Legendborn

by Tracy Deonn

  Fear wraps its hand around my heart.

  I came to the Order to find answers about my mother’s death, and I found them. Finding a way to leave the Order afterward was always the next step. That was our deal. But Nick’s offer would take me on a new path: accepting the Order’s mission as my own. Living with the risk of Abatement.

  Sel steps close to my side; I feel the tension in his shoulders. “You must respond,” he whispers, the harsh sound in my ear jarring me back to life.

  “I…”

  I meet Nick’s eyes across the room and across hundreds of people, centuries of history, secrets and truths—and I feel the familiar tug between us. If you can be brave, I can be brave. If I can, you can. Call and response. In a way, Nick and I are already bonded. We have been since that very first night. In that second I am in two places at once: here with Nick and back in the hidden memory from my mother. I see the same qualities in his eyes that I saw in hers: faith, hope, pride. Camlann is coming and, like my mother, I have a choice: fight or flight.

  Take risks. Follow your heart. And move forward.

  I am my mother’s daughter.

  “Yes,” I call, loudly and clearly. “I do. I accept Scion Davis’s offer.”

  As soon as the words leave my mouth, the crowd explodes again.

  The ballroom becomes a storm of exclamations, gasps, and outraged shouting. Lord Davis calls for order, even tapping the mic. It’s no use. No one is listening. An attendant moves Nick offstage. He’s protesting, they’re pushing.

  “You stole this from my son!”

  I flinch. The woman next to me sneers, disgust turning her face into a hideous mask. It’s Vaughn’s mother, Rose member Schaefer, who had been kind to me before. Tonight, the slurs in her eyes rain on me like daggers.

  “This is his future, you… you nappy-headed little—” Someone pushes her back, but another man with a graying beard takes her place, his teeth bared.

  A pair of strong arms—Sel’s—wraps around my middle, pulling me backward through hands that grab at me. Hands that try to pull me close so that they can inspect me, judge for themselves. I twist in his arms to find Nick, but he’s gone.

  Insults fly as I pass.

  “Gold digger!”

  “Onceborn cheat.”

  “Charity case!”

  “Come on! Her blood is dirty. She’ll taint the Line!”

  That sets me off. I swing around for the culprit. “Who said tha—”

  Sel twists me out of a Vassal’s grip. He manages to get me off the dance floor without being harmed, but it takes Whitty, Greer, Sarah, and Evan forming a wall behind us to hold off the grown men and women ready to come after me with pitchforks. Behind the crowd, the stage is empty. Sel hauls me to his side, halfway lifting me off the ground, and bolts to the locked doors on the far side of the room. Two Lieges move out of his way—just in time—before he kicks the doors open and sprints down the long hallway, shifting me onto his back as he runs.

  “Fucking assholes!” His curses reach my ears over the rush of air.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Away!” We’re heading toward the exit. “From the aforementioned assholes!”

  “Fuck them!” I bat at his arms. “I need to see Nick!”

  Sel growls low in his throat and curses again, but changes course. He runs us down a short, empty hall, and suddenly we’re in a dark room that smells like leather and books, striped with amber light streaming in from the balcony windows. He deposits me on the floor, and pain shoots up an ankle when I land awkwardly on one heel, but I barely notice it. Adrenaline roars through my veins along with giddiness, pride.

  In the light of the hallway, Sel peers out to see if we’ve been followed. He shoves a hand through his hair and turns back to me with electricity in his eyes. A surge of fierce triumph, a current of conflict. “Stay here. I’ll get him.” And then he’s gone in a whoosh of black.

  I press both palms to my flushed cheeks and whirl around in a circle. Even though I’m still shaken from the mob, endorphin-fueled joy bubbles up in my chest, escaping from my mouth in breathless laughter. I can’t find the light switch, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to see. I need to feel. Fresh panic is still bouncing around my chest and against my ribs, but there’s anticipation, too.

  A click behind me, then Sel and Nick appear together in the doorway, their hair equally tousled from Sel’s run.

