Page 95 of Soulbound

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The second they were inside the cellar, he called a mage globe of pure white to life so they could see.

The tingle of the broken ward skittered over his skin, and he could hear cries of surprise from above. A woman's voice came to him, just distant enough that he couldn't make out the words, but the sound sheared through him like a knife. Morgana.

Focus on the Blade.

"Find it," he snapped. Bishop's distraction wouldn't last long. The smoke pouring through the house, and the small detonations would cause confusion, and make it difficult to see, but Morgana was no fool.

There was a low altar in the corner of the room, and a hexagram engraved in the floor in silver. Cleo moved perilously close to it, and he hauled her up short. "Don't step on that."

Red velvet gleamed in the corner, covering a globe of some description. A scrying device, probably. Sage hung in dried clumps from the walls, and he caught a glint of silver on the bench along the side wall, but it was only his mother's athame, a ritual blade used to draw blood to power her spell work.

Power brewed in the house. It felt like a gathering storm.

"Cleo!"

"Here!" she cried desperately, placing her hand flat on one of the flagstones on the floor. "It's drawing me to this stone."

"Stand back." No time for finesse or stealth. Not anymore.

Sebastian triggered a small spell, and the flagstone exploded in a little hail of stone that he contained within a ward. Kneeling down, he fumbled in the hole, hauling out a larger slab of stone that was all that remained. There was something beneath it. More velvet. Something long and sharp. "Got it."

No denying it was the Blade. He'd touched it once before, and felt the malevolent, oily stain of its aura, for lack of a better word. The Blade was stained with blood, involved in numerous sacrifices over the years, and those deaths haunted it.

"Let's go." He grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her toward the staircase.

They slammed into an invisible ward at the top, and he swore under his breath. Of course. "I thought it was too easy." Getting inside the cellar was the easy part. Getting out, another matter entirely.

Cleo pressed against that invisible wall. "Damn it. Sebastian, my skin's on fire, my Premonition setting off all sorts of alarm bells." Her pale face flashed toward him. "She's coming."

Morgana.

The world dropped away from him, that familiar icy chill sliding through his veins. He had years and years of pent-up violence stored within him. Revenge, whispered the darkest part of him, hungering for it. No longer weak. No longer powerless. Bishop had granted him the chance to finally, finally match up against his mother and see which one of them emerged the victor.

He severed the link between he and Cleo, not wanting her to be a part of this.

"Stay behind me," he said, handing her the Blade. "I'll cover you. You need to get the Blade to Bishop, no matter what happens next."

Chapter 21

HE WENT COLD. That was the only way to explain it.

"How are we going to get out?" Cleo whispered, resting a hand on his arm, and holding the Blade in her other.

"Stand back," he said, flexing his hands.

Static wards like this could be broken with an enormous influx of power; a hammer-blow of immense proportions. Cleo glanced at the roof above them. "Bastian, be careful."

"I know what I'm doing." For once he sounded confident. "Bishop's had me cracking wards for the past month. This is something I can do."

Power swelled through him as he sucked it up through his feet. She could almost feel him vibrating with energy, and the surge of it she felt through the link buoyed her.

"Shusharah," he cried, bringing all his power to bear upon the invisible ward.

The backlash was immense. Sebastian flung up a ward to protect them, driving her into the wall and covering her with his body. Dirt shivered from a crack in the ceiling as the entire house shook.

The second it died down, he took her hand. "Move!"