Page 74 of Hexbound
"Bishop?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"Verity, do you know that woman?"
Verity examined the woman again, darting her glance between them. "Well... no. I don't think I've ever seen her before, why?"
Every inch of him was still. He had that "hunting" expression on his face, and tension etched his muscles. "Because that's Morgana de Wynter, my father's ex-wife. I'm certain of it."
Verity's voice dropped. "I thought she was dead."
"So did I," he breathed, fading back into the bushes in the park, drawing her with him. "Don't move. Don't make a sound. Anddon'tuse your sorcery, or she'll sense it."
Pressed against him from breast to thigh, Verity caught hold of his coat, the screen of overgrown shrubbery enveloping them. His wariness was contagious. Her lungs tightened. "What are you going to do?" She caught his sleeve as he shifted minutely. She'd never seen that sort of intensity in his dark eyes. They looked almost black in the shadows. "Bishop. You can't kill her. Not here."
He finally looked at her, and she saw how much he wanted to. "Everything that has been done to my father can be laid at that woman's feet.Everything."
"Who knows what is in that house," she pointed out. "And if she survived what you threw at her last month, then what tricks does she have up her sleeve?"
"You're right." He swore. "I'm not usually this careless."
"You're angry, and you're not thinking." Verity took a wary step backward. There was something about him in this moment that seemed quite dangerous. "Perhaps we should tell your father. I assume he would want to know?"
Bishop nodded. He looked back at the house just as a young man strolled out onto the back porch, his hands in his pockets and his hair neatly pomaded.
Verity's jaw dropped again.Oh, no.
"What?" Bishop breathed in her ear.
"That's Noah Guthrie."
Bishop froze. "Verity, I'm fairly certain that's not Noah anymore. I think we've just found the demon."
"What are we going to do?" she mouthed.
"We'renot. You're going. I can move silently without you by my side, and I need to find out more."
"I'm not leaving you here alone," she pointed out.
"Someone needs to let Drake know." He took her chin firmly between his palms. "Verity, matters just took a turn for the worse. That woman wants to destroy my father, and the demon is her means of doing so. We need to know who else is in that house, and Drake and Ianthe need to be alerted." He shook her a little. "Promise me you'll go to Drake. Get as far away from here as possible."
"And you?" she asked in a small voice.
"It would take more than Morgana has to kill me," he said, turning his gaze toward the house. "Go on now, Ver. I'll catch up with you at my father's house."
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Chapter 18
"Sorcery isbut the manipulation of pure energy. There are two means of doing so: by training yourself to Harness your will, and force energy to comply, or by giving vent to heated emotion, that which we call Expression. The danger of Expression, however, is that if emotion drives your sorcery, then how can you prevent yourself from manipulating the world around you in the heat of the moment?"
–'Harnessing Your Will', by Sir Ian Blythe
VERITY TRANSLOCATED BACKto Bishop's house, where she picked up a book she'd seen in the library with a scrawled note from Drake in it to Bishop, and then punched across the city, using it to track Drake down.
Finally, she fetched up outside a manor on the outskirts of Kensington. The door opened the second she went to knock, and Verity started, staring at a young woman in a pale pink gown with a wealth of golden ringlets curling down her back.
The young woman blinked. She had the thickest, darkest lashes Verity had ever seen, and her eyes were so dark a brown that she almost looked as though she bore some faint resemblance to Bishop. "Oh," she said, clearly taking Verity's appraisal just as much as Verity took in the stranger's. "I knew something was coming—something momentous. I didn't realize it would be you."
Verity stood there rather stupidly, holding Drake's book. "Is, ah, the duke at home?"
