by Anna Argent
“Is all of this necessary? Can’t you just pretend you didn’t see me and let me go on my way?”
“Not until we figure out why your shards brought you here.”
“I already told you. I was here to drop off that paper.”
When he didn’t budge, Echo sighed. “Fine. Make it fast. I have to keep moving.”
He was going to have to confront her about this rat man soon, but again decided to stay focused. There were things she needed to know for her own protection.
“Shards are small fragments of a human soul.”
“Mouthy ones.”
“Agreed.”
“Where did they come from?” she asked.
“There are a lot of theories, but they all agree on a few things. The first being that centuries ago, a group of bad people were trying to do evil magic. Some good guys stopped them before they could pull off the nasty spell, but the cost was the total destruction of everyone around—both good and bad, old and young. The clash of power was like an atomic bomb going off, but one that only destroyed souls.”
Echo nodded. “Mom said that each of their souls were shattered into dozens of pieces and flung out into the world, some thousands of miles away.”
“We don’t know the exact details, because everyone present died, but we do know that those little broken fragments of souls were absorbed by who-knows-how many humans. They carried them around without knowing they were there.”
“Then how do you know that’s what happened?”
“There’s enough written evidence in the form of journals and diaries to piece together what happened.”
“Which was…?” she asked.
“Over the generations, the fragmented shards worked secretly to be put back together.”
“How?” she asked.
“Our best guess is that even a single shard is able to exert influence over its host. It could have even driven a man to seek out a certain woman as his wife so that their offspring would make one of the original souls more complete. A few generations of that repeated, and the shards would become more whole and powerful.”
Her pale eyebrows drew down in thought. “Mom always said that she didn’t understand why she was drawn to Dad. He was a bit of a bad boy, and she knew from the first day she saw him that he would be trouble.”
“But she stayed with him anyway,” Stygian guessed.
“Long enough to have me and my sister. After that he disappeared. I barely remember him. All I know is that he died when my big sister was eight. She got his shards.”
“I’m sorry.”
She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Shit happens. At least we had Mom. She was awesome.”
“Raising two daughters alone couldn’t have been easy.”
“Three. Mom found another little girl on the streets, digging through trash for food. Her parents had been killed, and poor little Hedy was left with a brain full of voices and no one to look out for her. Mom took her in and raised her as one of us.”
“Your mom really was awesome.”
Echo gave him a sad smile. “She really was.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Eight years.”
“What happened?” he asked, hoping he wasn’t overstepping his bounds.
Her expression tightened with grief. “She was murdered by the rat man. My whole family was.”
Stygian put his arm around her. He knew they weren’t friends, but he couldn’t stand to see her hurt and not offer some kind of comfort. At least that’s what he told himself.
The truth was, he was hyper-aware of her, constantly on the lookout for a reason to feel her smooth skin under his hands. Whenever he wasn’t touching her, he missed it, which was odd for a man who couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched anyone he wasn’t willing to kill.
He should have asked Eden if that addictive power Echo had over him was a manifestation of their shared shards. It had to be. There was no other explanation for it.
Except the fact that Echo was the single most beautiful woman he’d ever encountered. And that included Starry and Phoenix, both of whom had shards that enhanced their beauty.
Maybe Echo had a few of those as well. Maybe that’s how she got that glossy, golden hair, those amazing pale teal eyes, and that full, plump mouth that made his own water for a taste.
Taste her. Kiss her.
Take her.
He had to avert his gaze away from her lovely face to keep his thoughts on track. “We all become hosts through the death of people we love. It’s a sad way to enter a family, but that’s what we are—the Riven. You’re one of us now, and if you let us, we’ll be there for you when you need us. You can help us fight the good fight, and in return, we’ll have your back.”
She was quiet for a long time before she cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was thick with emotion. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m better on my own. I really need to get going. I’ve already been here too long.”
We need her.
He couldn’t let her leave. Voices or no, the urge to keep her by his side was too strong to dismiss. Her presence was vital in a way he didn’t yet understand.
“Don’t you want to know what the prophecy says?” he asked.
“Not particularly. As far as I’m concerned, this whole magical shard stuff is a curse—one I try hard to ignore.”
“It’s not safe to be out there alone. I’ve been hunting the Vires for a long time, and they will kill you to take what you have. If you’d broken into their home instead of ours, you’d already be dead, your shards absorbed.”
Echo toyed with a salt shaker, her slender fingers trembling slightly. “I was never supposed to have any shards. They were all supposed to go to my big sister.”
“I’m sorry you lost her.”
She blinked rapidly, but to her credit, shed no tears of grief. “Is there a way to get rid of them? Other than to die, I mean.”
“I’m sorry, but no. Marvel has been working on a shard-sucking device for years with no luck. But she keeps trying. One of these days she’ll crack the code.”
