Evan toes at a pile of powder where one of the hellfoxes had dissolved. “There are three green piles. Sel’s hounds are blue.”
Nick leans around me to look at the pile himself. His blue eyes sharpen, and his jaw goes tight. “What happened here?”
No one looks at me. Everyone looks at Sel.
Selwyn Kane is an annoyed, slightly bored sorcerer for all that anyone can see. But I can see beneath that now. He’s nervous. Rattled. “Hellfoxes. Almost fully materialized.” He nods at the piles. “They stole the aether from my weapons. We went to ground, took the tunnels, but they found us somehow.”
Evan walks toward us, shaking his head. “But three? Working together in the same location at the same time? No Gate is big enough for three to pass at once. Where’d they come from?”
“They ambushed us at the graveyard.”
“Three Shadowborn ambushed you?” Evan frowns. “You can sense a non-corp imp half a mile away. How did these demons catch you off guard?”
There’s a crack in Sel’s facade. When he doesn’t answer right away, I feel Nick tense beside me. “How did they surprise you, Sel?” he asks his Kingsmage.
Sel meets Nick’s eyes, and I know then why he didn’t fully answer my question in the tunnels. “I was… distracted.”
Tor’s anxious glance between Sel and Nick, Evan’s uncharacteristic silence, and the subtle clench of the fingers holding mine are all the warning we get.
Nick stands to face his Kingsmage. “Distracted? By what?”
Sel swipes his tongue over his lower lip, a nervous gesture that looks unnatural on his face. “We haven’t seen a Shadowborn uprising in two hundred years. If you were planning one, what would you do? Use a scout to disable us first? Knock us off-balance? What better time to disrupt our ranks than initiation? What better opportunity to break the Table before it’s gathered than to take out our king before he is Called?”
“Thinking like a demon now, Sel?”
Sel growls in frustration. “It’s my job to think like a demon.”
Nick’s brow furrows as he makes the connections. “What does this have to do with Bree?”
Sel meets his gaze head-on. “That first uchel wanted you, Nick. It called for the Pendragon. How did it know where to find you? A goruchel need simply to pose as a Page—act as a mole—to uncover that information, and it’s only a matter of time before a mole exposes themselves.” Sel swallows, and a shadow passes through his eyes, but he doesn’t look away from his future king. I give him points for that. “I decided to accelerate the process.”
Nick takes a step toward his Kingsmage. When he speaks, his voice is deadly quiet. “What did you do?”
The muscle in Sel’s jaw twitches, but he holds Nick’s gaze.
Another step. “What did you do?”
Sel lifts his chin. “I could have called the hound off her at any moment—”
Using the momentum of his next step, Nick throws a fast, hard punch to Sel’s jaw. The hit knocks the sorcerer back into the same oak that stunned the fox. Nick must have put real power into his swing, because my ears ring with the crack of bone meeting bone. It all happens so fast—had to, to catch Sel off guard—that it takes a second for anyone else to react. Sarah yelps and Evan curses, but no one moves to step between them.
Sel is against the tree trunk, utterly still, his stunned expression warring with a visible urge to retaliate.
“Well, that wasn’t entirely fair, Nicholas,” he finally mutters. He pushes to standing and spits bright red blood onto the grass before dragging the back of his hand over his mouth. It leaves a crimson streak across his pale knuckles. “You know I can’t strike you in return.”
In a voice made of iron, Nick says, “Precisely.”
Sel’s eyes flash. His lips curl over bloodied teeth, then smooth over in the same breath. Fury, barely bottled.
My eyes dart between the two of them, king-to-be and his sworn protector. When they’d battled in the woods that first night, Sel had aimed for me, not Nick. The Kingsmage Oath means he can never intend to injure Nick without risking his own destruction, but it does nothing to prevent Nick from harming Sel. They’d grown up together with this power imbalance, but I’d never expect Nick to exploit it. Not like this…
Sel shrugs, like Nick’s violence is no matter, but tension radiates from his shoulders, the raised veins of his neck. He chuckles—then winces, bringing a hand to his chin. “Hm. You don’t have Arthur’s strength yet, but I think you almost broke my jaw. Imagine the damage you’ll do once you’re Awakened.”
“Is this why you wanted to be with Bree tonight? To threaten my Page with your constructs?” Nick’s fists shake at his sides. “To defy me?”
The Kingsmage scowls and looks away, and I see where the anger is truly directed: at himself. He slipped up and his abilities failed him—just like Lord Davis suggested that night in the woods. And here is Lord Davis’s son, bearing witness to that failure and punishing him for it.
I feel the urge to stand and defend him, but what would I say? I’m not a mole. I’m not an uchel. I don’t know what I am, but I’m not a threat to Nick. And yet… there’s something in me that recognizes something in him.
“Stay away from her,” Nick orders, his voice low. “Excalibur or not, Called or not, if you try anything like this again…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but consequences hang in the air where we can all imagine them. Nick raises his chin. “Do you understand me, Kingsmage?”
“Yes.” Sel’s eyes darken until they go flat and unreadable. “My liege.”
Nick turns without another word and walks back to me. Everything about him is vibrating, with adrenaline or anger, I’m not sure, but when his eyes meet mine, they soften into the ocean I know. “Can you stand? We need to get you to William.”
I nod, but wave his hand away when he reaches to pick me up. “I can walk.” Still, he takes most of my weight easily with one arm wrapped about my ribs, and we turn in the direction of the Lodge. Tor and Sarah fall in on one side, and Evan on the other. Flanking us, I realize. For protection.
When we walk down the path, I’m the only one who looks back.
The Kingsmage and I lock eyes once more just as the three piles of Shadowborn dust swirl up in the air around him, then spark out of existence.
31
“IT ITCHES.”
“I didn’t take you as a complainer,” William murmurs, his hands hovering over my forearms.
“I’m not a complainer.”
“Mhm-hmm.” William leans down to watch as the last bit of skin closes up over a fresh scar. He makes a twisting gesture with his wrist, and the silver aether coating his fingers and my arm disappears with a quiet pop. “That’ll do. You’ll wake up without scars. Try to keep my arms in good shape next time?”
I’ve been leaning over a silver hospital tray for ten minutes as he worked. It feels good to finally lie back in bed under blankets, but then the rest of the aches immediately become more apparent. I grunt when my head hits the pillow. William makes a soft, displeased sound. “I can use aether to heal those bruises.”