by Tracy Deonn
He looks at me between his fingers. “Don’t tell me you’re prudish?” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “How did I ever think you were Shadowborn? Now I’m truly embarrassed. Mortified, really. Perhaps I should resign from my post.”
“I’m trying to help you.” I grit my teeth.
“Poorly, I imagine.” He strolls to a chest of drawers, and I get a glimpse of charcoal-and-obsidian feathers—another, larger tattoo that I can’t see in its entirety. Whatever it is, it stretches across his ribs and spans his back and sends heat from my chest to my toes. When he pulls a black T-shirt out, I breathe a slight sigh of relief. Clothes are good, I think. In general. On people. On Sel, especially. But then he shrugs the tee on, and it fits him like a second skin—a marginal improvement at best.
He snatches a towel off a hook on his door and scrubs at his hair as he steps around me to drop into his desk chair. “All right, I am curious, I admit. Tell me what you think you know.”
“Are you going to listen?”
Head bent under his towel, he lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. All the answer I’ll get.
“It might take a while to explain.” His tawny eyes flick to the bed, the only other sitting surface in the room. I sit down begrudgingly and take a deep breath.
“You weren’t the first Merlin I’ve met, and your mesmer wasn’t the first one I’ve resisted.”
That gets his attention. He tosses his towel, shoves his hair back from his face, and fixes me with a stare. “Talk.”
And then I tell him. I tell him about the night at the hospital and the night I met Nick. I tell him about how and why I forced Nick’s hand and got him to name me his Page. I tell him about needing to find the truth, not just about my mother’s death but about my own abilities and how they might be connected to hers. I don’t tell him Patricia’s name, or her ancestors’, but I tell him about the facts of Ruth’s memory. And then I tell him about the memory that drove me to his room—the Wall of Ages with the marble representing Lord Davis’s Kingsmage, and how the silver surface had been scratched.
Like someone had carved one marble out and replaced it with another.
“What if you were wrong about a mole but right about the attacks being organized by someone close to the chapter? What if it was a previous Kingsmage who opened that Gate twenty-five years ago, and the Order punished them by removing them from their post? If this Kingsmage became unstable away from their Oaths, then what would stop them from taking revenge on the Order and anyone else who led to their being caught? Maybe this Merlin-gone-bad went after my mother because she was a witness that night. And then they came here to hurt the Order by opening Gates again and kidnapping the most valuable Scion. After the attempts to take Nick didn’t work, they sent hellfoxes after the current Kingsmage to take you out of the picture. If these attacks are all connected, I can find my mom’s killer and you can prove your hunches were right!”
When I finish, he sits back in his chair and studies me for a long, silent while. He stands up to pace to the end of the room and back. Stops, stares down at me, then paces again.
“Say something.”
“Something.”
I roll my eyes. “You can go down to the Wall. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
He waves a hand. “I know what your lies look like. This isn’t one of them.” He pauses, shakes his head. “Is this what you and Nicholas are truly up to? Looking for the truth about your mother?”
I release a slow breath. “Yes.”
His eyes are unreadable. I brace for a challenge about my and Nick’s plan or a derisive jab at Nick for not claiming his title for the right reasons. Neither comes.
“Say you’re right and this Kingsmage opened a Gate. There’s no way the Regents would let that Merlin run free. They lock up Merlins who succumb to their blood. The second we begin to turn, they put us in a warded prison under guard.” His brows furrow. “And before you ask, I’ve seen the prisons. Escape is impossible.”
“But who would be more interested in vengeance than a formerly incarcerated, more-demon-than-human, unstable Merlin? If not the Kingsmage, could it be the Line of Morgaine?”
He frowns. “Too many things don’t add up. I am the Sergeant-at-Arms of this chapter, trained to take this exact post since I was a child. If someone opened a Gate on campus on purpose twenty-five years ago and hellhounds in that number attacked Onceborns, why has that history never been shared with me? Especially if it was a Morgaine? Why would Lord Davis and the Master Merlins tell me that a Kingsmage had never been removed if it had, in fact, happened right here? And to Davis’s own Kingsmage at that?”
“Maybe it’s a cover-up.”
He considers this, looks for the holes in my logic, then sighs. “Lots of leaps here, but I’d buy that. If that attack was initiated by one of our own, that would explain why all of this was buried and why I was never told about it. And taking me out would be the best way to get to Nicholas.” He scratches his chin. “What I don’t get is the timing. If we go with your Kingsmage theory, why would they go after your mother almost three decades later? She wasn’t the reason this Merlin was stripped of their title, and she wasn’t connected to the chapter in any way. Further, why bother showing up and mesmering you? If they killed your mother, they shouldn’t have needed to meet you at all.”
My shoulders drop. It feels like we have all the pieces to the puzzle, but the picture doesn’t make any sense. Which means we can’t have all the pieces. We’re missing something.
Sel glances at his watch. “We have time,” he murmurs. “If we hurry.”
He speeds to his closet, pulling his boots on in a blur. Before I can say anything, he walks over to the window, unlatches it, and pushes it open to the night air. He leans both hands on the windowsill and looks at me over his shoulder. “Come here.”
I stand and walk over. “Why?”
“Reasons.” He grabs me around the waist in the blink of an eye and tosses me over his shoulder until I’m draped over his back, facing his room. I squirm, but before I can protest further, he wraps an iron forearm around my thighs, pressing them to his chest. Everywhere our skin touches leaves a trail of sparks.
“Please tell me you’re not jumping out of this window right now!”
“I’m not jumping out of this window right now,” he says. Then he promptly climbs up—and jumps.
38
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 ba
se 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.”