by Linsey Hall
“I didn’t know what to expect when I tracked you to Ancient Magic, but it wasn’t someone like you. I like you.” He looked away, as if this was more emotion that he was used to feeling, and he needed a breath of air to keep going. “Especially after getting to know you. I couldn’t take you back to the Underworld or turn you in to the Order. Not for anything in the world.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“I don’t know. I know that you make me willing to break the rules.” His gaze met mine, fierce, and he pulled me toward him.
He hesitated for a second, just long enough to let me pull away. His intentions were clear. My escape would be easy. But no way in magic was I doing that. It might be a bad idea, but at this point, I didn’t care.
His dark gaze burned into me as he lowered his head. When his firm lips pressed to mine, I swear my heart jumped out of my chest. He smelled like sandalwood and tasted like wine, but also like himself. Something that wasn’t his magic. It made goosebumps prickle over my skin.
A weird little noise escaped my throat as his lips moved skillfully on mine. I kissed him back with everything I had, reaching up to grip his sweater in my hands. I was growing so lightheaded that I had to hold on for balance. I couldn’t get enough of this.
He pulled away abruptly. “I’m sorry. Now isn’t the time.”
“Um.” My heart fluttered in my chest, a frantic beat of wings as I tried to recover. “So, you ah, like like me?”
“How could I not like the woman who saves the day with her books and her sword?”
My heart just about exploded at his words. He got me. My books were a crutch because my dragon sense wasn’t super strong, but they were still me. And my sword was definitely me.
I struggled to find something to say. “You’ve kept it pretty much on the down-low. I wasn’t exactly expecting that kiss.”
“Really? I felt the tension in the woods in Scotland. You did, too.”
“Yeah. Why didn’t you kiss me then?”
“At that point, I was still threatening to take you back to the Underworld. I didn’t want to ask for a date at the same time. And a kiss was out of the question. I’m not interested in compelling a woman’s affections.”
Oh, so he was super honorable. I’d been told to expect it, but just knowing that he hadn’t used his position of power to get in my pants was pretty awesome. I’d really been wrong to doubt him because he was half demon. “So, no trading dates for time out of the Underworld, then?”
“No. I’m not making you return there. You’re special, Del. You have a role to play in whatever is coming, and I’m going to help you accomplish it. I don’t know what makes you so special, but you are.”
“I don’t know either.” Just the idea of what might be within me scared the crap out of me. And the idea of fulfilling the role of Guardian? Yeah right. How was I going to do that?
“We’ll figure it out together.” He reached for my hand and squeezed, then met my gaze. Sincere, determined.
We could figure it out together. With Roarke and my deirfiúr, I wasn’t alone in this. But wherever this was leading, it was becoming clear that it was something only I could handle. Which meant I had to try. Even if I failed, that was all I could do. Keep trying, until I succeeded. Or it killed me.
I knew which outcome I was hoping for.
Thank You For Reading!
Want to find out how Del died? Dragon’s Gift: The Huntress, which stars Cass, is the series to read. There is an excerpt of book one, Ancient Magic, on the next page. You can also sign up for my mailing list here to get an exclusive novella for free. It’s from Cass’s perspective and takes place before the events in The Huntress series.
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Turn the page for an excerpt of Ancient Magic.
Excerpt Of Ancient Magic
Blood. I rubbed my tongue against the top of my mouth. Definitely blood. Fear shivered through me. The ground scratched my bare arms and the back of my neck. Prickly grass? My eyelids were gritty as I lifted them and blinked into the darkness. Stars twinkled down.
Night? Where was I?
Panic closed my throat. I gasped for air.
I pushed myself up and looked down. A ragged dress covered my skinny form, but didn’t protect me from the chill night. I shivered as cold embraced me. A battered golden locket lay on my chest. It looked old, but I didn’t recognize it.
A field stretched out around me, illuminated by starlight and a moon that hung low over the earth. The hair on my arms stood up at the sound of night creatures in the distance. A cold breeze rustled the grass, but fear chilled me more than the wind. Why was I out here?
Please don’t let me be alone.
My heart thundered in my ears as I glanced around.
Two girls who looked to be about fourteen or fifteen lay sprawled on the ground beside me. They wore ragged dresses like mine.
Why was I here with two other girls my age?
Wait—were they my age? When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember how old I was exactly. Just trying to think of it sent an icepick of pain through my skull.
With a trembling hand, I reached out and shook the girl closest to me.
“Wake up,” I said. Panic sunk its claws into my chest. Why were we here?
When she didn’t wake, I shouted, “Wake up!”
The girl gasped and shot upright, her black hair stuck with grass. Her terrified blue eyes met mine.
“Run,” she gasped.
She spoke Irish, like I did, and the word shot straight through me.
“Hide,” I said. “We have to hide.”
I wasn’t sure why, but I knew it more strongly than I knew anything else in the world. Her word—run—had triggered my own. Hide.
“Get up!” I scrambled to my feet. “We have to hide. Now. Now, now, now.”
She clambered up, and we frantically tugged at the arms of the girl who still lay on her back. She was so pale she looked dead.
But I couldn’t leave her. “Get up!”
