by Tracy Deonn
“Why?” I scream.
A glittering, fanatical glee dark as the cave itself slides into his burning eyes. “To get to Nick, of course. And to wait.”
My lungs burn in my chest, but behind them my heart twists and skips.
His scratching voice becomes low and conspiratorial. “Did you know that if a fully Awakened Scion of Arthur dies, the Lines will end forever?” He giggles. “Kill the head, kill the body. It’d be easy if all I needed was for Arthur to Call Nick like the others do, but that arrogant prick of a king won’t fully Awaken his Scion until they take the blade.”
I crabwalk away, my sword dragging at an awkward angle, but he follows, one silent step at a time.
“And here I was, planning to go for the father! Then precious Nickie asks for you at the gala”—his lips curl in a mocking smile, and he clasps his hands to his chest—“declaring to all that he wants you as his Squire. That’s when I realized that foolish boy would do anything to keep you unharmed. Fight a horde of my demon comrades. Take up Excalibur. Expose Arthur. I had to take you”—he grins—“so Fitz the meathead got kebabed.”
My stomach turns. Bile rises in my throat.
“My mistress, Morgaine, will love hearing how I found the Scion of Arthur’s weakness.” He considers this. “Well, love is the wrong word. She’ll be quite jealous, actually. She adores torture.”
I shuffle backward, but he moves faster than my eyes can track, grabbing both of my ankles this time. “Rude!” he hisses.
My fingers dig into the gravel behind me. My only thought is to grab it and throw it into his eyes, but when my fingertips hit the soil and roots below, the doors inside me snap open.
‘The cave is right behind you. Just ten more steps, Bree.’ My grandmother’s voice urges me forward. I feel her hands, warm and soft, wrap around my heart and hold it in her palm.
Rhaz registers something in my face. His eyes narrow—and I wrench my legs from his grip with frightening speed. Pull my knees tight to my chest, and kick both feet upward to send him flying into the ravine.
53
MY GRANDMOTHER WAS exactly right about the cave. I reach it in ten limping steps.
I turn a corner onto an overhang—and look down into chaos.
Rhaz meant what he said: he’d called his brethren. And they were doing his bidding, fighting Scions and Squires who’d reached the cave before me.
Tor and Sarah zip around the room like streaks of silver aether, shooting arrows at hellhounds and foxes from every angle.
Felicity and Russ are on the floor, each brawling with enormous green hellbears.
Pete and Greer are back-to-back, facing a pack of hounds closing in all sides. Two glowing lions take on one hound, jaws clamped at its haunches and throat.
Vaughn hacks at a fox of his own and seems to be keeping it at bay.
And in the middle of it all, on a small island surrounded by black water, is Nick. Buckled over on his knees with the effort of resisting Arthur’s Call.
My heart leaps into my throat at the sight of him, scratched and bloodied, but alive. Above Nick, his father slashes at circling imps, barely keeping them at bay. There are too many demons here. Whatever Davis had in mind, the goruchel was never part of his plan.
Behind them is a bright sword sticking out of a boulder at an angle. Even at this distance, the clear diamond of Arthur gleams from its pommel.
Excalibur.
I launch myself over the overhang into the curved wall of the cave, sliding down on smooth-hewn rock. I hit the ground floor with a jolt and draw my sword for battle. Test my ankle; sprained maybe. But not broken.
I join Felicity against her bear. She pins it while I stab it through the chest. She takes a flying leap onto the back of Russ’s bear. I hack at its arm until it rears back, sending us tumbling. Russ grabs it by the middle and slams it into the rock wall so hard the entire cavern shakes. Rubble tumbles down on us from the ceiling.
“Try not to bring the whole damn thing down!” Whitty yells from where he’s fighting his own hellfox in a corner. He dispatches it swiftly, then turns toward us with a grin—
His body seizes into a single, rigid line.
Both daggers fall from his hands.
“Whitty?”
His eyes are wide, blank. His chest angles up. Toes drag on the ground, like he’s being lifted—
By the hand buried in his back.
“WHITTY!” I scream, frozen in place. The fighting rages on around us. We’re overwhelmed. The demon that was once Evan kicks at Whitty’s upper spine to free his hand. My friend falls forward, hitting the cave floor with a heavy thud, head twisted in my direction.
My heart stops, but I search for life.
I don’t find it.
Instead I see my friend’s unseeing eyes. The wrong angle of his shoulder. Blood on his favorite camo jacket. His jaw open to the dirt.
No one saw Whitty die but me.
I should have guessed that that fall wouldn’t have killed a greater demon.
I should have known.
Rhaz points at me with a bloodied claw. “That was very mean of you, Bree! Look at what you did!”
Two black ribs protrude from his chest, oozing green blood down his T-shirt. He doesn’t seem bothered at all.
I’m running, screaming, an arrow of hate. I’ll kill him. I’ll rip him apart—
“I’ll order these beasts to kill everyone here,” he snarls, stopping me short, “unless you tell Nick to accept Arthur’s Call and take up the blade.”
