“If it’s possible, then Nick will be the one to do it,” Evan says from where he’s leaning on the back wall. “Especially if he thinks he can talk his father down from starting Camlann. He has faith in us to handle the demons in the meantime. And we can, now that we’ve got two more bonded pairs. But there’s another variable here.” He looks over at me. “Nick’s in love with Bree.”
My cheeks heat. “That’s not—”
“Yeah, it is.” Evan smiles and pushes off the wall. “The entire gala saw the way he looked at you. Davis made a bad gamble. He thought Nick would believe that you’d accept his Squireship, then quit. Instead, that tightly controlled temper of his finally popped. I bet Nick is furious. Angry, heroic, and in love is a formidable combination; he’ll hold off Arthur’s Call, all right.”
Everyone looks at me then, and I feel like I might burst into flames. I’m saved from an internal wildfire when someone knocks, hard, against the back door.
“Sel!” Felicity yells, and runs out the door again. I want to follow, but I can’t. My feet are rooted to the floor in terror, my heart suddenly beating so hard that the blood rushing in my ears sounds like an ocean. It doesn’t make sense, but my brain tells me that if I don’t see Sel injured and broken like Tor, that might mean that he isn’t injured at all.
It’s not Sel, though. Felicity walks back into the room with Vaughn trailing sullenly behind her.
Greer scoffs. “Didn’t you run off with your tail between your legs?”
“My question exactly,” Fitz says.
Vaughn watches us warily. “Lord Davis said he had a plan for me. That I should just wait in my room until he called.” His eyes slide to mine, but when I look into them, I can see that the arrogance from before has taken a blow. Then it hits me: Davis had reserved Vaughn for Nick.
Russ frowns. “So, what, you got antsy and decided to come here?”
“My dorm’s on the sixth floor of Ehringhaus. I looked out the window and I saw some lights over mid-campus. Green mage flame. Blue-white too.”
“Sel,” I breathe. “When was this?”
“Ten minutes ago,” he says, spreading his hands wide. “I ran straight here, but… it sounds like you already know?”
Fitz steps forward to fill his Page in. I hope Sel is still alive. The thought that he might not be steals the oxygen from my body.
“Fitz,” I say quickly. His head raises. “What did you say earlier about the campus map? About the demons’ movement?”
“They’re moving toward a central location.”
“Why would they do that?” Alice asks, and the room turns toward her. She raises her chin, and soldiers forward with her question. My chest bursts with pride. “What are they drawn to?”
“Onceborns, obviously,” he says.
“And aether,” Greer says.
My heart races in my chest. “What source of aether is in the middle of campus?”
Felicity’s and Fitz’s faces blanch. They’re the only veteran Scions in the room, and they’ve come to the same realization at the same time.
“Care to share with the class?” Russ huffs. “Or is this a bloodline secret?”
“Actually…” Felicity flushes. “It is.”
Somehow, I already know what she’s going to say.
“Excalibur,” she says, her voice a mixture of fear and awe. “It’s the oldest aether weapon in the world. Forged by Merlin himself, it contains so much power that it never dissipates, like ours do. Not even when its bearer releases it. Each king, each Scion of Arthur, adds to its strength every time they wield it. When the last Camlann was over, and we’d won, that Scion returned it to the stone. Shadowborn usually aren’t materialized enough to get this far. Or Sel finds them first, so I didn’t think of it, but if a lesser demon doesn’t find a specific person to hunt, they’ll seek the nearest, biggest source of aether to consume. The more they consume, the longer they can stay. And the biggest source of aether would be the sword.”
“Where is it?” Russ demands.
“Ogof y ddraig,” I breathe.
She nods. “Yes. Under the Bell Tower. And there are Gates underground too. Tons of them. Merlins sealed them hundreds of years ago, but if Lord Davis wants Nick in position to take up Excalibur…”
“Then that’s where Nick and his dad are,” I say, my chest tightening at the very thought. “We’ve got to get to them and stop Davis before he opens any more.”
Pete throws a hand up in the air. “What about the Gates up here? I know they don’t spit demons out rapid-fire, but are we going to just let them stay open?”
“I’ll go,” William says from the doorway. “I can close them.”
“How?” Pete asks.
“With this.” William produces something small from his pocket and wiggles it back and forth. A vial of blood.
Sel’s blood. I’m sure of it.
“You don’t need to be a demon to close or open a Gate. You just need demon blood. Or part-demon blood, in this case.” He steps forward into the room. “I don’t have the same radar that Sel does, but my healing abilities give me a pretty good sense of where aether is. This is sort of like that, except on a bigger scale. And Russ, Felicity, and Sarah can point me in the right direction.” He nods to Alice. “I’ll take Vassal Chen with me to keep the Onceborns out of the way.”
“No,” Felicity says firmly. “You’re a solid fighter, but it’s not even close to midnight, so you don’t have Gawain’s strength. What if you get hurt? You’re our only healer.”
William’s lip curls. “No, I’m not. Whitty’s a fine apprentice already. He’s in the infirmary right now finishing up with Tor. What I’ll be doing is ten times safer than going into the tunnels to find the ogof. If you’re worried about someone still being around to patch y’all up, then you don’t want me in there. You want me out here.” He smirks. “And if Sel returns, I’ll tell him where you’ve gone and send him in like frikkin’ Gandalf the White. It’ll be great, promise.”
Russ places a hand on his Scion’s wrist. Felicity tilts her chin slightly in his direction. A silent conversation passes between them before she sighs and turns back to William. “Okay.”
Before she and William leave, I pull Alice aside. “You won’t be able to see them coming. If William says run, you run.”
She nods, her mouth tight. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean it?”
I pull her into a hug. “I mean it.”
Before we part, she grasps my arm. “Make him pay, Matty.”
* * *
It only takes a quick twist of Russ’s wrist to break the lock on the door to the hidden weapons room. Well, hidden to me, at least.
“The Lieges don’t like us playing with their stuff, aka real weapons that stick around after a fight, but the padlock always makes me laugh.” He pulls the door back to let us in. “It’s insulting, honestly. Do they forget whose traits we’ve inherited?”