Page 2 of Bright Soul

“Watch your tone with her,” Madigan said flatly.

My whole body tensed. I had yet to give her a piece of my mind for tearing me away from Phaeron earlier. Which was foolish, I told myself, trying to get my emotions back under control. If she had left me, I might be a soulless husk right now. But I had no idea what’d happened to the princely dimensional after we fled. Was he alive? Was he between Myuna’s teeth or worse right now?

Hana shifted to put herself between Madigan and me. “It’s all right. Let her be angry. Cress, I apologize for withholding information from you.”

My lips quirked to the side. I had a distinct feeling there was a “but” following on the heels of this apology and about to ruin its sincerity.

“But I gazed hard into the gray for any other way and didn’t find one. Look around. What do you see?” Hana asked and barely gave me a chance to do as she instructed before she continued. “I’ll tell you what I see: standing around us is the team that will defeat Myuna the White. She was destined to be summoned to our planet. If not today, in Cerris City, where she can be contained…on Earth itself, where nothing would stop her from glutting herself on billions of souls.”

The moisture left my mouth at the thought. “But—” I began to protest.

“It had to happen,” Hana stated, steel behind every word. “At this time, in this place, with these people. I give you myword. Do you know what happens when a Graygazer denies their fate?” She gestured between herself, her husband, and the older gentleman sitting on a curb nearby, Kwan Graygazer. He was one of two members of the Crown Coven to survive.

I couldn’t help a cringe and the sting of moisture in my eyes. “Don’t say that,” I croaked. “The last time you said that to me…”

It was burned in my memory like a brand, along with the follow-up.Someone else dies instead. Often horrifically.Lanie, her daughter and my friend, had just sacrificed herself to prevent the Hungering Darkness from killing and eating the soul of a different witch. It was the curse of a talent augur—knowing when, where, and how they would die.

Hana’s dark gaze softened. “I know. And if it makes a difference, it hurt to lead us all on this path, knowing what you would have to witness and endure. Now, you came over here to suggest where we go next, right?”

I’d nearly forgotten I had my unlocked phone in hand, the map route waiting to be shared. “Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat and blinking rapidly. I offered the device to Hana, who passed it to Madigan. Orthus leaned over to look at the screen too. “My mom found the nearest hospital, and it’s not all that far from where we are.”

“The streets will be safe for now,” Hana shared.

That seemed to make Madigan’s decision easier. She exchanged a glance with Orthus before declaring, “A sound position for us to rest properly and plan our next steps. Let’s move.”

I stayed by Hana’s side as Madigan picked up her helmet and hammer, circulating the news that we were heading out. The group moved slowly toward a main street, with our leader up front, consulting my phone and its map. I was so used to having my phone disappear to be used by others that it didn’t bother me.

Madigan’s guardian witches and Crystal fae spread out to surround the perimeter of our group with fighters. Ben and Geo, still carrying Lucas, were pushed toward the center along with most of the members of my coven and all our assorted familiars. Roe supported Willow, who wasn’t the steadiest on her feet.

I could hear Roe also trying to encourage and comfort Wren. The blonde had just watched her father and boyfriend die senselessly. She muffled sobs into a handkerchief and wobbled uncharacteristically in the heels she’d worn as she shuffled along with the group.

I itched to go be with them rather than toward the back of the group with Hana. But I had a burning question for the augur who’d pushed us toward this situation that’d put the tears in Wren’s eyes and the grief in all of us for what we’d already lost.

“What about Phaeron?” I asked. Hana glanced up at me, her expression unreadable. “Did Myuna eat his soul? Did she corrupt him? Is…is he alive?”

“He’s alive, just suppressed by her presence,” she answered, measuring each word carefully. “His fate branches in several directions, and the most likely outcome is yet unclear to me. I am thankful, though.”

“Oh?” I asked faintly.

“You will have an opportunity to affect which fate he meets. Because of your influence, I have hope we will avoid the future where Myuna twists him into one of her monsters,” she stated. The thought made my insides feel like they were trying to wrap into a knot, drawing out a pain in my gut.

Hana was as serious as ever and I felt the weight of her words keenly. “But if she succeeds and he becomes corrupted, we’re doomed. Each and every one of us.”

2

PHAERON

The goddess Myuna the White did not chew her food. It’d always unsettled me deep down that she didn’t have teeth. But once, I’d been naïve enough to think that, as a higher being, she had no need to eat.

She slurped down all that was placed before her in offering now, her face a thin veneer over a bottomless hole. Her mouth stretched grotesquely around the whole bodies of human beings, and she uttered the occasional rumble of dissatisfaction.

I was forced to watch. While she was aware I was tethered to her, all she wanted to do was eat and eat. Endaeron fed her, dragging over the soulless corpses left behind in the Crown Coven’s audience chamber. The metallic smell of blood was heavy in the still air, and the silence between Myuna’s gulps and quaffs was broken only by the grunting and cursing of Endaeron’s newest vessel, a vampire named Garroway.

When I refused to help bring her the bodies littered around the chamber, she’d pointed a clawed finger, and I stood where she indicated, waiting with dread in my heart for her feasting to cease. My body was turned toward hers, standing with rigidobedience to await her next order. Purple-tinged blood still dripped down my leather armor, courtesy of the burning wounds left behind in my fight with Endaeron in his last vessel, the boy Lucas. I let the pain ground me, its sting reminding me of who I was.

There was a small hole in my soul and a pinprick of corruption left behind within it. It formed the strand of control by which she could command me. My logical mind was shut under a layer of her magical influence, and even now, I pushed and probed at the barrier between Myuna’s control and my free will.

Once she realized there were no souls left here for her to eat except for mine and the tainted one Garroway carried, my life was forfeit, or worse. I had to find a way to defy the control her mere presence gave her.

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