by Bec McMaster
"What's wrong, dearest?" Morgana mocked. "Can't you focus on your weaves? Is it difficult to concentrate right now? It's so tempting to fall back on Expression, to forget everything you've clearly tried to learn. Come on, Sebastian, show me your wards."
Sebastian screamed as his mother made a claw with her fingers, his body arching obscenely on the floor.
A wave of bile rose in Cleo's throat. Come on. Get up!
But he wasn't getting up, and Morgana was tying him in knots, all his skill evaporating in the wake of his emotionally compromised power.
Morgana drew her hand back, giving him an instant of relief, before she threw a vicious blue mage globe at him. Sebastian rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding it, his face tinted blue and his eyes black as the globe exploded, pitting the marble where he'd been.
Cleo's thigh muscles bunched. She couldn't simply stand there and watch. No matter how drained she felt.
But she couldn't defeat a powerful sorceress like this.
Unless...
Farshaw's book sprang to mind. Some say those disciples of the Light discipline of sorcery are the weakest, with their gifts tending toward Elemental magic, Healing, and Divination. But one forgets the most dangerous weapon of all: a skilled practitioner of the divination arts can see the future. And if that practitioner learns how to future-walk—to see ten seconds, twenty... or even a minute in advance—while still maintaining their grip in the current timeline, then they are well nigh invincible.
Cleo wasn't trained, but she knew how to open her Third Eye, and she knew how to see the future. Not in Visions anymore, but in odd flashes, in Premonition. Could she both see and react?
"All that power," Morgana whispered. "Wasted. It should have been mine."
And she drew her hand back for another strike. A red globe formed, Cleo's heart clenching in her chest in horror.
"No!" Cleo yelled, sliding to a halt between her fallen husband and his vicious mother. She wrenched back some of the power he'd stolen from her, fairly thrumming with it. "I won't let you hurt him."
"You're beginning to become something of a nuisance, girl." Morgana's eyes glittered as she flicked the battle globe directly toward Cleo.
Cleo flung her arms up, crossing them at the wrists, and her ward sprang into being; a shiny, flickering bubble that enveloped her and Sebastian. She'd been working on her wards with Ianthe in the past month, and Morgana's mage globe shattered against it, violent red sparks showering across the marble floor. The force made her stagger back a step.
Then she was staring at her adversary across the blistered ruins of the ballroom, her ward amorphous and flexible around her—but still intact.
Morgana's mouth fell open.
"Sebastian's not the only one who's been learning new tricks," Cleo warned. And whereas he might be purely offensive in his magic, she'd revealed a heretofore-unknown ability to defend herself.
Open yourself to probability, Quentin Farshaw's book had said.
Open your Third Eye.
Cleo bloomed like a flower, power flowing through the tenuous soul-bond between her and Sebastian, only this time it flowed toward her. The world suddenly changed, flat lines flowing from almost every surface as if she could see through distance. Golden threads glimmered over everything. An aura of soft white energy surrounded every human in the room.
She pushed forward. Five seconds forward perhaps.
As if in a trance, she saw Morgana unleash a shining net of golden strands that Cleo knew would destroy her if they hit.
Part the weaves, instinct told her.
And then she was back in the moment as Morgana drew her hand back to send her deathly net directly toward Cleo—
—who held both hands together, slicing apart the core of Morgana's magic network, in some method she'd never used before.
On either side of her, imps fell screaming, tangled in the remains of the treacherous web.
And Morgana's eyes widened.
The next assault appeared in her trancelike state, and Cleo countered it before it had even begun. It was so easy, so brutal, to stay several seconds ahead of her opponent, a sharp ache beginning to form behind her right eye like the insistent stab of an ice pick slowly being driven into her brain as she neutralized every single one of Morgana's assaults.
She couldn't keep it up forever. Seeing through time was a heavy burden in itself, let alone manipulating spells as well.
But neither could Morgana, and Sebastian was slowly getting to his feet behind Cleo.
