by Bec McMaster
Thief of Souls
Bec McMaster
Copyright © 2021 by Bec McMaster
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover: Covers By Combs
Editing: Hot Tree Edits and Olivia Ventura
Proofread: Julie K
To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the
text, please contact the author at
www.becmcmaster.com
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Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
22. Soraya
23. Zemira
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
27. Keir
28. Zemira
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Afterword
Promise of Darkness
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Also by Bec McMaster
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1
I drown a thousand times.
Every day, for months. Sometimes twice a day. Sometimes three times. In the cold, dark silence of the Abyss it’s difficult to keep track, so it’s only when the winch starts clanking that I get my first warning that we’re going to play this game again.
My stomach tenses, and I jerk out of the half-comatose reverie I’ve been existing in. No. No, not again. Pain screams through my shoulders. I’ve been hanging in these chains for so long that the only time I can feel my arms is when they threaten to dunk me into the pit of water below.
My throat is raw from screaming, and there’s no point.
There’s no one here to hear me anyway.
This is the cost of failure.
As the chains lower me back into the watery pit, I can’t stop myself from shaking. I don’t want to do this. Not again.
But when I returned from the Court of Dreams without the Dragon’s Heart I was sent to steal, my father sentenced me to three months in the Abyss.
Three months hanging in chains over a watery pit, just waiting to drown again.
It won’t kill me.
I might, however, begin to wish I could drown and be done with all of this.
That’s the problem with being a half-breed. The fae are long-lived, and wraiths are difficult to kill. I can heal from almost anything, if given the chance.
It’s both a gift and a curse.
Because the ability to heal from most things means the ability to survive most things.
The first shock of frigid water hits my bare toes.
“Stop!” I grab for something to save me—anything—and then I suck in an enormous breath.
The chains rattle faster as I’m plunged into a watery grave. The cold iron that burns around my wrists shoots straight for the bottom, taking me with it.
No matter how many times this happens, I still fight. Far above me, high in the tower, is a single lantern, and I can see that firefly glow slowly fading as the chains haul me lower.
A bubble escapes me—an unconscious cry of fear—and then several more as panic starts to set in. Kicking hard, I yearn for the surface, but the weight, the wretched weight, is dragging me down, down, forever down—
Pressure crushes my chest.
Please. Please, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fail. I won’t fail you again, Father. I won’t. I promise I won’t—
It’s so hard to keep holding on. My lungs kick like a mule, heaving at my ribs. Nothing. There’s nothing there. Only my ears threatening to pop, and bubbles slipping from my mouth as I try to capture them with my hands and hold such precious oxygen in….
The first mouthful is the worst.
I scream, but there’s no air. Only thick, wet weight that sinks through my lungs and the anchor that hauls me to my doom. Maybe this time will be the last time. Maybe this time my father will keep me down long enough that even my body can’t heal itself.
Darkness roars over me, but it’s not the warm cocoon of nighttime. It’s a greedy fist locking around my throat and choking me.
Please! Please help me!
A little spark of light burns to life in my chest like a hot coal.
Magic. Pure magic.
I reach for that spark with desperate hands.
“Merisel?” whispers a startled voice in my head.
A male voice.
Merisel? That’s not my name.
Why would he call me…?
My eyes blink open in horror, but it’s too late.
Because the spark of magic is consuming me, right at the moment where consciousness meets that dawning darkness.
Heat and flames snap around me, and I’m pulled through time and space until I finally slam into the world again.
I suddenly blink and find myself standing within an enormous bedroom. The first gasp of air sends me to my knees, slapping wet palms on the tiles. I can breathe again. Hot, blistering air that burns my ravaged throat and lungs. Warm. The tiles are warm. I want to kiss the floor and bathe in that heat. Or maybe just collapse. Water pours from my body, my shirt clinging to every inch of me. I can’t move. I want to, but I simply don’t have the strength within me.
This is some sort of gift, but fate never deals me a hand like this. Miracles are for pretty blonde fae princesses who have never known a day of toil in their life, until the moment they’re horribly cursed or prick their finger on an enchanted spinning wheel. There’s always a kiss stamped into their destiny, a twist of fate, hope.
But even though my silvery hair might charitably be called blond in a certain light, and my father technically is a king, I’m not that princess. I’m the villain of the story. I’m the thief, the liar, the girl of storms with her mercenary heart.
