by Tracy Deonn
I can’t help but snicker into my palm.
He catches it and scowls. “What?”
My smirk grows to a full-blown grin. I lean in close again until he tips his head toward mine, then whisper, “We may have experienced a life-threatening demon attack together and you may have saved my complete and total bacon—again, thank you—but this isn’t over. I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t tell me what to do.”
His shocked expression is wonderfully satisfying. I shove out of my seat and push down the row until I reach the aisle and the exit.
Time for Plan B.
* * *
It takes all of five minutes to look up a list of historic homes near campus on my phone, and there are a lot. But it only takes one minute to pick out the house surrounded by woods: the Lodge of the Order of the Round Table. Not a fraternity. A historic secret society. My mind flies to robes and chants and rituals in catacombs, but before I can keep researching, my father calls.
Oh.
God.
No use in hiding.
“Hi, Dad…”
“I don’t wanna hear it.”
Oh, he’s pissed.
“Why didn’t you call me back last night? What is your word worth right now?”
What is your word worth? Another family saying. “Not much,” I mutter. “I—”… think there’s something we don’t know about Mom’s death. Know for a fact that there’s a secret network of magic users who can wipe memories and—
“You what?” he demands.
I grit my teeth and lean into a lie. “I flaked. I got caught up with some people I met at dinner and just forgot. I’m sorry.”
“What’s going on here, Bree?”
I tell him the parts of the story that would most likely match the dean’s; when I know what happened that night, and I can prove it, I’ll tell him the rest. He’s still angry. “We have an agreement, kiddo. You take care of business, you can stay. If you can’t do that…”
“Then I come home.” I sigh. “I know. I made a bad call. It won’t happen again.”
* * *
During Statistics, I skim through Google results, marking the pages that seem most helpful.
There are five known secret Orders associated with the university, all organized around a central theme—the Gorgons, the Golden Fleece, the Stygians, the Valkyries, and the Round Table. The first three use stories from Greek mythology. The Valkyries, from Norse. The Order of the Round Table is the only society to draw their name from a legend—King Arthur.
I’d shoved that list of words at Nick to get a rise out of him. To get him to crack. But now I tumble the phrases around and slot them into place with what I know of the legend. It’d be easy for someone to dismiss the King Arthur connections as a medieval fantasy about chivalry and honor that the Order founders assigned to themselves to feel bigger, older, greater than they are. But this isn’t fantasy. This is real. So, I have to ask: Is the Order based on the legend? Or is the legend based on the Order? I know “Merlin” is a title, not a person. Nick mentioned Pages. Sel’s a Kingsmage. How much of the story is true?
The website says little about the societies beyond stating that they exist, and almost nothing about the Order of the Round Table—except that it’s not only the oldest society on campus but the oldest known secret society in the country.
I have to hand it to the Legendborn; their cover is perfect. Public frats and sororities advertise their rush, host parties at their homes, and have social media accounts, but collegiate secret societies simply… exist. And not just at schools, but out in the world, too. There’s a Masonic lodge not ten minutes from my parents’ house. The casual outsider would never expect to learn what a secret society gets up to, who its members are, or how they recruit. By unspoken agreement, we all just accept that it’s not public knowledge.
Maybe the Order of the Round Table recruits sorcerers called Merlins and demon hunters called Legendborn?
I look up. Seated all around me are students who have no idea that they’re walking through two worlds every day. One world with classes and football games and student government and exams, and another with Shadowborn and mesmers and aether—and hungry demons from a hell dimension that want nothing more than to devour them. An isel could be flying above my professor’s head at the front of the lecture hall, feeding from her energy, and no one here could see it. No one but me. And them.
After class, I walk through campus and past its northeastern edge to the Battle Park forest reserve, on a mission to find a house I’ve been inside but never seen.
* * *
Growing up Black in the South, it’s pretty common to find yourself in old places that just… weren’t made for you. Maybe it’s a building, a historic district, or a street. Some space that was originally built for white people and white people only, and you just have to hold that knowledge while going about your business.
