Page 29 of A Royal’s Soul (Soul Match #3)

Selene Borealis

How was it possible for the mansion to be so overrun, so quickly? They had to be entering from multiple locations—or perhaps they were already here. Not simply given help from the inside, but already on the inside.

Despite my sense of smell being useless and my hearing impaired with ringing due to the explosives, I was able to hear the breathing of others gathered in the room I was about to pass.

“Show yourselves,” I demanded, stopping mid-path.

It was likely servants, hiding—not knowing how or where to evacuate to—but another sense, some called it our vampiric sixth sense (more accurately perhaps our tenth or twelfth sense, depending on opinion) told me to be cautious.

“You never call, never visit, and this is my greeting,” Lydia replied.

I groaned. This idiocy was so very clearly genetic. Vasilios, Vallen, and now Lydia. It was too many to be a coincidence.

“Maybe it’s contagious,” I thought aloud. After all, Adamantia wasn’t this foolish. She suffered from obstinacy—a flaw that would likely end in her death. But she wasn’t an idiot.

“What?” Lydia asked from somewhere within the room.

“I wonder if your clear lack of intelligence—your hubristic, narcissistic foolery—is genetic or contagious. Either would explain how you share such traits with our uncle and cousin, the traitor. Though the former is more worrying. It won’t be enough to simply kill you and those you have infected—I’ll have to clean out the entire Ardens line,” I replied.

“Are you calling me an idiot?” she shouted, affronted, stepping out of the room into the corridor. She looked much like I had remembered her: bleached blonde hair, makeup too thick, clothing too tight.

“Yes,” I told her.

“Well this idiot has you surrounded. There’s no escape, Selene. You might as well surrender now, and I’ll make your execution quick,” Lydia said.

“I’ll make you the same offer,” I answered.

Lydia laughed—that brash, loud laughter that was designed to turn heads. She even flipped her hair over her shoulder and looked back into the room, checking to see who was watching her.

“Pathetic,” I said.

“You’re pathetic,” she retorted, turning her attention back to me and straightening her stance.

I didn’t reply. I wanted to throw her through the nearest window. Drag her into the maze and watch her from the viewing ground. I’d give her just enough guidance to ensure the maze inflicted the most delicious kind of psychological torment before her death. I’d feed every last rebel of the North to the maze. Let it grow and devour the entire estate if necessary.

Yet I couldn’t attack—not when I didn’t know who or what was waiting within the room that Lydia stood in front of.

“What’s stopping you from approaching, Selene? Are you scared?” she mocked.

“Simply cautious. I understand how weaker, lesser beings feel a need to travel in groups for safety. I’m curious who you have waiting in that room,” I told her.

She sneered. “We’re taking Ardens Estate, from you,” she said pointedly. “Could your ‘lessers’ do that?” she asked.

“Rats can gnaw through a ship’s hull. Pests don’t need to be powerful to spread disease,” I replied.

“You’re calling me a rat?” she asked, infuriated.

“All True North scum are rats—spreading disease to those lacking enough intelligence for foresight.”

“Foresight?” she asked, confused.

“It’s the ability to predict what could and is likely to happen in the future and proceeding accordingly. You ensured your death long before today,” I explained.

“I know what foresight is!” she screeched.

“Really? Your actions suggest otherwise. And you parroted back the word like you had never heard it before,” I said, unable to help the way the corner of my lip tugged upward. Lydia was always the easiest to tease growing up. Despite her being my senior by five years, I could summon a tantrum out of her from my first memories of her. She was barely noble. Clinging to aristocracy in her name alone, marrying another nobody—but at least he had a recognisable name.

“Why can’t you see that you’ve lost for once? The great Selene Borealis has fallen from her pedestal!” Lydia shouted.

“I’m quite taller than you,” I reminded her. “I won’t be toppled by a nobody.”

The tantrum I had been summoning bloomed.

Lydia charged me.

Whoever she had hired to protect her protested, swearing in annoyance, and a group of rebels ran out of the room behind her.

