I can’t really argue with that. Plus, now that the adrenaline has fully left my body, I’m beyond exhausted.
Still, I pull out my phone and text Alice to let her know where I am and that I’m okay before putting my phone on silent. When the screen goes black, we sit in the darkness listening to the voices downstairs until the house becomes quiet again.
I start to wonder if I should find some pajamas and sneak into one of the spare rooms to go to bed for real. I reach up to my hair and tug on my bun. I’d hate to sleep without my satin pillowcase. Maybe Felicity has a scarf?
Before I can slip off the bed, Nick starts to speak, his voice low and disembodied in the pitch-black room.
“Most Scion parents can’t wait until their child is old enough to begin training. I know my dad couldn’t. My mother, though? When I look back, it was obvious that she was terrified.”
“You don’t have to talk about this now, if you don’t want to.”
“I do. Want to.”
I reach for his hand in the darkness, and he squeezes my palm.
“My mother was raised in a Vassal family, and she Paged right away but never tried for a Squire title. Marrying a Scion of Arthur was the next best thing, her parents figured. My dad was never Called, but Scions of Arthur still hold… a lot of power. When I was growing up, she and my dad fought a lot. About my future, about my dad’s training regimen. I couldn’t go to regular school; he homeschooled me so he’d have more control over my studies. I was eight when Dad started bringing other Lieges around to train me. He told them not to go easy just because I was a kid. Because really, I wasn’t a kid. I was their king. And they didn’t. Go easy, that is. They…”
Nick pauses, and I can hear him swallow once, twice. I’m scared that he’s crying and I don’t know what to do. I press my shoulder into his and hope I can send my warmth and strength over to him. When he starts again, his voice is thick with memory.
“It’s not the broken bones or the bruises, the black eyes or the concussions, that keep me up at night. Those were healed by a Scion of Gawain. It’s the look in my mother’s eyes when I’d come inside, like the sight of me was carving holes into her heart. They’d fight the most those days.”
He takes a deep breath in the darkness, and I take one with him because I want him to know I’m here.
“One night she woke me up and told me to grab my things, that we were leaving. She’d had enough of watching her son get beaten. We made it about a mile out of town before these black cars surrounded us. Dad comes out of one of them and he’s frightened and angry. More upset than I’d ever seen him. I think he was scared we’d both been kidnapped by the Shadowborn, and that’s why he called the Regents for help. He’d never imagined his own wife would take his son from him. A Merlin I’d never met took my mother away without letting either of us say goodbye.” His voice has gone cold with rage, quiet with sorrow. “Dad broke down in tears when they drove off, because he knew she’d be punished. I think he tried to stop it, but the Regents’ word is final. The trainings stopped for a while. He started me at private school, stopped talking about my rank, our bloodline. The next… the next time I saw her was a few weeks later at a park near our neighborhood. My dad and I were getting ice cream. Mom walked by, and I ran up to her and gave her a hug, told her I was glad she was back. But she wasn’t back. She smiled, but… then she held me at arm’s length and asked who I was.”
I choke on my next breath. Tears burn at the edges of my eyes.
“I spent years researching Merlins’ mesmers. Trying to figure out how to break what they’d done. Extracting a mother’s child from her psyche is mesmerwork only a Master Merlin could do. When we met and you told me you’d broken Sel’s mesmer, I thought maybe I’d missed something…” His voice trails off into a heavy sigh.
That’s what I’d seen in his eyes that first night at the Lodge. Hope. “I’m sorry,” I murmur.
He squeezes my thigh. “Not your fault.” He inhales sharply, returning to the memory. “Anyway, after we ran into her, Dad moved us out of town within the week. To protect me, I think. Not long after that, Sel came to live with us, and another Merlin brought us here to perform the Kingsmage Oath. Sel’s a little kid, pledging his life to protect me, and all I could think was how much I hated the Merlins for being monsters and how I didn’t want this strange boy in our house. I wanted my mother. I blamed my dad for calling the Regents that night, but, in the end, it was Arthur who drove my parents apart, and I’m… I’m so angry with him, Bree. Angry with a sixth-century ghost.” He laughs bitterly. “I was so… so furious at all of it that I thought if I stopped training every day, stopped doing everything my dad wanted me to do, and stopped hanging around everyone here—William, Whitty, Sar, everyone—that I could make it so Arthur wouldn’t even want to Call me. I left this world, the people, the politics, the rituals… so that maybe he’d think I was unworthy and leave me alone. And now that it might be real…?” He huffs out another hollow laugh. “I’ve pushed it all away for so long that sometimes I’m not sure I’d even be able to hear Arthur if he did Call.”
I wrap my arms around his chest and squeeze until he drops his cheek onto my head and squeezes back.
I don’t mention Sel saying that same thing when he was aether-drunk, about Nick not being able to hear Arthur’s Call.
I hate that Sel, in his own fit of fury, might have been right.
* * *
I wake up to the sound of Nick showering in the room’s bathroom. My phone says it’s seven thirty—early enough that I can still make my first class. I sit up, hands smoothing down my unwrapped, slept-on curls in apology, and notice a small basket of toiletries on the nightstand beside me. Soap, a washcloth, a comb I’ll never be able to use, and a small toothbrush and tiny tube of toothpaste.
I can already hear Alice’s squeal of delight when I tell her about Nick’s efforts. I may not be able to tell my best friend everything, but I can at least tell her about sleeping in Nick’s bed and waking up to a literal gift basket.
I grab the toiletries and head downstairs to one of the hall bathrooms, hoping against hope that no one saw me emerge from Nick’s bedroom. Ten minutes later, Nick finds me and insists on walking me back to my dorm.
Dew and fog have settled over the grounds of the Lodge overnight, and the quiet of the morning falls thick and heavy around us.
Nick shakes his head, eyebrows drawn tight as soon as we step away from the building and toward the tree-lined gravel road and trail that leads back to campus.
“What?”
“Every time I come here, people look at me like I know what the hell I’m doing.”
I cross my arms as we walk, and a memory comes to me. “My mom used to say, ‘Fake it till you make it.’ Maybe that’s what you’ve got to do. Fake it till you make it.”
He chuckles, and the warmth of it fills my chest. “Thanks, partner.”
“Oh, I’m not your partner.” I jerk a thumb over my shoulder, back toward the Lodge. “I think Vaughn wants that gig.”
“Ugh, that dude.” He rolls his eyes. “He keeps asking me to spar. It’s all very… bro-y? Is that a word?” I giggle, imagining Vaughn the asshole chasing Nick down with sparring swords, begging him to practice. “I really don’t want him as my Squire.” Nick’s eyes widen hopefully. “Any more thoughts about—”