Braving Fate (The Mythean Arcana 1)

“I—I don’t know. Minutes, maybe an hour.” She ran her hands down her front and scrubbed them nervously over her hips. He’d never seen her so frantic. “Damn it!”

She couldn’t stay still, and he couldn’t seem to move.

Diana dragged in a breath and stood to search the clearing. There had to be a way out. She had a body. She wasn’t just a soul. She shouldn’t be here.

Panic tore at her insides with scrabbling claws as she fumbled in her pocket for her invisibility charm. Please still work. She didn’t want to be sighted by any of the harpies who still lurked in the forest. She slipped it over her head and looked at her arm.

Shit. Still there. But she could still see herself when she’d first put it on and it had presumably worked then. Since she couldn’t be sure, she ran for the cover of the forest.

Think, Diana, think! She crouched behind a bush, staring blindly at the thick yellow mist that crawled along the ground as she searched her brain for an idea. Any idea.

She tried to ignore the bushes that scraped at her back and the skitter of animals above her in the trees as her mind scrabbled frantically for answers. The spell book. Paulinus had thrown aside his spell book. Maybe it held answers.

She peered out from behind the bush and searched the clearing for any sign of danger. They’d killed the demon sentries. Would more show up? If a human soul saw her, would it matter?

She couldn’t worry about that right now. She had to get that book. She took a bracing breath and raced from her spot. The ground flew beneath her feet as she sprinted toward the book. She jerked as a hare streaked by her but didn’t stop running. She scooped the book up out of the yellow mist and sprinted back to her hiding spot.

Frantically, she skimmed through the pages of the spell book. Latin. All in damned Latin. She wasn’t terrible at Latin. As an historian, it had been one of the languages she’d learned for her degree. She even used it sometimes.

But trying to read a spell book in Latin while she was in hell took more concentration than she had. The lines blurred before her face and a tear dropped to the page.

Searching the book for answers was stupid. Paulinus had been using it to escape and look where it had gotten him. A complex spell with ingredients she didn’t have.

A bitter laugh escaped her. She was in the same predicament as her enemy now. She buried her head in her hands, but jumped when an owl hooted. That was weird. She’d heard it before, but she hadn’t expected animals to be in human hell. And a hare had jumped through the clearing earlier.

A hare. She looked up. If there was a hare here, then maybe she could call Andrasta. It was the animal she’d used as Boudica to help call the goddess to her, and it had worked before. But how was she going to catch a hare? Chase it?

Maybe she didn’t need it. If it was still here, perhaps if she just said the words, it would work.

Here goes nothing. Diana took a deep breath and began to recite the words. They echoed creepily in the clearing and she shivered. When she finished the last verse, she looked around, hoping to see Andrasta.

Nothing.

Damn. Well, she’d try again. And again.

“Diana.”

She jumped. “Andrasta?”

Diana turned to see the goddess. She stood in the middle of the clearing, dressed once again in her warrior’s garb, this time with a different breastplate. Her stance was confident, her mien unconcerned, if slightly paler than when she had seen her last. Apparently hell didn’t bother a goddess as much as it did a mere mortal.

“Oh, thank you! You didn’t have trouble coming here?”

“As a Celtic god in a Roman hell?” She asked, smiling just slightly.

“Yes. Is that allowed?” Was shock making her ask these inane questions? She should be begging to be let out of here!

“I had to get special permission,” she said wryly.

Diana clutched the book in one hand, her sword in the other. Thank goodness she’d kept trying. “So, um, can I get out of here?”

Andrasta smiled. “I think so. You did well today.”

Diana nodded her thanks. She’d be able to appreciate the compliment better once she was out of Erebus.

“You showed uncommon wisdom, as I did so many years ago. You also showed mercy.”

Diana shook her head. “No, not mercy. The boy had nothing to do with my daughters’ deaths. I shouldn’t have killed him in my past life. I just wanted to undo that wrong.”