She shrieked and jerked out of our hold, then crouched like a terrified animal. Her dark hair hung in her face.
What had happened to her, to us, that we were like this?
“FireSoul,” she whispered, also in Irish. Her wide green gaze met mine through the curtain of hair.
The fear in her eyes must have mirrored my own. Her word pricked at my consciousness, but fear overrode it.
My heart pounded in my chest, trying to break my ribs. “Come on. We have to hide!”
She nodded and her head whipped around, searching for shelter like a cornered animal. I looked too. A small patch of woods about a hundred yards behind me caught my eye.
“This way.” I spun and set off running across the field. They followed.
My lungs burned and my legs ached as we raced. I clearly wasn’t used to being outside, nor to exercise.
But why? When I tried to think of the reason, nothing came but pain. My head ached when I tried to remember myself or my past. A sob burst from my chest. I couldn’t remember anything.
Fear and the desperate need to hide drove me on when I wanted to stop and collapse to the ground, weeping. The trees loomed ahead—leafless, claw-like branches reaching for the sky. They were terrifying, but far better than the open field.
There was nowhere to hide in an open field.
Hide.
We dove into the woods, plowing through the underbrush until we were deep in the forest. Night creatures continued to rustle around us.
When we came to a large pile of collapsed trees, I plunged into them. Bark and branches scratched my arms as I found a nook created by the collapsed wood. The other girls crowded in behind me.
They were warm. Familiar, though I didn’t recognize them. Safe.
We huddled together, panting. It wasn’t quite as dark when they were near me, though it w
as more a feeling than reality.
Cold pinched my cheeks. I reached up and touched wetness.
Tears.
One of the other girls sniffled.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“It’s—” The green-eyed girl started panting. Moonlight illuminated her panic-filled eyes. “I don’t know!”
“I don’t either!” the other girl cried. “I don’t know my name!”
I tried to think of my own, poking for memories.
Pain.
I didn’t know how old I was. Or where I was from. It hadn’t been a fluke before. I really couldn’t remember. “I don’t know anything either!”
We gasped and cried, huddling closer. Their warmth felt familiar, like we’d done this a hundred times before. Slowly, it soothed me. I tried reaching into my mind to draw out some memories.
“Ouch.” I cringed.
“What’s wrong?” asked the dark-haired girl.
“Every time I try to remember something, my head hurts.”
“Me too,” said the green-eyed girl.
“And me,” sniffled the other.
“Then what do we remember?”
“Run,” said the dark-haired girl. “We’re running, but I don’t know from what.”
“Is that how we got into the field?” I asked.
“Maybe.” Her voice shook. “Run was all I remembered. When I woke, it was the only thing in my mind.”
“Hide,” I said, thinking back. “That’s what I remembered. We must hide. From a bad man.” I rubbed my temple. “Or woman? From someone very bad.”
Just the shadowy memory made tears pour down my face. My shoulders shook. The trembling traveled down my arms and legs until my entire body quaked.
I couldn’t remember who we were hiding from, but my body remembered. Hiding from evil. Bad. Bad, bad, bad.
The green-eyed girl threw her arms around me. “Hey, hey, calm down. It’ll be okay.”
I gasped through my sobs and realized I’d been saying bad out loud. I didn’t believe that it’d be okay—not really—but her words made me feel a little better.
“What do you remember?” I asked.
“FireSoul,” she whispered. “We are FireSouls.”
I gasped and jerked out of her arms. “No, we’re not. We can’t be.”
I might not have remembered my own past, but some knowledge of the world still seemed to be intact. FireSouls were bad. Even the word sent a shiver of panic through me.
Run, hide, and FireSoul were my only memories? That couldn’t be. In my mind, I poked for the biggest, most important pieces of information. I wanted to know something.
What came was that I lived in a world full of magic. Thoughts burst in my mind. “I’m one of the Magica—you two feel like Magica as well.”
I could feel their power now that I tried. Could smell it and taste it. The green-eyed girl’s power felt like water on my skin and smelled like flowers. Tasted like vanilla. The dark-haired girl was just as powerful. Her magic felt like soft grass beneath my feet and smelled like fresh laundry. It tasted sweet, but I couldn’t place it.
“Magica?” the dark-haired girl asked.
“Magica can create magic!” the green-eyed girl said, excitement in her voice. “I remember now. But I don’t remember what kind I am. Witch, or sorcerer, or… mage.”
“Or shifter, demon, or fairy,” I added as the memories flowed back. “But they aren’t Magica. They are supernaturals like us, but they don’t use magic the same way we do. But they know about us. Unlike humans. The Great Peace keeps us hidden.” It came back to me in pieces. Though we lived alongside humans, the Great Peace—the most powerful bit of magic ever created—hid us from human eyes. It took the powerful spells of hundreds of Magica and shifters to create the Great Peace. “Humans can see us but not our magic, which we shouldn’t use around them anyway.”
“Right, I remember now,” the dark-haired girl said.
“I feel your power too. But you don’t feel evil,” I said. “Not like a FireSoul would feel.”
“We’re not evil,” the green-eyed girl said. “We haven’t killed…I don’t think. But I do remember that we’re FireSouls. I know it.”
