Two brothers enter that building... Only one of them comes out...
Which meant either Cleo was going to be a widow very shortly, or Ianthe was never going to get the chance to be anything more than Lucien's Anchor. "Here," she said, dragging the young woman faster. Pieces of rubble jumped and shivered across the floor as a tremor began to shake the very earth itself. "It's intensifying."
Silence.
No wind. No air to breathe. Just pressure.
A vacuum of nothingness.
Lucien's ears were ringing. He took a step forward, power roaring through him and diverted through his outstretched hand into the Prime. Glass crunched beneath his boot, having given up the ghost in the first blast. The wall between the cell and the sunroom had blasted outward during that first intense wave as the Prime sought to contain the raw force erupting from his son.
Lucien's brother.
He recognized little of himself in the other man. No, Sebastian was cut from Drake's image, whereas he himself bore more of his mother, Lady Rathbourne. When Sebastian looked up, his eyes narrowed with hatred upon the woman that Drake was protecting, Lucien finally saw something that he recognized.
The loneliness. The ache of betrayal. A brother who had known some of the same miseries that he himself had felt.
"Can't... hold him... much longer." Drake grit his teeth. The sheer amount of power that he was grounding was extraordinary.
"Then let him kill her," Lucien shouted, though his voice sounded strange and empty. He was starting to feel empty. One of the rings on his hand shattered as he drew too much power, letting his father absorb it.
The Prime's startled eyes shot to his, but defiance formed there. "No. That task... is mine. Not his... No son should have to... kill... his mother."
Drake had been straining beneath the lash of raw fury, but at the words, somehow the Prime found an inner strength that began pushing back against the strain. Somehow he was containing it.
That sensation of feeling watched heightened. An eerie sensation trailed down Luc's spine.
Shouts. Ragged confusion. Then something slammed into him as Morgana slid the knife into his side.
"Your sacrifice, my lord," she whispered, her green eyes meeting his.
Agony erupted. A wash of red flooded Luc's vision, making him see double, until it felt like he stood in two places. In one world he staggered across the floor with glass crunching beneath his boots, a cold throb erupting from just beneath his ribs; in the other world, there was an aching feeling of nothingness, just icy stonewalls and a shadowy figure turning around to face him, its hands lifting to drag the black hood back from its face.
“There you are,” something whispered in his mind. Its mental claws locked tight over him.
Lucien screamed as all of his old nightmares took shape and form.
When he blinked, he was no longer standing in the sunroom. The two worlds became one. Instead, he was screaming within a prison of nothingness, the grate overhead revealing a small, insipid moon that looked oddly wrong, and the walls shimmered with a haze of heat, as if they were not truly there.
Voice raw, he came back to himself. "Where am I?"
The shadow revealed its face. The demon stood there, wearing a mask, and a topcoat with tails. The thin eye slits gleamed black, as if the holes fell into infinity, rather than reveal its eyes. It smiled, the mask stretching into a contortion that echoed its expression, and chilled his blood.
"My prissson," the demon rasped, "in your mind." Both hands speared wide. "This is where I dwell. Where you casst me, once my s...sservice was done."
No. A cold sweat gleamed along his skin, and Luc took a step back. "How...?"
The demon advanced without taking a single step. "Do you remember my name?"
Lascher. He didn't dare utter it. "I banished you."
That smile spread. "Yesss. Here. Always here. Did you not know that I have been watching you? All this time?"
A bubble of power spun to life, balanced on the creature's fingertip. Within the opaque globe, Lucien saw himself and Ianthe entwined upon their bed. Her pale skin gleamed against their dark sheets as her body arched in ecstasy and she threw her head back.
Lucien smashed the bubble, and it dissipated like smoke. "Not her."
It can't hurt me, Lucien told himself. This is a psychic plane that it's created somewhere within my mind. I'm not really here. "You cannot step through into the physical world."
