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MARIAH AND ZOE help clear the way for me to run after Nick. They shout at the other guests, not caring how they appear, so that I can rush to the exit. When I burst through the doors, he’s gone—but I don’t care if he’s running. Not anymore.

I push past the guests who have started to flow out of the auditorium and race across the estate and down long hallways, nearly tripping on my dress as I go. The morning sun streaks across the carpeted stairs where we stood the first night at Penumbra, challenging each other in hushed whispers, parried with words and smiles. I round the landing where he’d found me when I was lost and reminded me who I’ve always been. Where he’d been Benedict and I’d been Iris, but we were always Nick and Bree.

I’m down the hall, sprinting, breathless, when I skid around a corner—and run face-first into someone walking in the opposite direction.

“Excuse me,” a deep voice says. A pair of hands lands on my shoulders, steadying me where I might have stumbled.

“Apologies,” I mumble, and step back—expecting the hands at my shoulders to release.

When they do not, I wrench backward only to find that the stranger I have bumped into is staring down at me, mouth slightly ajar. Even behind his satin mask, I can see that his eyes have widened. And he still has not let me go.

“How…?” he murmurs, eyes searching my face. I blink up at him. He is a middle-aged white man with dark blond hair and a beard; sharp, light eyes; and a well-groomed appearance. “How are you here?”

Alarms ringing in my mind, I jerk back until he finally releases me, and yet his hands hover for a moment—as if he might reach for me again.

I slide back another step. “Who are you?”

At a short distance now, the man takes in my pastel blue cardigan, honey-gold floor-length dress, and short boots. My curls twisted up in a bun at the back of my neck, the bit of makeup on my face. “You…,” he whispers, “don’t know who I am?”

My body is screaming at me now, some primordial area of my brain yelling at me to run from this man. That I do know him, or I used to, and what I know of him is enough to send me racing away—or should be. He recognizes me, even with my mask on, and seems to think I should be able to recognize him… but I don’t.

It’s not the mask that’s blocking my ability to identify him; it’s my mind.

I wrap my arms around myself and take another step back. “I need to go.”

He steps toward me, eyes glinting with a dark fascination. “You don’t know who I am.” This time, it’s not a question. It’s a statement, a fact he finds both wondrous and amusing—and powerful.

“Of course I do,” I say, swallowing.

“Then what is my name?” he demands quickly.

I open my mouth, clamp it shut. Swallow hard. My eyelids flutter as the mist returns. I don’t know this man, but my body is shouting at me that he is dangerous.

When I don’t respond, the man’s face curls up in a satisfied grin. “What else do you not know, I wonder?” His head tilts. “What else have you lost?”

My heart thunders in my ears, and this time, I do run. I hear his laughter in the hall behind me, bouncing off the walls and through my mind.

I don’t even remember navigating to the third floor and the Chambord Suite. When I reach the door, it is unlocked. I twist the knob open and slam it shut behind me, pressing my forehead to the wood—half expecting the strange man to be right on my heels.

My thundering heart eventually slows. When it is clear that the man has not followed me, I release a long, slow breath. It takes a few minutes to realize that the shower is going in the en suite behind me, and that that’s the reason Nick has not greeted me.

I flip around and brace my spine against the door. Sunlight stripes the rug at my feet, casting a warm glow over the still-rumpled sheets on the bed where we’d woken together only a few hours ago.

The door to the bathroom is shut, the sound of water muffled.

He’d run straight here and gotten in the shower… to hide? To delay facing me?

It seems so silly after everything he’s just shown me. Everything he’s just exposed about us and himself and Sel… to a roomful of strangers. After all that, how can he hide from me again?

Or is that why he was hiding in the first place?

I need to tell Nick about meeting the man in the hall. About my instinct that he is the “new player” that Bianca mentioned. But that can wait.

Nick and I can’t.

I walk toward the bathroom and pause at the door, finding my courage waiting for me just beneath the surface of my skin.

“Nick?”

Silence.

I shut my eyes. “Nick, please open the door.”

Silence.

“We need to talk,” I say.

“I think I’ve said plenty.” Nick’s voice is muffled behind the door, but it doesn’t sound like he’s actually taking a shower. There’s no interruption in the flowing water hitting the tile floor. No sound of movement. I imagine him standing under the water, hands against the tile, letting the stream take away the lingering sensation of Mikael’s magic. It’s what I’d do.

“Can we talk about it?” I ask.

Silence, aside from the flowing water. Then, he says, “You were right.”

“About what?”

“About this place making it harder to hide.”

