by Tracy Deonn
A second slam, closer this time. “No! Wha—”
“I need you to trust me,” Nick hisses. I stare, speechless, and he shakes my shoulder to get my attention. “Do you understand?”
“Yes!”
“Stay here.” Without another word, he jogs to the door, opening it and closing it behind him.
I do not stay there.
I throw the covers off the bed. Across the room, my sneakers are perched on a stately-looking armchair. I make a beeline toward them and shove them on, but when I stand up, a wave of dizziness sends me slumping against the leather.
Sel’s cold, measured tones reach me from just outside the door. “The prodigal son returns. And with such flare.” He’s so close. Too close. My eyes dart to the open window, and I heave myself off the chair to get to it even though the floor threatens to rise up with every step. “Did you even kill it, Davis?”
“Yes, I killed it.” Nick’s voice is a taut wire ready to snap. “You want to inspect the blood on my blade?”
Sel doesn’t miss a beat. “Perhaps if you weren’t so busy playing Onceborn, leaving us to do the dirty work, you’d know that I should have been called immediately to find its Gate and close it. Or do you want more hellhounds coming through from the other side?”
I reach the window and curse silently. I’m three stories up. Wherever this museum house is, it’s surrounded by a dense forest. Even if I were on the first floor and felt steady enough to climb out, there’d be nowhere to go.
“Do you want me to pause mid-battle to send a text? What are the emojis for a hellhound? Fire, then dog?”
There’s a quick shuffle, and the third voice intervenes again. “This is not helpful! Sel, you closed the Gate. Nick destroyed the hound. That’s all that matters.”
“That is not all that matters, William. This is the fifth attack in a week. They are escalating. And getting stronger. Just last night I tracked a near-corporeal isel miles from the nearest Gate. It is my job to protect this chapter,” Sel growls. “Just as it is my job to clean up your mess tonight. William says I’m needed here?”
“She’s a human being, Sel.” I wonder if Nick is stalling, but his voice sounds too weary. Too familiar with this argument.
“She’s Onceborn,” Sel retorts. Something about the way he says “Onceborn” makes me flinch, and I don’t even know what the word means. “How did she even get wounded?”
“It was partial-corp. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“A partial-corp demon, capable of hunting—and harming—human flesh. Wonderful. And then you brought her here. Lovely.”
“Would you rather I left her on the ground, blacked out from pain?”
“Of course not. Her injuries would raise far too many questions.”
“That’s your only concern, isn’t it? The Code of Secrecy. Not that an innocent was injured!”
“The Line is Law, Nicholas.” Sel’s voice is low, dangerous. “Our Oaths come first!”
“Gentlemen!” William shouts. “Speaking of the Code, may I remind you both that these walls are not soundproofed. The more you argue outside this door, the more Sel will need to erase.”
My heartbeat speeds from a gallop to a full-on jackhammer sprint.
“Thank you, William, for that reminder.” The knob turns, and Sel sweeps into the room, face full of thunder. When his eyes fasten to mine, his forehead furrows slightly in surprise. “You.”
It’s only been a day, but I’d somehow forgotten how terrifying this boy is. Even without Nick’s height and stature, Sel’s presence fills the doorway. He floods my mind with a crackling, swirling cloud of fear—fear so palpable and alive that it holds me in place like a heavy hand. Then, I remember that a man just like him—a Merlin—lied to me about my mother’s death, and a rising rage burns that fear to ash.
“Stay away from me!” I spit.
“Hm.” Sel’s head tilts to the side. “Two nights in a row, you’ve been in the way.”
Nick pushes around Sel to look between the two of us. “You know her?” He’s quick; anything else and Sel would know I talked to Nick about the Quarry.
I slide along the wall until my back is against the window. The glass creaks against my spine, and I briefly consider whether I’m strong enough to break it. What I’d do even if I could.
“We’ve met.” Something like suspicion skates across Sel’s face, gone before it really lands. “But she doesn’t remember that.”
