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have if it had been opened and the wards displaced. "That piece of velvet should suffice."
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    T HE A RTS of Divination were a gift through his mother's side of the family. She'd been the Cassandra at the time, the strongest seer in a generation. Though Lucien didn't have her abilities to forecast, he could scry over a particular distance and had a certain amount of control over psychometry, the ability to divine an object's history.
    Both the duke and Miss Martin were silent as Lucien prepared himself, sitting on the ground and forcing his breath to ease until he was aware of every single aspect of his body. The Void washed through him, leaving stillness in its wake and his senses focused to pinpoint accuracy.
    Lucien reached out and picked up the athame the duke had provided for him, slicing one of his other fingers. Blood dripped into the bowl, and he plunged the piece of velvet into the stained waters, whispering words of power under his breath. Instantly, his mind connected to the piece of fabric, images flashing at him one after the other—the dagger, hands stroking the fabric, magic twisting around it—then back further to the fine nap and weave, as someone worked unfinished threads to create it... Lucien tried to push all of that away, trying to focus on what had happened in the early hours of dawn.
    Where are you now? he scried.
    There was nothing, only the vibrating image of the house painted onto the back of his eyelids.
    Panting hard, Lucien released the skeins of vision. Divination unraveled, as though it had never occurred. Everything distracted him. The hair on his arms, each individual pore standing to bright revue. The swirl of dust motes through the air, circling around the Prime, as if he'd moved, and the man himself... Harsh grains of freshly shaved stubble, a tiny scar under his lip, and the glints of silver in his irises... Lucien could almost feel the beginning of a scrying lock on the man, images swirling up in his mind.
    A woman laughing, the sound echoing in his ears. A child's voice calling out, ' Mama !' And a somewhat watery version of Rathbourne Manor in Kent, though it seemed as if it had come directly from before the renovations of 1862. Lucien pulled away from it. A grave sprang to mind. The Prime standing guard over it in the snow, staring sadly down at the words on it. A handful of words carved into the granite. In memory. The son I never knew. 1868.
    Wincing, Lucien clapped a hand over his eyes. Miss Martin hurriedly drew the drapes, plunging them into darkness.
    "What did you see?" she demanded.
    Too much. That had never happened to him before. Usually he could read only objects, not people. Reading people was a very rare talent and unpredictable. The effort made him stagger into a nearby chair, his stomach revolting as it threatened to disgorge Miss Martin's overly sugared tea onto the Prime's Turkish carpets.
    "What was it?" Miss Martin knelt by the chair, her fingers clutching his own.
    "Give him air, Ianthe." The Prime squeezed out a rag over the bowl of water he'd been using and stepped forward, leaning the cane against his desk. He reached out and undid Lucien's poor attempt at a cravat, draping the wet rag over the back of his neck. "Keep your head down and focus on the ground. Your vision shall return to normal within a few minutes."
    How did he know that? Lucien obeyed, too wrung out to argue. "I saw... Christ —"
    "Me," the Prime said grimly, "or flashes of my past. I caught the edge of it."
    That made his head jerk up, a fact he regretted instantly. The Prime shoved it back down, his callused palm firm on the back of Lucien's skull.
    "My son was miscarried, so I'm told." The words were quiet with grief. "The grave is his. A final parting gift from my ex-wife when I threatened her with divorce. I saw that much." A hesitation. "Was there anything else?"
    "Rathbourne Manor. My mother's laugh." And a little boy crying out her name. "Me and you."
    The pressure of the Prime's hand