“Mikael feeds on it,” I remind him. “The confessions. The secrets. It isn’t… You shouldn’t have had to do that. In front of everyone. All those thieves and murderers and frauds. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

I hear him sigh. “I am a murderer, if you recall.”

“You were defending yourself.”

A long pause. “I could have gone for Zhao’s arm or leg, you know. I didn’t.”

I recall how quickly he’d stopped Zoe with his swords at her neck—and how he’d stopped short. “Zhao was going to kill you, and if he hadn’t, Erebus would have. I know him, remember? The real him. The King is ruthless and you were right to run. He’d have killed Sel without blinking. Killed you, too, if you’d gotten in his way.”

I listen, waiting for a response. Eventually, I hear the shower faucet squeak and turn. I step back from the door and wait while he towels off. I hear the clink of his belt buckle. The shuffling of cloth and material as he gets dressed.

When the door opens, steam flows out of the room in a thick cloud.

It’s only when it clears that I can see that he’s standing in front of me, shirtless. Waiting.

I get a split second to note the width of his shoulders, the curve of his biceps, before my eyes are drawn to the center of his muscled chest.

Then, I see it.

There, right at his breastbone, lies a small black fragment of metal no more than two inches long. Surrounding it is a layer of blue crosshatched magic.

Aether, bright and clear, but not from a weapon. Not from Nick’s palm or glinting off his armor, but from encasing something deeply embedded in the center of his chest.

“Nick,” I breathe. “What is that?”

I look up to find Nick watching me with sad eyes. “You were never supposed to know. At least, that was my plan.”

“That magic, I can’t sense it or smell it—”

“By design. It’s been rendered undetectable, and so has the fragment it’s surrounding.”

“Nick,” I repeat, eyes filling with tears. “Whose magic is that?”

“Ava’s,” Nick whispers. “Her casting. Her construct. Her enchantment.”

The fragment of metal is so dark, it swallows light. “And what is it?”

“I think you know.”

A half sob claws its way up my throat. “Tell me it’s not—”

“A piece of the Shadow King’s crown?” Nick says. “It is.”

“I’ll kill her myself,” I growl, vision red with rage. “Why would she do this to you—”

“Because,” Nick replies quietly, “I asked her to.”

Blood rushes in my ears. The floor tilts beneath my feet. “What?”

“This is the reason I agreed to come here with her. In exchange for”—he gestures at his chest—“this, I’d help her get the crown. That was our bargain.”

“Nick, this is…” I shake my head. “Why?”

“I thought I could hide it.” He inhales slowly. “At least until after it was done.”

“After what was done?”

He gestures toward the window seat. “Let’s sit?”

I follow him numbly to the seat but keep staring at the shard of the King’s crown in his chest like it’s something I could pluck out with my bare hands. It’s so small, the magic a type of cage, the cage a type of ward—

“If you try to take it out by force, it will kill me.”

Nick’s calm voice snaps me out of my daze. I curl my fingers against my thighs, and he smiles softly. “I recognize that look. A classic Bree Matthews fighting face. The look you get when you sense a grave injustice has been done.”

“I don’t have a face like that,” I bite out. “Now talk.”

“It’s not just you who can’t take it out safely. No one but a Morgaine can. It’s…” He gestures at his chest, where the blue-silver light glows against his skin. “It’s how this type of magic works. They infuse their workings with a type of magical lock that even I can’t unmake, or, at least, I’m too scared to try when it’s in my own body. This magic is something that requires one of them to undo.”

“Just like the crown itself.” My fingers still itch to claw it out of him, but his matter-of-fact reminder about the power of Morgaine magic helps me focus when all I want to do is scream.

“Yes. The shard is held in place by a similar enchantment, but I wouldn’t want an unpracticed hand to make an attempt to remove it, because it’s tied to my heart.” He pauses, glancing up at me. “People are complicated. Magic attached to people is even more complicated. Difficult to unravel.”

I grimace. “Nick…”

“I know how it sounds. How it looks.” He sighs. “I thought that when I explained this to you, if I ever did, it would be to you and Sel both. At the same time. So you’d have time to prepare.” He tips his head back against the window. “Although, if Sel were here, he probably would have already tried to remove it by force, so maybe it’s good I only have to deal with one of you being headstrong, impulsive, overly ambitious—”

“Nick. Keep explaining why you did this or I’m going to let the impulses win.”

He sighs again. Looks away. “I told you about my visions. What I can see and do. I have visions because the original Lancelot had visions, but his were more… traditional. He could see his near future. Nothing far, but far enough. Last year, when you blood walked me into his memories, sometimes he would… linger. Show me things.”

