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HE LANDS LIKE a Merlin—light-footed,

cushioning the impact with his knees—but his shoulder digs into my hips, and

my stomach threatens to upend all over his spine. My right collarbone burns with a

deep ache.

“Put me down!”

He calls over his shoulder, “Do you want answers or

not?”

“Of course I want answers!”

“Then we need to hurry.”

“You’re not carrying me like this!” I sputter,

gesturing to my sling. “Just—just tossed over your back like a sack of

potatoes—”

He bends and drops me onto my feet, not helping me at all when

I stumble back and nearly fall, disoriented. Instead he releases a slow, frustrated

stream of air through his nostrils. “How would you like me to carry

you? What would please you, Page Matthews?”

I huff and circle him, evaluating my options and ignoring his

long-suffering stare. “Piggyback.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Like that movie—”

“Shut up.”

“Churlish.”

“Arrogant.”

He swoops in, turning and pulling my uninjured arm

at the same time until I’m draped piggyback like I asked. I cling

instinctively, and he makes a gargled noise, pulling at my forearm where I’ve

crushed it against his Adam’s apple. “I do need to breathe,” he

mutters, before his voice turns sardonic. “I’m not actually a

vampire.”

I loosen my grip slightly and will his hands away from my skin where

the electric sensation is zipping up my arms. He shifts until he has his hands under

my thighs, moving me like I weigh about as much as paper.

“Hold on”—a pause—“and keep your mouth

closed.”

“Why do I need to keep my mouth closed?”

He chuckles, hefts me up a little higher. “Bugs.”

That’s the only warning I get before he starts running.

The last time Sel ran me across campus, I’d been half out of my

own mind with fear from hellfoxes and mage flames. All I remember is a blur. This

time, it feels completely different. This time, it’s exhilarating.

He’s fast, all right. Not as fast as the uchel, but far faster

than any human being.

I wonder if he makes an extra attempt to keep the ride smooth, because

my shoulder barely jostles.

The gravel road, trees, and streetlights all pass in a smear of

colors, and then he turns up a paved road that winds through one of the historic

neighborhoods where the professors live. I see just a glimpse of a two-story brick

manor at the end of a cul-de-sac and a second later we’re in its backyard. Sel

releases my legs, and I slide down, wobbling only slightly this time.

“Whose house is this?” I ask as he strides forward to bend

down at the back door.

“This”—he lifts up a weathered rubber mat, feels

under it for a moment, and produces a spare key—“is where Nicholas and I

grew up.”

I stare up at the house with new eyes. And a slow, dawning horror.

“I can’t go in there.”

He scoffs. “Why?”

“Because it’s trespassing.”

He rolls his eyes. “I was raised here. The

Davises took me in when I was ten.”

“But—” I stammer, trying to put my hesitation into

words. “Why don’t we just wait until Nick and his dad get back from the

airport and ask Lord Davis in person?”

“Because I don’t trust Lord Davis to speak the

truth,” he says simply. Nothing in his tone holds rancor or spite. It’s

a simple statement of fact.

“Why not? Didn’t he raise you?”

“The two are not mutually exclusive. And the reason I

don’t trust him is because that man is Oathed to the hilt, just like I am. He

is sworn to do the Regents’ bidding by an Oath of Service, the same way I am

sworn to the Legendborn. We could ask him what he knows, but if your theories are

true, his Oaths would force him to lie to keep their secrets.”

“But why are we at their house?”

“This is Lord Davis’s house. Nicholas doesn’t

live here any longer. We’re here because his father is the Viceroy of the

Southern chapter, and because I have excellent hearing and old paper smells

different than new. I happen to know that Lord Davis keeps historic chapter records

and archives locked away in his personal study.”

“Why didn’t Nick bring me here before?”

“Nicholas rejected the Order’s history, so he didn’t

know to look. The truth about your mother’s history with the chapter might be

here. Why are you hesitating, Matthews?”

Because Nick and I are supposed to do this together , I think.

