by Bec McMaster
"Look at you," Morgana drawled, pausing on the stairs. "Almost reined in. It's quite impressive."
"Perhaps it's time we finally had that little discussion I've been promising all these years," he threatened.
"I can hardly wait." Morgana lashed out, power lancing like a dart toward him—
Cleo screamed, but a bubble of iridescent power shimmered around him, and his mother's attack skittered harmlessly aside, sheering through the wall.
Sebastian advanced upon her, hands clenched at his sides. For the first time, something else flickered in Morgana's eyes. Fear.
"You've been learning," Morgana chided, clucking under her tongue. "Who was fool enough to teach you how to ward?"
"My brother."
Morgana retreated up the stairs, one step at a time.
"You might recall him," Sebastian's voice sounded dark as midnight as he took the first step. "He's the assassin, remember?"
Cleo staggered to her feet, holding on to the wall. "Don't do this."
"Get the Blade out of here," he told her.
"Not without you."
"And what is your assassin brother going to do when all of this is over?" Morgana chided. "Do you think he's not going to look at you and see a threat? An educated one?"
The arrow struck its mark. Cleo sensed his confidence falter through the bond. "Do you think you have a place with your father if he ever gets that creature out of himself? One big happy family... is that what you see? You'd like that, wouldn't you? You always wanted a brother or sister."
His fists clenched. "You know nothing about what I wanted."
"No?" Morgana reached the top of the stairs, and glanced behind her, as if to search for someone to help her. "What about Lord Rathbourne? Do you think he looks at you and sees anything more than the man who helped kidnap his daughter? And his wife, what does she think of you?"
Cleo frowned. Something about the woman's manner struck her as odd. Morgana had never fled before. "Sebastian, don't listen to her. She's trying to poison your thoughts."
He tilted his head as if he were half listening to her, but she could feel him locking himself down inside, so even she couldn't reach him. "I know."
Morgana locked eyes with Cleo and smiled. "Ah, the sweet young bride. Always your champion, my dear boy. How long do you think she's going to look at you with those loving eyes? How long before her hope starts to fade?"
"That's enough," he said.
"Have you fucked her yet?"
The walls began to shake.
"If not, then I'm sure the demon could take care of her virginity for you. It's got an insatiable appetite these days."
"I'm sure you would know that," he spat. "It's the only way my father would ever touch you again."
For the first time, something real flickered in Morgana's eyes.
"No," Cleo whispered to him, "You're not your mother. Don't stoop to her level."
His fists clenched, lightning flickering across his wards. "Do you remember when you said you would destroy everything I ever loved?"
A shard of glass from the chandelier dropped from the ceiling, shattering on the marble below. Morgana didn't look at it, but she faced him at the top of the balcony, her calculating eyes gauging the damage she'd done. "I remember. I remember everything. Did you know Julia Camden is working for me? The bitch is practically frothing at the mouth to get her hands upon you again."
A red mage globe formed in his palm. He threw it toward his mother, but Morgana flicked it aside and it exploded as it hit the wall, sending chunks of plaster flying.
Another formed. And then Morgana brought her own to life. Seven red globes circled her head as she twisted her wrist, and she smirked at her son. "Let's do this then. Show me what you've learned."
"Sebastian!" She tried to reach him, but the link between them was locked down tight now, and only he had the power to open it.
Hand fisted around the Blade, Cleo scurried up the stairs after him. Another hammer-strike of Vision sent her swaying into the wall—a white painted hexagram splashed over timber floorboards, a timber hall runner dragged over it.
A trap.
Then the image was superimposed over the sight of Sebastian finally reaching the top of the staircase. Morgana backed away slowly, lashing out at him with crackling blows, trying to find any weakness in his wards.
Sebastian brushed away each attack almost contemptuously, advancing with sure and steady strides, and Cleo suddenly realized Morgana was not bringing all her power to bear upon him. Just enough to distract him as she took stealthy steps back. Panic flickered over the woman's heart-shaped face, but her eyes gleamed hot and steady.