She gave him a pointed look. “All I have to do is stick around long enough to find out, right? You really think I’m that naïve? I know you don’t want me to leave, but I don’t understand why.”
“My gut says you’ll be safer here than on your own.”
“Are you sure it’s your gut talking and not the crazy voices in your head?”
He ignored her question because he knew she was right. “You could spend the night in one of the empty rooms. Maybe have a good meal. You don’t have to worry while you’re here. There are a lot of us who will watch your back while you get some rest.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” She scooted closer to him in an effort to get him to slide out of her way.
Stygian held his ground and enjoyed the feel of her thigh grazing his.
“Are you holding me here against my will?” she asked.
“No, but I’d like you to stay long enough to figure out why the shards brought you here, find out what the prophecy you brought says. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
“Nope. The less I know, the better.”
She was going to leave if he didn’t find a way to stop her, so he grasped onto the first thing that popped in his head. “What about Hazel?”
“Who?” Echo asked.
“The woman your other shards are keeping caged. Her name was Hazel.”
“There’s no way you can know that.”
“It’s what Eden meant when she said I’d recognize the woman in the cage. Most of her shards are in me, so I know how nasty she is. It’s entirely possible that she or one of your other shards wanted you to come here. If I were you, I’d want to know why I was being manipulated.”
“You’re far more curious than I am,” Echo said. “It’s safer to keep your head down and mind your own business.”
Echo looked him in the eye, and her direct gaze drove the breath from his ches
t.
She was so pretty—almost ethereal. If fairies were real they’d look just like her, with her dainty, slightly pointed ears and huge, tilted eyes. Even in the bright light of the dining area, her skin was flawless. And her golden-blond hair was an otherworldly color that never could have come from a bottle. He’d never been much for romantic fantasies, but the few times he’d let his mind wander to places too good to be real, the woman that he’d pictured looked a little too much like Echo to be a coincidence.
He had to glance away from her so that he could focus on her words rather than her lush mouth. “We can protect you.”
“How? If I stay in one place too long, the rat man will find me. I’d take the risk if you could pry the damn voices from my head, but you can’t do that, can you?”
“No, but you shouldn’t be on your own. There are people who will want to kill you for your shards and the power they possess.”
“You mean people like the rat man? I’m well aware.”
“I don’t know him specifically, but he is certainly one of the Vires. Do you know about them?”
She was quiet for so long he wasn’t sure she’d answer. When she did, her voice wavered with grief. “They kill people for their shards. They are the reason my family is dead, so I’d say I know all I need to know.”
Stygian covered her hand with his. Her fingers were cold and he could feel the way they shook. Still, she didn’t pull away from his touch, and for some reason, her small offering of trust rocked him all the way down to his toes.
“That’s why you need to stay. The Vires can’t touch you here. You’re safe.”
She let out a humorless bark of laughter. “No one is ever safe from those assholes. My mom was as careful as anyone could be and the rat man still managed to kill her.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were a pitiful offering, but they were all he had to give her.
“I appreciate your sympathy, but all I really want is for you to get out of my way so I can leave. I’ve already been in one place too long. It’s safest to keep moving.”
His shards rose up in a roar of defiance at the news that she wouldn’t stay. He did his best to ignore them, but for once he was in full agreement with the freeloaders in his head.
He needed her to stay.
We need her.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“Anywhere I want. If I don’t stay in one place too long the rat man won’t catch me again.”
He wasn’t sure her logic worked, but she was living proof that it had so far. “Is that how you’ve stayed safe on your own?”
“I was sixteen when my family was killed. Moving has kept me alive for eight years. No sense in changing tactics now.”
“At least stay the night. Sleep in a decent bed. Have a hot meal. We good guys try to stick together as much as we can. You can get to know us, gather a few phone numbers to call if you get in a bad spot. We always try to come when one of us calls for help.”
“The voices keep telling me that I should trust you, but they like to play games, don’t they? They have their own agenda, and I’d rather not be their pawn.”
“No one is asking you to be. We’re all in the same shitty situation. We all have noisy tenants in our heads that we can’t evict. The more we stick together, the safer we’ll all be.”
“I don’t see how. All you’re doing by clumping up is offering the Vires a bigger, juicer target.”
“They don’t know where we are, and even if they did, we’d know they were coming.”
“The way you knew I was coming?” Sarcasm reigned.
She had a point.
He should have asked her before—demanded an explanation—but he’d been too swept up by her to worry about how she’d gotten into his room, under his body. All he’d been able to think about was how good she felt there.
But now, he really needed to know how she’d slipped past their security measures. Because if she could, then others could as well.
“How did you sneak in, anyway?”
