The Mythean Arcana Box Set

by Linsey Hall

  Once the rippling pain of the change had faded, the lightness of being and the wind beneath his wings made his heart fly even as his mind dreaded what was likely to come. He soared through the air, higher and faster, until his mind freed itself from the shackles of earth and he entered the aether, and through it arrived in Otherworld.

  He couldn’t aetherwalk as other Mytheans could, but he could travel in one of his alternate forms. Shapeshifting had always been his gift, and as the black falcon, he could travel through the aether.

  After flying over Otherworld for hours, alternately over mountains and pastures, he neared the desolate land that had to be Blackmoor. It lacked the beautiful sweeps of colored heather and waving grass that dotted the other moors. He spied a flock of black birds circling over a tor and sped toward them, wind whistling past him.

  Camulos. As he had feared. The man lay chained to the rock, eyes squeezed shut and struggling as if he were living out a vision within his mind. Poor bastard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ana gasped and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly to regain her sight. When her vision cleared, she looked around and realized that she was kneeling in the same grove of oaks that she’d arrived in two thousand years ago when she’d come here to kill Cam.

  Fitting.

  She looked at her wrists. Two scars now. A grim smile stretched across her face. It was a macabre way to travel, but she was lucky that it had worked.

  Gracefully, she rose to her feet, no longer burdened by her mortal body. Though it didn’t feel the same as godhood, it was certainly better than being mortal.

  Her fist closed longingly around air, and she wished she had her bow. It was still in Druantia’s creepy shop, gone forever because she’d never escape Otherworld to retrieve it.

  She shook away the pang of grief. At least she wasn’t an unfeeling automaton like she’d feared. And there were bigger things to worry about, such as getting through the forest and out onto Blackmoor without any of the gods realizing she was here. Luckily, despite the vast size of Otherworld, she was only a few hours from Blackmoor. She’d learned every patch of Otherworld in the centuries she’d been trapped here.

  She set off through the oaks until eventually she stood at the edge of the tree line, warily eying the vast, open expanse of the moor. If the gods were still out there, it would be easy for them to find her.

  But she was so close to Cam she didn’t want to wait.

  Her eyes scanned the rolling hills, barren brown with ever-dead heather. Great granite tors punched up through the ground, hulking over the horizon as the sun set behind them. It lacked the beauty of Otherworld’s other moorland, but for good reason. This was the place of punishment.

  In the distance, she caught sight of a flock of birds circling a tor and set out toward them. The sun had nearly sunk beneath the horizon, and the coming dark would shield her as she walked across the too-open space. She couldn’t wait any longer for dark, not being as close as she was now.

  She set off at a jog, slowly because of the deceptively boggy and uneven ground. About halfway to the tor, one of the birds cut away from the rest and joined her. A pitch-black falcon—feather, beak, and eyes. Strange looking, but prophetic.

  By the time she reached the base of the large hill that supported the tor, it began to rain. She picked up her pace, sprinting now that she was out of the boggy valley. So close. Her heart pounded and cold fear raced along her skin.

  The tor was a jumbled pile of massive granite rock, too complex to identify an outline of Cam in the low moonlight. But he was here—he had to be. She climbed, scrabbling for purchase on the smooth surfaces. The falcon veered left and she followed, climbing to reach the highest point of the tor.

  There. She sobbed in relief when she spotted the barest outline of Cam only ten feet in the distance, straining violently against the chains that bound him to the rock. After a last mighty effort to heave herself onto the top of the tor, she fell to her knees at his side.

  “Cam.” She grasped his thrashing head. The chains had rubbed his skin raw, and blood seeped beneath him to soak the granite. Great circular bruises dotted his battered muscles, purple and blue and black.

  “Ana.” A tortured moan escaped his mouth.

  He wasn’t here. Not mentally, at least. She stroked his face, his neck. “Shh. Shh. I’m here. It’s me. I’ll get you out of here.”

