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THREE DAYS AGO

Natasia

THE THREE LIEGES guarding the Matthews home are well-meaning but sloppy.

They have no idea that they’re surrounded. No clue that there are four Mageguard forming a loose circle around the split-level house, and that those Guards must have been deployed to the Matthews residence by none other than the Mage Seneschal Erebus Varelian himself.

After a week of searching, I lost Selwyn’s trail. I rushed to Bentonville to secure Edwin in the event Selwyn sought Briana here at her childhood home. When I arrived, my son was nowhere in sight, but instead, I find myself bearing witness to a stark display of the Order’s factions and competing missions:

Lieges, former Legendborn , seemingly protecting the Crown Scion’s Onceborn father from her demon and human enemies while the very Mageguard sworn to protect that same Crown Scion seek to rob her of her sole surviving parent, either through kidnapping or murder.

There are simply no other explanations for a unit of Mageguard to exist in a quiet suburban neighborhood. No other reason for trained soldiers to move like silent water between the twilight shadows of quiet streets lined by white oak trees and plastic trash bins awaiting their morning pickup. The soundproof ward cast around the property and the deadly intent in the Guards’ gazes only offer further confirmation that their intent here is not to protect, but to attack.

Something must have gone very wrong, very recently for Erebus to have sent his elite soldiers to Briana Matthews’s father’s home. Did she defy the Regents in some way? Does Erebus seek to punish her by threatening her father? Or does he wish to eliminate a tie to her former Onceborn life, further isolating her from her own humanity?

Selwyn craves Briana. If Erebus sent his Guard here, he seeks to control her. There is a critical difference.

But there is no controlling a Matthews girl. If Erebus hasn’t caught on to this truth yet, I will do my part to ensure that he does.

I have been watching the Guards for over an hour now, and they have yet to detect me; they’ll likely wait until the sun finally rests to move in on the Lieges and Edwin. Human neighbors still walk the streets with their dogs, chatting about the school year, the rising gas prices, the weather. In the time the Mageguard and I have spent waiting for their moment, I have been able to heal most of the damage my son dealt me.

I am the last person in the world who should have underestimated Selwyn Kane… and yet I did just that. In the four months Selwyn stayed with me, the most magic I saw him wield was the handfuls of aether he would call into visibility within the boundaries of his palm. I saw him test that aether, prod it, claw it, then release it more times than I can count.

But what I saw him do in my cabin, the way that he fought, his speed, his strength—and the dark joy I saw in his eyes as he attacked—was like nothing I’d ever witnessed, not even in a goruchel.

All of that very visible, very repetitive testing of his power back at the cabin, done in the most nonthreatening manner possible? All those little bursts of magic in my son’s palm? Perhaps they started as genuine experiments, but I see them now for what they became: a strategic ploy to deceive his grieving, guilty mother into believing that he was weaker than he was—and I fell for it.

Use your enemy’s assumptions against them. Lean on their ignorance to customize their downfall. Not a lesson the Merlin academy taught him but a lesson I taught him at the age of five.

There is undeniable poetic justice in my son using my own teachings against me. Enough to make me smile in the dark shadows of my hiding place—and wince immediately at the sharp ache in my face. With one expertly aimed blow toward the end of our fight, Sel dislocated my jaw and broke my first and second premolars. I stifle a grimace, not at the pain from broken teeth—I pulled those out myself on the drive over—but at the itchy, uncomfortable sensation of those two teeth growing back.

I swear… when I see that boy again, we’re going to have some serious words about honesty and deception and rebuilding our estranged relationship. Maybe after I show him what a real ward can do.

The sun is closer to the horizon now. The Mageguard have another twenty minutes until they can use the night as an accomplice. While I wait, I test the other injuries I earned in my battle with Selwyn: My left shoulder is still healing at the joint, but it will hold. The left kneecap he kicked out of place was moved back into position before I ever got into the car, and stopped aching about ten minutes ago. Sel knocked me out with a roundhouse to the face that sent me flying into my kitchen cabinets. I woke up in a pile of broken boards and bloody metal cabinet pulls with a searing headache.

And my car was missing.

That fucking kid . Chagrin and pride bloom together in my chest. At least I won’t have to worry about a goruchel overpowering him in the wild.

