by Bec McMaster
Lady E poured them both tea. "Lila Sinclair. Aye, I knew her. I warned her not to marry Tremayne, as he was dabbling in occult areas he shouldn't have, but she wouldn't listen to a single word I said. I told her she'd come to a bad end."
"She had the gift of Divination," Cleo murmured, fingering the small silver charm on her necklace in the shape of a moon. Her mother's charm. She hadn't worn this necklace in years, but today it seemed... fitting. "Not like me. Her gifts were quieter, and limited to reading tea leaves, and scrying." And mine are either gift or curse, depending upon how you look at it....
"Aye. It's the reason your father married her. His powers were purely telekinetic, and he was quite powerful within his ranks, but he wanted to breed telepathic gifts into his bloodline. He hoped to produce a child with equal strengths in both disciplines."
"It doesn't always work like that." Sometimes two sorcerers produced a child with no penchant for sorcery at all, and at other times a child with no sorcery in the family lines suddenly learned how to manipulate the world, through sheer willpower—or desperation.
"No it doesn't, though it sometimes helps. Most sorcerers are one or the other, though they can be taught the other discipline to a certain degree, if they're dedicated enough. It's very, very rare to find a child who is equally telekinetic or telepathic."
"And I am almost purely telepathic."Cleo sipped her tea. Her mouth felt dry.
"Aye, well, your father went funny in the head after he, Drake, and Morgana quarreled five years earlier. He was furious when Drake became Prime of the Order. He always believed he was the better of the two, and I think Tremayne decided this was a means to prove it." Lady E helped herself to the butter cake. "But you're not asking about him, are you. Why do you want to know about your mother?"
"My father said she died in a carriage accident." Cleo met Lady E's eyes. "I begin to suspect it's not true."
"Are you sure you wish to know?" Lady E asked bluntly, and Cleo's heart plummeted in her chest. There was more to this story.
"I think I need to." Trepidation stirred. She hadn't spoken of the black queen to anyone. "Please."
"You were a little girl, barely off her short strings," Lady E murmured, "when Lila found herself with child again. Your birth wasn't a kind one, and the pregnancy drained her. It took her almost a year to regain her strength, and she was warned not to try again. Not anytime soon.
"But she didn't listen, or perhaps there was someone else whispering other suggestions in her ear, someone with more influence than Lila's contemporaries."
"My father," Cleo said leadenly, for it was the sort of thing he would have done.
"He wanted a dynasty, and it was far too early to tell whether you had inherited both gifts from your parents’ bloodlines. I think he believed that the more children they had, the greater the chances were. So she fell with child again. And the second pregnancy was much the same as the first. I've never seen a mother so drained of vitality like that.... The healers could barely keep her alive, and they couldn't find a single physical reason for her to be fading so fast."
There could have been a very good reason for that. Cleo saw that moment again as her father let something else inside him, before he reached for her mother. Her teacup rattled on its saucer, and she looked down before Lady E saw it in her eyes.
Lady E sighed. "Lila died in the birthing chambers, and the baby was stillborn. It wasn't.... Tremayne locked himself away for days. I think he regretted encouraging her to try again so early. He did care for her, despite everything. I will grant him that. And in the end I think he felt he'd killed her and the child, which left him only with you."
A child. He'd always said it was a carriage accident. "Did you see my mother's body?"
Lady E paused with her teacup to her lips. "Yes, I saw her laid out in the parlor, while we all paid her our respects." She put the teacup down. Suspicion narrowed her dark eyes. "I've played along, my gel, but enough of this fiddle-faddle. I won't believe you've suddenly got a hankering for the family history without good reason. Spit it out."
How much could she trust Lady E? Cleo pressed her fingers to her temples. It didn't make any sense. Her mother died...
...and the baby was stillborn.
Or so it was claimed.
Heat drained from her face. "Did you see the child's body?"
"Of course not. It was a closed coffin." Lady E folded her arms over her chest and presented a menacing brow. "That's a rather unpleasant question. And a very curious one. As far as I know, the child was in that coffin. But you think otherwise."
