Page 58

57

I WAKE TO the sun shining through the curtains. Everything, and I mean everything, hurts. I’m so weak that it takes three attempts to turn over on my side in bed. When I do, two sticky notes fall from my forehead.

You collapsed in the ogof, but not

before driving Excalibur back into

the stone. Sel carried you back

through the tunnels.

It was all very dramatic, or so

I’ve heard. I hooked you up to

an IV for fluids, (cont’d)

but I expect you’ll wake up

famished. Alice told me to put

cheesy grits on the stove.

(I like her.) Lots to talk about.

Come down to the great room

when you’re ready.

—W

I smile, grateful that Alice knows me so well. Then the memories flow back and take my breath away until my chest feels like it could collapse.

I bury my face in the pillow and cry. For Vera. For my ancestors. For my family. For my mother. For all of my people. For the thread of death and violence forcibly woven into our blood, and the resistance we had to grow to survive it.

I cry for the deaths I witnessed—and couldn’t stop—for Fitz and Whitty and Russ.

I cry for me.

I’m not Nick. I’m not some chosen one. I am the product of violence, and I am the Scion of Arthur, and I don’t want to be either. I just want to be my mother’s daughter. And my father’s. I just want to be me .

But I know it will never be that simple again. I will never be that simple again.

My lineages are bound together in inextricable, horrible truths, and there’s no untangling them from my destiny, whether I’m ready to face it or not.

Sel bursts through the doors, and I shoot upright. “Where is he?” His hair is sticking up in every direction, his yellow eyes wild, and his clothes are covered with dirt and leaves.

“Where’s who?” I croak. I finally take a hard look at my surroundings and realize I’m in Nick’s empty room.

As Sel blurs from one end of the room to the other, opening the bathroom doors and the closet, a heavy, cold feeling settles in my stomach. “Sel?” When he stops in front of me, he roars in frustration. “Sel—”

His eyes find mine, and they are wide, lost. “They took him. They took Nick.”

I pace the room calling his phone without success for half an hour before Sarah stops me and pushes me to the couch. She disappears into the kitchen mumbling something about caffeine. Panic and tension have set every Legendborn on edge.

“Has anyone else tried calling him?” Tor asks for the fifth time.

“Kidnappers don’t tend to let their hostages call home, Victoria!” Sel bites out. He shifts beside me in the chair, and I feel the heat of aether radiating from his skin.

“How do you know it was Lord Davis and Isaac?” I ask around the catch that has formed in my throat. I’m trying to push fear for Nick out of my immediate consciousness, but the efforts are no good.

“Because,” Sel says, shoving himself to his feet, exasperated to be repeating his story for a third time, “Isaac mesmered me. I was up late in the kitchen after we returned from the cave because I couldn’t sleep. Isaac slipped into the house, I turned around, and he was just there—taking over my vision, eyes locked, full mesmer. Then I woke up thirty minutes ago in the woods two miles from here. He got me out of the picture so he could grab Nick.”

“And Nick’s not in danger?” Tor demands.

“No. I would feel if his life was being threatened.” Sel shakes his head. “Doesn’t mean he’s safe, though.”

“But Nick and Bree were in the same room,” Felicity says in a wavering voice. She looks horrible. Her hands won’t stop shaking. My heart hurts just looking at her, trying to be strong when Russ is… gone. “Why didn’t Isaac take her? Control the Scion of Arthur?”

Sel’s already considered this. “Because an Awakened Scion of Arthur he can’t control with powers he doesn’t understand is too risky. Dangerous, even for a Master.”

“Speaking of powers he doesn’t understand…” William enters the room with more records. “A Medium, you said? And…?”

Sel watches me respond as he paces. “I—yes. A Medium and… a Bloodcrafter. I can generate my own aether.”

William whistles. “Handy. The Medium bit explains why Arthur can possess you the way he did. We sometimes inherit personality traits but… what he—and you—did is nothing I’ve ever heard of—the Pendragon speaking directly through his Scion—”

“You’ve never heard of it before because it’s never happened before.” Sel drags both hands through his hair. “William, this isn’t the time—”

“This is the time, Selwyn!” William shouts. “You yourself said you could feel if Nick is in harm’s way. He’s not. We need to arm ourselves with information. About Bree, about Nick, about how this all happened.”