"Is that all you've got?" he asked in that dangerously soft voice.
Premonition dug into Cleo's skin like knives as he started to take another step, and she could almost see her prediction colliding with real time, the spelled star hovering beneath his unsuspecting foot—
Cleo gathered her own power and reached out, hauling him back sharply. He staggered as she used telepathy against him, ripping at his coat. It was never her forte, and she barely managed to stop him in time, but he didn't take that final, fatal step.
"Under the rug," she gasped, as he looked back at her. "It's a trap."
Cold green eyes cut her way, Morgana's lips thinning. "You're starting to get on my nerves, dear daughter-in-law."
Cleo dragged herself to her feet, and cried out in surprise when one of the mage globes suddenly hurtled toward her.
* * *
Cleo crossed her wrists at the last moment, a ward coalescing around her. Red heat exploded over the ward, the impact driving her to the floor.
Sebastian's heart leaped into his throat, his hand outstretched toward her.
But the heat died down, and Cleo looked up at him, wary, but untouched. "I'll shield myself."
He turned back to his mother, rage turning into crystalline clarity. There was nothing Morgana could ever do to him to break him. But this... this crossed every line he owned.
The walls of the house started shaking again, and wind whipped through the house as he summoned it into a vortex. Glass smashed somewhere else as the pressure in the house mounted, and the windstorm increased. Pottery smashed, Morgana's skirts blowing back behind her, and her arm flung up in front of her face to protect herself.
"You won't touch her again," he said, in a deadly soft voice, utterly devoid of feeling.
The center of his own deadly whirlwind, he took the attack to his mother.
Mage globes hammered her, one after the other. A new one formed above his hand just as the previous one battered his mother's wards, and he could feel his strength fine-tuning itself. Morgana went to her knees, holding her wrists crossed, strain twisting her face.
Yes. He stepped around the hall runner with its deadly trap and advanced. A heat spot formed in his mother's shield. His next mage globe struck it in the dead center and Morgana's wards exploded.
She hit the floor, sliding back on the polished marble several feet. Blood dripped from her nose, and a sense of exhilaration choked him.
All of Bishop's lessons seemed to coalesce in his head. He formed a manacle of pure energy and flung it toward her wrist. The glowing manacle snapped shut, locking her hand to the floor.
"You want to know why I could never be your mother?" Morgana spat. "Because I was warned this would happen. Your wife's not the only seer out there. I was always going to die because of you." A sob broke loose. "You're a monster. A monster I held to my breast."
The words picked him apart, and Sebastian paused, only to have her throw a tangled golden web of spell work at him.
It wrapped around his body, cutting into his skin like snaking wires. He screamed and went to his knees. Fire in his blood, wrapping around his bones... then his mother was upon him, lifting a knife and trying to drive it into his chest—
Bishop's training made him react in time. He slammed a palm to her shoulder, shifting her deadly trajectory. Sharp pa
in slashed across his shoulder, as he used her momentum to drive her murderous hand toward the floor. The knife clattered free from her outstretched hand, and Morgana scrambled to get it, the glowing manacle sucking her toward the marble again.
It buzzed suddenly, the current in it evaporating.
One hand wrapped around her throat and the other scrambled for the knife. There was blood all down his arm. Everywhere. She'd genuinely tried to kill him. It broke him. If you'd only fucking loved me, I would have been yours....
A seer had done this. Turned his mother against him as a boy. Years of abuse hammered through him: the collar locking around his throat; the first time Morgana used the control ring to drive him to his knees with the pain; the last time she'd locked him in a box as a little boy; women touching him, pawing at him....
He lifted the knife. She'd been more torturer than mother, but.... But....
"Do it," Morgana hissed at him, her nails digging into his wrist. "Go ahead and fulfill your destiny."
Cleo. His heart broke again, and he held the knife in the air above her, suddenly realizing what this all looked like.