Cleo pushed to her feet in a swish of skirts. "I haven't told anyone this... but the demon's been visiting me in my dreams ever since Morgana stole the Blade of Altarrh."
"What?" No one could enunciate a word quite like Lady E.
"It lures me into the dream plane, I think...." The second the words tripped over her lips, the floodgates opened. Lady E stared at her, face paling slowly as Cleo told her everything; the chess board, the game, the pawns.
"I'm the white queen," she whispered, "but there's a black queen on the board too, and... I get the impression the black queen is going to set this entire mess off. She's the ace up the demon's sleeve, and she's somehow tied to me and Sebastian. I was told to look in my past for the answers—"
"Told by who?"
Cleo's shoulders slumped. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me, my gel." Lady E's voice cracked like a whip lash.
"I saw a man who claimed to be Quentin Farshaw in Balthazar's Labyrinth. He said he was part of some collective that watched over England's safety. He gave me the book, and he told me the black queen can be found somewhere in my past, and she has divination gifts."
Lady E merely waved a dismissive hand. "Meddling bloody Travelers."
"You know of them?" she said incredulously.
"I'm a Triad Councilor," Lady E said haughtily. "There's not very much that goes on within the Order that I'm not aware of." Thoughts swirled in her dark eyes and she looked at Cleo with a very disconcerting look. "Hmm."
"What?"
"You think you have a sister out there somewhere?" Lady E asked. "You think she might be the black queen."
Cleo's shoulders slumped. "It's the only answer I can come up with. In my dream, there was only one woman in that room and she is confirmed dead, by you. But was the child that was conceived me? Or was it a sibling? If I'm looking for the black queen, then it makes sense. A child with the same gifts I have. A child...." She looked down into her lap. A sister.
"Have you told anyone else about this?"
"No," she said, meeting the old woman's eyes. "And I don't intend to. Not until.... Not until I know more about it."
"Good," Lady E said, pouring them both another cup of tea. "I would keep what you have learned very close to your chest. And keep scrying. Sometimes Visions aren't quite what they seem."
* * *
Later that night, after another fruitless day of searching, Sebastian sat in the window seat, reading by the light of a small mage globe that burned above him. It was the journal, the one he wouldn't let Cleo look at. Frost gleamed on the window, though she didn't think he was aware of the cause of it.
But she was.
She was.
"We missed you at dinner," Cleo murmured, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb as she returned from scrubbing her teeth. "How does your reading go?"
He closed the book with a gentleness that belied his expression. She'd learned to recognize the gentleness as a mask. When he was emotionally conflicted, he became quieter, and yet colder. His movements became very, very careful, as if he'd burst out once upon a time and hurt someone or something, and knew better now what he was capable of.
"As expected. Morgana blames everyone but herself. I can't see what Lady E hopes for me to learn."
Then why are you so absorbed in it?
She didn't say it though. Instead her eyes took a small tour of the room.
&nbs
p; A bottle of brandy on the vanity. A sticky-rimmed glass on the floor beside his seat. And her husband, moving with such precise, gliding movements as if he were locked down so firmly that merely moving required a conscious level of control others didn't bother with.
She knew not to touch him when he was like this. This was the man who'd faced his mother with icy rages, the man who locked his heart away and guarded it with cruel words and dangerous smiles.
Perhaps the journal meant nothing to him, as he claimed, but she didn't think so. It was cutting him to pieces, and the only method he had of surviving was to fall back into old habits.
Cleo took a deep breath. Let me in. Please let me in. She wanted to hold him so badly, even as she knew he wouldn't accept such a thing. Not tonight. I hate to see you hurting.
"I don't think she would have insisted upon it unless she thought there was some value within it."
He snorted. "Lady E probably finds it amusing."
"To torture you?" Cleo arched a brow. "Well, you're in a mood tonight."