What I do have to worry about is what Selwyn is willing to do to get to Bree. Now that I know it was Bree’s root that tipped my son into demonia, I am even more desperate to prevent them from reuniting. A Bloodcrafted Matthews girl in her full power is too dangerous for any cambion to consume once, much less twice.

And I have no idea how he will react if she does not remember him, as she could not with me. Something isn’t fully connected within Bree, some core component loosened and fractured, but what is there is power unheard of.

Faye would be so proud. Terrified for her daughter’s safety, but proud.

If Faye were here, we could have shared in these emotions. Seen ourselves as mothers… and laughed at the impossible absurdity of it all. Pain slices me deep at what we both lost.

I shake my head. I need to focus on the here and now .

After I procured another vehicle, I didn’t bother driving to the Lodge because I know Bree’s with those twins in Asheville—or at least I hope she is. Selwyn, however, has no leads on Bree’s whereabouts. I can only hope he returned to the Lodge first to locate her, as that gives me enough of a head start to remove Edwin from my son’s path.

Four Mageguard and three Lieges were not variables in my calculus. I didn’t expect them.

Then again, they didn’t expect me, either.

I’ve just knocked out the last Mageguard and tucked her behind a dormant hosta when the first of the Lieges finds me.

“Hey!”

I freeze.

“Turn around!” the Liege shouts. “Now!”

I cast the glamour mesmer before I turn around, hoping that the Liege’s Sight isn’t strong enough to see through it before it takes effect.

The tall white woman has short dark hair and bears the sigil of Geraint. She was a Scion, once, and is a hardened warrior who has earned a smattering of silver Liege hair for her time served. I won’t enjoy knocking her out.

“I…” Her eyelids flutter as she takes in what is probably quite confusing. The thin, older woman she saw standing by a low shrub has transformed into a tall, broad-shouldered police officer with bushy eyebrows and blue eyes.

“Evenin’,” I say, and cringe inwardly. My Southern accent is rusty.

She frowns as the mesmer settles in. “What are you… what are you doing here, Officer?”

“Heard some reports of break-ins in the neighborhood.”

She frowns again. Her Sight starts to win out over my hastily cast mesmer—and her apprehension must be enough to call over her bonded. I curse silently. The Warrior’s Oath means that her emotions are transmitting over to her former Squire—and I don’t have the time or energy to cast a mesmer over them, too.

“Ophelia?” a voice calls, and a shorter white woman Liege with shiny bronze hair rounds the corner.

“Yeah, Lyss, this officer here—”

Lyss spots me. “Get back! She’s a Merlin!”

I groan silently but apologize out loud: “Sorry.”

They’re both pulling weapons—stun batons designed to take down a demon—when I strike.

I blur to Ophelia first, tapping her as lightly as I can on the forehead with an open palm.

Her eyes roll back. She crumples. One down.

Lyss is quick for a human. Her baton is lit, and she jabs, but I’m already moving—ducking the crackling end and backhanding it out of her grip.

Her eyes widen—I dart to the side, punching her in the temple with a quick right hook.

She falls in my arms. I set her down easily, rolling her on her side, just in case.

“What the—” Another voice. Damnit.

No point in keeping up the mesmer now. It’s useless against the third and final Liege and draining to keep up, so I drop it, let it melt—that visual alone confuses the man who is sprinting toward me from the other side of the garage. Makes him hesitate.

I meet him halfway with a clothesline to the Adam’s apple—and cradle his head on the way down before it strikes the pavement.

“That could have gone better,” I mutter apologetically to his unconscious form. I check his pin—Liege of Lamorak. Glad I caught him as a Liege and not an active Legendborn; the Line of Lamorak might have given me some run for my money.

I turn him onto his side quickly, then dart back toward the front shrubs to do the same to Ophelia.

It’s only been ten minutes, but I’m breathing a little harder and my shoulder aches.

I take a deep breath and stand up, brushing off my pants, then raise my fist to knock on the front door. Before I can rap more than once, however, the door opens to reveal Edwin Matthews in a tattered blue robe and slippers. He meets my gaze with a stern one of his own. “Did you just knock out those nice people?”

“Uh…” I blink, momentarily stunned, arm still raised in the air. I follow his gaze to Ophelia behind me, Lyss by the hydrangeas, and the Liege of Lamorak by his dormant butterfly bushes. “Well…”

“I like them,” he says pointedly, looking over me as he talks. Without the mesmer, I appear as what I am: a slightly winded, middle-aged white woman he’s never met before with gold eyes and a bit of blood at her temple, wearing a sweater and loose pants. “They do good work down at the shop, then come around to make sure I’m safe… for some reason they won’t explain.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “They’re good people. You better not have done them any permanent damage.”