Greer shakes their head. “If Nick isn’t the Scion of Arthur, then why did they take him?” They’ve been mostly silent on the couch all morning, eyes red-rimmed with tears for Whitty and Russ. Their grief is the voice-stealing kind. The kind that lives in your throat like slivers of glass.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sel sneers. “To keep the Table from gathering! If they hold him hostage while Camlann has come, the Regents will do everything in their power to get the Awakened Scion of Lancelot back. Give Davis whatever he wants. If they don’t, the Table will never be at its full strength and it will fall to the Shadowborn. And to the Line of Morgaine—who are now in league with demons, if what the goruchel said is true.”

“That’s exactly why we need to understand the Scion we do have!” William says, sitting down on the couch. “Bree is something new. Something powerful. We need to understand the situation she’s in, and by extension, the situation we’re in.” He turns to me. “Now, Bree, my theory is that Arthur will inhabit you in ways we’ve never seen. Not just his abilities, but his spirit, his emotions, memories, possibly.”

William’s grief has sent him diving into work. He’s eager to dig into all that Arthur’s possession entails, but I have no desire to revisit it. Not when I can still feel him in the back of mind. I hold William’s gaze for a long moment, then look away.

Tor excuses herself just as Sarah walks in with a carafe of coffee and a tray of mugs.

While we’ve been talking, Greer has been spreading stacks of William’s yellowed documents and heavy, leather-bound records across the coffee table. “I still don’t get it. How is Nick Lancelot’s Scion and Bree Arthur’s?”

William rests his hand on my knee. “Bree, this is where we need you to fill in the gaps. Last night when Sel carried you upstairs, you were mumbling about Vera and a baby.” He shakes his head. “Who is Vera?”

All eyes turn to me, just as I knew they would.

“My ancestor,” I say quietly. “She was enslaved on a Scion of Arthur’s plantation.”

Greer and Sarah shift uncomfortably on the couch. Sel sucks in a breath between his teeth.

I tell them what I saw, remembering it all myself as the words spill forth. I tell them about everything except the woman at the hospital. When I stop, Sel looks at me closely. He knows I’m holding something back. I shake my head imperceptibly. Later. He narrows his eyes, but nods.

“Say the names again,” William says, riffling through a large, musty-smelling brown book. “The men’s names.”

I take a shuddering breath. “Davis. And Reynolds.”

William stops on a page, trails his finger down, until, “And there it is.”

“There what is?” Sarah says. We all lean in over the table.

William points to a yellow page with columns of names, dates, and locations. “This is Nick’s family. The Davis line. In the early 1800s Samuel Davis was the Scion of Arthur. Samuel”—William grimaces—“was a slave owner. He owned a plantation maybe twenty-five miles from town.”

The room falls silent around me.

“Davis knew if Vera had his child, that child would be a Scion,” Sel says. “If there was even a sliver of a chance she was carrying his child, he’d hunt her down.”

“But because she survived, she gave birth to a Scion,” William says thoughtfully. He turns to me. “Which means that you and your whole family are a splinter in the Line. The blood of Arthur has been running in your veins for generations.”

“And what about Davis’s wife?” I ask faintly. “The blond woman in my vision? She was sleeping with Reynolds.”

“Her name was Lorraine.” William flips to another page in the same book and blows out a breath. He taps a row of notes and names. “Reynolds is the surname of the Line of Lancelot. And Paul Michael Reynolds lived near here around the same time.”

“Like Guinevere,” Sarah whispers, eyes growing wide. “It’s just like the legend. Lancelot is Arthur’s most trusted knight, until he sleeps with his king’s wife. Lorraine sleeps with Reynolds and passes the baby off as Davis’s. Maybe he was even in on it, since he never found Vera or her child.”

William nods, staring down at the book on his table. “Samuel Martin Davis, Jr., born the same year. Their only child on record, and Nick’s ancestor eight generations back. Reynolds, on the other hand, isn’t recorded as having any children until later. He had three sons and a daughter. The Order has all of their records here.”

Sel stands up, pacing the room. “Which means Lord Davis and Nick are not Davises at all, from a bloodline perspective. They’re Reynoldses. And the Reynolds at the Northern Chapter right now is from the Line of Lancelot, but he’s not the eligible Scion.”

“Nick is,” I whisper, and all eyes turn to me. “His face last night… I’ve never seen him look so broken.”

When I look up, I catch William’s worried expression. The glance of concern he shares with Sel.

I’m worried too. I think about my connection to Nick. Our trust and affection. Now I wonder how much of that was me and Nick and how much was Arthur and Lancelot. Call and response. A king to his first knight, tied together by the deep bonds of loyalty and betrayal both.

“What will we tell the Regents?” Sarah asks.