He looked up, and sighed. "Sorry. It gets to me. What could I possibly learn about my mother I don't already know? I pity her in some ways, yes. She was beaten and raped by her uncle for years. But...."
She saw the conflict in his eyes. If Morgana had suffered so, then why had she not protected him from the same horror? Had she hated her son enough that she didn't care? How could a woman who'd been through such a thing then turn that same abuse upon her own child?
"She wasn't worthy of you," Cleo said. "The fault lies in her, not you."
He moved restlessly, circling the room. "My mother saw me as a weapon she'd designed to unseat my father. All she ever wanted from me was to use me. To kill her enemies, to fuck her friends, to threaten those she despised with my strength.
"And Bishop wants to use me to get my father back. It's a different kind of leash, but all he cares for is my sorcery too."
"That's not true," she said, stepping forward. "He's your brother."
"She was my mother." He'd found the brandy again, and the room was very, very cold. "And you. What do you want from me?"
"Nothing," she whispered.
If it were a test, she would have failed. His entire expression shut down, those silver eyes glinting in the moonlight as he sipped at his brandy. "That's not entirely true, is it, Cleo?"
Cold. He moved with predatory intent toward her, and she sucked in a sharp breath. There was something languid to the movement now. Something predatory.
"You want my body—"
"Only if you wish to give it," she protested, taking a step back. "Last night was special." Wasn't it?
"You want my heart."
She had nothing to say to that. She captured his cheek in her hand, and perhaps it was that which confused him. She meant to comfort him, but his eyes turned to molten silver, and he swooped down and took her mouth in a searing kiss.
Cleo kissed him back desperately, aching with his pain, and frightened of this mood of his.
As far as kisses went, it was sublime. Perfect. Designed to arouse her, but also designed to give nothing back. A kiss like this could consume, but it left one hungry, denied the substance she craved so much. Each stroke of his hands set her on fire, for he knew what a woman wanted from him.
Hands moved with ruthless intent toward her robe, and he tore it open with a sharp tug, breaking the kiss.
And that was when she realized she could not heal him with a kiss, or a gentle touch.
This was not love. This was sex, and Sebastian was playing the role that had been predetermined for him by all those other women.
The glitter of his eyes cut her with sharp knives. "You want this," he whispered, tracing those tormenting kisses down her throat. "And this."
Hands on her breasts, his thumb circling her aching nipple....
Stop. She placed a hand, very firmly, upon his chest. "No."
"I can give you my body." His thumb stroked the side of her breast, and it ached both within and without, for a part of her yearned for his touch. Even as she knew he wasn't there. Not tonight.
This was Sebastian at his cruelest. Sebastian with his mask firmly in place. A hollow, gilded man.
"I said no." Cleo sucked in ragged breath, and pushed him away from her. "This isn't a transaction. This is... a gift. I would give my heart to you, my body, and ask for nothing in return." She looked up. "Though yes, I desire it."
The shock on his face turned to uncertainty, and then a brief flicker of horror went through his eyes. He looked down at her as she tried to control her ragged breathing, and she knew what he saw. Her robe agape. and her hair tumbling in a messy braid over her shoulder, her lips kiss-stung and swollen.
"You want me," he said, as if to try and understand, and a little piece of her heart broke because she knew he was trapped in the past right now, seeing sex and lust as a bargaining chip, as a game of control and hate.
"Not like that." Cleo tucked her robe back together. "And not this particular incarnation of you. I want the man who makes a rose bloom for me, and asks for his first kiss. I want the man who danced with me because he knew it was my first ball, and... because I'd always dreamed of it." She took a trembling breath. "I want the man who looks at me and sees me. Me. Not other women, not other times. I know what you have been through. I sympathize. And I will always be there for you if you wish to talk about it. But if you think I will let you use me like that even as you're pushing me away, then I suggest you think again."
She tied the knots on her robe. "I don't want anything from you that you're not prepared to give to me. All I want, all I've ever wanted, is to see you happy. And... and if you cannot be happy with me," she whispered, her mouth tasting like ash, "then I would grant you an annulment. The marriage remains unconsummated.” "But what of you?"
