Page 17 of Soulbound

Cleo bit her lip, looking at the beautiful Prime. Every eye in the room was upon her; Lady Eberhardt; Ianthe's husband, Lucien; Mr. Bishop and his wife, Verity; Sebastian.... Only Ianthe stared into the grate, as if she could almost see the Vision Cleo had seen in the mirror.

"You had a Vision?” Lady Eberhardt prompted.

"Not quite." Cleo took a deep breath. "I bought an Ouroboros mirror in Balthazar's Labyrinth. But I've been having dreams lately. Or nightmares, if I'm to be specific. They feel so real. Almost as though my visions are trying to come back, but my conscious mind is not letting them, and it's only when I sleep they break through."

"And what did you see?" Lady E asked.

Another slow breath. It flashed through her mind again, as if it were painted on the back of her eyelids; blood, death, her friends falling before the demon's wrath... and yet, a single moment of hope. "The demon's been lurking in the depths of the London undergrounds while it gluts itself on blood, and restores its power. It's stronger now, after we cut at it last month. It's about to make its move. I saw it wade through gardens splashed with blood as Order sorcerers try to incarcerate it. They die. We all die. I saw Ianthe's broken body on the snow"—Lucien Devereaux sucked in a sharp breath—"I saw Lady Eberhardt's lifeless eyes staring at a blackened sky. Bishop... it goes after you first, because you're the only one who could kill it. Or the body it wears. But there is one ray of hope. It wants to destroy the Relics Infernal. They're the only thing that could control it, and I suspect they're the only thing that can send the demon back to its realm, and free Drake's body from being its vessel."

"Well." Lady Eberhardt cleared her throat. "That's fairly brutal. Where is it?"

"That's the one thing I can't see," she admitted, and all their searches had turned up nothing.

"Ianthe, you should take Louisa and flee," Lucien said, his lips firming as he stared at his wife.

"What about you?" Ianthe demanded. "I'm not going to leave you here. And running only means I prolong my sentence, I suspect."

Husband and wife stared at each other hopelessly.

Then Lucien turned to Bishop. "He's my father, and yours. I know you want to save him, but I won't risk my wife—"

"We have to try." Bishop murmured, tugging off his gloves. He picked up the box he'd brought with him and set it on the table in the middle of them all. Taking a deep breath, he opened it up, revealing a small golden chalice within.

"I have some small divination gifts. Enough to know Cleo's Visions see only probabilities," Lady Eberhardt said. "There's a chance we can turn the path of fate."

"We have the Chalice," Bishop said. "That's one of the Relics. And we know who has the second Relic."

"Oh, we should ask Morgana if she'd care to hand it over," Sebastian said in a cool, almost bored tone. "I'm sure my mother would be so kind as to do that."

"I wasn't planning on asking her," Bishop said.

"I could steal it," Verity suggested, and Bishop glared at his wife.

"Absolutely not."

Verity Hastings had the ability to translocate. It was an impossible gift, but she'd been raised by the Hex Society in Seven Dials, a bunch of gifted curse workers who refused to join the Order. There were rules of sorcery Verity hadn't learned, and apparently her conscious mind didn't know enough about the laws of energy and sorcery to understand she simply shouldn't be able to punch in and out of a room.

But the first rule of sorcery, and the one currently affecting Cleo's Visions, was Mind over Matter.

Verity believed she could do it, and hence she could.

"Morgana wouldn't even know I was there," Verity replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Morgana knows your talents," Bishop snapped, "and I daresay she's accounted for them."

"He's right," Sebastian said. "She'll have set traps."

Malice whispered through the room as the Chalice began to smoke and smolder. It was crafted with sorcery from the Grave Arts, which meant it could raise an army of the dead, and had, not so long ago. Cleo glanced down at it. Had nobody else noticed?

"Are you doing that Adrian?" Lady Eberhardt barked.

Bishop glanced down. "No. It senses my power sometimes though, and it starts singing to me."

Singing?

"Can you close that bloody box up," Lady Eberhardt grimaced, rubbing her chest. "It's making my chest ache."

Bishop shut the box, and then seemed to take a deep breath.