Sel watches me, waiting for an answer. “It just doesn’t feel

right.”

Sel sighs and looks up at the sky. “We have an hour at most

before they get back. It’ll go faster if you help me look, but if

morals are getting in the way, you can tell Nicholas I brought you here

against your will and stay out here in the yard.” He gestures behind me.

“There’s an old swing set there. Watch out for splinters.” He

turns back toward the door with the key.

I hate the offhand way he dismisses me, but I do want answers. And if

Lord Davis can’t be trusted…? When would I get another opportunity like

this? Nick will understand, won’t he, if I tell him right away? I shift from

one foot to the other in indecision while Sel opens the door

and disappears inside.

It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s left the door

cracked open behind him.

With a quiet curse, I follow him in.

I trip twice walking up the basement stairs and stumble into

Sel’s back when we get to the main level. As I follow him into the foyer, he

mutters, “I can’t believe I thought you were a creature of the

night,” under his breath. I scowl at his shoulders.

He moves through the house easily, with both the familiarity of long

residence and Merlin night vision on his side. I stare at the dark shape of

Sel’s back as he walks to the interior stairs at a human pace—for my

sake more than anything, I’m sure. “Why can’t we turn on the

lights?”

“Because the neighbors are nosy.”

Light filters in from a window on the second-floor landing, so I can

see a little now, enough to make out the framed pictures of both boys hanging

alongside us in the stairwell. Nick in a PeeWee football uniform, grinning wide. Sel

at a violin recital, looking thin and dour even as a small child. I’m torn

between a deep curiosity and the feeling that I’m violating Nick’s

privacy.

Right as I get to the top of the stairwell, the LED-bright headlights

of a luxury car flare through the large picture window. Sel grabs my hand, yanking

me down as the car approaches. His fingers are five sizzling points that sear into

my bones, and I cry out, yanking my hand away. He blinks down at me in confusion. My

heart thuds against my chest so loud his sensitive ears must hear it. The car

passes. A garage door lifts—but it’s the house next door. We exhale in

unison.

I move to stand, but he presses me back with the flat of his palm on

my uninjured shoulder. “Wait until they go inside.”

Once the garage door descends, he looks down at where I’ve

started rubbing my wrist with my other hand. “I didn’t touch your

wounded arm, or grab you that hard. Why did you scream?”

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “It felt

like an electrical current. Like static, but worse.”

Several questions flash across his face before he decides on one.

“You never answered me that night at the Quarry. Do you

feel something when I look at you?”

I stand up to put distance between us, suddenly hesitant to talk about

this part of my abilities. I haven’t mentioned how his gaze affects me, or any

of the other more sensory parts of what I can do. “Yes.”

He stands. Looks at me like he’s trying to see inside my brain

and assess its contents. “Explain.”

“It’s going to sound weird.”

“Weird is relative.”

Understatement of the year. “When you look at me, it

feels… prickly. When you’re mad, your eyes feel like sparks.”

His eyebrows raise in the middle. A strange sort of tension runs

through his shoulders—like anger, but not quite. He looks like he wants to

press the issue, but instead he turns down the hallway. “We need to

hurry.”

I follow behind him until a familiar smell reaches my nose halfway

down the hall. I stop. To my right is an open door, and suddenly I realize

why the smell is familiar. This room belongs to Nick. The color scheme is

similar to his room at the Lodge—blues and whites on the twin bed in the

corner and in the checkered curtains. There’s a small desk and two large

bookcases.

“We don’t have time for you to snoop around your

boyfriend’s childhood room.” Sel sounds utterly annoyed.

I scowl at him in the darkness, knowing full well he can see it, but

catch up to where he’s standing at the very end of the hall. I join him in

front of a wide wooden door.

“I probably should have thought about doing this before,”

he says with a hint of chagrin. He takes the two finely engraved silver rings off

his left hand and adds them to the empty fingers on his right, so that all four

fingers have rings on them.

“You should have thought about your jewelry?”

He side-eyes me. “No, breaking into Lord Davis’s records.