Cleo sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to think of all she'd lost. "I shall make do. It will hurt, I would expect." Voice firming, she looked up. "I care for you. You know I do, and I cannot hide my feelings. But my happiness does not depend upon you. With or without you, I will make my own way in this life, though I would like it very much if you were by my side." He looked so lost, and her heart ached. "I would like that very much."
"I'm sorry." He went to his knees before her, and there was her Sebastian again. "I don't understand you sometimes, or what you want from me."
"Yes, you do."She stroked his black hair back from his face, caressing the roughened stubble of his jaw. "It's yourself you do not understand. I love you."
His face twisted. "I don't know what that means."
Cleo sank to her knees too, still caressing his face. "It means I wish only the best for you. Love is not a chain, Sebastian. It's not something I seek to tie you with, or to trap you with. Love means I would protect you, and that it hurts to see your pain, and I know you don't understand any of it... I don't ask for it in return. I don't. But I must love myself too. Enough to expect more than what... what happened here tonight."
He looked down, capturing her hands against his cheeks, and shaking violently. "My head is a mess tonight. I shouldn't have allowed you in here."
"I knew," she whispered. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He sank back against the wall, dragging one knee up to his chest. "No."
"Do you want to be alone?" she whispered, dragging her knees up to her chest too.
The "yes" was in his eyes, the thought of what his instincts probably told him. But the word that came from his lips in a single breath was, "No."
A hand slid toward hers, resting over it with lax attention. A question lingered in that touch. She silently replied, turning her palm toward his and locking their fingers together. A single touch that meant more than any others that had happened within this room tonight.
"My mother used to ask me to brush her hair," he said softly.
Cleo's head turned sharply. "Pardon?"
He was staring toward the window again. "She had this brush. Her mother's brush. And
sometimes she'd let me brush her hair."
The words made no sense, but then she saw his gaze alighting on the journal. Oh.
"Sometimes my father would send for me for dinner," she whispered quietly. "He never had any time for me during the day, or unless he wanted to see how my lessons were going. And when I grew older all he wanted from me were my Visions." She could see the lavish spread of the dinner table. "But sometimes we had dinner together. Perhaps they're the hardest moments to recall, for he neglected me, severely, and yet no matter how much I tell myself it wasn't my fault—that I was worthy of more, and he was a bad father—it's those moments that break me sometimes."
A thumb stroked across her palm. "The first time my powers came in was a sunny day in Provence," he admitted, and the stroke of his thumb turned a little desperate. "I liked Provence. There was a serving girl who was kind to me, and that was a rare thing. And Madame Cook always set aside an extra pastry for me."
"What happened?" she asked, for the first act of sorcery was nearly always Expression. An emotional outburst, and usually destructive.
"One of my mother's lovers was in the house, and they were quarrelling." Sebastian looked down at their entwined hands. "He barreled out of the house in a rush, calling for his carriage and his hounds, and when he alighted, he took the whip and sent the horses racing out of there at a gallop. The serving maid—Sybil, her name was Sybil—had been collecting eggs. She was walking through the gates to the courtyard when he drove straight into her."
Sebastian released a slow breath. "He didn't even care. He was worried about the horses, and shouting that the stupid girl should never have been in the road. My ears sounded hollow, and the world around me felt so distant. And he didn't care, even as Sybil lay there in the dirt." Tears shone in his eyes. "I killed him as my mother watched. I... I crushed him somehow, slowly, as he screamed. And when I looked at my mother's face, I saw her smile somehow fade. She'd been waiting for my powers to come in, but when they did, she didn't like what she saw.
"I'd been bred and trained to be a weapon to use against my father, but I think Morgana finally realized I was everything she'd ever dreamed of. Ridiculously strong. The perfect heir to two powerful bloodlines. Dangerous." His silky lashes swept down as he looked at their clasped hands.