Page 34 of Hexbound
Bishop frowned, looking troubled. "I'll be there."
Then he waved a hand in a sharp gesture, dispersing the spell, and the orb's light vanished as he turned—
Verity flicked her fingers and the rift closed. Falling back onto her bed, she lay still and quiet, her heart pounding in her ears as she listened.
The house remained quiet. Nobody came to castigate her for listening to a private conversation.
Who had he been speaking to?
He'd promised that they would work together to recover the Chalice, but she wasn't entirely certain how far she could trust him. There had to besomeangle. Didn't there?
Trust him? Or follow him?
Perhaps she could wait until breakfast to make that decision, depending upon whether he told her the truth about the meeting, or not.
Wait and see, she told herself, then let her body relax.Let's give him one more chance.
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Chapter 8
FREEDOM. IT HAD been a brief but sustaining dream.
Sebastian Montcalm stepped out of the hackney and stared up at the house on Banbury Square with a note in his fist. He limped a little as his boots crunched over the gravel drive, his side still aching from where his mother had buried a knife in it just over three weeks ago. The wound shouldn't have healed—no blow struck by the Blade of Altarrh could ever stop bleeding—but somehow it had.
Or no, notsomehow....
He knew exactly why it had crusted over and begun to scab. The little knot of anticipation in his mind was linked directly to his wife. After years of loneliness, it was quite startling to feel the bond between them every time he woke up, a bond that she'd used to save his life. Cleo, the only person he had ever trusted, was wrapped so tightly around him that sometimes he woke and reached for her in the empty bed. But that too was a trick, a dream. For Cleo was missing, and he knew exactly who had her.
As the note in his hand, delivered just this morning, dictated.
Your freedom for hers, it promised.
He was a fool to even be standing here, staring at the front door. Morgana could never be trusted and he was finally free of her, but if he didn't come... then Cleo would suffer the consequences. Sebastian, who knew more about his mother's evil nature than anyone, knew precisely what would happen to her.
Damn him for a fool. Morgana had warned him after all;"Never allow yourself attachments, Sebastian. They're only weaknesses that can be used against you."
He'd never truly understood that sentiment until this moment.
The doorbell rang and dread shivered down his spine as he steeled himself. Every nerve in his body pushed at him to flee. This was wrong. So wrong. But it was either cast himself to the lions, or see harm done to the innocent young wife he'd known for only a matter of days.
And that could not be borne.
"Sir," the butler greeted, opening the door and gesturing him inside. "Madam is waiting in the library."
Wondering to whom his mother had attached herself now, Sebastian took that one fatal step inside.
"This way, sir," said the butler, and Sebastian followed him warily, raking the hallway with a glance.
He'd been expecting his mother. But as the butler ushered him into the library, he realized this was but one last sally against him, a way to twist the knife and put him off guard. For instead of his mother, a young woman clad in purest white stood there.
His wife.
"Sebastian?" Cleo whispered, blinded by the linen blindfold that kept her visions pure. She'd always owned fine senses, and now the bond between them flared bright gold at their proximity, she had to know who stood there.
He could feel that link between them, both a taunt and a hope. "What happened? How did they steal you away?"
The last time he'd seen her had been directly after he brought the house down on top of his mother and tried to destroy a demon. Of the man who called himself a father, there'd been no sign. Raw edges scraping his psychic abilities, he'd collapsed in the bed in the inn that Cleo had somehow managed to get him to, undone by the sheer amount of power he'd wielded that day.