  For a moment, the three of us stare at one another in wordless comprehension. I look between the two of them—a fallen angel and a king, the dark and the light, and feel a deep, churning thrill at what I’ve done. What we’ve done. This is how it will be now. Oaths between us. Bound to each other. Forever.

  Nick moves first. He reaches me in two steps and lifts me in his arms, laughing into my hair. He spins me until my shoes fall from my feet. On one rotation, I glance over his shoulder to see the door swinging shut, and Sel gone, but when Nick puts me down, all we can do is hold each other’s gaze and grin. Then, he covers my mouth with his, and this kiss… this kiss is nothing like our first one.

  I can feel it in the hard heat of his lips and in the tight, firm way he holds my waist like a man drowning. He walks me backward until my spine hits the door, then his hands slide down to my thighs and I’m airborne, held up by the strength of his arms and press of his hips. I dig my fingers into his hair, and he sighs before his kiss presses my lips apart and overtakes all my senses. When he pulls away to drop his forehead to the flowers on my chest, he takes a long, soul-deep breath, inhaling me and us together.

  When he looks up, his sapphire-black eyes and kiss-swollen lips pull me in so wholly I feel like I’m falling into all that he is and all we’ll become. He sinks his teeth deep into his bottom lip and shakes his head in wonder. “You and me, B,” he murmurs. He trails light kisses along my jaw between his words. “We can make things better. Make it good. Together.” I tip my head against the door and think of forever.

  A sharp rap behind me jars us both. “Scion Davis?”

  Nick’s head jerks up. “One moment!”

  I stifle a giggle, and he pecks me on the mouth before sliding me to the floor.

  When he opens the door, it’s the attendant who instructed us to take our seats for dinner. The man flushes red. I can only imagine what we look like. Nick’s arm is draped low around my waist; my hair must be massive, wild. “Can I help you?” Nick says with a barely suppressed smile. He pinches my hip, and I yelp.

  “Your father needs you, sir.” The attendant steps back, his eyes everywhere but us. “Immediately.”

  Nick leans in close. “Five minutes. Then it’s you and me. I’ll have Sel Oath us as soon as Arthur Calls,” he murmurs against my skin. The words set my heart racing all over again. With the Warrior’s Oath, I’ll be Legendborn. More than that, we’ll belong to each other. That feeling between us that has always been there? Now it will be official.

  He passes a thumb over my cheek again, and I know he’s thinking the same thing. Then, he kisses my mouth and leaves with the attendant.

  I’ve just found the light switch and started looking for my shoes when there’s another knock. “Back already?” I rush across the carpet on bare feet and open the door. “That was—”

  Isaac pushes into the room, glowing red eyes bearing down on me in a grip that I can’t shake. They burn and expand, taking me over until all I see are his black irises, the rings of crimson. I try to scream, but my nose is already filled with the smell of hot bile, my mouth burning. It’s too late. Blackness takes me.

  47

  WHEN I COME to, the mesmer headache in my skull blooms bright and full. It takes everything I have to simply pull my head upright and open my eyes.

  A slow voice finds me in the dim light. “She awakens.”

  It takes a few blinks for my eyes to focus. I’m in a lamplit office. No, a study—Lord Davis’s study, where Sel and I were just last weekend.

  Nick’s father sits at the desk across from me,
his fingertips templed on its inlaid leather writing surface. Lightning flashes outside the window to my right, illuminating the angles of his cheekbones and deep-set eyes. For a moment, he looks like Nick.

  “Where is Nick?” I move as if to stand but only get an inch off the chair I’m sitting in. I look down to see rope wrapped around my wrists, tying me to the armrests. Even my ankles are tied to the chair, somewhere underneath the layers of my dress. Dread chills me from the inside out. “Let me go!”

  “My apologies about the restraints.” His Southern charm and its gentle tones of hospitality and care feel twisted now. Calculated. He inclines his head toward the rope around my arms. “I had a feeling you’d decline my invitation to chat.”

  “Abduction is not an invitation,” I say through gritted teeth. “Where is Nick?”

  He ignores me and stands up to circle around the desk, tugging at his tie as he walks. “How much do you know about our heritage, Briana?”

