She leaned her chin on the Duchess's knee, looking up at her with adoring eyes.
While she smiled, Seraphina's Spirit Sight was working in overdrive, analyzing the baby ghost.
The spirit didn't look at her; it remained buried in Lysandra's neck. But the bond tethering it to the Duchess wasn't a natural, warm thread of maternal grief.
It was jagged, sickly, unnatural shade of swamp-green.
'It's a curse,' Seraphina realized, her blood running cold. 'Someone attached this thing to her deliberately. It's a targeted assassination via spiritual parasite.'
She needed a location, as well as a suspect.
"You guys are so cute," Seraphina continued her sweet, innocent interrogation, batting her eyelashes. "Papa Duke said you have babies! He said you have twins who go to the magic school and blow things up!"