"You little snake!" Morgana hissed, her hands falling at her sides as she breathed hard. But she looked perplexed. "You're an apprentice!"
"I warned you once," Cleo whispered, feeling something hot slide down over her lip, saltiness flooding her mouth, "that I could see the future—"
"He took your Visions from you!"
Her own father. Cleo blinked, the world going a little blurry. "As Drake said, nobody can take another's magical gift from them. Not without sundering their ties to sorcery completely. My gift is still there. I just have to find a way... a way to unblock it...."
"Cleo?" She could hear the words distantly. Feel someone shaking her.
See the imps starting to flee.
Fury danced in Morgana's eyes, but Cleo blinked and then there were two images before her; Morgana slowly backing away, even as her reflection started to flee.
"Cleo!" It was Sebastian, looking down at her with frightened eyes.
She was on her back on the floor. She couldn't remember falling.
"It's all right," she whispered, or thought she did. The world was starting to blur. She could see a hundred images of him, reflecting into the future. That ice pick was working its way into her brain.
"You little fool, what did you do?"
She thought she was going to vomit.
Then Ianthe was there, sweeping a cool hand over Cleo's brow. "Close your Third Eye. Now, Cleo!"
A thousand Ianthes.
A thousand Sebastians.
"I don't think... I can...."
Then a surge of coolness washed through her as Ianthe brought peaceful, blessed darkness to Cleo's fractured world.
Chapter 14
"WHAT'S WRONG WITH her?" Sebastian demanded, placing his unconscious wife on her bed in Rathbourne Manor. "She's not waking." Panic swept through him. "She hurt herself."
Hurt herself to save you.
Gods, would he ever stop bringing destruction down upon those he cared for?
Ianthe twitched the curtains shut. "I've sent for help. There's not a great deal I can do at this moment." Her cool face momentarily looked younger, the mantle of power slipping just enough to let him see her indecision. "Divination isn't one of my gifts."
Lucien eased a hand over Cleo's brow. "Yes, but it's one of mine." He winced. "She's overtaxed herself, I think. Severely. I can sense the strain around her aura and her mental faculties. Eleanor? You have divination gifts too."
Sebastian had been ignoring her until now—he still couldn't look her in the eye—but Eleanor Ross sat on the edge of the bed and took Cleo's hand in hers. "She's still projecting something."
"Will she recover?" Sebastian demanded, pacing by the bed.
Lucien looked up flatly. "I don't know."
"What she did is extraordinary," Eleanor breathed. "I've only ever seen one other person display even the slightest gift like this. She was future-walking, and it's a dangerous gift, to See one timeline, and react in another. She's clearly untrained too, which is why she couldn't draw back."
"This happened because of me," he said hoarsely.
The three of them looked at him sharply.
Merde. Sebastian's nails dug into his palms. "I wasn't strong enough to face my mother. I thought I was. I thought I could destroy her." And in trying to do so, he'd forgotten everything he'd been taught in the past month. The second he'd seen Morgana, his careful attempts to harness his will and work his sorcery through ritual and sigils evaporated, and were oblitera
ted by the rash power of Expression.
All he'd dreamed about in the last month was facing Morgana and making her pay for everything she'd done—to him and to others. He'd spent long restless hours staring at the canopy of his bed, planning exactly how to defeat her.
And the second he saw her, it all went wrong.
"Can you heal her?" he croaked, sliding his hand over Cleo's pale fingers.
"There's nothing to heal," Ianthe said sadly. "Nothing but rest, and hope—"
"There is one person we might be able to turn to," Eleanor murmured, meeting the Prime's eyes.
"Who?" Sebastian demanded.
"Madrigal Brown," Ianthe replied grimly.
"I don't know her." And while he'd do anything to save Cleo, the expressions on both their faces concerned him. "Neither of you like this idea. Why?"
"This information doesn't leave this room," Lucien murmured.
Sebastian gave him a dangerous look from beneath his lashes. "Who would I even mention it to?"
