life in the years following the loss of his soul and his humanity.
“I’m fine. Just doona like the idea of this soulceress getting out, that’s all,” he said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cadan shrug. His friend didn’t buy his excuses, but Warren couldn’t bring himself to care.
They arrived at the lushly gardened section of the university that housed the witches’ cottages and strode down the path leading to the main cottage in the middle. Roses climbed up the gray stone, pink and red and yellow, all vibrantly in bloom despite the fact that it was a dreary November day. Smoke drifted from a chimney that speared up from the side of the slate roof and the windows were aglow with golden light.
Good, they were within. He banged on the wooden door, meeting his friend’s eyes as he did so. Concern tightened Cadan’s brow, and Warren realized he probably looked crazed. He tried to flatten his features into calm even as his insides roiled.
“Be quiet,” a voice hissed from within.
Warren turned to see one of the witches peering through a little slot in the door. Her eyes blazed green and threatening.
“I’m here to talk about the problem with your prison in the aether,” he said.
It was the only prison of its type, a jail without bars or stone. It floated within the aether, that ephemeral substance connecting earth and the afterworlds—known to mortals as the heavens and hells of their religions. It was between here and nowhere, and as such was impossible for him to manipulate. Only the witches had access because they had created the prison.
“We’re working on it. Right now, in fact. And you’re going to screw it up. Come back tomorrow.”
“Now.” Warren’s voice rumbled.
The witch squinted, glowering. “Tomorrow. We’re in the middle of a containment spell. You’re going to screw us up. We’re trying to shore up the boundaries and you’re messing with our concentration.
Come back tomorrow.
”
Warren frowned, but the seriousness of her voice penetrated. A flash of light bursting from the windows convinced him. If they were doing what they could, he wouldn’t interfere.
For now.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
She slammed the little slot in the door shut.
Warren heaved a frustrated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. A huge part of him wanted Aurora to be released so that he could hunt her and retrieve his soul.
No.
The risk to others was too great if she was released. She could aetherwalk away from the university as soon as she escaped, free to wreak havoc anywhere she chose. There was no telling how long it’d take him to find her, or what she could do in the interim. He’d made a vow to protect others when he’d joined the Praesidium. Serving his own selfish needs at the expense of the safety of others was not an option.
He met Cadan’s worried eyes. “We’re done here.”
Cadan nodded. “Come on, let me buy you a pint. Work day’s almost over.”
“Thanks, but nay. Go back to your Diana.”
“I’ve got time. She’ll be in the library for another couple of hours.”
Warren liked Cadan’s woman, an American scholar who was the reincarnate of Boudica. But his friend would be happier with her this evening, no matter how much he protested. Warren was shite company right now.
“I’ve got some things to take care of. Give my best to Diana.” He clapped Cadan on the shoulder, then spun and strode away, desperate to get some space and clear his head.
The possibility that Aurora might escape made his skin feel like it was stretched too tight over his muscles. He felt trapped in his own body, torn between duty and possibility. He spun on his heel, changing direction and heading to his house instead of back to his office. All he needed was some space.
He told himself he’d do the right thing by seeing to it that she stayed in prison.
But he couldn’t say if he believed it.
CHAPTER TWO
“It’s a freaking miserable night to be hunting rogues,” Esha Connor whispered to Chairman Meow, her feline familiar.
They crept silently through the darkened tunnels of the Edinburgh underground, each dodging the deepest puddles in the worn dirt floor. Unrelenting rain had leaked through the porous ceiling, which was actually the street above, and Esha could feel the Chairman’s foul mood. It matched her own, which was the reason she’d leapt at the job to kill the rogue demon who’d been lurking down here.
She caught sight of a cluster of remnant shadows to her left and gave them a wide berth. Shadows of old evil that lingered after the death of the evildoer were thick down in the underground—one of the reasons Edinburgh was considered the most haunted city in Europe. She could have banished the shadows, but the shadows were relatively harmless and any magical activity might alert her prey.