Stolen Fate (The Mythean Arcana 4)

But she did. She worried about him. She wanted to know if it was as bad as she was imagining it.

“I never knew my mother. And I haven’t seen my father in fifteen years,” she said.

He looked down at her, brows drawn. The dim streetlight cast a yellow glow on the side of his face. “You’re telling me this so that I’ll share, too?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I just want to share it. What you decide to say after is up to you.”

His hand tightened on the windowsill.

“You know that he lost his mind because he’s a Failte. He’s a shell now. Just a body. I doona visit him anymore because I canna take it.” Her throat burned. That would be her one day. Soon, if she didn’t recover the book. She said no more. It felt like the words were boulders stuck in her throat.

“Thank you for telling me.” His hand still gripped the windowsill, knuckles white. She wanted to touch him, so badly. Instead, she reached out to trace her finger over the grain of the windowsill.

Minutes passed.

His hand shifted and landed over hers, squeezing lightly.

He turned around and leaned against the wall, staring into the small living room. He didn’t look like he was seeing anything, though.

“There’s no’ much to tell, really. I grew up in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century. Among the mortals.”

“How?” she asked. “How’d you end up there? You’re a Mythean.”

“I was brought up by an old mortal woman until I was five. I knew she wasn’t my mother, but I’ve no idea how I ended up with her. We were hungry and cold almost all the time, but she was kind. For the most part. When she died, her son sold me to the workhouse. A glassworks. It was like a fucking nightmare I’d never wake up from, but I had it no worse than any other child had it in the workhouses. Half of Britain ran on the backs of children in those days.”

He sighed and turned around, looked down at the street, his gaze lost in the past. “When I was about thirteen, I figured out that I wasn’t human. At will, I could become invisible. It was my Sylph side coming out. I escaped the glassworks using that ability.”

Of course. He was a half-breed. They didn’t come into their powers until puberty, unlike full breeds, who developed them more gradually from the time the

y were infants.

“Then what?” she asked.

“I met Tommy. Fell in with his crowd of thieves, and have been doing it ever since. I left Tommy and his like behind years ago and struck out on my own. More profitable.”

“You could do legitimate work,” she said.

“What kind? I’m a former Mythean criminal. At least, I hope to be, if I can get out of prison.” He fingered the collar at his neck and she wanted to yank the thing off him. There was no way he’d be getting out and it made her sick.

“Anyway,” he said. “I enjoy the hunt. The chase. It’s who I am.”

Fiona’s phone shrilled and jerked her attention away.

She looked down at the number. Fear clogged her throat, and it felt like the floor dropped away from her.

Her boss. Again.

The phone continued to shriek into the now-silent flat. Fiona knew her face was white, her eyes probably wide as hell.

Ian turned and walked to the couch, no doubt trying to give her a bit of privacy in the tiny flat. But she couldn’t seem to pick up the phone. Her hand clenched around the little piece of plastic until the ringing finally stopped

A voicemail popped up and her stomach pitched. A second call from the boss who never called her. She was just a researcher and receptionist now. A desk jockey. There was only one reason he’d call her.

She took a shuddering breath and pressed the voicemail button, then lifted the phone to her ear.

‘“Fiona, this is Darrence. Lea has informed me that you’re searching for the book. You’ll cease this ridiculous hunt immediately and return to the university at once. Retrieving the book is beyond your capabilities, as you’ve proven. The university will be sending in the best of the best tomorrow. Don’t screw this up for them by charging in there and fucking this up. You’ll be a disgrace to your family, as your father was. I want to see you in my office tomorrow morning, or we’re sending guardians after you.”

She dropped the phone into her lap. She’d known this would happen, she just hadn’t thought it would be so soon.