I am the Wraith King’s daughter, and if this is fate, then it’s about to punch me in the teeth.
Get on your feet then, I hiss to myself.
Because the first thing I ever learned is not to crawl. Not for anyone.
So I push my head upright and realize fate is a tricksy bitch after all.
Merisel, he called me, and there’s only one male who knows me by that name. Even though it is—like the rest of me—a lie.
A warm breeze billows through sheer curtains, and I sense someone prowling along the balcony. My breath catches, and I squeeze my fists tight in order to control the response.
I know who it is.
But the part of me that descends from a long line of fae that lived their lives in dark forests, feels the gl
int of the wolf’s eyes lock on me. I’m not alone, and I’m not trapped in the dark, but something is still hunting me and my body knows it.
The curtains shift and then he’s there, pausing just inside the room as if he’s a little surprised to see me standing there.
Keir.
Prince of Chaos and Dreams.
Our gazes collide and even though it’s been several months since I escaped his court, the impact of his presence hasn’t abated one bit. Dark hair brushes against his collarbone, and his thick brows highlight the intensity of those green-gold eyes. He owns me with a single look. It’s the kind of look you can’t practice. Hundreds of years of overweening arrogance combined with centuries of knowing you’re at the top of the food chain and anything and everything around you is your prey. You are either born with it, or you surrender to it.
“Merisel.” He breathes the word.
The truth hits me like a wall of solid stone: He isn’t looking at me like that. No. He still thinks me Merisel of Greenslieves.
I wince. Two months ago, Prince Keir sent out a summons in search of a bride, and over twenty prospective princesses and ladies attended in the hopes of capturing his heart.
When Father ordered me to steal the Dragon’s Heart from the Court of Dreams, I’d kidnapped the Lady of Greenslieves and used her alias in order to get inside.
It should have been the perfect cover.
I had the invitation. I had a new identity. I just had to avoid the prince, find the relic, and steal it.
Instead, somehow, I’d captured his eye. And for a second—just a second—I’d known what it felt like to want something for myself, something I knew I couldn’t have because I’m tainted and ruinous, but that didn’t negate the strength of the feeling.
I wanted a handsome prince to whisk me away and save me, but the truth is: I’m a wraith-born bastard who is owned by her father. There is no handsome prince coming to save me. All I have is myself.
But he looks at me, and it’s as if we’re both drawn back into the past.
We both feel it—we both wanted something else too.
A pretty little lie.
“No.” The truth dies in his eyes. “Not Merisel. I never did catch your real name…?”
“I never gave it.”
Keir glances down, his silky lashes hiding his eyes for one small moment before he looks up again. There’s no green in his eyes anymore. Only the dragon staring back at me—because that’s his little secret.
He looks like a fae prince. He acts like a fae prince.
But long ago, when the fae went to war against the dragon kings, rumor says they turned from this world, turned to stone, stepped into the long Unwaking….
Sometimes I wonder if the dragon kings set those rumors themselves, because one of them is right in front of me. Locked into mortal flesh, his eyes blazing as though his fae prison can barely contain him anymore.
“Where have you been?” he demands as his gaze slides down me. “I’ve summoned you a half dozen times.”
Drowning. Repeatedly.
But he doesn’t need to know that.
I shrug, but the shiver that runs through me ruins the effect. “I told you that you weren’t the only one to whom I owed a debt. Sometimes, I’m not at liberty to attend.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re dripping wet. And freezing, by the look of you. Where are you?”
“What? You’ve never taken a bracing swim in a glacial fjord?”
“Not clothed.” Keir bares his teeth. It’s not a smile. “I see how easily you do it now.”
“Do what?”
“Lie,” he growls before he holds his hand up and makes a gesture.
Water sluices down my body. It feels like a warm tingle running over every inch of my skin, and I do mean every inch. A gasp steals from me as puddles of frigid water hit the floor, and then I’m warm and dry and blessed gods, I almost forgot this feeling….
It’s enough to make my eyes water as I stagger.
Warmth. Actual warmth.
I can survive almost anything my father wants to do to me—I will survive—but the sudden shock of such a comfort almost breaks me.
It’s not real.
