An immortal creature of shadow and a young woman with an immense magical gift spar through the centuries in the atmospheric, romantically charged dark fantasy novel As Many Souls as Stars by Natasha Siegel (The Phoenix Bride).
Cybil Harding is born into Elizabethan-era English nobility and a terrible curse that's documented in the Harding grimoire "in ink that was no longer blood but might once have been." Each firstborn Harding in a generation will be a witch, but should that child be a girl, "she would be tainted... bringing disaster to all those around her." Cybil fears her magic and represses it, but the glow of her power still draws the malevolent eye of Miriam Richter, an ageless being born of ambition and dark magic with an endless hunger for souls. Miriam offers to trade Cybil anything in exchange for her essence. Cybil feels an attraction to Miriam but refuses her offer until a tragedy leaves her no choice. Cybil's soul travels the centuries, reborn into new bodies and new lives while unchanging Miriam pursues her like a fox chasing a plump hen. The two women match their strength and cunning across the eras, but no matter who triumphs, their connection may prove more enduring than darkness or light.
Siegel's high-stakes, emotionally gripping fantasy echoes Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, if Faust felt a simmering, toxic sexual chemistry with Mephistopheles. Readers who enjoy narratives with gothic overtones and treacherous yearning will relish this intimate, magical game of cat and mouse. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads