Imprisoned Heir Read online

  Imprisoned Heir

  Atlantis Institute For Dangerous Criminals: Book One

  River Starr

  Copyright © 2020 River Starr

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Covers by Christian

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Soul Bound - Free Prequel

  About the Author

  About Imprisoned Heir

  We're the most dangerous criminals...

  They call me Nyx. Under the cover of night, I used to steal from the rich to give to the supernaturals at the bottom of the chain, and to earn enough money to find a cure for my sister’s death curse.

  After an… accident we’ll call it, I ended up with a one-way ticket to the sea fae’s top prison: Atlantis. Not the lost city, but the inescapable penitentiary beneath the sea fae court. The Atlantis Institute For Dangerous Criminals is where the vilest supernatural prisoners are kept. Assassins. Murderers. Treasonists. And the three supernaturals sentenced with me are the most ruthless of the worst. Dax, the dark, enticing vampire whose gaze is too intimate for a total stranger; Titus, the fiery dragon shifter with an anger problem; and Frost, the winter fae with a chilly personality to match her ice-blue eyes.

  But to escape and survive, we'll have to work together despite our differences...

  We may not get along, but we’re all we have to survive and escape Atlantis Prison. It won’t be easy. Someone thinks I’m a criminal—but I have no memory of committing the murder, and it wasn’t amnesia…

  It was the other soul inside of me.

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  1

  Nyx

  The tea kettle whistled, startling me as it always did. Ever since Cyra had been death cursed, our apartment had been as quiet and still as stone. The curse had taken the light from my sister’s eyes—and joy from our lives. All because of an accidental run-in with an ocean hag in sea caves on the Cornish coast.

  I hurried to pour Cyra a steaming cup of tea and added some extra herbs for healing. “Here,” I said as I walked it over to her on the living room couch. “Drink this. It’ll chase the chill away.”

  Cyra smiled weakly at me as she took the teacup in both of her hands. “Thank you, Nyx.”

  She and I had the same jet-black hair and bright blue eyes, although her color had muted some. The resemblance sort of stopped there. Where she had Dad’s round face and dimpled cheeks, I’d gotten Mom’s nose and tall height. Then there were the black veins running up her chest and neck thanks to the death curse.

  For a moment, all I saw in her hands was the teacup I’d stolen a year ago to use in a ritual that was supposed to have saved Cyra. Instead, my life had been turned upside down by a ritual gone wrong.

  I cleared my throat along with the thoughts. “Of course.” I kissed her on the cheek and returned to the kitchen to make my own dinner.

  We’d been on our own for so long now. Twenty years since leaving the sea fae kingdom, and less since marrying a human, our sea fae mother had passed. Our human father too. And in the wake of turning to thievery to keep Cyra and me afloat, I’d ended up taking on the poverty problem of supernaturals all over Cornwall.

  I really wished Mom and Dad were here now. One year and three months had passed since that awful incident with the sea hag. I wasn’t sure how much time Cyra had left, but her death curse would come calling sooner or later. Until then, my younger sister lived with chronic chills, fever, and general weakness.

  I was five years older than her. I was all she had left. I had to save her.

  “What are you making?” Cyra asked.

  My mood lightened instantly. Cyra rarely asked that, as she hadn’t been very interested in food since the incident. “Just some simple pasta and meatballs. Do you want any?” Hope surged through me that maybe, somehow, the death curse was lifting on its own.

  “No.” Cyra’s tone slipped. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Cyra,” I said as I set a pot of water to boil. “But if you do get hungry, let me know. There’ll always be leftovers.” I made sure of it, even if I was more than sure she’d never eat any.

  Cyra smiled and sipped her tea. “Okay.”

  Our one-bedroom flat was tiny. Beige paint coated thin walls, while the only window overlooked the crowded, touristy street beyond our building. Cyra had taken up residence in the living room months ago, since it was closer to the bathroom. A small bookshelf with a decades-old TV on it that barely picked up broadcast signals was the only other furniture in the room besides a big, comfy reclining chair I’d found one day on the side of the road. Cyra kept flipping between the news and some prime-time drama, although the picture kept flickering in and out.

  For all the riches I’d earned while stealing from Cornwall’s wealthiest, I never seemed to have enough to get Cyra everything she wanted and needed. We had the basics, and food and shelter were never a problem. But every single cent that didn’t go to another supernatural who didn’t have those things went to finding Cyra a cure to her death curse. Paying witches for spells, securing time in secure wizard libraries. Even the necromancer who’d screwed up and gotten my soul attached to another soul had cost me a small fortune. And all I’d gotten out of that was Eos, a long-dead sea fae returned to use my body however she wished, whenever she was able to take over. Twin-souled, the necromancer had called it.