Sometimes it’s obvious, like when there’s a dedication to the “boys who wore the gray” on a plaque somewhere or a Rebel flag flying high out front. Other times, it’s the date on a marker that tips you off. Junior high school field trip to the State Capitol? Big, gorgeous Greek revival architecture? Built in 1840? Oh yeah, those folks never thought I’d be strolling the halls, walking around thinking about how their ghosts would kick me out if they could.
You gain an awareness. Learn to hear the low buzzing sound of exclusion. A sound that says, We didn’t build this for you. We built it for us. This is ours, not yours.
The Lodge has a black-and-white historic site marker right at the open gates. Original mansion constructed in 1793—the same year as Old East. My dorm is an antebellum building. Not built for people that looked like me, but definitely built by them. And the Lodge…?
I take a deep breath, ignore the buzz, and walk up the long gravel driveway. After one turn, I see it.
The place is a freakin’ medieval castle. A dark sorcerer’s keep, sitting isolated on a wooded hill in the middle of a forest. Four circular stone towers at each corner rise to conical points with fairy tale–style blue-and-white flags at the top.
And, like the trail that led me here, it’s coated in a faint, shimmering layer of silver aether.
I hadn’t realized the wisps I’d been watching filter through the trees were aether and not sunlight until I saw it gather in eddies on the Lodge’s gravel driveway. When I reach the brick steps, I touch the iridescent layer with a tentative hand. As my fingers pass through the shimmer, I feel a push away from the tall double doors. An insistent nudge urging me to move on. Not sinister, exactly, but intimidating. A subtle warning slipped between the folds of one’s brain, just like Selwyn’s message.
Leave.
My hand lingers inside the enchantment. The now-familiar clove and smoke scent rushes toward me. “Different casters use aether to do different things.” Does that mean this is a… signature? If so, the bright smell from my bandages had to be William’s.
Selwyn’s signature is so rich here I can taste it: the whiskey Alice and I stole from my dad’s liquor cabinet last summer. Cinnamon cloves. A campfire banked low in the woods and smoke carried on winter wind.
After several heavy raps of the bronze lion door knocker, I glance down at my clothing one last time. What does one wear to stake out a secret society? I’d settled on comfort over fashion: jeans, a fading Star Wars T-shirt, low boots. My curls are in a cute bun, high and full on my head. Nothing that screams “spy.”
The door opens to reveal a pixielike girl with short dark hair in a flowy dress and leggings. Her large dark eyes rake over me, then dart around the steps and up the drive, like she’s looking for someone else. “Who are you?” she asks, not unkindly.
“I’m Bree Matthews. Nick told me to meet him here.”
9
SEVERAL EMOTIONS CARTWHEEL across the girl’s face: alarm, doubt, and curiously, hope. “Nick told you to meet him here? Tonight?”
“Yeah.” I add an uncertain frown and wave
r to my mouth. “Is that… is that okay? He said it would be—”
A squeak leaps from the pixie girl’s mouth. “Yes! Of course it’s okay. If Nick said it, ohmygosh… yes.” She squirms like a caught mouse, and I feel a little guilt mixed with triumph.
When she opens the door farther to let me in, I notice a blue silk ribbon bracelet wrapped around her wrist. Sewn into the center of the fabric is a small silver engraved coin. “It’s just that you’re a little early,” she exclaims. “No one’s really here yet. I can’t let you into the great room without your sponsor, but we have a salon for guests. You can wait there while I call Nick.”
Sponsor? “Sounds great,” I say, and follow her into the foyer.
I immediately recognize the smell and the Southern Living–meets–ski lodge decor, but that’s where the Lodge’s familiarity ends.
I’ve never seen anything so grand in my life.
The stone walls of the three-story foyer extend up into open rafters. On either side hang paintings in gold-leaf frames and heavy-looking tapestries in dour browns and blacks. There are actual, honest-to-God iron sconces lining the entryway before us, but instead of flames behind their glass coverings, there are vintage Edison bulbs. Twin staircases flank the porcelain-white marble floor and curve up to an open balcony connecting the two wings of the second floor.
