Their bond.
Her.
She wasn't breathing. And she was colorless, all of the beautiful, incandescent colors that flickered around her constantly, fading to nothing.
It choked him, as if, without her breath, his own could not release. The shimmer of magic around her dulled a little, the vibrant white glow softening as if there were nothing to sustain it. Like a hot coal slowly fading in a cold grate, all of that heat, that energy, compressing into the heart of her, and then... flickering out.
"Please," he whispered, stroking a rough hand through Ianthe's hair. Her head lolled to the side. "Don't you dare do this. Don't you leave me."
Leaning down, Lucien pressed his mouth against hers, giving her the type of kiss that he'd never dared. One that gave her his heart and soul, tasting the lax fullness of her mouth. "You win," he whispered, hands fisting in her hair and heat flushing his eyes. Finally reduced to begging. "You win. I'm yours. Everything that I am is yours. I love you! Just... don't you dare leave me."
The link between them unraveled. Somehow he snatched at each end of it, holding on with sheer force of will as the pull of her own soul stretched back toward a pool of obliterating darkness. The pain burned him to ash, tore him apart, and burned him again, but he wouldn't let go. His teeth slammed together so tightly that he could feel the ache even through the lash of power. It scalded his senses, left him raw and scabbed over, where he'd finally begun to rebuild against the sensitivity of it.
But he didn't let go.
Instead, he drew the vast depths of his power into himself like a man taking in the deepest breath he could. Finger trembling, Lucien traced one of the forbidden runes between her breasts. It erupted into scarlet light, and Ianthe's body jerked as he turned the same gold-tipped finger to his own heart, transforming the bond that they'd begun, so long ago, it seemed.
Power exploded in a violent coruscation around them as the bond between them snapped back into place, twice as thick, each lashing tendril of power binding them together like a web.
He didn't think he could hold it. A force stronger than his own dragged him after her, slipping inexorably toward that pool of oblivion.
A small psychic touch brushed against him, a tiny little thread adding to their bond. Something alien, but something he recognized instantly. Louisa. Reaching out with powers as yet undeveloped, as if she'd sensed her mother's need, even over such a vast distance.
And both of them catapulted back into reality, slamming harshly into their own bodies.
Ianthe's eyes shot open, golden power streaming from them, and a dry, hollow scream sounding in her throat. Lucien held her in his arms, pressing his face against her throat, whispering, "Please," over and over again as he rocked her.
She fell into sobbing, and Lucien curled her against his chest, feeling raw inside. Thank God. He looked up to the heavens, barely able to breathe through the enormity of the emotions surging through him.
The room trembled.
Drake snatched at his sleeve, concern in his eyes, and his face stained with dust. "We have to get out of here," he said, balancing Eleanor Ross in his arms. "The entire house is going to collapse, I think."
In the end, it was a choice that Drake did not wish to make.
His lover in his arms. His son and the daughter-of-his-heart stumbling behind them as they fled the building.
Morgana and the son he'd only just found were left behind.
I'll go back, he promised himself as they fled. Go back and save him...
His heart bled, but he got them out, just as the house collapsed. Half of it sheared away, burying itself in rubble. The half where Eleanor had been held. Drake turned back to it, knowing he was too late to enter, knowing he couldn't save this last son.
You failed. You failed him. Just as Lady Rathbourne had once prophesized.
Others were there. Lady Eberhardt, setting the situation to rights with a brusque take-charge manner; and Bishop, the only son who he'd spent much time with, watching him with those dark Sicarii eyes, as Drake turned to stare at the house.
"It's better this way," Bishop told him.
They understood each other. They always had. Nobody should wield that much power. Nobody with only the gifts of Expression. It was dangerous. The whole of London would burn.
But Drake mourned, not as a Prime, not as a man who knew the dangers of such things, but as a father who remembered, once upon a time, the words his lover had once told him:
* * *
'Three sons, three sacrifices.
When you first lay eyes upon them all, the end will begin.