Morgana started laughing. "She'll never look at you the same way."
"Sebastian, no!" Cleo reached out for him, her hair whipping behind her in the whirlwind.
He looked up at her, the knife in his hand. His mother sprawled beneath him, still spewing her vile poison.
"This doesn't end until she does." His voice broke. "You don't understand, she'll never stop! She'll keep coming, she'll try to ruin me every second she still draws breath, and she'll... she'll destroy everything that I... that I care for. I can stop her. I can stop her."
"If you do this, you become her," Cleo said softly.
And it finally struck him, why Lady E wanted him to read his mother's diary so bloody badly.
Everything Morgana had ever done to him had been because she'd trapped herself in her own vile circle.
...I just wanted somebody who loved me...
...My uncle raped me...
...Your father betrayed me...
...It was the only time in my life I haven't been responsible for what I was accused of...
And he saw her for the first time. Not as the woman who was evil, but someone who, at various stages in her life had made a dark choice. Someone who'd turned down the wrong fork in the road.
In that moment he had the power over his mother, and he actually saw her cowering beneath him.
Emotion was his weakness. Lady E knew that. Morgana knew that. She'd said she could manipulate him better than anyone else on this earth, because she knew him, and he was her son in so many ways.
Truth. Truth so piercing that he'd always known, deep inside, that she wasn't lying. "You're your father's son," Morgana had always told him.
But there was another part of him that existed. A darker half that aligned more with his mother's side than with his father's.
Because, at heart, he was who his mother had been, before she'd made those choices.
Abused. Tormented. Powerless. Bitter. The only thing that separated them was the fact she had finally killed her tormentor, and never again trusted another soul. Not his father. Not Lady Eberhardt.
Not even him.
It struck him then, how things could have been so different for her if she'd been able to move past her torment.
"Sebastian?"
The knife lowered, his grip on Morgana's throat softening as he beheld her. The winds slowed.
There'd been a cage around him the last month, despite the mirage of freedom. Something that held him back from the people who cared for him, and now he finally understood it.
Him.
He was the key to his own freedom.
And this moment here, was the catalyst for it.
The whirlwind stopped. The air stopped pressing in upon them, frigid with ice. Furniture dropped out of the air, and Morgana flinched as Sebastian slowly lowered the knife.
Killing her would be too easy. He wanted to. He wanted her dead so badly his fist actually shook.
But the second he did that, he became her.
And as she crawled back across the floor, her legs dragging behind her, he finally shattered his mother's hold over him.
"Sebastian," Cleo whispered, her hand held out before her, as if she sought to placate a wild animal.
He took in the room. A mess of fury. He took in his mother, her eyes narrowing in that familiar hiss of rage. "You'll ruin her. You know you will. She'll never love you."
And he pitied her.
But nothing else.
Power bloomed within him. All his telekinetic lessons sprang to mind. It was ridiculously easy to reach out and pluck the table upright. To set the room below to rights. He used a cushion of force to pin his mother to the ground where she couldn't move.
Sebastian gained his feet, staring at his hands. He felt like he could do anything.
Glass smashed as someone in black hurtled through the window, and then Bishop rolled to his feet, shimmering knives of pure etheric force forming in his hands as he took in the scene. Verity punched into midair, fists raised as if to block a blow that never came.
Bishop blinked in surprise to find the room already locked down. "Heard someone screaming, and then the house wards went down."
"It wasn't us," Sebastian replied, still holding his mother pinned to the floor with telekinesis. Sweat slicked his temples. The effort it took to keep her in place without crushing her was immense.
"I can handle this," Bishop said, seeming to note the strain. A pair of shimmering golden manacles suddenly appeared in his hands. "Let me in?"
He dropped the pressure wards, and Morgana threw something at him. Bishop slapped it away almost contemptuously, and knelt down to slap one of the manacles around her wrist.
"No!" she cried, fighting him.