Bentonville doesn’t have houses like this. Normal people don’t have houses like this. At least not in my world. My parents had renovated an old split-level from the seventies, and we’d moved there eight years ago. Most of the homes nearby are rural farmhouses passed down from grandfathers and great-grandfathers, or middle-class neighborhoods filled with older houses that look like mine.
As I gape, the girl looks over her shoulder with a dimpled smile. “I’m Sarah, by the way. But most people call me Sar.”
I smile back. “Nice to meet you.”
Sarah opens a door tucked under the left staircase. The salon is circular, just like the stone tower above. Four round tables sit in the center of the room, each with a wooden and marble inlaid chessboard embedded in its center, and a leather couch sits in front of a fireplace by the window. Sarah gives a guarded but polite smile and closes the door, leaving me alone.
I walk the perimeter of the room while I wait, studying the frames on the walls. Directly across from the door are two prominent portraits hung side by side under a pair of brass picture lights. The first is a man with bushy brows staring out with unyielding blue eyes. JONATHAN DAVIS, 1795. The next portrait was painted much more recently. Dr. Martin Davis, 1995. Nick’s ancestor and his father. Of course. The Order must be the organization his dad wanted him to join. Like Nick, Martin in the portrait is tall and broad in the shoulders, but his eyes are a deep blue that’s almost black. Instead of the sun and straw strands that fall into his son’s eyes, he has a shock of thick, dark blond hair cropped close at the temples.
I gnaw on my lip, adjusting the information pile in my head. No, piles won’t do anymore. I need drawers and cabinets now. Organized places to add new details that feel important, like the fact that even though Nick seems to despise Sel and maybe even the Order itself, his family portraits are displayed in a place of obvious honor.
Another image draws my eye. To the left of Jonathan, there’s an old black-and-white illustration on yellowed parchment behind glass: five men in long, aristocratic waistcoats with puffy white sleeves, standing around a table in a drawing room. The bronze plate beneath it includes a short paragraph:
PIONEERS FROM GREAT BRITAIN, THE FOUNDERS OF THE ORDER OF THE ROUND TABLE’S CAROLINA COLONIAL CHAPTER WERE STEPHEN MORGAN, THOMAS JOHNSTON, MALCOLM MACDONALD, CHARLES HENRY, AND JONATHAN DAVIS, C. 1792.
The plaque includes brief bios of the men and their achievements:
Served on the legislature. Lieutenant governor. Tobacco baron. Co-owners of one of the largest plantation complexes in the South.
Buzz, buzz.
The door opens, and I turn around with as pleasant a look as possible. This is where my plan gets wobbly; I have no idea what Nick may have said on the phone, so I brace for Sarah’s response.
From the look on her face, my gamble has paid off. “Nick’s on his way. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Perrier? Wine?”
“No, thank you. Did he say how long he’d be?”
“Maybe ten minutes. He lives off campus, but it’s not far.” She stands on one foot, then the other, as though she feels required to play host but doesn’t know how. In the end, she mutters a quick “Okay” and slips out the door.
Part one of my plan is complete. I drop onto the leather couch and wait for part two.
* * *
Ten minutes later, part two surges into the room, his cheeks bright as blood oranges. Nick slams the door behind him and reaches me in two steps.
“What the hell are you doing here?” His normally kind eyes strike me like blue lightning. The force of him, the sheer momentum of his anger, pushes me back against the pillows.
“Getting your attention.”
He studies me, his chest rising rapidly like he’d run here on foot. “We need to leave. Now, before everyone else arrives. Especially Sel.” He leans down, grabbing my elbow. “Come on.”
I can’t help but stand when he yanks me up, but I don’t make it easy for him. I pull against his grip and he pulls back. “Let me go.” I jerk my arm out of his grasp. Before he tries again, I take a deep step into his space so he’ll retreat. It works, and he takes two stumbling steps back.
