Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"Well, well,” Morgana said, swinging a lantern into the small cell and pushing back her hood with a pale, slender hand.
Her smile was dangerous. "You should see the sunset, Eleanor.
It's beautiful and full of portent." Setting the lantern on the table, she turned and drew a slim, elegant knife from her sleeve. "Today is going to be a very good day."
Eleanor gasped, her barely-healed lip splitting open again. The Blade of Altarrh. She could almost feel the malevolent haze emanating from it. "How did you get that?" What had happened to Drake? Was he injured?
No. She forced herself to calm. No. Morgana's smile was only that of a gloating Madonna. The woman wouldn't have been able to contain herself if Drake was hurt or cast down. She would have been crowing from the rooftops.
"I have my means," Morgana taunted. "It is always simply about finding the right point to apply pressure. Everyone has something they won't risk, whether it's a secret or someone important to them."
"Even you?"
Morgana's smile faded. "People are weaknesses you cannot afford, and there is no secret I feel shame in keeping. No, Eleanor, I'm the exemption to the rule."
Gathering her dignity, Eleanor dragged herself to her feet, the chains rattling across the floor. "I think you're lying to yourself."
"Oh? Do tell."
"I think you've always wanted someone to belong to you, but you cannot fathom how to keep them loyal, because you don't understand loyalty. All you know is betrayal."
Those green eyes narrowed. "Learned from the day I began walking, I assure you, and nobody has ever dealt me otherwise. That's not a weakness, Eleanor."
"Isn't it? Then why do you still crave it?
Look at you." She let her pity show. "Your own son despises you.
Drake turned from you. No man will have you.
And you want them to belong to you so desperately that the misery of losing them has turned you into this.
A bitter old woman with no true power, no true friends, or allies, or—"
"Stop!" Morgana hissed, lunging forward with the blade drawn. "Don't you dare pity me!"
The blade stopped an inch from Eleanor's throat.
She stared into the other woman's eyes, refusing to be cowed.
Go ahead. Eleanor tipped her chin up. She was no longer that pale young girl who stammered and apologized to the other young female apprentices, as if her poor birth was her own fault.
Drake had taught her the value of her worth, and if this bitch was going to kill her, then Eleanor would meet her death with grace and dignity.
Morgana's lip curled back from her teeth, and she pulled the knife away.
"You," Morgana spat, "pathetic Eleanor Whitby, a girl taken directly from the orphanage, with a minor talent in psychometry, if at all.
.. You always looked beyond your station, Eleanor, nosing around the tutors as if that could make up for your lack of breeding and talent.
Gods, it makes me ill to even think of you in his bed.
Why would he choose you? You're nothing. You've always been nothing."
A spark of rage unfurled in her breast, but Eleanor held her head high. "It doesn't matter what you say or do to me, Morgana, you will never win. Even in death, Drake's heart belongs to me, and mine to him."
A dangerous glitter filled the other woman's eyes. "So be it then. If Drake wants your bloody heart, then he can have it. In a box. Henri! Phillippe!"
Two heavy-set men shouldered inside the cell. Morgana gestured them into place with a swift cut of her hand. "Take her wrists and pin her down."
They moved to grab her, and Eleanor fought. It was no use. Without access to her power—carefully blocked by the warded bracelet around her wrist—she was as weak as anyone else.
Morgana grabbed her by the throat, pinning her to the stone wall. "How dare you think you could replace me? How dare you think that you" —the knife dug into Eleanor's breastbone— "pathetic, little bitch that you are, could ever be half the woman that I am."
Power gathered along the Blade. Eleanor felt it growing, even as the point cut into her skin. She cried out, twisting her face away, but there was no hope. No relief from the slow, inexorable push of hot iron into her flesh. Eleanor screamed.
"What are you doing?"
The room was suddenly freezing. Sebastian stood in the doorway, his eyes raking over the scene. Power gleamed over his skin, giving him such vitality that he almost glowed. Eleanor slumped, breathing hard, as Morgana turned to face him.
"This is none of your business. Go back to your roses." There was a faint sneer to Morgana's voice, and she turned back to her task, as if dismissing him.
"No."
Morgana shoved away from Eleanor, leaving her gasping as blood trickled from the cut beneath her breastbone.
The woman turned to face her son, power lashing along the Blade as she pointed it at him.
"Don't you dare defy me, especially not after that debacle last night, where you almost cost me this!
