Page 83 of Soulbound
Cleo sank to her knees too, still caressing his face. "It means I wish only the best for you. Love is not a chain, Sebastian. It's not something I seek to tie you with, or to trap you with. Love means I would protect you, and that it hurts to see your pain, and I know you don't understand any of it... I don't ask for it in return. I don't. But I must love myself too. Enough to expect more than what... what happened here tonight."
He looked down, capturing her hands against his cheeks, and shaking violently. "My head is a mess tonight. I shouldn't have allowed you in here."
"I knew," she whispered. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He sank back against the wall, dragging one knee up to his chest. "No."
"Do you want to be alone?" she whispered, dragging her knees up to her chest too.
The "yes" was in his eyes, the thought of what his instincts probably told him. But the word that came from his lips in a single breath was, "No."
A hand slid toward hers, resting over it with lax attention. A question lingered in that touch. She silently replied, turning her palm toward his and locking their fingers together. A single touch that meant more than any others that had happened within this room tonight.
"My mother used to ask me to brush her hair," he said softly.
Cleo's head turned sharply. "Pardon?"
He was staring toward the window again. "She had this brush. Her mother's brush. And sometimes she'd let me brush her hair."
The words made no sense, but then she saw his gaze alighting on the journal. Oh.
"Sometimes my father would send for me for dinner," she whispered quietly. "He never had any time for me during the day, or unless he wanted to see how my lessons were going. And when I grew older all he wanted from me were my Visions." She could see the lavish spread of the dinner table. "But sometimes we had dinner together. Perhaps they're the hardest moments to recall, for he neglected me, severely, and yet no matter how much I tell myself it wasn't my fault—that I was worthy of more, and he was a bad father—it's those moments that break me sometimes."
A thumb stroked across her palm. "The first time my powers came in was a sunny day in Provence," he admitted, and the stroke of his thumb turned a little desperate. "I liked Provence. There was a serving girl who was kind to me, and that was a rare thing. And Madame Cook always set aside an extra pastry for me."
"What happened?" she asked, for the first act of sorcery was nearly always Expression. An emotional outburst, and usually destructive.
"One of my mother's lovers was in the house, and they were quarrelling." Sebastian looked down at their entwined hands. "He barreled out of the house in a rush, calling for his carriage and his hounds, and when he alighted, he took the whip and sent the horses racing out of there at a gallop. The serving maid—Sybil, her name was Sybil—had been collecting eggs. She was walking through the gates to the courtyard when he drove straight into her."
Sebastian released a slow breath. "He didn't even care. He was worried about the horses, and shouting that the stupid girl should never have been in the road. My ears sounded hollow, and the world around me felt so distant. And he didn't care, even as Sybil lay there in the dirt." Tears shone in his eyes. "I killed him as my mother watched. I... I crushed him somehow, slowly, as he screamed. And when I looked at my mother's face, I saw her smile somehow fade. She'd been waiting for my powers to come in, but when they did, she didn't like what she saw.
"I'd been bred and trained to be a weapon to use against my father, but I think Morgana finally realized I was everything she'd ever dreamed of. Ridiculously strong. The perfect heir to two powerful bloodlines. Dangerous." His silky lashes swept down as he looked at their clasped hands.
Cleo squeezed his hand.
"She was never the same after that day," he whispered. "And on my next birthday, she collared me. I'd... forgotten about brushing her hair, about the books she sometimes bought me, for it seems so long ago now."
"The journal's bringing everything up," she said softly.
"She lost a first child before I was even born," he whispered, his gaze dropping to his lap. "A daughter. I never knew that. It's all through her journal. What she dreamt the child would look like, the little dresses she would buy for her, a trip to Paris for the pair of them when the girl was older....
"She was threatened by me," he continued in a hoarse voice. "Because I was not a daughter. Her uncle.... The things he did to her as a child.... It broke her somehow, I think. And when she married my father, she could not see past her uncle. Whenever she'd speak of Drake, it was always with vitriol. ‘He betrayed me.’ With another woman. With the divorce, when she was accused of murdering his nephew and only heir." Sebastian buried his face in his hands. "And I was my father in every way in her eyes. 'You're his mirror image,' she used to say, but it was not in pride. But she loved this daughter. She loved the idea of her in a way she could never love me."
Cleo brought their clasped hands to her lips, pressing a kiss to the back of his hand. This was the heart of his turmoil, and her heart broke for him.
"I was a threat," he rasped, and this time his eyes gleamed from emotion, not the moonlight. "But once upon a time, she was occasionally kind and... I'd forgotten that."
Cleo gently tugged him into her arms, and he rested his head on her shoulder. "I think the worst thing about hateful parents are those small moments of kindness. For they give you a glimpse of hope. They make you crave it, and you can never understand why they withhold it so frequently." Cleo stroked his hair. "Your mother didn't deserve you."
He was silent for a long moment. "Your father didn't deserve you."
Cleo sucked in a sharp breath, for it hit a little too close to home. For what if Lord Tremayne wasn't truly her father?
Chapter 18
SEBASTIAN SAT UP from deep sleep with a gasp, rubbing at his throat. The collar was gone, but he could still feel the ghostly caress of it from his dreams, as if it were branded in his memories. He could feel Julia Camden's touch as she worked his body like a puppeteer.
He couldn't stay here. Mother night.
