Page 133 of Soulbound
She hesitated. Just a faint flicker of expression across that disdainful face, but it was there. He wasn't imagining it.
Could she hear him, deep in her prison? He swallowed hard. "Fight her, Cleo."
"The night I first kissed you, the frozen prison around my heart began to melt," he whispered. "You have been there at every step of the way, forcing me to be a better man. Holding me when I have weakened. And loving me, loving me no matter how much I loathed myself."
"Finish it," the demon hissed, sensing, perhaps, its doom.
"Cleo, I love you." Sebastian cupped the back of her calf through her dress. The soul-bond flared with the physical link. She was in there, he could feel her. Her light was small, but he cupped his hands around it and blew on the spark, trying to bring her back to life. "This is not your fault. I give you my heart, my death, if you want to take it. It's yours. My heart was always yours, and it always will be, no matter what. My life is yours. I love you."
The black queen shook her head, her skin rippling from beneath as if some hidden war was waged inside her.
"Fight her," he whispered, touching the link and feeling something brush against him.
Then her expression hardened.
"If you love me, then you’re a fool," said the black queen, lifting the Blade of Altarrh in her hand.
Chapter 30
A THOUSAND MOMENTS stretched out in that second.
And Cleo saw it all.
Sebastian on his knees in front of her. The knife in her hand, growing heavier by the second.
The knife descending toward his vulnerable throat.
No! She screamed it with her entire being.
With his hand touching her body, she was suddenly no longer alone, trapped in the dark. The bond between them swelled, and she pushed on the invisible walls trapping her in the dark, raging up within herself.
Sebastian looked up at her, his gaze unflinching. He refused to look at the descending knife. Refused to do anything but pour his emotions through the bond between them. "My life is yours. I love you."
Cleo screamed, the sound breaking from her lips as she fell heavily into her body. She could sense the shadow within her, fighting for control, but she had more power here, linked to him as she was.
The Blade fell harmlessly to her side.
And Cleo looked down into Sebastian's relieved face before closing her eyes. This was not done yet.
Whatever the demon had done to her, it had stripped all the veils from her eyes. The world seemed entirely different, a second plane of existence sitting almost on top of the real world. It was a simple matter to take that sidestep into another world. She opened her eyes and found herself in the dream-plane, the checkerboard tiles stretching from horizon to horizon, and the real world merely an echo.
A woman stood there, dressed all in black. She turned around, and Cleo stared into her mirror image, though she'd never worn an expression like that upon her face.
"I cast you out," she said softly, feeling the steadiness of Sebastian's hair beneath her hand in the real world.
"You cannot. I'm a part of you," said the black queen.
"I cast you out," she said, more firmly this time as she advanced. "You're nothing more than a parasite, and I am done with leeches trying to drain me."
The black queen threw everything she had at Cleo, twisting the dream world into a dark prison, reminiscent of the one she'd just been in. "Without me, you'll be alone. Trapped in here for all your years."
"I'm not alone," she said, taking another dangerous step forward. "My husband loves me. It is you who is alone."
The Blade in her hands shimmered, ethereal light streaming off its runes as it created light in the darkness. She finally understood how Drake, Morgana, and her father had created the Infernal Relics. They'd been crafted in the physical world, but it was here, in the plane between the mortal realm and the Shadow Dimensions, that the enchantments had been laid.
A weapon of both worlds, meant for a creature of both worlds.
"No," whispered the black queen, the dark heart of her.