And, for your information, silver conducts aether best.” He calls a tiny,

bright sphere of aether into his palm, letting it rotate and build until it becomes

a small spinning planet with white clouds swirling across the surface.

His brows knit together. The spinning ball changes

shape, stretching into a very thin, translucent blade. As I watch, it hardens in

layers, growing denser with every passing second, until it forms into a razor-sharp

point, with the base still swirling in a ball in Sel’s hand. He wraps his

fingers around the handle and draws the blade down the seam of the door until the

latch releases. The door unhitches with a quiet click.

Sel says we have about an hour before Nick and his father come home.

I ask him again if we can just wait, ask Nick to help us, and he glares at me before

pointing to the other side of Lord Davis’s office where there are at least

four sets of filing cabinets up against a wall.

“What are we looking for exactly?”

“Records, membership details, witness accounts, anything someone

might have documented about the attacks.”

We divide and conquer, with Sel taking one side of the room and me

taking the other. I go slow with one injured arm, but can use my right fingers to

hold single pages. After ten minutes, Sel speaks up.

“You’re good for him, you know.”

We both know exactly who he’s talking about.

He pulls another drawer open. “He’s always been

self-righteous, but now he has focus. Before you showed up, he defied his father to

prove to himself that he doesn’t care what the man thinks. Now he’s

actually considering the legacy he used to shove aside.”

It’s my turn to scoff. “Nick doesn’t care

what his father thinks. He did that to avoid Arthur.”

He chuckles. “I’m sure that’s what he believes, but

I’ve known him since we were in diapers. He resents his father and hated his

upbringing. After his wife departed, Davis doted on his son in every way possible.

Gave in to his tantrums and fantasies. Allowed our future king to turn his back on

the rest of us.”

“But—”

“Take it from me, Bree.” Sel sighs. “No matter what

a partially abandoned child says, in the end, there is one truth: one

parent left, and the other stayed.”

“His mother didn’t leave him. She was taken.”

“His mother made a choice. She knew the risks.” A pause.

“And she made her choice anyway.”

I pause. My mother is gone, but she’d never have chosen to leave

me, or run the risk of us being parted. That’s my own truth, and one I

hadn’t considered.

I put back the folder in my hand and move on to another. “Well,

if the two of you are so similar, why does he hate you so much? I know how he feels

about Merlins in general, but you were a child when his mother was mesmered. You had

nothing to do with it.”

Sel grabs a thick folder and drops down to the floor with it, speaking

without looking up. “When I was young, my mother was killed by an uchel while

on a mission. After that, my human father fell into a liquor bottle and never came

out.”

I blink, stunned at both the matter-of-fact tone of his story and how

familiar that tone sounds. Sometimes, you say the awful thing quickly and without

taking a breath because lingering is too painful.

If an uchel killed Sel’s mother, then no wonder he’d

threatened to murder me. Frankly, I’m surprised at his restraint.

“The Regents moved me to a school for Merlins in the mountains,

but when I was Oathed to Nicholas, his father took me in. While my own parents were

absent, Davis was kind and generous. Not long after I showed up, Nicholas began to

see his father’s praise and attention as a zero-sum game. And since I was

obedient, I was getting those things.” He shrugs. “Over time, jealousy

became anger, anger became resentment.”

I mull this over for a moment. “For both of you?”

Sel exhales and looks at me, thinking. “Perhaps.”

We sit silently for a moment before he continues, his voice heavy with

memory. “I thought Nicholas was amazing. He was everything I wasn’t:

bright, open, popular. Heroic. He made it all look so easy. Still does. I wanted to

be close to that.” He sighs softly. “Probably why I fell in love with

him.”

Oh.

“I didn’t realize. You—does

he—”

“I was thirteen. I’m well over it.” Sel lets out a

loose, wry chuckle, head still bent over a filing cabinet. “And everyone falls

in love with Nicholas, Bree—it’s part of his insufferable

charm.”