Tor strides back into the room. “Not sure, but I just called their emissary. They’re on their way.”

“You did what?” Sel roars incredulously.

“I had to!” Tor yells. “I’m in charge now, Merlin, and I say we have two dead Squires, a dead Scion, a goruchel who murdered a Squire and infiltrated us— for months! You heard that thing, there are others embedded in the Order. What do you think will happen if we try to hide all of that?”

“That was not your call to make,” Sel says between his teeth. “And you are not in charge. Bree is—”

“Bree is what?” Tor demands. “Our king? By accident? This is a mistake!”

“Accident?” I growl. “Mistake?!”

Alice is on her feet already, fists clenched. “Is that what you’re calling chattel slavery? Three hundred years of accidents ?”

Tor’s face turns red. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do!” I spit. A flash behind my eyes of Vera’s face as she spilled her own blood into the earth. My fingers curl, nails cutting deep into my palm. William’s eyes—and Sel’s—stare down to my fist and the strength that lives there now. “What that man did was not an accident. He knew exactly what he was doing. He liked owning her life. Her body. And he wasn’t the only one. She wasn’t the only one.” Suddenly, I want nothing more than to launch myself at Tor. Would the Legendborn stop me? I wonder. Could Sel even stop me?

Tor catches sight of my growing anger and takes a step back, but she won’t shut up. “People gave their lives for the cause last night, and you what? Just showed up at the last minute?”

I take a step forward, and Sel’s arm shoots across my chest. “Tor!” he booms. “Bree is your king!”

“Not my king.” Tor shakes her head, staring at me accusingly. “Not when she doesn’t even want to be.”

“I—” The memory of Whitty’s and Fitz’s and Russ’s bodies rises up before me, blood spraying into pools so red it was black. “I…”

Alice steps in front of me, arms crossed. “Scion of Tristan, right? Bree doesn’t have a choice in any of this, as far as I can tell.” She looks Tor up and down. “And neither do you, third-ranked.”

Tor lunges so quickly that only Sarah can catch her around the waist. And only Sel is fast enough to move in front of Alice.

Alice doesn’t even flinch. She’s catching on fast, all right. She’d been up early learning all she could from William.

But William’s had enough. “Everyone, calm down!” he yells. “Tor, back off!”

Tor’s heaving in her girlfriend’s arms. She pulls away, glares at me and Alice both, and speeds out of the room in a gust of wind.

In the ensuing silence, William orders, “Take a breath, all of you! Before I sedate you myself!”

I do, but it doesn’t keep the world from tilting. I wonder if I’ll ever see it tilt back in the right direction or if I need to learn a new way to move through it. A way without Nick. A way where I’m in charge of all of… this.

Does a king imagine strangling her own knight?

The events in the ogof showed me answers, even if those answers are hard and ugly. Those same events only gave Nick questions. And we didn’t get a chance to talk about them and what they’d mean for us, for the Table, for everything we both have known.

Soon, Sarah’s, William’s, and Sel’s predictions and plans swirl around me, peppered with occasional references to my new title and rank. Alice holds her own, interjecting with logical questions and demanding answers on my behalf.

Sel is adamant that we stand our ground against the Regents and start the search for Nick ourselves, but even he doesn’t sound so sure of our success without outside assistance; the Order’s network can cover more ground than we can, and they’re better equipped for a manhunt. Sarah wants to wait for the Regents’ instructions, but Sel says they’ll waste time debriefing all of us about what happened here, me especially. I will have to share Vera’s story again. The Mage Seneschals will want to know about my other abilities, maybe even run tests on me. Sel won’t allow it. He thinks I need to select a Squire as soon as possible, before I take the throne. William argues I need to recover before taking the Warrior’s Oath. In the meantime, the Regents will need to confirm Arthur’s presence before they transfer power to me and alert the whole Order that Camlann has come. He says that, as king, the Regents will expect me to promote calm among Order members instead of panic. Then I can gather the Table and designate members of the search committee myself. The discussion goes on and on… and right now I don’t want any part of it.

“What if the Line of Morgaine and the Shadowborn working with them get to Nick first?” My own voice floats up and around me like mist over a pond. I didn’t realize I’d possessed the question until it had made itself known. For a fleeting moment, it makes me a little worried that the question didn’t come from me at all. “What will they do to him?”

Silence. Anxious glances.

No one knows what to make of the Morgaine-Shadowborn alliance that we now know exists.

I squeeze Alice’s hand and stand. “I need some air.”

She lets me go, and no one else stops me, because I am their king.

