hair stretching wide and loose like a live oak.
“Answers, but not an ending. Now that you have them,
do you still want to fight?”
I don’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then there is one final truth. A legacy forced, not given.
A burden I did not carry.”
A question in her eyes. A choice.
“I’m ready.”
She considers this. Nods.
“Then I will release him. And grant him voice.”
In the distance, a presence rises.
From the threshold between worlds, he calls my name.
All at once, I become we.
We are in the cave again.
We take one step and we are already at the stone.
We grasp the ancient hilt, warm under our fingers.
We pull Excalibur free.
56
THE MOMENT I raise Excalibur, the sword sings in my hand, hungry for war.
The blade’s aether rockets up my arm and slices through my consciousness, pulling me back to myself.
In the center of the diamond in its pommel, red root rises and bleeds until the stone shines like heartblood.
Engraved letters glint on both sides of the silver: Take Me Up. Cast Me Away.
Flames of blue and red ignite and swirl around my body, and Arthur’s armor builds in stripes and layers until it gleams like metal on my shoulders. In Excalibur’s reflection, my eyes burn crimson.
Vera passes a hand over my brow. Ghostly lips kiss my forehead before she bids me farewell.
“Stop her!” Lord Davis screams. Enraged, he points a trembling finger and calls the Legendborn to action. “Now!”
On the far end of the cave, Greer, Vaughn, Felicity, Tor, and Sar startle at Davis’s command. But they do not comply. Their eyes follow the sword in my hand.
Sel locks eyes with me from where he stands in the water below, an impossible mixture of emotions on his face.
Inside me, Arthur is the only presence. And his possession is nothing like Vera’s or my grandmother’s.
He jerks my arm up, leveling Excalibur at Davis. The words burst from my mouth—in both my voice and Arthur’s booming baritone. “Traitor! You levy war against the crown, lure our enemies to innocent blood, and now you dare rally my knights against me!”
“No, no—” Davis stammers, shaking his head over and over again. Murmuring denials, he stumbles and plummets backward into the water with a splash. He scrambles up like a rat and runs toward one of the tunnels.
Arthur takes me to the edge of the island, full of righteous fury and royal rage as Davis escapes. “You will not go unpunished!”
“Bree?”
Nick’s voice cuts through us both. Arthur turns my body until I face Nick where he stands with a hand half-raised to shield his eyes from my light. Our eyes meet across flames of red and blue.
I want to cry. I want to scream. But Arthur is in control of my voice and body, and even though he uses my eyes, he doesn’t see Nick at all.
“My brother Lancelot. My right hand. Camlann has come.”
Nick’s eyes go round.
We’d all seen Nick collapse, heard the ancient knight proclaim his presence and Awaken his Scion. Nick had been Called. Just not by Arthur.
Because I am Arthur’s Scion.
A screeching, grating laugh echoes back from the cavern ceiling. All of us turn, reminded of the immediate threat.
Rhaz and his army of demons, prowling on the banks. A hellbear, imps, foxes, and hounds, waiting for his command.
“Abomination!” Rhaz cries, his face split in a wicked grin. “But an Arthur just the same!” The demons yowl and yip, roar and scream—a war cry from the underworld. “Kill her!” he roars.
The beasts surge forward. Arthur raises Excalibur high. In our dual voice, he shouts, “To me, my knights!”
And then I’m sprinting off the island, vaulting in the air over the moat. The Legendborn are running with weapons raised—
I scream mid-leap, my will overpowering Arthur’s. “No!” I swing my free hand in a wide arc, fingers splayed. A twenty-foot wall of red flames erupts in front of the Legendborn. A barrier between them and the demons. Arthur’s confusion fills me as I land on the bank. “No more deaths!” I say, and switch the sword back to my right hand.
He doesn’t argue. Instead, he calls on aether to create a heavy, solid shield strapped to my left forearm, and we go to work.
The beasts converge on us. Arthur thrusts Excalibur down deep into the earth at my feet, sending a hot pulse of swirling aether out wide in a shining circle. The wave hits them all, knocking them back against the cave walls.
The imps recover first and dive at me in one howling flock.
There are three. Too fast and nimble for a single attack. Too far away for a sword.
Root crackles in my ears, alive and ready.
I open the furnace in my chest—and scream. Flame pours out of my mouth in a rolling ball, exploding into the first imp’s face. It shrieks, burns, bursts. Smoke everywhere. The second imp pulls up and away. The other is close enough. Got you. I use Arthur’s strength to jump, spearing it through its scaly belly. It dusts over me in a shower of green aether and smoke that blocks my vision.
A roar in the mist. A paw like concrete strikes me in the face, knocking me back. Crushes my nose and jaw. Pressing me down. Suffocating me. I flail with the sword, reaching for an impossible angle around the bear. I can’t breathe! I can’t—
‘Drop the sword.’
I do.
Arthur pushes my left shoulder back, then heaves the shield edge first into bone and muscle. The bear rears back with an angry yowl. Arthur sends me surging up with it, following the embedded shield until the bear hits the earth. Now we are on top. Arm out of the shield’s straps. Both hands now, digging the metal in farther. The bear roars in pain. The metal hits bone. Arthur’s strength, more than I could have imagined. The hellbear swipes, slashing my right shoulder—the skin opens up—and I scream.
The hounds howl at the scent and thunder toward us.
Foxes suck the floating aether away, and the smoke clears with it.
“Sword now?”
Arthur yanks me back off the bear. Flips me stomach-down on the ground to grab Excalibur.
I roll back just in time to whip the flat of the blade up between a hound’s jaws. My arm shakes. I can’t hold the hound back. Saliva sizzles on the blade, on my cheek—
A crystalline spear shoots straight through its head. I crane my neck back, searching for the source upside down.
Sel stands on the island with the stone, another spear at the ready. He launches it. Impales the second hound. And leaps from the rock to the bank beside my head, eyes on the foxes, a ball of aether already blooming in each palm. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Before I can respond, a high-pitched whizz streaks by my ear. Tor’s arrow, striking a fox in the throat. The other Legendborn stream forward, weapons raised against the four foxes. Nick’s in the air, bringing an aether sword down across a hound’s back as he lands. My root barrier is gone. I don’t know how.
I spring to my feet, but my right arm can no longer take the weight of Excalibur. I can’t—
‘Switch to sinister!’ Arthur yells.
“What?”
Sel’s head jerks in my direction. “What?”