Sel enters the room, but Nick steps in his path and places a broad hand on the other boy’s chest, stopping him. Sel’s eyes drop to the fingers splayed against his dark gray shirt. A feral grin curves along his elegant mouth. “There may come a day when you can stop me, but you and I both know it’s not today.”
Nick’s nostrils flare, and for a brief moment I’m certain that he’s about to throw a punch. That the warrior I’d seen fighting a hellhound could easily throw Sel over his shoulder or knock him into a wall so hard it’ll leave a crack. But Sel’s fingers begin to twitch at his sides, silver rings flashing against the black of his pants, and Nick does not strike. His eyes screw shut, and he lowers his hand.
Sel looks almost disappointed, but he steps smoothly around Nick, tossing “You don’t have to watch” over his shoulder as he walks. A shadow of some emotion runs beneath the granite of his voice.
Nick meets my eyes behind Sel’s back, his earlier plea plain on his face: Don’t let him know.
Sel moves into my field of vision and peers down with a speculative gleam in his eyes. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Perhaps I should be concerned to meet you two days in a row, but no Shadowborn would have made herself as vulnerable as you have tonight, which means you must simply be… unlucky.” That word again, Shadowborn. When Sel says it, his face twists into a sneer.
“You are Unanedig. Onceborn.” The Kingsmage’s eyes—scientific, assessing—track every tremble of my frame. “So your body isn’t accustomed to aether. That’s why you’re dizzy.”
“Screw you.”
“Sit.” Sel’s voice rolls over me like a wave. When I don’t comply, he steps forward and that deep-down, primordial fear of him presses against me. I sit.
Nick takes half a step forward. “Minimal intervention directive,” he urges. “Just the last couple hours.”
Sel rolls his eyes. “Orders, Nicholas? As if I am not bound by the same laws you so carelessly neglect?”
My eyes fly to Nick’s. He nods as if to confirm what’s about to happen. He’s going to erase my memory again. Sel kneels in front of me, and the same heady, spiced smoke scent swirls around me, filling my nose. “Your name?” he purrs in that same rolling voice.
“Her name is Briana.” Nick gives Sel my legal name, not my preferred one.
My mind races. Last time Sel’s mesmer worked, but only for a little while. How did I break it? There was the light, then the pain in my palm—
Sel watches the fight on my face with interest. “I must admit, Briana, I’m curious. What twist of the universe has set you in my path again?” he asks, his voice quiet, wistful. “Alas, some mysteries must remain forever unsolved.”
I flinch when he reaches long fingers toward my face. It gives me just enough time to bite down on the inside of my bottom lip. Hard.
The last thing I remember is the hot skin of his palm pressed against my forehead.
8
A BEEPING SOUND drills into my skull. I lurch upright to play whack-a-mole on the nightstand until I slap the clock alarm. “Ughhhhh. Too bright.” I drop back and fold the pillow over my face. My brain is a fragmented, floating thing. Fruit in a Jell-O mold.
“You’re unbelievable,” Alice says from her side of the room.
“My eyes hurt,” I whine. “My optical everything hurts. The rods and the cones, Alice.”
“Well, it’s time to get up.” Alice’s voice drips with acid. “Unless you want to add skipping classes to your streak of delinquency.”
I frown, dr
opping one side of the pillow. “What’s your problem?”
Alice stands up from her bed, fully dressed in a skirt and blouse. She’d been waiting to berate me until my alarm went off. An ambush by an evil librarian. “My problem? You almost got us kicked out of school our first night here, and on the second night you don’t come home until one o’clock in the morning!”
I squint at her. “No, I didn’t. I mean, yes, I did. To the first thing. But no to the second thing.”
Alice bares her teeth. A fierce evil librarian. “I can’t believe you got blackout drunk.”
I sit up, shaking my head. “I didn’t.”
“You’re delusional!” Her screech makes me gulp. I hate it when she gets upset. I hate it when we fight. “Some blond guy brought you back here, stumbling and slurring. He said you’d partied too hard in Little Frat Court. A frat house, Bree? Seriously?”
That makes me jump out of bed. “Alice,” I say slowly, walking toward her with my hands outstretched for peace. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t black out.”
