Page 80 of Soulbound
"I saw something in my dreams the night of the Ascension Ball," Cleo admitted. "You knew my father. Did you know my mother?"
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."
