Page 99 of Soulbound

"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.