Page 121 of Soulbound
"Fine." Lady E poured a liberal dash of whiskey into her teacup, and then reached for one of the small pots on the tray Marie had brought in. She scooped out a small teaspoon of powder and dumped it in the whiskey, giving it a stir before tapping the spoon on the rim of the cup. "Drink this."
He looked down. Then up. "What is it?"
"A relaxant." Lady E shoved the cup into his hand. "I want your sweet wife back as much as you do."
What other choice did he have? Sebastian downed the contents, gagging at the taste. Then Lady E pushed him back down.
A gentle lassitude swept through his muscles. He blinked. The world divided into two images of itself, until several Lady E's looked down into his face.
"Excellent. Close your eyes." She started muttering her personal power words under her breath, and he could feel heat sinking through her palms as she rested them upon his forehead. "Think of your wife. Picture her hair, her favorite dress, the scent of her perfume...."
Apricot-scented soap.
"Imagine her smile and what it does to you when you see it," Lady E's voice seemed to soften, or perhaps grow distant. "Think of the way her skin feels beneath your touch. Can you sense her?"
The bond seemed to glow in the darkness behind his closed eyes. An image of Cleo formed in his mind, turning to smile at him as she looked up from Quentin Farshaw's book. "Yes," he breathed.
"What color dress is she wearing?"
"Pink." The silk nightgown he so admired. He smiled, tempted to reach out and touch her.
"Sebastian, I want you to focus now." The words felt like they were coming through a thick pane of glass. "Reach out and try and grasp that bond."
Worry filled him. "I don't want to crush the light."
"You won't, my dear boy," she said, stroking his forehead lightly. "But I need you to reach for it. Can you do that?"
He felt like he closed his hand over the little glowing spark in his mind that represented his wife. Instantly the bond strengthened, and he gasped as he saw through her eyes. There was laughter. Flames. The taste of wine in her mouth.
Blood.
But Cleo herself felt so distant.... "Help me. Please!" she cried, as if sensing the light of their bond.
He could feel her banging on a wall as if trapped somewhere, and someone had put her in the fucking dark, but... but he was also seeing through her eyes, and there was a garden, and lights and he saw her black eyes turning his way—
"Oh, no you don't," said a darker version of Cleo's voice.
The bond evaporated, as if she'd sliced a razor through it. Still there, pulsing in the back of his mind, but quietly now. Quietly.
Sebastian's eyes jerked open, heart leaping wildly as he came back to the room. "She shut me out."
"What?"
Sebastian swung his legs over the sofa, the world spinning as he righted himself. "She... she cut through the bond somehow. Locked me out."
"Cleo did?" Lady E asked, as if to clarify.
Or did she?
Fear washed through him and he pushed to his feet, needing to feel the heat of the fire on his skin. No. No it couldn't be.
"I don't know what it wants from me."
"But now I think the black queen is also me."
What if the demon had taken her for a more specific reason than merely a hostage?
What if it had succeeded in that reason?