She gave a negligent shrug. “I’m good at blending in with the shadows, good at being sneaky. Besides, you left your window unlocked.”
“No, I didn’t.” Unless he had and his shards made him forget. That line of thought was more than a little disturbing.
“Well, someone unlocked it. And it wasn’t like I tried a bunch of other windows first. I knew exactly where to go.”
“How?”
She tapped her temple. “They told me.”
The implications of that were creepy. Not only did someone inside Asgard unlock his window—possibly he himself—but the shards she hosted told her about it? The idea made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and wave.
“Do you think our shards communicated?” he asked. “That the part of Hazel in my head talked to the part of her in yours?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. You’re supposed to be the expert. I only know what Mom taught me, and she didn’t have time to learn more than simply how to survive.”
“I’ll ask Harold. If anyone will know about shard communication, it’s him.”
“Who is he?”
“We call him the librarian, but he’s also our resident historian, record keeper and all-around encyclopedia. He’s spent his life studying shards, magic and prophecy.”
She held up her hand to stop Stygian. “I can’t go there right now. It’ll break my brain to think about someone predicting the future. Just tell me about the past. What do you know about Hazel? Anything that could help me keep her quiet?”
“We have a few records on her, but the main thing you need to know is that she’s bad news.”
“How bad?”
“The worst. She was willing to sacrifice her own child to get what she wanted.”
“And what did she want?”
“The records are sketchy on that part.”
“If the records are no good, then how can you be so sure?”
“Because most of the broken shards of her twisted soul are in me. I can feel her.”
Echo pulled her hand away, tucked it under her thigh and made herself as small as possible, as if he were going to hurt her.
The idea both pissed him off and made him want to comfort her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’ve exhausted every resource we Riven have to learn more about her and how to control her. So far, she’s never managed to slip her leash.”
“Anything about how to get rid of her?”
“Death works. But other than that, I’ve found nothing.”
“So, I’m no better off now than I was before I snuck in here.”
He didn’t like her feeling that way. He wanted to fix her problems and keep her safe, though why he’d feel so strongly about her was a mystery. It’s not like he felt the need to protect every woman he met.
Echo was special.
We need her.
“I do know one thing about Hazel,” he offered.
“What’s that?”
“If she was the one who brought you here, then she has an end game. With only one small piece of her inside of you, it would have taken her considerable power to influence your will, especially if your other shards are keeping her in check. I don’t know if you being here is her doing or not, but if it was, then we need to find out what it is she wants before it’s too late.”
“I think I can help with that,” said Harold as he crossed the main hall toward them.
He held the yellowed page that Echo had brought in a gnarled hand, raised like a newly won trophy. His body was stooped with age, but he was surprisingly nimble for a man nearing the century mark. His cardigan hung on his frame, making Stygian wonder if he’d recently lost weight. Dark age spots were visible through his thinning hair, which there seemed to be less of every time Stygian saw him. As he glimpsed Echo, his watery blue eyes brightened with excitement.
“You read the prophecy already?” asked Stygian. “What did it say?”
&nbs
p; The librarian’s gazed was fixed on Echo. “I’ve only read some of it and it’s about her.”
This time, when Echo pushed to get out of the booth, Stygian let her go.
“What about me?” she asked.
“The prophecy is strangely clear, child. Usually, such things are cloaked in subtext and symbolism, but not in this case.”
“What did it say?” Stygian asked.
“Do I even want to know?” Echo asked.
Harold frowned in confusion. “Of course, you do. Why else would you be here?”
“I’m trying not to be here,” Echo said through gritted teeth. “Stygian isn’t taking the hint.”
In support of her claim, he grabbed her wrist to prevent her from taking the step she was about to take toward the door. He really didn’t want to have to chase her, because when he caught her, it was likely going to end up with her splayed under his body as he pinned her to the floor. There was no way he was going to keep himself from getting hard if he got her in that position, and he didn’t think that his raging erection was going to do much in support of his case that she should stay here—that they were all nice and civilized.
His voice was rougher than he’d intended. “Spit it out, Harold. What did it say?”
“It said why our lovely young guest is here.”
“And why is that?” Echo asked.
Harold grinned, making his watery blue eyes shimmer with excitement. “You’re here to save Stygian.”
Chapter Six
“Save Stygian?” Echo asked, dumbfounded.
She’d never heard anything more ridiculous in her life. How could a scrawny girl like her save a powerhouse like him?
“I wasn’t aware I needed saving,” Stygian said with a slight, amused smile painting his mouth.
He looked good wearing a smile. Damn good. All Echo could do was stare up at him and try not to drool.
The longer she was near him, the more she noticed just how appealing he was. It wasn’t just that he was hot, though he was definitely that. It wasn’t just that he was ripped and bulging with the kind of muscles a woman could get used to feeling under her fingers.