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.