  The necromancer had obviously had no clue what he was doing. I should have stolen my money back from him, but he was probably long gone by now. His Edinburgh lair was too far to travel to again and leave Cyra behind.

  I sighed heavily and started the meat and sauce on another burner.

  “Are you okay?” Cyra asked.

  “Yeah,” I said without missing a beat. “I’m just tired.”

  “Me too.” Cyra was always tired.

  Three loud knocks came upon the door to our flat. I froze, reaching for the knife rack on the counter.

  Cyra sat up straighter and placed her teacup on the table. “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know.” I moved quickly to the door, armed with the sharpest knife we had, and summoned my sea fae magic around me. Cyra and I weren’t as powerful as full-blooded sea fae when it came to magic and other fae perks, but both of us could defend ourselves if needed. “Stay there.”

  As if she could move fast anyway.

  Another round of knocks sounded. The thin door buckled from the force of them. My heartbeat jumped into my ears as I crept closer. No one knew where we lived. No one.

  “It’s me. Open the door.”

  Relief flooded my veins at
the sound of a familiar voice. Irritation followed close behind.

  “Dimitri.” I said his name almost as a curse. I undid several locks and pulled open the door.

  Sure enough, Dimitri stood on the other side, his hands in the pockets of his trademark long, black coat. His round, green eyes, flawless olive skin, and cropped short ebony hair gave him an air of innocence I knew was a lie from firsthand experience.

  He shed a half-smile and lifted his eyebrows, as if waiting for something.

  “How do you know where I live?” I asked him.

  Dimitri leaned in. I held my ground. “You’re not as hard to find as you want to be.”

  My grip tightened around the door handle. “How?”

  He lifted his hands. “Fine, fine. I paid a diviner to find you. At a pretty hefty cost, too. So you owe me for that.”

  I chuckled dryly. “I owe you for breaching my privacy in order to find me?”

  His smile grew and he wiggled his eyebrows. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Not even in your dreams, Dimitri. What do you want?”

  Dimitri was attractive, don’t get me wrong. I hadn’t been intimate with a guy since before Cyra’s death curse. I simply didn’t have the bandwidth for dating or men. Not while trying to find Cyra a cure and keep our heads, and the heads of all supernaturals at the bottom of the chain in Cornwall, above water.

  Dimitri sighed. “Actually, this is about something you want. Can I come in?”

  I let go of the door handle and crossed my arms. “No.”

  “You know I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t have something good for you. Besides, it’s been almost a week since your last mark, no?”

  Against my better judgement, my jaw slid open and betrayed my surprise. “How many times do you watch me from afar? Do you have a whole coven of diviners on tap?”

  “Nyx,” he said again, his tone turning serious. “Let me inside. Please. This is not a conversation we should be having in a doorway.”

  “Then maybe don’t show up at my door.” He lifted his eyebrows but said nothing. I inhaled sharply as my irritation boiled over. “Fine. You have ten minutes while my dinner cooks. Then I’m kicking you out.”

  “Okay.”

  “For good, Dimitri. I don’t care how many good marks you have. Showing up here crosses a line.”

  “Understood.” He relaxed his stance. “Can I come in now?”

  I stepped aside and let him pass.

  Cyra whined immediately at the sight of him. “Nyx, why him?”

  Cyra and Dimitri had met just once before tonight, after he’d given me the tip about the necromancer in Edinburgh. She’d decided immediately she didn’t like him, and I’d never gotten a real answer as to why. Still, I trusted my sister. Maybe that was also why I kept him at arm’s length away from any feelings or attraction.

  Dimitri waved her off. “Now, now, kid. I’ve got something that might help you, too.”

  “She’s not a child,” I warned.

  Rolling his eyes, he said, “Gods, you two are impossible sometimes. Listen, I found something you’ve been looking for. Something you need to save her.” He thumbed over his shoulder at Cyra.

  Dimitri and I had met robbing the same place over a year ago. Now, he had apparently retired from the actual thieving portion of the job, preferring to instead give tips on marks and take a cut off the top. Every now and then, he’d come across potential cures for Cyra’s death curse. All had failed.

  “And what’s that?” I asked. “Why are you so sure I’ll want it? Or that it’ll work any better than the other failed leads you’ve sent me on so far?”

  Dimitri’s eyes lit up. “This is the one, Nyx. But you’re right to question me because this possible solution to Cyra’s problem does not come without risks.”

  “Color me surprised,” Cyra said with as much sarcasm as she could manage.

  He lifted his pointer finger toward her. “I found a phoenix shifter.”

  My betraying mouth slid open further. “How? Where?” Phoenix shifters were rare. Rarer still were phoenixes. But we’d known for a year now that phoenix fire would probably save Cyra. If you could find some.