A wave of churning anger and fear comes over me, warring in my chest. All around me, there’s the clanging of aether weapons on hard isel hides. The roar and cry of battles.
“No.”
Rhaz hisses. “Have it your way.” He darts forward and strikes the blade from my hand. Twists my arm so tightly I scream and see spots. He yells something harsh and unintelligible—the language of demons. At once, every hellbeast stops. The Legendborn pause too. Stunned. Every time I try to move, the uchel squeezes harder—until I’m gasping for breath.
“Nicholas!” Rhaz yells.
Nick and his father turn stricken faces to the back of the cave. Davis is slack-jawed, but drained and on his knees, Nick takes the scene in all at once: the human mimic goruchel. Whitty’s broken body. Me in the demon’s arms. “BREE!”
“Take up the sword, Nicholas!”
“No!” I manage to scream. “He—will end—the Lines!”
Nick’s hands ball to fists. “If you kill her,” he grinds out, eyes like fire, “I will never touch this blade!”
“You must think I’m bluffing,” Rhaz says—and in a blink he is gone.
Not gone. He has Russ by the throat. He lifts him high—and pitches him like a fastball straight into a stone wall.
It happened so fast, Russ didn’t even get a chance to scream.
We watch as his body falls twenty feet into a crumpled heap.
Felicity shrieks and launches herself at Rhaz—Tor and Sar reach her first, but it takes both of them, Vaughn, and Greer to keep her down.
Before I can move, Rhaz has me around the middle again.
“Let Arthur Call you, Nick! Or I’ll snap her—”
A blue-white dagger hits him in the throat.
His fingers fly to the handle of the blade. He makes a gargling sound and pitches face-forward into the water.
With a piercing screech, a huge eagle owl dives into the cave from a tunnel. Quick and silent, it melts into the shape of a man as it drops to the ground.
A shape I recognize immediately: Selwyn Kane, Merlin and Kingsmage of the Southern Chapter.
A sorcerer—with the ability to shapeshift.
Sel stands, eyes blazing, and stalks to the moat. He hauls Rhaz up by the neck; blood drips from the demon, turning the water the color of rot. Sel inspects the unmoving body, a low growl rising out of his clenched teeth, and then drops it.
The hellcreatures yowl and snap, but without Rhaz to command them, they don�
�t make a move.
Felicity breaks free and runs to Russ’s body, tears streaming down her face. Her sobs echo throughout the cave, loud and painful and broken.
Which is just the distraction Rhaz was waiting for.
Alive and furious, he launches out of the moat and onto Sel’s back. They roll over and over in the water, grunting and striking in a blur of limbs.
Then the demon has both hands around Sel’s throat. The Kingsmage claws at the demon’s fingers for breath, kicking.
I run, but Tor and Sarah streak past me.
Rhaz is too fast; he sees them approaching.
He wrenches Sel’s head down just as his knee snaps up—a crack, blood—Sel’s limp body sinks into the water.
Suddenly, Nick’s scream echoes, the sound of agony everywhere. He writhes under the weight of Arthur’s Call. He’s losing the battle.
Rhaz grins. “That’s it, Nickie.”
We all watch, frozen, as Nick takes a shuddering breath, then draws up to his knees. His head falls back, and Arthur’s deep voice emerges from his throat.
“Though I may fall, I will not die, but call on blood to live.”
Nick rises to his feet in one movement, then turns to face the stone that holds Excalibur.
‘She’s here,’ my grandmother whispers, her voice so loud in my head that I’m sure everyone can hear it.
The resolve in Nick’s shoulders grows with each step he takes to his destiny.
Who?
Sel heaves up from the moat, gasping for air, searching for Nick. But Nick is already at the stone.
‘The old mother. The oldest. Vera.’
Nick reaches for the sword’s hilt and, with a deep breath, pulls.
My grandmother fades.
The sword does not move.
Tor gasps. Lord Davis makes a choking sound. Even the goruchel’s hellish eyes grow wide.
Nick pulls with both hands gripped around the hilt—but the ancient sword does not yield.
He steps away, his face a mask of confusion and shock.
Inside me, a bomb explodes. My house blows part.
Time slows.
Stops.
Freezes.
A single second, suspended.
The old mother of my family fills my every limb. Arrives, just as I’d asked.
Her voice is rich and smooth, liquid steel on its way to a blade. It drapes over me, a warm blanket with sharp edges.
‘What do you want to know, child?’
“Everything,” I whisper.
‘Why?’
I could say the demons. Davis. Nick. The innocents. The world.
But I don’t.
I think of my mother. Her fights. Her triumphs. Her pain. And how they’re mine now too. Mine to hold. And mine to wield.
“Because her life counted. And I want to make sure her death counts too.”
I feel her appraisal, and pleasure.
‘Then I will give you the power to do so, wound tight with truth.’
She pulls me into her memory.
I shatter.
54
A WALK.
Years past.
Years of pain.
The history my mother
and her mother
and her mother never knew.