"Good point." Lucien sighed. "Madrigal's the head of the Sicarii. While you might not know her, she knows who you are. She was the woman who stood against Ianthe the night of Ascension in order to try and gain the seat of Prime. The moment you walked into the gathering with a demon inside you, she saw something in her future that made her resign. Ianthe won by default, which means you cost her the chance to be Prime. She's no friend of yours."
An assassin. And not just any assassin, but the head of the Order's Sicarii. "Does she know Bishop?"
"Yes."
He looked down at Cleo, pale and still upon the bed. His heart twisted in his chest. "What will it cost me?"
"Probably nothing," Lucien admitted, but there was a hesitancy to his voice.
Sebastian looked up. "What will it cost you?"
It was Ianthe who answered. "Goddess knows. A favor. My soul. I'll pay the price, however. Cleo is dear to me."
He didn't know what to say. "Thank you."
Ianthe's cool gaze settled upon him. She slowly nodded. "I'll assume you'll stay here with her?"
"Of course."
"We'd best see to the ballroom. Cleo's not the only one who took an injury," Lucien murmured.
Ianthe looked grim. "I hate owing that bitch a favor." She swept toward the door. "Let me go send Jeremy to beg Madrigal for help. Then I have to make sure everyone else is all right downstairs."
The door closed behind them, and Sebastian paced by the bed. He could feel Eleanor's steady gaze upon him.
"It's not your fault," she said.
"I shouldn't have confronted her—"
"I'm not talking about your wife."
Sebastian turned toward her helplessly. Eleanor slowly levered herself to her feet, limping toward him with her cane in hand.
"Your mother was going to cut out my heart," she said. "If you hadn't defied her, I would be dead."
"I cost you your magic." And Morgana had only captured her, because Eleanor had tried to save him from his mother's collar.
"It's still there inside me," Eleanor said simply. "I have a long path of healing in front of me, but I will be a sorcerer again. And I have a chance to try, because of you. You should stop blaming yourself for the actions of others."
Eleanor leaned up on her toes, lurching unsteadily against him as she lost her balance, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "You remind me of your father, very much so. He always bore the weight of the world on his shoulders too." Lowering herself to the floor, she patted his arm sadly. "He loved you, even though he never knew you."
"Until it was too late," Sebastian whispered.
Eleanor merely smiled. "It's never too late. I still have hope I will see him again. The demon has him for now, but we'll get him back. I know we will."
He only wished he had half her confidence.
* * *
Three hours later, Madrigal Brown swept inside Cleo's chambers like a woman going to an afternoon soiree, rather than one who'd been roused from her bed at dawn.
Sebastian looked up from his seat at Cleo's side, his hands curled over the carved arms of the chair, though he'd been warned not to make any sudden moves.
The assassin looked no more dangerous than a Pomeranian. A fox stole was draped around her throat, and as she entered the bedchambers, she began to unpin her broad-brimmed green hat.
She had to be sixty if she was a day, and the chip of marble in her Order ring indicated she belonged to the Light Arts, which were usually wholesome and beneficial. Divination gifts often pushed one into the Light Arts. However, Madrigal's gift of Foresight made her a formidable opponent, Ianthe had warned, and she'd been the other contender to take Ianthe's position as Prime until he'd entered the fray, his body a vessel for the demon.
Madrigal examined him as she tugged off her lace gloves. "The last time I saw you, your eyes were pure black."
"The last time I saw you," he countered, as he'd been aware of what happened when the demon used him as a vessel, even if he couldn't stop it, "you turned white as snow, and surrendered your claim upon the mantle of Prime."
Madrigal's lips thinned, and she palmed her gloves, a considering light in her eyes. "You cost me a great deal that day."
"You could have confronted me," he replied. "The way Ianthe did."
"The problem with Foresight, however, is that one can see their death coming. I wasn't ready to greet it. Now"—Madrigal turned to the bed, running a mercurial eye over Cleo's prone body—"what have we here?"
Sebastian rested his hip on the edge of the bed, and curled Cleo's pale hand in his as he told Madrigal what had happened.