  She turned to the chain and jerked at it, pulling with all her might.

  It wouldn’t budge. In her haste and fear, she’d forgotten that she was merely mortal. Just one soul among thousands, with no special powers. If she had any hope of getting him out, she’d have to leave and find help. Tools—or her brothers, if she could convince them. Anything.

  Cam’s moan tore at her ears. Could she leave him like this? He was going crazy. Her head whipped around, searching futilely for help, and she caught sight of the same black falcon. It sat near Cam’s side, its eyes rapt on them.

  Her brow furrowed as she watched it, her mouth dropping open when it pecked at the chains with its black beak. It was no normal falcon, for the chain began to shatter beneath its blows. Finally, the chain snapped. Grateful beyond measure, she pulled the chain away from Cam’s chest as the falcon pecked at the others.

  Within minutes, she was pulling the last of Cam’s bindings away. She turned to the falcon, only to see it fly off into the distance.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, awed by her strange luck. She turned back to Cam.

  “Come on, Cam, you have to wake up.” She smoothed her hands over his face and chest, watching gratefully as his wounds began to knit with godly speed now that his body wasn’t fighting the chains.

  He moaned, a pained exhalation that tugged at her heart, and finally opened his eyes.

  “Ana.” Confusion wrinkled his brow as he reached up to touch her face. His eyes were vacant, the way one’s were after a dream. “But you—you’re dead.”

  Dead? She frowned at him. Mytheans didn’t use that term. Death or dying, maybe, to talk about crossing over to the next life. But few people were ever truly dead, their souls blinked out of existence.

  “I’m in Otherworld with you. My mortal body is gone, but I’m here.” And here, she looked and felt as if she were flesh and blood. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Cam shook his head hard and leaned up on an elbow. He looked up at her again, his eyes clear. He yanked her to him, burying her against his chest. “Fuck, Ana. How did you get here?”

  “Same way I did last time.” She hugged him hard, then pulled away and held up her wrists, each now bearing two long scars. One for each time she’d come to Otherworld for him, for two vastly different reasons.

  His big hands cupped the sides of her face, and he kissed her hard on the mouth and with so much gratitude that she could all but taste it. He stumbled to his feet, still weakened by his injuries.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  She pointed west. “The closest cover is that way. A grove of oaks.”

  He shook his head. “Out of Otherworld.”

  Her heart plummeted. Of course. “I can’t leave Otherworld. The demigod potion didn’t work. I’m mortal. I’m stuck here.”

  “You’re not mortal, Ana. At least, not entirely.”