I see the oldest mother when she is young, standing in a field behind a great white home.
She wears a plain white dress, or at least it was white, at one time.
Her hair is tied up. Face like glowing mahogany. Eyes like mine.
The sun is low in the sky. She is tired. The day has been long.
The days are always long.
The angry screams of the master’s wife
can be heard across the field.
They fight, the master and his wife.
They fight about children, but they do not have any.
Another day done.
She begins the walk to the quarters when
she hears a sound.
A pale man with hair the color of acorns
slips into the yard
through the back gate.
She recognizes him. The man called Reynolds.
A woman with flaxen hair comes out the back door to meet him,
glancing behind her at every step.
The master’s wife.
Reynolds pulls the master’s wife to him
until they are hidden behind the magnolia,
its branches almost touching the earth.
It’s daylight. Another day. Another magnolia.
She has stopped to rest underneath its bows, just for a moment.
Just a moment of rest.
The master appears. She is frightened. Caught.
He holds a hand out. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he says.
But he is. He hurts her anyway.
The magnolia tree’s fallen seedpods litter the ground.
Their sharp edges dig into her back.
Three months later.
The master and his wife
can be heard fighting from the orchard.
My ancestor wonders
if a child between them would truly make it better.
It wouldn’t.
But the next day
she feels one growing inside her anyway.
When she shows,
the master’s wife notices
but doesn’t seem to care.
When she shows,
the master notices,
and he cares.
He cares very much.
He comes for her. He holds her weathered, soft face
between his hard fingers.
His blue eyes stare down into her brown ones.
The others in the field notice.
He sees them over her head.
“Tonight, Vera,” he says roughly, and releases her.
He walks away.
Vera knows this time, he means to hurt her.
She runs.
There are paths to take. Rumors of the way to go.
She leaves as soon as the sun sets
and hopes she remembers the stories.
She tells no one lest he come for them, too.
He may come for them, too.
She takes nothing with her but a bit of fruit and sweet honeysuckle, nectar still in the stem.
She runs for hours.
Master Davis has the money for pattyrollers, but she didn’t expect to hear them so quick.
The dogs bay in the distance.
She splashes into a creek. Doubles back.
Works upstream with skirts held high.
Climbs a tree whose branches hang low.
Her arms are strong.
She works with the trunk, sends prayers to the roots,
thanks the tree for its help,
drops down fifty yards north of where she started.
She settles into the dark shadow of that helping tree
and spills out the fruit
and the honeysuckle, crushed but still good.
She sits cross-legged on the cool earth and draws a broken blade down her palm.
The cut is deep, but it hurts less than the blisters on her feet.
She is a memory walker, but tonight she does not want to walk.
She wants to run.
She smears her blood onto the fruit and the flowers, presses the mixture and her hand as deep into the ground as they’ll go, and calls the ancestors to aid in a rhythmic chant of her own making.
“Protect us, please. All of you. Everyone.
Protect me so I can protect her.
Help me see the danger before it strikes.
Help me resist their entrapments.
Give us the strength to hide and to fight.
Protect us, please. All of you. Everyone.
Protect me, so I can protect her.
Help me see the danger before it strikes.
Help me resist their entrapments.
Give us the strength to hide and to fight.
Give us all we need to hide and to fight…”
They hear her. Their voices rise up from the earth.
Up through her wound and into her veins
and directly into her soul.
‘Bound to your blood?’
She gasps. The dogs are at the creek. Tears drop into the dirt.
“Yes, please! Bound to my blood!”
‘A price.’ The voices sigh, sad and heavy.
‘One daughter at a time, for all time.’
“Bind us to it!” she cries.
Her body trembles with a wave of desperation,
an ocean of determination.
She and the voices say the words together. “And so it is.”
A molten core of red and black sparks to life in her chest.
As it spreads through her limbs, burning her up from the inside, she turns to me, sees me.
Her eyes are volcanoes, bloodred fire streaming from the corners.
Power erupting over her skin,
she wraps a hand tight around my wrist.
“This is your beginning.”
The old mother’s walk, like Patricia’s, is only the beginning.
In the grip of her power, I am passed through
eight generations of women.
Her descendants, my foremothers.
A stream of strong brown faces meet me, one life after the next, one after another into a blur.
Angry faces and sad ones. Scared ones and lonely ones.
Proud ones and ones tired from sacrifice.
Their faces. My faces. Our faces.
They show me each of their deaths,
when the furnace of power in each mother’s chest
passes down to her daughter.
Their resilience is bound to my flesh.
I spin, twist, stumble onto grass.
I see my mother when she was young. She walks through campus. The light inside her shines bright
even through her heavy winter coat.
A girl with smiling yellow eyes walks beside her.
Snow sprinkles the girl’s hair;
its black waves hang loose down her back.
They turn together down a brick path, talking and laughing.
I see my mother behind the wheel.
I am sitting in the passenger seat, watching her as she watches me, our spirits meeting in a blend of Vera’s walk and my newfound gift.