"The girl was countering all Morgana's weaves?" Madrigal reached out and pressed a thin, paper-skinned hand to Cleo's forehead. "Oh, the little fool. She's overreached. Someone has learned the basics of how to future-walk without taking the time to crawl."
"Can you help her?"
Madrigal brushed a soft curl off Cleo's forehead. "And why should I?"
Their eyes met. This was the side of human nature he knew well. "To avoid having me as an enemy," he suggested coldly, before letting his gaze rest on Cleo's heart-shaped face. He couldn't feel the lively flicker of her energy against the shield he maintained against her. He'd even dropped the shield several times, trying to reach for her down the bond they shared, but there was... nothing there. A hint of her, perhaps, the bond still in place, but... distant.
"There are very few things in this world I hold dear," he whispered. "My wife is the one person who I would kill for. Die for. She's the only reason I'm here, working with Lord Rathbourne and Bishop to save my father."
"Bishop?" Madrigal murmured.
"My brother." He looked up. "And one of your Sicarii, I believe."
Seconds ticked out. Madrigal peered through him, almost as if she were seeing something else. He'd seen that look on Cleo's face often enough to know she probably was. Slowly her vision came back into focus, locking on his face. "I'll help her."
"Thank you."
Madrigal's lips pursed. "Do you know how many seconds ahead your wife was projecting?"
"I wouldn't have a clue. It's not something she's done before. I didn't even know she could do it."
"Here." Madrigal reached for him, and Sebastian froze. The last time another woman—aside from his wife—had touched him, he'd suffered a flashback. It hadn't ended well. A surge of nausea washed through him, and he captured her wrist, the leather of his gloves protecting him from touching her skin.
"Don't." Even to his ears, it sounded deadly.
Madrigal flinched back, her eyes widening as if she saw something she didn't like. Skirts swishing, she circled the bed, keeping it between her and him. "Your wife needs energy, and as fond as I am of holding a favor over the Prime's head, she's not having any of mine."
"What do I do?"
"Take her hand." Madrigal cocked her head. "Are you bonded?"
He nodded.
"Then reach for her through the bond...."
Madrigal
talked him through the transfer, until Cleo's color had settled and she shifted slightly on the bed.
"She's still lost in the currents of time, I think," Madrigal murmured. "We have to reach her before it's too late, and drag her back. Overreach like this could destroy some of her gifts."
"How do we get her back?"
"You," Madrigal said. "You get her back. You use your bond to reach her, and convince her to return. I'll talk you through it. I can't reach her without you."
"What do I do?" He could sense her gaze upon him. "What is it?"
"There is a great darkness within you." Madrigal curled her hand protectively against her chest. "It's going to destroy you one day."
"Maybe."
Madrigal reached for Cleo once again. "She's the only thing holding your darkness at bay. So I will help her, not you. For all our sakes. For London."
* * *
"To find the black queen you need to go back to your past," Quentin Farshaw had told her.
Cleo floated in a world of nothing. She'd spent her nights walking her dreams, trying to remember, but she hadn't found the point in time that he referred to. Yet something felt different now. The second she'd begun to future-walk, something opened up within her, like a long dormant gift had been hiding—or waiting perhaps for the right moment to show itself.
She knew now, how to find what she was looking for.
"Find me the black queen," she whispered, and began sifting back through her past, seeing it flash by in endless years of blindness, until suddenly there was color again.
Black queen, black queen, black queen. She locked on the thought, using it to track her hidden nemesis. Something pulled her back deep into the past, slamming her into a single moment.
Cleo opened her eyes.
She stood like a wraith in the hallway of her father's mansion, many years in the past. Holly decorated the mantle in the sitting room, and the scent of pine needles filled the air. Christmas. He'd never celebrated it. Cleo frowned.
Or had he once?
"Show me the black queen," she whispered, and the tug drew her along the hallway.
The drone of her father's voice began to echo through her mansion. Cleo walked along the marble floors she knew so well, her bare feet flinching at the cold. Winter, judging from the snow on the windowpanes. And December if she were to use the holly as a clue.