My mouth closes, then opens again. I drop my hand. I am so stunned and disarmed by his calm, disapproving demeanor that all I can do is answer his questions. “No… no permanent damage. They’ll be fine.”

“Hmph.” Edwin regards the drying blood smeared across my cheek with an unimpressed eye, then the bruise on my jaw from Selwyn’s kick, the blood on my bare knuckles from two of the Mageguard, and the odd way I’m standing—still favoring the left knee. “They do all that to you?”

I shake my head. “No, sir. That was… my son, actually.”

“Your son ?” Edwin’s eyes widen. “What kinda relationship you got with your son?”

I start to tell him, in no uncertain terms, “A bad one, but we’re working on it.” But no words come. Instead, a wave of dizziness sweeps over me, nearly taking me to my knees.

Guess I got hit in the head one too many times today.

Edwin’s arms swoop beneath my armpits before I fall, holding me up. “What the hell, lady?”

“?’M fine,” I mumble. “The black spots are…” I wave a hand in front of my face, slurring slightly. “Goin’… n’away. Been a rough… months. Day.”

“You got a concussion?” he asks, voice alarmed.

“Probably.”

“From your son ?”

“Eh.”

“Goddamnit.” He shifts his weight, positioning his hip so that he can half carry me inside. “Well, come on, you need help—”

“No,” I cry, digging my feet in before he can go farther. I paw at my bloody shirt, at the necklace hidden beneath it. Will my mind to sharpen, to stay awake, to meet this moment. “Wait, don’t call the police—”

“I’m already outta my mind tryna help a random, tore-up white woman on my doorstep, but I sure as hell ain’t callin’ the cops. They’ll say I did all this mess. And now you say you don’t want my help?” he says, pulling against me. But I’ve got my feet planted, and he can’t budge me an inch. “What the—”

I push against his chest gently until I can stand on my own two feet, wobbling a bit in the process. The dizziness is passing. “No, wait. Please.”

He releases me to stand back. I glance at the warm home behind him. The living room with ESPN on on the large TV mounted above the fireplace. The tidy kitchen where, occasionally, Faye and I would meet on one of our too-rare check-ins, when Edwin was out of the house for work and when I wanted to make sure the Order hadn’t sent anyone else to observe her. I glimpse the table where she’d make me tea and ask me how my research was going. I see the photos of elementary-aged Bree with missing teeth. Bree with rainbow-colored ball hair ties in her thick dark hair for picture day at school. Bree with her friend Alice grinning at each other over ice cream at the zoo.

I see Bree’s childhood and Faye’s entire universe in the home behind Edwin… and it breaks my heart to know what I have to do next.

“Well?” Edwin asks, and his heart rate is finally matching the terror his human instincts are creating. Within his concerned brown eyes, his pupils are expanding. His brows are knitted close. Fight or flight, setting in. His body is readying him for something that no Onceborn can ever truly be ready for.

Good.

“This isn’t going to make any sense,” I say, voice heavy with grief and sadness both, “but there’s no time to explain. Your life is in danger, and a long time ago, I made a promise to protect it.”

Fear streaks across his features, rightly so. “My life?”

“And,” I say with a grimace, “my son might be on his way, looking for your daughter.”

His gaze sharpens. “The son who gave his own mother a concussion is looking for my daughter? What for, exactly?”

“Well.” I squint. “He doesn’t want to hurt her, if that helps.”

“It doesn’t.” Edwin crosses his arms. “What the hell does he want with her?”

“That is a very… nuanced question. With a long, complicated, awkward answer.”

I glance over my shoulder. The Mageguard will likely wake at any moment. I fish out the necklace beneath my shirt and yank the chain to break it. He watches as I pull a heavy golden engraved ring off the loose links and hold it between my forefinger and thumb. I raise it between us at eye level so that he can get a good look.

“I thought I lost that ring…,” he murmurs, “ years ago.”

“You didn’t,” I say. “Your wife took it, in secret, and gave it to me.”

“Faye?” he says, voice cracking. “Why would she give you my ring?”

“I’ll tell you everything I can, I swear it,” I say, “but right now I really, really need you to put this on.”