"Morgana, I have a warrant for your arrest and execution," Bishop said, "for the murder of Drake's nephew, Richard de Wynter, twenty-seven years ago. You will face the Prime of the Order, and the Triad Council for your crimes, including the use of a sclavus collar on your son, the murders of many others, theft, blackmail, and the summoning of a demon to this plane. If you make any sudden moves, it is within my powers to eliminate you, do you understand?"
"Sebastian!" his mother hissed, reaching toward him. "You treacherous little cur. Do you think they'll stand by you when this all comes to fruition? Do you think you can ever be part of them?" Her green eyes locked on Cleo. "You'll ruin her. You know you'll ruin her."
"That's enough." The heat drained from his face.
"You're my son," she spat. "You'll never be free of me! I'm in your bones, in your soul, in your—"
Bishop muttered under his breath and she suddenly gaped, her mouth freezing around an invisible gag.
"That's better," Bishop said. He looked up. "Are you all right?"
You'll ruin her. You know you'll ruin her. He held out his hand, only to find it was shaking.
Cleo took hold of it, squeezing it gently. "I think it's time to go home."
And he had nothing left within him to argue.
Morgana had scraped him raw.
Chapter 22
"ARE YOU PLANNING on this being a regular occurrence?" Cleo asked as she helped Sebastian out of his bloody shirt. "I don't know that my nerves can handle it."
His ears were still ringing. He could barely remember the carriage ride home. The last he'd seen of his mother, Bishop had been dragging Morgana to the cellars, where he planned upon questioning her about the demon's whereabouts. Nobody thought Sebastian needed to be there for the questioning, and neither did he.
"Sit," Cleo said, pushing gently upon his shoulders.
He sank onto the chair by the fireplace, exhausted right to his bones. Slumping his head into his hands, he let her dictate his movements as she clucked over his arm. He barely felt it. The wound to his heart was far deeper. Nothing had changed. His mother had taken a damned good shot at killing him.
/> He was a weapon to her, nothing more. And now he'd become a threat. He couldn't even understand why he'd... hoped... for anything different.
Water rippled as Cleo squeezed out a clean rag, and checked the wound to his shoulder. "Not too deep. I think I can heal it. Are you ready?"
He nodded, and felt her hands suddenly heat. Then energy swirled through him, and there was no more pain.
Sebastian caught her hand, looking up. "Thank you."
He didn't know how to ask for what he wanted, but she knew. He saw it in her eyes as she slid onto his lap and wrapped her arms around him.
"I—"
"No." She pressed her fingers to his lips. "Just let me hold you."
He couldn't recall anyone ever simply holding him before Cleo, and the sudden hunger to be in her arms was overwhelming.
This tenderness was something he was unaccustomed to. Holding her hand last night for hours had felt like more of a connection than anything he'd ever felt before. Desperate to hold her closer, he drew her into his arms, pressing his face against her throat. A shiver ran through him.
"Let it out," she whispered, but he couldn't. He couldn't.
Soft hands slid up and down his arms. "It hit me hard the night of the Ascension," she admitted. "When my father died. I knew it was going to happen. I'd Seen it." She made a little strangled sound in her throat. "I'd tried to turn him from his path. But it was inevitable in the end, for he didn't want to stray from it. Not if he had a chance at confronting Drake and killing him. His hatred for your father ran too deep for him to listen to me."
Cleo slid her hands into his hair, letting the black strands run between her fingers. He looked up, focusing on her soft mouth.
"It still hurt," she whispered. "Even though he earned his own death. Even though he was barely a father to me. No. He was a horrible father. There. I've said it."
"The Order will execute her," he said softly. "She deserves it."
"I know she's horrible. I know she's evil. But it's all right to grieve her loss, or the loss of what she could have been. What you hoped she could have been. She was still your mother. A terrible mother, but... I understand."
Sebastian shuddered, turning his face into her palm. "She tried to kill me."