Somewhere out there, my body is coughing and spluttering as the inevitable finally happens and I’m forced to choke down a lungful of freezing water. But just for a moment I’m safe and warm, and I don’t have to be strong anymore—
I hit my knees, palms slapping against the tiles.
It’s as if my body simply gives out.
Bare feet whisper over the tiles in front of me and then his shadow looms. It’s enough to make me flinch back, but there is no weapon to grab and belatedly I realize Keir’s not attacking me. His hands are still an inch from my arms, the expression on his face arresting.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says softly. Gently.
“You….” I clear my throat. “You caught me by surprise.”
I look up the length of his body.
There’s no longer a golden claw hanging around his throat—my sister, Soraya, stole it and presented it to Father, thinking it was the mythical Dragon’s Heart relic that was going to break our wraithbound curse.
Keir turns his hand over, offering me his fingertips.
And a sardonically arched brow.
My brain finally starts working again. “Why did you summon me?”
“I need you,” he says.
Every girl’s wet dream.
I know better. There are invisible glyphs painted into the skin of my forearms, counting out the days. I owe him a year and a day of service, and now he’s calling in his favor, and it has nothing to do with me seeing any more of that glorious skin and everything to do with me being crushed between two opposing forces.
“I am at your disposal, it seems,” I manage to drawl as he draws me to my feet.
Keir cuts me a hard look, then sweeps past me, the hem of his robe brushing against my calf. “Follow me.”
Just a small touch, but it feels as though he’s lashed me.
I don’t know if it’s the bond between us or something else, but the sense of awareness between us seems to be growing.
“Please,” I mutter, curling my fingers into my palms as if I can somehow trap the sensation of his hands on mine.
“What?” he calls over his shoulder as he vanishes between the gauzy curtains.
It’s a simple courtesy, one I lost many years ago when my father trapped my soul in the small vial he wears around his neck. Since that moment, I’ve lost the right to demand courtesy, and Keir condemned me to a similar fate several months ago when he demanded a year and a day of service from me.
A sigh escapes me. I have no choice.
I’ve never had a choice.
And so I follow.
2
The balcony overlooks an azure sea.
The Court of Dreams is anchored to the real world, but it exists in a plane outside of time. The only way to reach it is through a portal Keir controls—or through your dreams. Indeed, he commands every aspect of the entire island, because he created it with his power.
It was the first sign he wasn’t quite as fae as he seemed.
Platters of food rest on a table in front of me. Dates and stuffed figs, along with the finest cheeses, and biscuits cut so thin they’d melt in your mouth…. My mouth waters, even as my mood plunges. Keir can’t know how long it’s been since I was fed, but this feels like a new sense of torture.
If my father ever discovered it’s the key to breaking me, then he’d have more than my soul. I would give him everything.
“See something you like?” Keir’s voice is rough velvet as he gestures and one of the chairs sweeps back on an invisible gust.
My stomach twists. It wants food so desperately that I have to dig my fingernails into my palms to control the urge to stuff my face. “Are you referring to the cheeses, my prince?” I glance at him from beneath my lashes. “Or a certain dragon?”
He smil
es a little dangerously. “You don’t need to pretend to flirt with me anymore, Merisel.”
That’s not my name.
And he knows it bothers me. This is only a means to force me to tell him the truth.
“Fine,” I tell him. “The food looks delicious.”
I pluck a grape from a platter and stuff it in my mouth before he can even reply. Sweetness bursts across my tongue. I swear I almost have an orgasm. I need more.
“Is this even real?” It feels real beneath my fingers, the date sticky as I squeeze it. “This dream?”
“What makes you think it a dream?”
I laugh. Because my life is a nightmare, and this is a mirage. “You’re the Prince of Dreams. This is not the first time I’ve woken to find myself walking these halls.”
He pauses. “You never came. I’ve summoned you a half dozen times.”
Maybe they were fever dreams.
Keir leans back in his chair, one arm slung over the chair beside him as he watches me. “And it can be.”
“Be what?”
“Real.”
I pop the date into my mouth, and flavor bursts over my tongue. Gods, I barely chew it before I swallow it down. Maybe it’s not enough to fill my stomach, but I don’t care. With a flash of the knife, I slice a thin, crumbly wedge of cheese. “So you seduce you me with such pleasures first,” I murmur, “and then, I presume, comes the torture.”
