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