Page 68 of Hexbound

Nobody cared about him. Nobody ever had. Except perhaps Cleo, and his mother had shown him that caring for his wife only gave him one more weakness she could exploit.

"Sebastian...."A man. It was definitely a male, and a powerful telepath at that. The urging whisper filled his mind."Open up to me."

If he wasn't so alone, then he might have held back, but even this brief encounter made him hunger for contact. Something. Anything. Tentatively, he reached back, not quite certain what he was doing, but brushing up against that dark whisper in his head. The touch firmed, but he was fairly certain that was due to the other entity's grip on him. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"I want to help you."

"Why?"

"Because I'm your father."

Sebastian severed the connection. Drake de Wynter, the Prime. In his head he saw the man's face again as Drake reached out toward him, then glanced back at his other son.

And chose to save Rathbourne.

He was no friend to Sebastian.

This time, when the touch trailed fingertips down his mind, Sebastian held himself firmly walled away. His mother had taught him the value of trust when he was a child. He wasn't about to repeat the experience.

The doorto the cell opened.

Sebastian turned his head toward the sound, sweat rolling down his spine. So... she'd finally come.

What was it to be today? More pain? More blood? He almost didn't care. He was so hungry and thirsty he felt stretched to breaking point.

A hand reached out to rip his blindfold down and light suddenly burst into being, making Sebastian cringe. Days.... Days since he'd been able to see. Of the slow, silent torment of hanging here, the lack of sight had perhaps been the worst, for it made him feel alone in a way that he'd never experienced before.

How did Cleo do it, all those years?

That stopped him in his tracks.Don't think of her. You can't afford a weakness. Not now.

When he'd finally blinked away the light flares that had initially blinded him, Sebastian realized that Noah Guthrie was the one who'd torn his blindfold away.

The young man's hair had been cropped into a stylish man-about-town haircut, and the scruff along his jaw was gone, revealing smooth, lean cheeks.

Sebastian eyed him. Something felt wrong. Noah had been a street lad plucked out of the Hex by his mother. Noah had always been nervous, and though they'd had little to do with each other, he nevertheless knew the man.

This wasn't Noah Guthrie, even though they looked the same. Whoever this was they showed none of Noah's tics and nerves, nor the faint blurred haze of an opium addiction that had made Noah stare into space for long hours. No. These green eyes were cool, calculating.

And frighteningly unemotional.

"Who are you?" Illusion was one of his mother's greatest abilities, but Sebastian didn't think that was the case here, and he'd never heard of anyone able to shift into someone else's skin.

Not-Noah's head tilted to the side as the stranger considered him. There was a rash ringing the stranger's throat, barely hidden by his collar. "Perhaps a friend." Those shrewd eyes thinned. "How did you know I was not Noah?"

Sebastian's skin cringed. Wrong. This all felt wrong. "Noah was never in control of himself. He always looked distracted, or nervous."

Not-Noah didn't blink, and a knot began to tighten in Sebastian's stomach.

"Whatare you?" Sebastian asked quietly, and a cold pit of fear began to grow within his belly as suspicion took hold.

There was one way another being could assume someone's shape—or perhaps the correct word was topossessanother's shape. His mother had been trying to control a demon, after all, when she stole the Blade of Altarrh a month ago, and despite the fact he'd dropped a house on top of her, she'd somehow survived.

Morgana was a well-trained sorceress, but even she would have had to have help to survive that. "Is Noah still in there?"

"You're cleverer than she suspected."

"Who? My mother?"