She held the tip of the Blade to Eleanor's throat, draping his lover's weakened form back against her. "Don't move," she spat.
Drake held both hands out in a gesture of surrender. His eyes met Eleanor's. She looked confused, weakened. Fight back, he wanted to yell, but Eleanor's magic was silent. She was never submissive, never this quiet. Eleanor was a raging lion when someone threatened those she cared for. It made his heart drop like lead. What had Morgana done to her? "You're facing a dilemma, Morgana. If you hurt her," he promised, his voice darkening, "I'll kill you. Let her go, and I might spare you."
"I'm the one with the Blade! Don't speak to me like you hold the power here!" Morgana gestured the tip of the Blade toward him, then shifted it toward Sebastian when their son looked up. "Don't you move either, you treacherous brat."
"Morgana." Drake held his hand out toward her and took a slow, steady step. "It's done. You're surrounded."
"It's done when I say it's done—"
Sebastian launched toward her.
His son's sorcery was burned out, leaving him weak and unsteady, but he moved with deadly accuracy.
"No!" Drake screamed, but it was too late. Sebastian collided with them just as Morgana drove the Blade home.
One final time.
Sebastian ground his bloodied teeth together, holding the blade sheathed in his side and his mother's hands around it. This time, there was no warning. Expression ripped its way through the room, focusing in on the Blade itself. The pressure built, and Drake barely flung up a ward large enough to contain it.
Red light exploded as the Blade's magic sunk in upon itself, stretching the very fabric of being, and then it collapsed. Sebastian's power threw him and his mother apart, taking Drake with it.
When Drake blinked and came to, he was lying beside Eleanor. Some part of him remembered crawling toward her before the blackness overtook him. "Ellie?" he whispered. "Get up. We need to get moving."
Those gold-ringed blue eyes met his. "Nur. Megurrh."
"What's wrong?"
The room began to tremble. The entire floor felt like it was going to drop beneath his feet. Their sorcerous duel must have weakened some of the supports below. "Ianthe, get Lucien out of here!" Drake threw over his shoulder, then curled over Eleanor. There was blood on her back—a blow directly from the Blade, which sent a chill through him. The only way to heal such a cut was by using the Chalice to mix a healing potion. If they got to it in time... The slow steady trickle of blood wet his hands.
"Ianthe's not breathing!" Lucien yelled back.
Everything seemed to turn on its head. Drake glanced behind him. Ianthe flopped like a doll in Lucien's hands, but Lucien looked fine. Strained and pale, but he was only bleeding a little.
Drake glanced back at Eleanor, who lay on the floor, and Sebastian, who was grappling with Morgana, torn between too many opposing forces. For the first time in years, he didn't know what to do.
Or who to protect.
For they all meant something to him. And he was terribly afraid that he would have to make a choice...
Chapter Thirty-One
'A Soul-bond is formed between two lovers, and it ties their life-spans together as if they were truly but one...'
* * *
–- Lady Eberhardt's transcription on Soul-bond's
* * *
"Ianthe?” Lucien whispered, his voice tight and dry. "Ianthe. Please. Please come back. Breathe, damn you!"
The floor shuddered beneath them. Something fell. Somewhere.
But he shut the world out, pressing hard on her chest. Power was a faded ember within him, almost burned out, but at the periphery of his senses, he could sense the faded gold spill of the bond that connected him to Ianthe. It unraveled with delicate slowness as if she were slipping away into a place he couldn't follow.
"No," he whispered, bending forward to breathe into her lungs. Her mouth was soft and unresisting. Whatever the demon had flung at her had been a psychic storm of immense proportions. Ianthe had held firm, focused on dragging him out of that inner prison, rather than on protecting herself. It had worked. Lucien had blinked and found himself falling heavily into his own body, flesh weighing him down, but the cost of it... He didn't think he could bear the cost of it. He reached out with unsteady hands, stroking her face, trying to hold on, with everything that he had, to that dwindling thread of gold.
Their link.