“Everyone hates FireSouls,” I whispered. They were the bogeyman because they stole the magical gifts of others by killing the original owner. Was I the bogeyman? Me and these two girls? Had I killed another Magica to steal his gift? Wouldn’t I remember something as terrible as that?
“Is that why we’re hiding?” the dark-haired girl asked. “Are we hiding from the Order of the Magica and the Alpha Council?”
“No,” I said, though the two supernatural governing organizations would be after us if they knew we were FireSouls. “We’re hiding from someone worse. But if we really are FireSouls, we can’t tell anyone. They’ll throw us in prison.”
“We are FireSouls,” she said. “When I woke, I knew it. It was my memory. As strong as yours.”
I swallowed hard, remembering how strong that urge to hide had been. I’d woken confused, but when the dark-haired girl had said run, it had burst back into my consciousness.
“Are we really FireSouls?” the dark-haired girl asked. “I don’t feel like a FireSoul. I don’t feel evil.”
I didn’t either. I felt hungry and cold. My stomach growled and I shivered. If only I had something to eat. If only I was warm. I wanted it so badly.
A strange feeling tugged at my middle. As if there were a string tied around my waist that pulled me to the left. A sense of food and warmth flowed from the invisible string.
“There’s food and shelter nearby,” I said. “I feel it.”
“Treasure,” whispered the green-eyed girl. “You can sense treasure.”
Treasure. Of course I could sense food and shelter. I coveted them. They were treasure to me right now.
I was a FireSoul. That was proof.
FireSouls were given that name because they shared a piece of a dragon’s soul, though no one knew how it had happened. If dragons still existed, they were hiding. But legend said that all magic descended from dragons. FireSouls somehow shared a part of their soul.
That’s why we could steal powers and find treasure. Dragons were covetous. They coveted treasure of all varieties—including the powers of others. The greatest treasure of all could only be obtained through death.
“We can find what we need with our dragon-sense,” said the green-eyed girl. “If we want it badly enough, it becomes treasure. Then we follow our sense to it.”
Was that how we were supposed to survive? Become hungry enough to find food and then steal it?
I looked down at my ragged dress and skinny body. The only thing I had of value was the necklace, and even that was probably almost worthless. It didn’t look like I had a lot of choice right now. If I had parents, I had no idea who they were or how to find them.
My throat tightened. Did I have a mom and dad? Where were they? I pushed through the pain in my mind, trying to remember. But nothing came. Just blinding agony. I slumped against the other girls.
“Are you okay?” one asked.
“Yes.” I pushed thoughts of parents away and focused on surviving. “If we use our dragon sense, we have to be careful.”
If we were caught, we would be thrown in the Prison for Magical Miscreants. It was a cold, dark, terrible place, I remembered that. A shiver ran over me. My own personal bogeyman. In the corner of my mind, it felt like someone had once threatened me with that prison, but when I poked at the memory, the blinding pain came again. Why didn’t I learn? I needed to quit poking at my personal past.
“We need names,” I said.
“Yes. I hate not having one,” said the dark-haired girl.
The green-eyed girl looked up at the sky. “I will be Phoenix. After the constellation. Call me Nix.”
I liked that. Naming ourselves for something bigger gave me hope. I looked up too. A cluster of bright stars caught my eye. I didn’t know what in my past had tau
ght me the constellations, but I was grateful for it. “I’ll be Cassiopeia. Call me Cass.”
The green-eyed girl looked up and sighed. “You took the best ones.”
I giggled, the sound surprising me.
“I’ll take Delphinus,” she said finally. “But it’ll be Delphine. And you can call me Del.”
“Okay. Del and Nix.” They both looked so different. Panic gripped my throat as I realized that I didn’t know what I looked like. I pulled my hair around. Red. “We look nothing alike. I don’t think we’re related by blood, even though we’re all FireSouls.”
They were rare from what I remembered, but I didn’t recall the gift being genetic.
“We’re sisters now,” Nix said. “Because we’re all we’ve got. I don’t remember my parents.”
“Me neither.” Del sniffed back tears.
“We’ll find them.” I closed my eyes and focused on the idea of parents. I wanted them more than anything, so I should be able to find them.
But the magical string didn’t tie itself around my middle. I thought harder, reaching into my mind, pretending it was a book I could flip through.
Agony pierced my skull.
I retreated, gasping.
“I tried to find them,” I said. My parents were lost to me. My throat tightened and tears burned. “I don’t think I know enough about them. I could imagine food and find that. But people are harder, I think.”
“We’ll find them somehow,” Del said.
I nodded, trying to hope but finding it hard.
“We can only use our dragon sense to find food and other things we need,” I said. “No killing for other powers.” I didn’t want to be a murderer, no matter how much power it got me.
Nix nodded. “I don’t want to be a monster.”
“Me neither,” said Del.
“If another supernatural asks how we can find things, we say we are Seekers,” I said.
The green-eyed girl smiled. “That’s a good idea. Camouflage ourselves.”
“Exactly.” Seekers were a type of supernatural who could find things. As long as we didn’t kill and steal powers, we could use our ability to find treasure and just say that we were Seekers.