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.”