Page 12 of Soulbound

Bishop offered him a hand.

He never could quite decipher this brother's expressions, but there was a faint twitch of Bishop's brow as he hauled Sebastian to his feet. "You're the key to getting my father back from the demon. Or at least, that's what your wife keeps telling everyone."

Of course.

Sebastian bent over and rested his hands on his thighs. Hell. Everything hurt. But most of all, the mention of his wife shattered any gains he'd made that day.

The soul-bond between he and Cleo was growing steadily weaker every day—through lack of consummation, Sebastian guessed. But he could still feel her there, a little heated knot in the back of his mind.

If he focused, he could sometimes see through her eyes, or hear what she was thinking, but for some mysterious reason, today that knot was walled off.

It felt like pressing his hands against a glass pane, and trying to feel her heat through it.

She'd learned to lock him out, the same thing he'd done to her several weeks ago, when he didn't want her knowing what was going through his mind. It was somewhat jarring to realize how much he'd come to rely upon the bond with her in such a short time.

"What's going on?" Bishop asked Lady Eberhardt.

Lady E straightened Bishop's collar, an almost maternal gesture that drew Sebastian back into the dark recesses of the past.

He brushed away the memory of his own mother doing that to him as a little boy. Before she betrayed him.

"Ianthe's called a meeting. She has information on how to deal with the demon, and apparently, an old ally who just might be able to help us," Lady Eberhardt said.

The demon. Sebastian flinched and turned around, locking his wrists behind his back in order to stretch. He didn't know his father. All Drake had ever been was a name his mother cursed. He'd been raised to be a weapon against his father, the former Prime of the Order of the Dawn Star—a group of sorcerers who'd cast his mother out of their ranks years ago. He'd spent years poisoned by her lies, certain Drake saw him as only a threat.

And instead the man had sacrificed himself to save Sebastian from a demon's clutches.

It unnerved him. Why? Guilt harassed him, but the uncertainty was what kept him awake of nights. Why would his father do that? Sebastian was nothing to him. They'd only spoken once or twice, on a mental plane his father created.

And he'd worked with his mother to betray the man; to blackmail his apprentice, kidnap his granddaughter, and force Drake to yield his position as Prime.

Of course, he hadn't had much bloody choice in the matter. Morgana had put a sclavus collar upon him when he was thirteen, and used the control ring that accompanied it to force him to her will.

He was bloody lucky Bishop had decided against killing him—though he knew his brother had spared him only because he needed Sebastian's power to confront the demon that wore Drake's body.

"Finally," Bishop said. "It's about time we had something to work toward. It's been a month since that creature took my father as a vessel, and so far there's been no sign of it. It's up to something. It has to be. But we've found no trace of it."

"It will be out there somewhere." Distaste soured the old woman's voice. Sebastian looked up sharply, and Lady E's lip curled. "But that, I think, is something Ianthe needs to speak to you both about."

"Agatha—"

"Tut, tut." She poked Bishop's sweaty shirt. "You're dripping all over the place. The pair of you need to freshen up, and then we can take the carriage to the Earl of Rathbourne's house. Ianthe's holding the meeting there, and I'm not going to breathe a word about her intentions until then, so you might as well stop wasting your breath."

Bishop exchanged a look with Sebastian that was so long-suffering he almost felt a sense of kinship with the bastard.

Almost.

But there was one smile-suffocating fact about the Earl of Rathbourne that Lady Eberhardt hadn't mentioned, though she locked that gimlet gaze upon Sebastian as if she could sense where his thoughts were going.

"Yes," she said, lacing both hands on her cane. "It's time you strapped on your breeches, Sebastian, and confronted your wife."

Cleo. His mouth went dry. He didn't think he was ready for this.

But then, when would he ever be?

* * *

Cleo stared out over the gardens of the Earl of Rathbourne's manor, tilting her face to the meager sunshine. It had rained earlier that morning, and the gardens were lightly dewed. Snowdrops poked their heads through some of the half-melted snow, and lush fir needles shed their winter mantle.