Page 113 of Hexbound
But for a moment, when Cleo had lain beside him in that bed, he'd almost... wondered about it. Cleo smelled like apricot soap, with her hair spread across the pillow as she waited for him to touch her. Silvery hair in the moonlight. She'd barely been breathing, as if waiting for him to lay a hand on her.
And he'd wanted to. For just a moment. Wanted to pretend that he wasn't what he was, and that the filth of his past, of what he'd done, of what he'd been forced to do, couldn't contaminate her purity if he touched her.
"You are what you are,"Morgana whispered in his memory,"You are my son. Mine."
And it was true. There was a darkness in him that he couldn't deny.
He had no place dreaming of someone like Cleo.
Sebastian clenched his eyes tightly, banishing thoughts of her before he could truly lose himself to despair. His father was another hope, another dream, he couldn't have. This cold cellar around him—stinking of rotten onions—was the cold, hard truth of his life.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. Letting out a hopeless breath, Sebastian flexed his wrists against the manacles that bound him. At least they were no longer held high above his head. The demon had made good on that promise at least. He prepared himself for anything.
A clank, the sound of a lock being turned, and then it opened and light flooded inside. Sebastian straightened, his head turning toward the door even as his eyes flinched shut against the light.
The long moment of silence stretched out, then boots stepped down into his makeshift cell. "Here," said the demon wearing Noah Guthrie's body. It set something down—a tray covered in a small towel—and the scent of food made his stomach ache.
Holding a cup to his lips, it poured water into his mouth. Sebastian drank greedily, and though a part of him hoped the water was pure and not drugged, he was too thirsty to pay the proper caution.
Finally, the demon lowered the cup. "I brought food."
It had been two days since he'd last eaten. The demon unfastened his manacles, and Sebastian knelt on the ground, flipping aside the warm linen cloth. Bread.Jesus.And soup. His mouth watered and he set to with a vengeance, breaking apart the bread with his bare hands and stuffing it in his mouth ravenously.
"I am sorry I did not come earlier," the demon said. "The human processes elude me sometimes. I did not think to feed you until your mother and Tremayne sat down to dine."
Sebastian tilted the bowl to his lips and drained the salty broth, washing down the bread that stuck in his throat. His stomach gave a warning lurch, but he couldn't have stopped himself if he tried. Using the last bit of bread to mop up the barley and dregs of meaty liquid in the bottom of the bowl, he looked up, gauging the demon's cool expression before he set the bowl aside. His stomach rumbled. More. He wanted more.
He was probably lucky to get what he had.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
One of the demon's eyebrows arched. It tilted its head. "You are angry."
Better that than the despondency that had filled him during the last twenty-four hours. His hands curled into fists. He glanced toward the door.
"You wouldn't get far," the demon said. "Your mother is upstairs and she's wearing the ring."
As if to punctuate the words, the collar at his throat throbbed. Sebastian slumped back against the wall. Hopeless.
"What do you want?" he repeated, and this time the words echoed emotionlessly.
"I have a proposition for you," the demon said.
I'll bet.Everybody wanted something from him. But perhaps he could play it both ways? Tit for tat. Every muscle in his body locked tight. "I'm listening."
It cocked its head to the side, idly stroking the rash at its collar. "I have promised Noah that I will give him back his body, which means I have need of another."
It looked at him—looked through him—and sheer terror obliterated his senses.
"No way in hell," he breathed. It was the only thing that had ever been his, and even then others had abused it, and done what they wished with it. But this....
"Oh, I don't want you," the demon said. "Not for very long, anyway. But there is a very important meeting to be held tomorrow. You're the ace up my sleeve. The last gambit I can play. And we share similar aims. You want revenge. So do I."
That soothed his terror for a second. Sebastian rested his wrists on his knees and stared at the creature, starting to think. What did he have to lose? Really? What would it be like to be trapped inside his own body, no longer in control of it?
Something rather like this, he imagined.
He couldn't escape on his own. He'd tried. And his father wasn't going to ride to his rescue. That hope had been brief, a fantasy he flirted with more than anything else, but there'd been no sign of his father.