  Our heritage. Not mine. The Order’s heritage and history. His and Nick’s.

  “Thirteen knights. Merlin. The Round Table…” I turn my gaze inward and search for my Bloodcraft, for the part of me that might be able to burn these ropes, but nothing responds. I’ve shoved my grandmother away so far I can’t reach her. My insides feel like they’re full of numbing cotton. Why can’t I—

  “Don’t bother tryin’ to get free,” Davis says without turning. “Isaac’s mesmer is quite draining, even for you.”

  He looks at me over his shoulder. “Oh yes. We know about your inherent resistance to mesmer. Isaac saw Selwyn’s mark inside your skull earlier tonight. Remnants of a memory replacement that, it appears, never took. Further reason to take you in.”

  I don’t bother denying it. If that’s all he thinks I can do, the better for me.

  He crosses the room to pull down a wall map of Western Europe. “There were one hundred and fifty knights of the Round Table at first. The table bein’ metaphorical at this point, of course.” He taps the map with his knuckle. “And these knights were known all throughout Europe.”

  “Wonderful for them,” I snap.

  Davis hums and turns away from the map. He props himself on the edge of his desk. “Legends of individual knights’ feats and chivalry stretch even beyond that, even as far as Africa.”

  The casual tone in his voice does nothing to hide where he’s going. What he might say. Fear grips my body.

  His voice is easy, light. A gentleman making an innocent inquiry. “Have you heard of the knight called Moriaen?”

  He waits, smile patient and smug, for my response. The moment stretches out between us, endless and strained, until I reply, my voice thin as air. “No.”

  “Ah,” he says, staring down at a silver ring on his left hand that he twists idly back and forth. “That’s understandable. Legend tells us that the knight Aglovale, son of King Pellinore and brother to four other knights of the Table including our own Lamorak, once traveled to what were then known as Moorish lands. There he fell in love with a Moorish princess and got her with child. By all accounts, their son, Moriaen, grew up to be a formidable fighter—tall, strong, skilled in battle. Moriaen wore a shield and armor and, as grandson to Pellinore and nephew to so many valorous knights, it must have seemed a sure thing that he, too, would join the Table.”

  The hot blanket of sudden humiliation suffocates me, makes it impossible to breathe.

  Davis looks at me, false concern settling across his brow. “But Moriaen did not join the Table. Do you know why, Briana?”

  I swallow around the thick, burning rage in my throat. “No.”

  “Because he was not worthy.” He clasps his hands in his lap, eyes unreadable. “Just as you are not worthy. Not for Camlann, and not for my son.”

  My voice rings oddly, like someone else is speaking from a room far away. “Nick has already decided that I am.”

  “Nick doesn’t see the grand vision of his ascension. What the return of the king means, and what it can restore. The opportunity of Camlann that I never had.”

  I glare at him, fresh rage lacing my voice. “You think war is an opportunity?”

  He looks surprised, as if I’ve mistaken red for blue. “All wars are opportunities. And I won’t let another one pass me by.”

  “Pass you…” I trail off. My heart pounds as details return. “You wanted Camlann when you were a Scion. You wanted Arthur to Call you.”

  “Of course I did.” Lord Davis tilts his head. “You wouldn’t understand the frustration of a Scion who has never been Called, but for a Scion of Arthur? To be that close to that much power and be forced to wait for it to come to you? The impotence was intolerable. But that’s not why I am accelerating Camlann. That, I’m doing for my son’s future and the future health of the Order.” He waves his hand at the paintings on his walls, the old books. “In the old days, Vassals served us in exchange for protection. Now, CEOs and politicians expect Lieges to follow their whims, give them what they want. Vassal infighting pits Lines against Lines. Once, ladies were respected and honored at court, but then the Order of the Rose fell to the wayside and now women sit at the Table, when Malory tells us that ‘the very purpose of a knight is to fight on behalf of a lady’! And now my son’s foolishness in choosing you, who sits at the crux of two faults. Can you not see the sickness here? How the corruption must be rooted out and corrected?”

  Two faults. My race and my gender.

  But they are not faults. They are strength.

  And I am more than this man can comprehend.