I take a sharp breath. Because broken hearts strip vocabularies down to their raw bones, and because I don’t want After-Bree to show up and turn this conversation into a tear-streaked explosion, I’ve scripted an admission using as few words as possible: “My mother died three months ago.”
Nick blinks, confused dismay overtaking fury until his expression lands somewhere in between the two. Most people say something right away, like “I’m sorry to hear that” or “Oh God.” Nick doesn’t. It makes me like him more than I should.
“Bree… that’s…” Nick shudders, and there—that response right there—makes me worry he won’t understand. That he hasn’t lost anyone close, so he won’t get it. I plow ahead anyway.
“It was a car accident. A hit-and-run. At the hospital, they took me and my dad into this… this room with a police officer and a nurse who told us what happened.” Hard now. Panic bubbling. Finish fast. “Or at least that’s what I thought. Yesterday, a memory came back. Just a snippet, but enough that I know that police officer was a Merlin. He mesmered me and my father to forget something from that night. If we know the full story, then maybe…” I break off, swallow again. “I just have to know what happened and why he hid it from us. And I need your help.”
Nick turns away, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
“Nick?”
“I’m thinking. Just—” He shoves both hands through his hair.
“You don’t look surprised.”
A hollow laugh escapes him. “That’s because I’m not.”
I set my jaw. “I need your help.”
He’s silent for so long I think he might turn around and leave. Shove me out the door for real. Call security, like in the movies. Then he closes his eyes, sighs, opens them—and starts talking.
“Merlins are the Order’s sorcerers. Their affinity for aether is so strong they’re essentially supersoldiers. Trained from birth, assigned to posts, and sent on missions to hunt rogue Shadowborn, keep Onceborn populations safe, close Gates…”
My breath catches. A mission. “They never let us see her body. Could—could she have been attacked by a demon?”
Nick doesn’t look convinced. “A Merlin can detect a demon miles away, and even then, most are incorporeal isels. Visible to someone with the Sight, but not strong enough to cause physical harm. Onceborn deaths are extremely rare because they’re exactly what Merlins are trained to prevent. That, and securing the Code. If Onceborns ever knew the truth, there’d be mass fear, chaos—t
wo things Shadowborn thrive on. No, this doesn’t make any sense.” His eyes darken. “Unless…”
A cold hand grips my heart. “Unless what?”
“Unless the mission went bad. The Code threatened. Merlins are authorized to do whatever it takes to keep the war hidden.”
I remember Sel’s cruelty with the boy at the Quarry. The near torture of the isel. His disregard for my wounds last night.
“What if she got in his way somehow? Or—or he failed and wanted to cover his tracks?”
When I look up, Nick’s expression holds disgust. Old pain, resurfaced. And a question.
Maybe the question. The one all the others have led to.
The one that changes everything just by the asking.
“Would a Merlin kill someone?”
He doesn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t—”
“The truth.”
He looks at me then, his voice iron. “I’m not a liar. Not outside the Code.”
“Would they?”
His eyes slide shut. A single nod.
Everything inside me burns. A furnace, roiling, turning. I draw my shoulders back and steel myself. “I know the date. The time. Location. If I tell you what he looks like…”
He spreads his hands. “There are hundreds of Merlins all over the world. Even if I knew every one, they won’t tell me anything. Each Merlin takes the Oath of Service to the High Council of Regents. They’re the ones that assign Merlins to their missions, and no Regent will speak to an outsider.”
“You’re Legendborn. Speak to the Regents on my behalf.”
A heavy sigh leaves him. “Technically, yes, but procedurally? No. I renounced my formal title years ago—very publicly. Upset a lot of people. I’m sorry, Bree, I—”
“I don’t care!” I shout, and close in on him until our faces are inches apart. “Let me make this clear. My mother is dead, and a Merlin might have killed her. At the very least, he hid the facts. I’m not leaving until I get answers. If you can’t help me, tell me who will.”