I know without looking that it’s Sel who eases the door to the balcony open and then closes it behind him. Even before I felt the prickle of his gaze on my back, I knew he’d be the one to come to me. Aside from Alice, he’s the only one who looks at me like I’m still just Bree.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is quiet, cautious.

I nod and grip the wooden railing until it creaks in protest under my fingers. Arthur’s strength is terrifying .

“Are you going to ask what I’m apologizing for?”

“No.”

The evergreens stand like the last hope of life in the crowded wood, pines like needles and blades against the sky. I envy their readiness. Soon, the Regents will arrive with questions that I can’t answer and some that I don’t want to.

His approach is silent, as always, and then he’s beside me, leaning forearms on the railing. “I don’t know how much time we have, but the Regents and their Mage Seneschals will be here soon. We need their resources and intel to find Nick.”

“I know.”

“We will find him, Bree. I swear it.” Sel turns toward me, pulling my attention from the trees to his golden eyes. My gaze travels across his dark hawkish brows, the aquiline curve of his nose, and the inky-black hair that curls like feathers over his ears.

I nod. “We will.” My chest clenches. “What they did to his mother, his father’s abuse… all of it was for a lie, Sel.”

He regards me with solemn eyes. His sacrifices were based on a lie too.

“Your mother…”

He sharpens, tenses. “What about my mother?”

I tell him then—my small lie of omission from inside the Lodge. I tell him that I’d seen his mother in my memory walk, that she and my mother had been friends, and that she’d been there that night at the hospital—in mourning. That she’d posed as the Merlin assigned to my mother’s case, if that Merlin had even existed. That his mother watched over my family for who knows how many years to ensure that we were safe from the Order. Our mothers were friends. Allies. Like Nick, our bloodlines are connected in ways we’d never imagined.

When I finish speaking, his mouth has fallen open in silent shock.

“Sel?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just—” He shakes his head, recovers. “Even if she escaped their prison, overpowered and mesmered her Merlin guards as Isaac did to me… how could she have survived? At her age and power level? Away from the Order, she’d have succumbed to her blood years ago.”

“But at the hospital,” I begin carefully, “your mother was lucid, focused. Mourning, but in complete control of her abilities.”

His eyelids flutter. “That’s… impossible.”

“It is,” I whisper, “if what the Order told you is true.”

His dark eyebrows wing upward in shock. “Bree…”

“What if Merlins don’t have to succumb to their blood? Just—just what if ?”

He blows out a long, slow sigh. “That would change everything we’re taught about how our powers progress, how our blood works, why we’re Oathed in the first place, why they lock us away…” His eyes narrow in warning. “If that were true, this would be dangerous knowledge to possess. Or share. Even for you.”

“I figured.” I nod, picking at the wood beneath my fingers. “It’s why I waited until we were alone.”

We stand in silence for a long moment, considering how much our worlds have already changed, and how much change is still to come.

I feel Sel’s attention on my cheeks—and wonder when the sparks in his eyes had become a comforting heat.

“What?” I murmur, looking up at him.

“You are my king now, cariad.” His low voice carries all the intimacy of a caress, and his eyes are a melted gold. I turn away, overwhelmed at the meaning in both.

I don’t ask him what “cariad” means, because, in my heart, I’m scared of his answer. Scared to be torn in two once more when my reality has been a slow shatter all morning.

Sel touches my chin, guides my face back to his. “Camlann has come. We are at war. Against the Shadowborn and the Morgaines both. Against enemies that can hide in plain sight.” A pause while he searches my features. “You need—”

“You are Oathed to Nick ,” I cut him off, my voice thin.

Sel studies me, sees my twisting heart. Releases me with a quiet sigh. Unspoken words hang heavy between us, but he lets them go until they dissipate in the air to wait for another day.

I know he’s right. I need a Kingsmage. I am the most important player on the board now. My life is tied to the Lines, and now that I’m Awakened, the Shadowborn will come for me. But…

‘We will face the shadows. We always have.’ Arthur’s baritone is resonant inside my chest. A bell rung too close. Sel lifts an eyebrow but says nothing at the mage flame that leaks from my skin.

Vera hums from within. Even now, I can feel the strength she holds. Enough to hold Arthur, and his Call, back with ease—until I agreed to hear it. ‘ There is a cost to being a legend, daughter. But fear not, you will not bear it alone.’

If I concentrate, I can almost feel three heartbeats behind my ribs. Different rhythms. Different origins. All me.

I shudder. “Can we get out of here?”

His mouth quirks into a smile.