  Lord Davis watches me, waiting for an answer with open curiosity on his face. The disconnect in his eyes, the cold way he talks about war and power… Suddenly, I remember the records, the affidavit, his signature at the bottom—and sickening horror floods me.

  “It was you. You opened the Gates twenty-five years ago. You laid out the welcome mat for the Shadowborn, invited them right into our world.”

  I expect him to deny it. Call me a liar. But he doesn’t. Instead, he wags a finger. “Isaac told me he could smell both you and Selwyn here in my study. I imagine you availed yourself of my archives while he pursued his very inconvenient ‘mole’ theory?”

  “You aren’t even denying it,” I breathe. “You got people killed! My m—” I start, then stop. He has no idea about who I really am. That my mother suffered because of his greed. I don’t want to raise her name here. Don’t want to give him any more power over me.

  He hums, sliding off the desk. “I admit, it was a failed experiment. I’d hoped to create the threat of Camlann through the sheer numbers of Shadowborn crossin’ and the loss of Onceborn life, as you might infer from the tenets of our mission. ‘Protect the Onceborns from the scourge.’ It took a few more years of research before I realized that the more the Scions themselves were threatened, the more the Calling would occur.”

  “Sel was right. There was someone on the inside opening the Gates on campus. You.” Memories piece themselves together faster now. “The night of the First Oath, you asked him if his abilities were failing him—that was just to make him question himself. And your threat to remove him as Nick’s Kingsmage, that was just to get him out of the way.”

  “I can’t take all of the credit for Selwyn’s paranoia, Briana. Gates are opening at an increased rate up and down the coast, at every chapter. I simply pushed things along where I could.”

  “You were going to torture him!”

  He shrugs. “The Kane boy needs to be leashed.”

  My teeth grind together at his flippant response to Sel’s pain. The disregard for the child he raised.

  I cycle through all of the Shadowborn attacks in the past two weeks, starting with the first at the Quarry, the hound on campus, the Oath—“You’re the one who brought the hounds and the uchel to the Oath that night, aren’t you?”

  Lord Davis tips an imaginary hat. “I suppose I have you to thank for that, don’t I? Nick’s unexpected arrival made things a bit more dramatic than I’d planned, b
ut you helped serve a great purpose. He saw you injured, saw me fall to the uchel.” He drops his hands into his pockets, clucking his tongue. “It was a strong start, but I still needed to open the Gates at other chapters so that all of the Lines were at risk. And now there are only two Lines left to Awaken.”

  “You’re putting your own son at risk,” I sputter. “And all the Lines, too. If Nick falls—”

  “Nick will not fall. I’ve trained him far too well for that. He is a natural-born leader and does not tolerate harm to innocents. He’s made for this war.”

  “This manufactured war, you mean,” I spit.

  “The world is a great chain of being, and everyone has their place. Even you. Even me. The hierarchy that holds the Order together has lost its value because the danger has appeared distant. Once the Vassals are reminded of the destruction we prevent, they will be reminded of their place in things. Their place under the king.”

  “You mean Nick,” I retort. “Your time as the Scion of Arthur has passed.”

  That makes him angry. “Nicholas is a hero to his core. If it’s necessary, I will show him how I have learned to open the Gates, and how I will continue to if he doesn’t follow my lead. He will be Called by Arthur and take up Excalibur tonight and, as king, he will do as I say. Then the whole of the Order and its Vassals around the globe will bend to our will.”

  “Well, I won’t,” I say, clenching my fists against the ropes.

  His expression shifts to pleasantly amused just as there’s a knock at the door. “Right on time,” he says, as if we’d just ordered room service at a fancy hotel.

  When the door opens, my whole world cracks into a million excruciating shards.

  Alice enters the room in her matching polka dotted pajamas as if sleepwalking, her face slack and eyes half-open—with Isaac holding her tight at his side.

  “Alice?” I cry. “Alice!”

  She sways, silent, and her forehead glistens like she’s sweating out a fever.

  “Alice!”

  Davis leans away, wincing with a finger to his ear. “No need to yell. She can’t hear you.”