“Arthur lingered too,” I whisper, remembering my visits with the king on my ancestral plane. The things he’d say. “I didn’t realize it was happening with you and Lancelot. I didn’t—”

“I know,” Nick says gently. “I didn’t tell you it was happening. When would I have? How? I didn’t understand what I was seeing and hearing. Didn’t know anything about Lancelot. When he came to me, he shared his memories. He showed me that the original Morgaine studied the Shadow King’s crown against her brother and Merlin’s wishes. It was Morgaine who discovered that the crown allowed the King to walk the living world without needing to feed. Not only that, but she realized that when the King wears it, he can choose to share that ability with his Court members. So she enchanted the crown to ensure that, if the King ever returned to power, he would not be able to find it and no other demon could touch it.”

“Insurance,” I say. “To make sure that the Court could not rise again.”

Nick nods solemnly. “Then Lancelot showed me his visions and what he’d seen of Morgaine’s future ambitions. He showed me that Morgaine would eventually desire more than just insurance. She wanted to fight.”

“Morgaine wished to be like her mentor,” I murmur, remembering the girl with dark hair who was so eager to please. The apprentice to the original Merlin, from my own time in Arthur’s memories. A long-dead girl I’d met in a dream that wasn’t my own and whose memory I’d retained.

“Yes,” Nick says. “She also wished to be like her brother, Arthur, and find a way to live on forever through her own descendants and fight by his side. Morgaine was… creative. Experimental. She knew her descendants wouldn’t have the benefit of the Spell of Eternity, nor would they be part Shadowborn like all Merlins. She needed another solution. Her experiments with the King’s crown gave her one. She theorized that she could alter one of the inherent qualities of the crown—its ability to share the bearer’s powers with chosen recipients—to create her own version of the Spell of Eternity. She thought it might be possible to pass on her own acquired magical abilities to her descendants if they bore a shard within their bodies. Morgaine hid this theory from Merlin and her brother, knowing it was risky and that they’d never approve. It was only on her deathbed that she convinced her daughter to try it. Morgaine’s daughter embedded a shard of the crown into her own chest and touched her mother as she died, expecting to receive her mother’s abilities—but Morgaine’s spirit transferred instead. It was not a full possession… but a sharing. Morgaine lived on within her daughter, and that’s how her daughter was able to wield her powers.”

My stomach turns and twists as I think of Arthur, layered beneath my skin. “I’ve shared my body with a spirit; it’s not simple or easy. It feels awful. Like you don’t own yourself.”

Nick’s eyes harden. “Morgaine’s daughter pushed the experiment further. Her daughter discovered that if she touched another human sorceress who bore a shard of the crown, even if they weren’t related by blood, her mother’s spirit and magical abilities transferred again to the new recipient—while a sort of ‘copy’ of her mother’s abilities remained with her. The embedded shard acted like a receiver as well as a conduit, mimicking the way Merlin’s Spell of Eternity uses blood. But unlike the Spell, Morgaine’s spirit was forced from one body to the next, by shard and by contact. Morgaine’s daughter called this process ‘Enthralling.’ Lancelot showed me that Enthralling continued in secret for centuries without the Order ever finding out, with the original Morgaine’s spirit being passed from one shard bearer to another, all of whom called themselves Morgaines.”

I shudder at the image, all of those possessions. All of those shards. “Is that why the Morgaines splintered off?”

He shrugs. “That I don’t know for certain. Lancelot’s visions didn’t go that far. But I do know that the original Morgaine was only trying to help, in her own way, and the Order was likely looking for a reason to remove a sect of mostly women sorceresses from their ranks.”

The knot in my stomach twists. “Did you search for Ava to become one of them?”

“No.” His mouth lifts at an edge as he leans forward from the window to rest his elbows on his knees. “After I found Ava, I caught her off guard when I told her what Lancelot and your blood walking had shown me. I was the first Legendborn member in six hundred years who knew Morgaine’s story and the true source of their power, and who didn’t condemn their namesake for her efforts. But I didn’t join them. Once I realized that Ava didn’t know where you or Sel were, I asked her if their technique could help me do something… else.”

I frown—then cold and horrible clarity comes. “Nick—”

“I have never in my life felt more helpless than when Arthur possessed you. Not when my mother was taken. Not when my father”—he grits his teeth—“sent Liege after Liege to train and break me.”

“Please don’t tell me you did this… for Arthur,” I whisper in horror.

He twists on the bench to grasp both my hands. “When Arthur took over your body in the ogof, I felt like I was dying inside watching him ruin another life.” Nick dips his head to catch my gaze, pleading with me to understand. “And he did it again, at Volition and the Keep. Sel and I got there right before the Morgaines were going to kill you for being him . We couldn’t get you back. We tried everything. Sel and I—” He breaks off, looking away. “We didn’t know if our blood walk would even work.”