I wasted no time—reaching out and batting Lydia away by the head, sending the side of her skull smashing off the wall beside me. I did not hold back. And despite the crunching sound of the blow and the blood that stained the wall, Lydia was a pureblood and such damage would not kill her.

There wasn’t time to deal further with Lydia, before the first rebel reached me.

I knocked his rifle from his hands with a sweeping arm block and stepped forward using the heel of my opposite hand to cave in his nose, crushing it. I turned to the rebel next to him and gripped their jumper delivering a violent headbutt that made my own eyes water.

I hated close-quarters fighting. I was well-trained, but there was too much risk of weapons. I was fast and strong but not bulletproof. Enhanced healing would not save me from a bullet to the head.

With two rebels momentarily handled I turned my attention to the third.

He was different.

I was struck in the chest with the butt of his hand gun. The cold steel bruised my collarbone, a wave of pain spreading over my chest and through my shoulder. I grabbed his forearm before he could pull away and was immediately struck again above my right eyebrow, causing the skin to split and blood to spill.

Still, I refused to allow him to back away.

He was strong—his yellow shifter eyes glowing. A pureblood undoubtedly.

I couldn’t risk him shifting.

Not this close to me.

I yanked him off balance and into me, enduring repeated blows to my head until I had sank my teeth in his neck and tore his throat free. He fell, limp to the ground, gun discarded, both hands clutching at his bloody throat, desperately trying to stop the spurting blood.

“Ma’am!”

I turned at the sound of the Royal Guard.

It was a mistake to take my eyes from the enemy.

Interestingly I felt the sharp intense pain accompanied by the sensation of having the air knocked out of me. Instinctively I gripped my upper flank side and held up my hand to see it stained red. Blood.

I turned, looking for the cause and found Lydia had stabbed me.

She wobbled on her feet away from me before leaning against the wall clutching her head with one hand and the knife her other.

I had not known she was armed. Too concerned with potential gunshot wounds to consider a blade.

Her aim was terrible, of course, and she had hit what I thought was a rib, given my ability to still breathe. But the pain burned through my entire chest.

Lydia stumbled away from the wall towards me again.

A shot was fired.

Her head slammed back against the wall. A dark bloody hole in her forehead. In quick succession the other two living rebels were put down.

“Ma’am,” one of my guards said, attempting to wrap his arm around me.

I pushed him away.

“It’s a flesh wound,” I told him angrily.

I was upset that of all people Lydia had stabbed me. And worst yet she was now dead—I couldn’t even make her pay.

I tried to bend down to pick up the offending weapon, but the pain stopped me. My breathing was shallow, and I felt sweat prickle around my forehead and down my neck.

“You need medical attention,” another of my guards began.

“Where is Rylan with my pet?” I asked in response, ignoring the suggestion.

I would seek medical attention once Percy and I were safe.

“We don’t know where the commander is. He stopped answering his radio,” another guard admitted.

“For how long as he been missing?” I demanded.

“Almost as soon as all this started. He radioed in our commands, but since then—silence.”

“Has anyone seen Percy?” I questioned worried.

I tried to feel our bond but this time my pain prevented me. The pain invaded my mind, and I couldn’t concentrate enough to attempt to feel past my enchantments.

“I know where she is,” my newest guard announced—the one who had spoken privately with Percy. Too familiar. I had chosen to ignore his lapse in professionalism for my pet’s sake. She had made no mention of an unpleasant interaction with any guard and while I demanded the highest standards of my Royal Guard, I also wished for them to care for Percy past duty and blood oaths.

He was staring, wide eyed, out of the window.

I walked towards him, surprised by how badly my ability to walk had been affected. I began to suspect that Lydia may have coated the blade with her own venom.

I pushed away the worry and I calmed myself by recognising that the bleeding wasn’t catastrophic, and even if she had used her venom, she clearly lacked potency.

I reached the window.

There she was.

My Percy—running down the steps towards the maze.

Rebels pursued her.

“No!” I shouted, uselessly.

She reached the entrance—

And disappeared inside.

Those in pursuit of her stopped.

What was she doing?