  Dimitri winced. “This is the part you won’t like.”

  I slammed the knife in my hand on the countertop. “Dammit, Dimitri. Just tell me.”

  “Alexandria,” he said, and he continued speaking fast so I couldn’t interrupt him. “A client of mine wants you to steal from a noble’s house inside Alexandria. That’s unrelated to the phoenix fire, though. But I’ve heard so many rumors lately about a phoenix shifter being kept there as a prisoner.”

  My jaw slid shut as I considered Dimitri’s story. “Why would the sea fae kingdom want a phoenix shifter?”

  Alexandria was full of cold-hearted, sadistic beings. My mother had warned my sister and me not to go there, and for good reason. Being arrested was as simple as breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and what they did with inmates in the Atlantis Institute for Dangerous Criminals was renown for all the wrong reasons. Going to the sea fae’s prison meant death—a slow death filled with torture.

  Dimitri smiled. “Rumor has it the queen’s health is beginning to finally fail after two hundred years. They’re probably keeping her alive with phoenix fire.”

  “So, you want me to go into Alexandria, steal from nobles, and then somehow kidnap the shifter responsible for keeping the queen alive?” I asked, utterly dumbfounded. “Alone, I’m guessing, since I doubt you’d want to risk that. This is impossible. Do you know how guarded that shifter will be?”

  Dimitri stepped closer and lowered his voice to barely louder than a whisper. “Do you understand how little time your sister has left?” I reached for the knife again, but Dimitri clamped his hand around mine. “I’m not threatening Cyra. All I’m saying is that if it were my sister, I’d do anything. Even head into Alexandria and face the devils there. And I’m only human.” He smiled, but it was hallow. Nothing about what he’d just said was good or reassuring, not in the way he wanted it to be.

  But Dimitri was right—as much as I hated it.

  I’d do anything for Cyra. Anything that might lead me to a surefire cure.

  “How much is this client paying?” I asked. “And how much of it are you keeping for yourself?”

  Cyra stood shakily from the couch. “Nyx, no, this is crazy.”

  Dimitri let go of my hand and relaxed now that we were talking business. “Five hundred thousand, and twenty-five percent.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Are you kidding me? Try one million and ten percent.”

  Dimitri wagged a finger at me and grinned. “I knew you’d say that, so I went ahead and said yes for you at seven-fifty and fifteen percent to me.”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. Dimitri was bad enough when he was wrong about something. He was entirely insufferable when right. “You better be right about this.”

  “Why are you always like this?” Cyra asked from the couch.

  Dimitri flashed his charming smile at her and then pulled something bound in fabric from the large pockets of his long jacket. “I brought you something just for this occasion. Two somethings, actually.” He handed me the bundle.

  Slowly, I unwrapped the package and nearly dropped it when I saw what was inside. A huge, ancient key made from twisted metal. Not iron. And a knife that absolutely was. It was beautiful—and deadly to full-blooded fae. The handle had been made from decorated coral.

  “Careful,” he warned.

  “An iron knife,” I whispered. “You must think this is going to go bad.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you without a way to defend yourself that the sea fae won’t be expecting.”

  I shook my head and wrapped up the iron blade before it burned me. Being half-fae, iron wasn’t immediately deadly to me. But after enough exposure, I’d get iron-poisoning, which would really put a damper on my night. “This is insane.”

  “But it’s enough money to help many supern
aturals,” Dimitri said. “Not to mention get you and Cyra set up in a nicer place than this once you also bring her home the phoenix fire cure. Nyx, it’s worth it. I promise.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Dimitri.”

  He held my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. “Stealing from the nobles is the easy part. I even got you a sea fae contact that can bring you to Alexandria without you dying from ocean pressure.”

  “How thoughtful of you.” My half-blood magic wasn’t strong enough to keep me safe on the swim down, even with the ability to breathe underwater. Alexandria sat at the bottom of the ocean, with tons of water and pressure above it.

  “All you have to do is sneak past the guards long enough to collect some phoenix fire,” Dimitri said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “You’re good at this, Nyx. You can do it. You’re the best thief around.”

  I might also end up the most dead thief around if Dimitri was wrong.

  But with Cyra’s life on the line, there was nothing I wouldn’t try.

  I shrugged out of Dimitri’s hold. “I hope I am.”

  2

  Nyx

  A rhythmic plunking of water led me out of the dark pool of unconsciousness. Large water droplets splashed against my warm cheeks while others hit the stone floor.

  Plunk, plunk, plunk.

  Fog in my mind clouded all memory, just as it always did. My dry tongue felt too big for my mouth. I licked my cracked lips to bring moisture back to them, gasped a deep breath, and yelped as a sharp pain sliced through my ribs.