I try to imagine what they’d seen. Watching Arthur use my body to fight a battle I hadn’t agreed to. Watching Arthur wield my flesh and bones like a weapon, speak from my mouth… when they both knew how much I hated it.

How much of a violation it is.

Nick’s eyes turn fiery. “Arthur took you away, Bree. Not just from me, or your father, or your friends, but yourself . I saw him in your dreamworld. I recognized the look on his face—the look of a powerful man desperate to remain powerful. Arthur may be lost to you now, but he’s not gone. He wants nothing else but to return to the living—and he didn’t and won’t care when you suffer the consequences. If he possesses you again, he won’t ever let you go.”

“No—”

“If Arthur takes you again,” Nick says, voice like steel, “I will take him from you. For good.”

I pull my hands from his. “That’s why you wouldn’t touch me,” I whisper in horror, rising from the window seat. “Arthur.”

“No—”

“It was him. He was the real reason. The only reason.” I back away, then turn away, embarrassment sending me across the room. “You didn’t know I’d burned my ancestral stream. You thought he could possess me at any second—”

Nick’s hand is at my elbow, tugging me around to face him. “That wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t touch you, Bree. You know that!” He pulls me close, pulls me tight. “And if you don’t, then I’ll remind you for as long as I have breath: I will never be careless when it comes to you. I will never be thoughtless about what you deserve. And I will never let Arthur Pendragon keep us from who we are together.”

My eyes blur all over again, this time from an ache so deep I can’t speak.

“I chose the shard so Arthur couldn’t choose himself. Even if…” As he gazes down at me, his expression turns pained. “Even if that meant I couldn’t touch you again. Or didn’t get a chance to explain before it happened.”

“Explain it now, then,” I whisper. “What will happen if I find a way to restore my ancestral plane, but I can’t stop Arthur from possessing me? What will happen if he takes over and you take his spirit?”

“If that were to happen and I’m killed by a Shadowborn while I have his spirit,” he says with a quiet sigh, “the Legendborn cycle can stop… without killing you.”

“By killing you instead?” This time when I pull away, he lets me go. “No!”

“Cestra might have me murdered any day as it is. This quest was only buying me time. I could fall in battle, anyway. That’s the life of a Scion; even Sel had to prepare for it to happen—”

“That’s all a gamble!” I cry. “What about before then? If you touch me and don’t die? You have no idea what it could do to have two spirits within you at once. The Order forbids Scions from crossing the Lines because they’re assholes, but there could be a good reason for that! You’re no Medium. You don’t know how Merlin’s spell works. Holding both Arthur and Lancelot could kill you. The Abatement could… could accelerate!”

“Those are chances I’m willing to take,” Nick says, closing the distance between us in a single step. “The Order was built on a scale of abuse I can’t even begin to comprehend, the weight of which you bear without your consent. Arthur is a weight you bear without your consent. Being his Scion, hiding the truth everywhere you go. If the Order wanted to punish us for being together, we both know they’d take most of that out on you, not me. And Samuel Davis? What he did to Vera…?” He pauses. Clenches his jaw. “He’s not my ancestor, but my family benefited from his sins.” Nick takes a deep breath in, and exhales a declaration. “I was born to thrive in this machine, Bree. It was built with me in mind. It’s my responsibility to take it apart.”

“But it’s not your responsibility to die,” I whisper through tears. “If you do this, you could die.”

Nick pulls me into his arms. “And if you keep Arthur, you won’t?”

I try to argue, but no argument comes. “I just got you back.…”

He presses a kiss to my temple. “I could say the same.”

“If Sel—”

“If Sel feels me fall now, he can recover quickly. The more his humanity fades, the easier it will be to survive me… being gone.”

I ball my fists against his chest and meet his gaze straight on. Ask the question I must ask. “Do you want to take Arthur from me because you want to die?”

“I don’t want to die, I promise.” He cradles my face. “But I also don’t want you to die. Let me take Arthur from you, so he’ll never be the reason you do.”

“But—”

“I’m not scared, B.” He leans back, mouth curved in a sad smile. “Not anymore. I’m already cursed, after all. Arthur and the Order have taken my mother, my family, my friends—” His breath leaves him in a rush. “My Kingsmage. The only good thing Arthur Pendragon has ever done for me was bring you into my life.”

I sob.

“Let me do this.” His thumb brushes my cheek, wiping a tear away. “Let me end it.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Yes.” He taps his forehead to mine.

“No…,” I whimper. “We’re… we’re you and me, like you said.”

He presses me to his chest, squeezing me tight. “Not for this.”