  What? Before she could speak, he wrapped his arms around her and she felt the familiar pull of the aether.

  ~~~

  When they appeared in Esha’s flat, Ana gasped. She’d never expected to make it back to earth. When a mortal went to an afterworld, they stayed there. No exception. “How? How am I here?”

  Cam kissed her hard, then pulled away from her and limped toward the bedroom, presumably looking for Esha. “The gods cannot come here, right?”

  “Of course,” Ana said. “The gods hold no sway at the university.”

  “Excellent. Gofannon will know that his magic chains have been broken. Soon the gods will know I’m gone.”

  “But how am I here? I should be t
rapped in Otherworld. You can’t give life back to mortals.” She shivered. It had been the hardest part of slitting her wrists back in Druantia’s pantry, the knowledge that even as a god, he couldn’t give her back the earth. But it had been the easiest trade she’d ever made.

  “You’re part Mythean, Ana. Not enough to make you immortal, since you were able to kill yourself to get into Otherworld.” He reached for her wrist and rubbed his thumb against the new scar, then met her eyes. “But enough that combined with your knowledge of the world of myth, I could treat you as any other Mythean and take you from Otherworld.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Then what am I? This doesn’t make any sense.”

  He pulled her over to the couch and they sat. His grip on her hands remained, his thumb slowly stroking as if to confirm for himself that she really was there. The story that followed was surreal. Her mind raced as he told her about an enormous party, every god from Otherworld in attendance—and she had been there with him in the forest.

  “A Dryad?” she asked. Could she have truly lived another life? The Celts believed in reincarnation, but she’d always thought that if it had been her, she’d have remembered her past life. “But I don’t remember any of that. And I shouldn’t have a body. I killed my earthly body. Even as a Dryad, my soul should have stayed trapped in Otherworld.”

  “That’s strange, and I’ve no idea how that worked. But it was you, Ana. You’re identical to the woman from my past.”

  Her eyes raced over his face. He believed this. “But how did everything change? You went from feeling to unfeeling. How is that even possible?”

  “Very powerful magic, in which we gods played a part. That night, I woke long after the others, farther into the forest where the magic couldn’t reach me as quickly. I witnessed the bones and blood of the Dryads form the oaks in that macabre glen. Your blood and your bones. But the spell made the memories fade until they felt unimportant. When I saw you covered in blood at Logan’s house, it looked horrifyingly familiar. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. When I was chained up on Blackmoor, I remembered.”

  “Holy shit,” she breathed. She didn’t remember any of that. She’d had another life? Where she’d known Cam? “You killed me?”

  Grief darkened his gaze. “I’m sorry, Ana. I couldn’t control it.”

  Her mind struggled to recall anything from her past, but she could remember nothing. Flutters of panic rose in her breast, that she had a whole history with Cam that she knew nothing about.

  “Ana, I’m sorry.”

  She blinked and met his gaze, realizing that she’d disappeared into her mind, searching for memories. “It’s fine. Really. It was a spell, of course you couldn’t control it. And I can’t believe it was me. I don’t remember anything.”

  “It was you. I’m certain of it. She looked like you and she felt like you and smelled of the forest, like you do.”

  “I—I believe you. I just can’t remember. But it’s fine. I wouldn’t be here in this incarnation if you hadn’t killed me in the past. I like being me, even if my situation is currently a nightmare.”

  “We’ll get out of it.”

  “How? If you step foot off the university campus, the gods will get you.”

  “They’ll have to find me first.”

  “They will, eventually.” Then they’d be separated—presuming the gods didn’t kill her.

  “Not if we can figure out a way to break the spell on Otherworld. It’s got to be one of the reasons that the gods feel so bound to the place. None of the other religions are like that.”

  “True. You said before that Druantia hosted the party where the gods lost emotion?” When he nodded, she said, “I think she cast the spell. When I went to her for help to come after you, she locked me up. She hates the gods. She hates you. With the kind of hatred that lasts millennia and spawns intricate plots.”

  He cursed, vile and low. Then nodded. “Fucking idiot. I was so damned arrogant back then, I never realized. The last time I saw her before that terrible night was after a battle. She’d taken tributes that were meant for me. Now, I don’t give a damn about them. But back then I was enraged. I was obsessed with myself and what I thought she’d taken from me. I threw her into the mud. Humiliated her in front of her followers.”

  “But you’re not like that now.”

  “No. I think having my emotion taken from me changed part of the way I think. I couldn’t care about anything enough—even myself—to dredge up arrogance. Once you gave me back some of my ability to feel, I think I wised up some.”

  “But she still hates you.”

  “And she’s determined to have her pound of flesh. My pride didn’t allow me to see what she was capable of. What she took from us. All emotion. Locking us in Otherworld.”