I want to know more, despite the complicated feelings this

conversation is giving me, and Sel answers before I can ask.

“There’s so much baggage between Nicholas and me; there

was never going to be room enough for anything else to grow.” Sel gives the

paperwork in his hands a tight scowl. “When I think about that crush now, I

remember how much of my life I sacrificed to protect a spoiled brat who didn’t

even want his crown—and feel entirely grateful I moved on to more

mature people.”

“Like Tor?” I reply without thinking.

Sel turns to me, raises a brow. “Among others.”

A confusing mixture of jealousy and curiosity and want swirls

in my stomach.

Sel turns back to his work. “Any more personal questions or

shall we get back to looking for a rogue, murderous mage?”

I open my mouth to shoot back another retort when he goes completely

stiff. “What?”

“This is it,” he whispers, pulling a thick green hanging

folder stuffed with paper out of the cabinet. “Stamped confidential with the

Regents’ seal. ‘Documentation and affidavits about a spate of demon

attacks on campus.’ Dated twenty-five years ago. Let’s go.”

The trip back to the Lodge goes just as quickly, but this time

I’m on Sel’s back as he leaps up to the second-floor trellis, then yanks

on a ledge to propel us the rest of the way to his open window.

Once we’re inside, he drops down on the floor and spreads the

folder open, laying out stacks of paper in a row. His casual way of sitting and the

deliberate movements of his hands catch me off guard, but then I remember that even

though Sel is a Kingsmage, he’s still an eighteen-year-old junior in college.

He has to study and do homework and write papers just like the rest of us.

Someone slams a door down the hall, and I hear

voices. It’s almost dawn.

I kneel down across from him. This is it , I think. This is

the moment when I find out what happened to my mother, and why. And who is

responsible. I reach for the top stack of papers with a shaking hand, but

Sel has already found what we need: a slightly yellowed affidavit, three pages long

and handwritten in a formal script.

He looks up at me with a question in his eyes. I nod, and Sel reads

aloud:

“April 9th, 1995

Confidential and Classified

Attn: Honored Lieges and Mage Seneschals of the High Council of

Regents of the Order of the Round Table

I will begin this affidavit without equivocation of any kind. The

Southern Chapter of the Order of the Round Table has failed in its duties. As

requested, this personal report details in linear fashion and from my

perspective the events that transpired starting last week and up to today. I

write this with the understanding that the facts herein will be filed for the

record in the Order archives.

On Friday, March 31, our Merlin alerted the Scions of Gawain and

Bors to a partially materialized sarff uffern. The two Scions successfully

dispatched the serpent, as recorded in our logs, and we assumed we would have

respite from another crossing.

Four days later, unbeknownst to us, a large Gate opened near the

mouth of ogof y ddraig. A dozen partially materialized c?n uffern emerged.

Within minutes, our Merlin alerted us to their presence, and we dispatched all

six Scions, each with a well-trained Squire, and our Merlin. We were certain we

were capable of destroying the creatures; our hubris was our mistake.

Before we arrived, six Unanedig had already

been eviscerated. The Cysgodanedig—the Shadowborn—were coordinated,

and split up into three groups when they detected us, affording them time to

grow fully corporeal. In the course of chasing these three groups, eight more

Unanedig were killed. In all cases, we dispatched the beasts and sent their

bodies to dust, but could not do so with discretion. We worked with the Vassal

network on campus and off to hide the true nature of the deaths and framed the

losses as an accident due to a gas explosion. All families have been paid a

settlement from Order coffers via the University legal department.

There were fifteen surviving Unanedig witnesses. Our Merlin

mesmered them with false memories, and we held them here at the Lodge, but as

you know, mesmered memories must be of equal weight to the originals. The shock

and graphic nature of these attacks prevented the mesmer from taking hold. Too

late, we realized we needed the Regents’ assistance.

With the help of the Regents’ attending Merlins, the

witnesses were successfully mesmered and released. Each witness has a file,

attached here, with further details regarding their management.