" Morgana held up the relic. "Now get out of here. I've had enough of you for the day!"
His cold gray gaze flickered toward Eleanor, then back to his mother. "No," he said again, slowly, as if making up his mind. "I cannot let you do this. I will not."
As if to emphasize the words, Sebastian straightened, his fingers curled faintly at his sides with flickers of lightning-coated power dancing over them. Just a hint of a threat, but one made dangerous by the weight of power that could be felt within him.
It felt like everyone in the room held their breath.
Eleanor didn't hope to escape this, but in saving her, was he risking himself?
Morgana seemed shocked. "What do you mean, 'you cannot let me do this'? Who are you to tell me what I may or may not do?"
"Unfortunately, I'm the only one with the power to stop you. That's who I am, Mother."
"Power?" Morgana took a step toward him, and Eleanor could feel Morgana gathering her own sorcery.
"Have I taught you nothing? Power is not strength, not when one is inept in wielding it with finesse.
" She lashed out, the ring on her finger sparking as some type of sorcery was channeled through it. "Just a taste, my dear."
Sebastian winced and went down on his hands and knees. His hair lifted, almost as if with static, and when he looked up, the expression on his face was murderous. "I will not let you do this."
"This is a sudden change in demeanor. I thought we had discussed what would happen if you ever went up against me again. What has brought about this change?" And then Morgana's eyes widened. "Ah. Of course. How did I miss that? Oh, Miss Sinclair, well played."
"Leave Miss Sinclair out of this." Sebastian straightened.
"I should have seen that coming." Morgana tsked under her breath.
"I thought it odd that you knocked her over in the garden.
You've always had a weakness for those pathetic, innocent little creatures.
Your poor blind wife... Of course she'd appeal.
I just didn't think you'd already formed an attachment. "
"Leave... her out of this." Sebastian's power crackled around him.
The attack was instant.
Sparks flared into being around his body, forming thin golden lines between them that suddenly tightened, and sank through his clothes, into his flesh.
Sebastian screamed, his fingers curling into whitened claws.
He raged against the invisible net, fine white pressure lines forming all over his skin.
"Stop fighting it!" Eleanor screamed, recognizing the effects of a Bathingway hex. "It intensifies if you fight it!"
A flash of gray eyes, and then Sebastian forced himself to relax. The pain would remain, but at least now he had a chance. Looking up, he flung everything he had at his mother.
Morgana staggered back, a deft flick of her hands deflecting the pure wave of force away from her.
Eleanor's back slammed against the wall, her ears ringing as her head hit the stone.
For a moment, she blinked, and it felt like time had slipped away from her.
Then she found herself on her hands and knees amongst the rubble that was all that remained of the wall, with Henri and Philippe sprawled beside her.
Blood trickled from both men's ears, the force crushing their brains instantly.
The only reason she was still alive was because Morgana's wards stood directly between them.
Eleanor barely had time to grasp what had happened before horror filled her. There was a terrible silence in her head, almost a ringing, as if she'd been standing inside a bell when Sebastian's power had struck it.
Expression. And not just on the base level of the spectrum, but a wash of power so intense that she knew nothing would be able to stand in its way. Not even Drake. The type of power could bring London to its knees, if channeled correctly.
"Sebastian," she gasped, or thought she did. It didn't sound right. Don't. Please don't! Her mouth wasn't working properly, one side of her face felt like it was drooping, and her head was throbbing now. Throbbing like her brains wanted to spill out of her ears. Gods. What was happening to her?
"Aisle stop oo." Sebastian's voice sounded so far away. So distant. So strange. "No matter whar-muss do."
Eleanor tasted blood.
Energy welled into a crescendo. It spiraled around the room, drawn from every living thing within the nearby vicinity. It radiated toward him in ripples that worked in reverse, flooding him with power. No one human should be able to do this. No one man could contain all of that power.
Eleanor realized what he was going to do.
"Stop!" she screamed, or tried to. Somehow her chains were broken, the iron links seared away halfway down and dripping slag onto the floor.
Her left hand wouldn't work. Numbness tingled through it, and she fell onto her face as the left side of her body gave way.
It was like watching her own actions from outside her body.
Sebastian. Drake. Had to... stop this.
And then someone grabbed her by the hair and plunged the Blade into Eleanor's back in a hiss of burning pain that lit all her nerves on fire.
And all she could do was scream.