I can’t help but snicker into my palm.
He catches it and scowls. “What?”
My smirk grows to a full-blown grin. I lean in close again until he tips his head toward mine, then whisper, “We may have experienced a life-threatening demon attack together and you may have saved my complete and total bacon—again, thank you—but this isn’t over. I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t tell me what to do.”
His shocked expression is wonderfully satisfying. I shove out of my seat and push down the row until I reach the aisle and the exit.
Time for Plan B.
* * *
It takes all of five minutes to look up a list of historic homes near campus on my phone, and there are a lot. But it only takes one minute to pick out the house surrounded by woods: the Lodge of the Order of the Round Table. Not a fraternity. A historic secret society. My mind flies to robes and chants and rituals in catacombs, but before I can keep researching, my father calls.
Oh.
God.
No use in hiding.
“Hi, Dad…”
“I don’t wanna hear it.”
Oh, he’s pissed.
“Why didn’t you call me back last night? What is your word worth right now?”
What is your word worth? Another family saying. “Not much,” I mutter. “I—”… think there’s something we don’t know about Mom’s death. Know for a fact that there’s a secret network of magic users who can wipe memories and—
“You what?” he demands.
I grit my teeth and lean into a lie. “I flaked. I got caught up with some people I met at dinner and just forgot. I’m sorry.”
“What’s going on here, Bree?”
I tell him the parts of the story that would most likely match the dean’s; when I know what happened that night, and I can prove it, I’ll tell him the rest. He’s still angry. “We have an agreement, kiddo. You take care of business, you can stay. If you can’t do that…”
“Then I come home.” I sigh. “I know. I made a bad call. It won’t happen again.”
* * *
During Statistics, I skim through Google results, marking the pages that seem most helpful.
There are five known secret Orders associated with the university, all organized around a central theme—the Gorgons, the Golden Fleece, the Stygians, the Valkyries, and the Round Table. The first three use stories from Greek mythology. The Valkyries, from Norse. The Order of the Round Table is the only society to draw their name from a legend—King Arthur.
I’d shoved that list of words at Nick to get a rise out of him. To get him to crack. But now I tumble the phrases around and slot them into place with what I know of the legend. It’d be easy for someone to dismiss the King Arthur connections as a medieval fantasy about chivalry and honor that the Order founders assigned to themselves to feel bigger, older, greater than they are. But this isn’t fantasy. This is real. So, I have to ask: Is the Order based on the legend? Or is the legend based on the Order? I know “Merlin” is a title, not a person. Nick mentioned Pages. Sel’s a Kingsmage. How much of the story is true?
The website says little about the societies beyond stating that they exist, and almost nothing about the Order of the Round Table—except that it’s not only the oldest society on campus but the oldest known secret society in the country.
I have to hand it to the Legendborn; their cover is perfect. Public frats and sororities advertise their rush, host parties at their homes, and have social media accounts, but collegiate secret societies simply… exist. And not just at schools, but out in the world, too. There’s a Masonic lodge not ten minutes from my parents’ house. The casual outsider would never expect to learn what a secret society gets up to, who its members are, or how they recruit. By unspoken agreement, we all just accept that it’s not public knowledge.
Maybe the Order of the Round Table recruits sorcerers called Merlins and demon hunters called Legendborn?
I look up. Seated all around me are students who have no idea that they’re walking through two worlds every day. One world with classes and football games and student government and exams, and another with Shadowborn and mesmers and aether—and hungry demons from a hell dimension that want nothing more than to devour them. An isel could be flying above my professor’s head at the front of the lecture hall, feeding from her energy, and no one here could see it. No one but me. And them.
After class, I walk through campus and past its northeastern edge to the Battle Park forest reserve, on a mission to find a house I’ve been inside but never seen.
* * *
Growing up Black in the South, it’s pretty common to find yourself in old places that just… weren’t made for you. Maybe it’s a building, a historic district, or a street. Some space that was originally built for white people and white people only, and you just have to hold that knowledge while going about your business.
Sometimes it’s obvious, like when there’s a dedication to the “boys who wore the gray” on a plaque somewhere or a Rebel flag flying high out front. Other times, it’s the date on a marker that tips you off. Junior high school field trip to the State Capitol? Big, gorgeous Greek revival architecture? Built in 1840? Oh yeah, those folks never thought I’d be strolling the halls, walking around thinking about how their ghosts would kick me out if they could.
You gain an awareness. Learn to hear the low buzzing sound of exclusion. A sound that says, We didn’t build this for you. We built it for us. This is ours, not yours.
The Lodge has a black-and-white historic site marker right at the open gates. Original mansion constructed in 1793—the same year as Old East. My dorm is an antebellum building. Not built for people that looked like me, but definitely built by them. And the Lodge…?
I take a deep breath, ignore the buzz, and walk up the long gravel driveway. After one turn, I see it.
The place is a freakin’ medieval castle. A dark sorcerer’s keep, sitting isolated on a wooded hill in the middle of a forest. Four circular stone towers at each corner rise to conical points with fairy tale–style blue-and-white flags at the top.
And, like the trail that led me here, it’s coated in a faint, shimmering layer of silver aether.
I hadn’t realized the wisps I’d been watching filter through the trees were aether and not sunlight until I saw it gather in eddies on the Lodge’s gravel driveway. When I reach the brick steps, I touch the iridescent layer with a tentative hand. As my fingers pass through the shimmer, I feel a push away from the tall double doors. An insistent nudge urging me to move on. Not sinister, exactly, but intimidating. A subtle warning slipped between the folds of one’s brain, just like Selwyn’s message.
Leave.
My hand lingers inside the enchantment. The now-familiar clove and smoke scent rushes toward me. “Different casters use aether to do different things.” Does that mean this is a… signature? If so, the bright smell from my bandages had to be William’s.
Selwyn’s signature is so rich here I can taste it: the whiskey Alice and I stole from my dad’s liquor cabinet last summer. Cinnamon cloves. A campfire banked low in the woods and smoke carried on winter wind.