As tragic as this account is, I’m afraid that I must add

further unsavory details to complete the record. The Regents members and

Merlins, in their wisdom and due right, proceeded immediately with an

investigation into the incident, its origins, and the chapter’s responses.

Our actions and failings as described here were recorded by the committee.

However, in the course of the subsequent investigation, new information has come

to light and devastated our chapter.

It was discovered that our Merlin and Kingsmage,

Na—”

Sel stops reading abruptly, his face stricken.

“What is it?”

His eyes scan the letter again, darting back and forth as the blood

drains from his face.

“Sel? Selwyn?”

I reach for the paper, and he doesn’t resist when I slip it from

his slack fingers. The mixture of horror and shock contorting his face, marring his

beautiful, precise features, sends a cold blade into my heart.

“Read it.” His usually sonorous voice scrapes the quiet of

the room.

“Maybe—”

“Read it, Bree,” he repeats, a fierce command threaded

through his words.

I do. I read the story of his mother.

“It was discovered that our Merlin and Kingsmage, Natasia

Kane, opened the Gates herself using an arcane ritual and Cysgodanedig blood she

procured specifically because of its strength and ability to open Gates of that

size. Kingsmage Kane gave no reason for her abominable behavior and denied the

investigation’s findings at every turn. In hindsight, perhaps we should

have considered the possibility of Natasia’s involvement the moment the

first Gate was found; it is well documented that the more power Merlins command,

the more they succumb to their unnatural, demonic nature. Natasia is the product

of careful Merlin bloodline curation, and she’s the most powerful

sorceress in a generation. But we were swayed by her gifts and did not expect

her corruption to manifest so early. In the weeks leading up to the attack,

Natasia had been consumed by an obsession with the Cysgodanedig. She’d

been so certain that a goruchel had crossed over that she became paranoid,

unreasonable, even suspicious of our own chapter members.

The usual sentence for treason of this magnitude and intentional exposure resulting in death(s) is

forcible elimination. In truth, even the Regents are not certain that

elimination is possible due to Natasia’s unusually strong affinity for

aether. As such, Natasia has been secured in one of the Regents’ most

heavily warded prisons.

Regent Ross has informed me that the loss of her bloodline would

be a blow to our efforts against the Cysgodanedig, so in the event that her

stability returns under rehabilitation, the Regents will consider offering

temporary probation so that she may bear an heir. Any child she produces will

need to be Oathed early and raised under close supervision.

On a personal note, I would like to state for the record that I

have known Natasia most of my life. I am not sure what it says that I, her

charge, did not sense her intentions. Perhaps she hid them from me to protect me

as best she could. I offer this possibility and perspective in hopes that it

will support her fair treatment while in Order custody.

The Regents requested that I write this report so that it may

serve as a reminder to others of the Line. They have asked me to state for the

record that while the Merlins’ aether abilities hold the keys to our

Order’s mission, their cambion blood affliction requires constant

vigilance.

Merlin Isaac Sorenson has agreed to take on our open Kingsmage

post. The Regents have advised that all records of Natasia Kane be expunged.

They have also agreed, by our request, that the other chapters remain ignorant

of the culprit behind these incidents, lest the report generate strife and

distrust within our Order.

Yours in the Lines,

Martin Davis, Scion of Arthur

Addendum I: 5 years from incident

Natasia Kane has exhibited several years of stability. She will

be released under probation and monitoring.

Addendum II: 12 years from incident

Natasia Kane has exhibited a relapse of blood symptoms. The High

Council of Regents has taken action to remove her from service and return her to

containment. Her young son will be admitted to a residential Merlin academy in

Asheville, North Carolina, and monitored by the Masters on faculty. There is

some hope that, under their close supervision, he can be groomed as the next

Kingsmage for the Line of Arthur, and bonded to my own son, Nicholas.”

I look up to see Sel clenching and unclenching his fists where they

rest on his knees. His breath is a rattling, choking sound, like a man drowning on

land.

Of all the horrible, possible truths, this is one I could have never,

ever imagined.