  “No longer. You have it back.”

  “Because of you.” He reached for her, drew her face up to his. “Thank you, Ana.”

  He gave her the sweetest kiss of her life, all soft lips and grazing touch. Eventually, when she was breathless, he drew away and looked down at her.

  He ran his thumb across her cheek and said, “I don’t think I have the full capacity for emotion that I once did, but everything good that I feel is wrapped up in you. I couldn’t kill you all those years ago when I found you in the forest because I recognized you. Not my eyes or my mind, but my heart.”

  Something in her chest cracked open. She almost felt like she should speak words of love. They simmered within her, ready to boil free, but the gaping hole in her memory and their past kept her silent.

  What she felt already was enough to give this situation an edge of fear. Their odds of getting out of this free and together were so slim that she couldn’t speak those words.

  He grasped her wrists and raised them to his lips, pressed a kiss to one, and though she tried to jerk away, he pressed a kiss to the other as well.

  “No,” she whispered. “They’re my failure.”

  Her failure to extricate herself from the mess she’d made so many years ago, her failure to live the life she was meant to. At least, that’s how she’d always thought of them.

  “And they’re my savior,” he said against her wrist. “You came to Otherworld for me. You wanted to escape, but you killed yourself and came back, thinking you’d be stuck there for good. How can I not love these scars for what they did for me?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t even think about it. I just had to get to you. And you’re the one who saved me from godhood. Thanks for shooting me with my own arrow.” She smiled wryly.

  “It was my place all along. Even if it wasn’t, I’d have done it for you. I could never let you suffer like that.”

  She kissed him, delighting when he reached out and pulled her toward him.

  “Will Esha come back soon?” he asked against her lips.

  “No. She said something about a vacation with her sister. I think she’s gone.”

  “Good.” He stood and swept her up into his arms.

  “Wait, your injuries.”

  “I’ve healed. Enough.”

  She still had so many questions and so much worry about how they would keep the gods from hunting them, but they flew from her mind when Cam started for the bedroom.

  Tomorrow. They would deal with them tomorrow.

  He strode into the dimly lit room and set her on her feet near the bed. With a gentle hand, he lifted her chin so that she could meet his eyes.

  “This means something, Ana. This is about what’s between us. No more lying to ourselves about what’s really happening. No matter what tomorrow brings, we’ll have this.”

  Ana’s heart leapt and she nodded. Everything they’d had until now had been hard and fast and full of fear, running from what could be and lying to each other about what there really was. The mess of their past and the fear of their future had put them on either side of a chasm.

  She didn’t want to run anymore, no matter how terrifying this was. Whatever came tomorrow, she’d have tonight.

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nbsp; He smiled and lifted her up, laid her upon the bed. He was so strong she felt weightless in his arms. She reached up to welcome him down to her, and he sank between her thighs with a groan.

  His mouth found hers, lips seeking and tongue sinking deep. She moaned and opened for him, wanting to be as close as possible to this man who’d come to mean so much to her.

  “I want you naked,” he muttered, and stripped off her clothes until she lay in nothing but cotton underwear.

  Every time before this, they’d removed just enough clothes to finish the job. Now she wanted to see all of him. The glorious hard muscles and lean strength. She tugged at his shirt, her hands trembling, and he obliged, yanking it over his head. In seconds, the rest followed.

  She grabbed for his shoulders, but he slipped lower, kissing his way down her body, first to the scars on her wrists that he so loved, then to her thighs, which tightened when he neared their juncture. He nuzzled the fabric and she quivered.

  “You are what I want,” he murmured.

  She shuddered and parted her thighs.

  “That’s it,” he growled, and pulled aside her underwear to stroke his tongue along her pussy.

  She jumped, keening low in her throat, and then reached for him. Her hands sank into his soft hair. “I want to see your face.”

  He relented, but not before he yanked her panties down and threw them across the room. She suddenly felt vulnerable, completely naked before him with her heart opening in a terrifying way.

  He loomed above her, huge and hard with his warrior’s face tight with concentration. Pale moonlight shone through the windows, highlighting the harsh planes of his face. He looked as if he never wanted to look away from her. The openness of this moment, of him staring down at her, was more intimate than anything they’d done before. Saying that this was something. Suddenly she was aware of how exposed she was.

  She’d laid everything on the line for him. Her life. Her future. As he’d done for her.

  She pulled him down for a kiss, sighing as his lips, the only soft part of him, pressed against hers. The rest of him was hot and hard, all smooth skin and firm muscle.