She stamps her foot, and if I wasn’t so rattled, I’d laugh. “Isn’t that exactly what a blackout drunk would say the next day?”
“Well,” I say, considering. “Yeah, but—”
“I know it’s our first real freedom. You always hear about people going to college and drinking too much, not knowing their limits. I just didn’t think you were that…”
Suddenly, I don’t want to laugh anymore. “You didn’t think I was that what, Alice?”
She crosses her arms and sighs. “Pedestrian.”
I blink. “Did you just Jane Austen me again?”
Alice breathes slowly through her nose. “This is what everyone says happens. You go to college with a friend, you each find some new… group or whatever, you drift apart. I just didn’t think it’d happen to us.” Alice snatches the handle of her bag and stomps to the door. It’s the resignation in her voice that does me in, and the blow she delivers right before she walks out. “You need help.”
Tears fill my eyes almost before the door shuts behind her; then comes a rush of burning anger. My hands ball into fists, nails digging red half-moons into my palms.
* * *
Five minutes later, while brushing my teeth in the hall bathroom, I let out a scream so loud the girl next to me jumps.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry,” I mumble through a mouthful of toothpaste. The gash in my lower lip is so deep that when I spit, crimson blood and foamy Crest swirl in the sink in equally disgusting harmony. In the mirror, I draw my lip down to check the damage. “I bit myse—”
Another stab of pain. Then, I feel a strange, fluttering panic, like I’ve just tumbled down a staircase, but instead of hitting the floor at the bottom, I tip forward—into memories.
* * *
Where is he?
Genetics 201 starts in five minutes, and Nick isn’t here.
I’d arrived early to make sure I wouldn’t miss him and have been hovering near the back row of the large lecture hall as students stream in. A girl with stringy black hair scoots by, blocking my view of the door momentarily. After she passes, I see Nick in a blue T-shirt and jeans, walking along the back wall toward the corner of the room.
I weave through the incoming flow of students to follow him. When the clock strikes eleven, a thin, middle-aged man wearing a gray tweed suit steps up from the front row to cross the creaking wooden floor. He pauses at the lectern and frowns as the others and I continue to find seats.
“As the board states, this is Genetics 201. Not Geology 201. Not General Anthropology 201. Not German 201. If you are here for any of those classes, please exit now and take some time to review both the class abbreviations and the campus map.”
Amid a low wave of laughter, half a dozen students stand and shuffle down their long rows toward the exit at the back of the lecture hall.
Nick flops into a wooden seat in the very top row in a move that somehow manages to look graceful. I speed toward him, slipping into the seat directly beside him at the end of the aisle. “Nick, short for Nicholas.”
He jumps. “Bree. Hi.” I don’t miss his quick glance at my forearms. “How’s my peer mentee?” His smile is so fascinatingly genuine that I probably would have believed him if I didn’t know any better. He pulls up the small writing surface attached to the armrest and slaps down a composition notebook that looks like it got wet at some point. He pauses, squints. “I didn’t think you were in this class.”
“I’m not. I asked the dean for your schedule.”
A smile breaks across his face. “Who’s creepy-clever now?”
I snort. “Still you. By the way”—I lean back in my chair—“I’ve never gotten blackout drunk in my life, and I’d die before I set foot in a frat house. Tell Sel to mesmer better next time.” I sit up, eyes wide. “Wait, was that a frat house? I thought you said we couldn’t join them.”
Nick’s brow lifts a fraction, his eyes widening, but he doesn’t respond.
Any further conversation is interrupted when the professor clasps his hands together. Nick faces front, and I smother a frustrated growl. The professor serves all 150 of us a long-suffering gaze. “Now that everyone who is supposed to be here is here, my name is Dr. Christopher Ogren. We will be taking roll today and randomly throughout the semester”—groans all around at this—“by sending around the roster. Please initial beside your name and only your name.”
“Nick—” I begin, turning to him.
He silences me with a finger, then points to the front of the room. “I’m trying to pay attention.” His tone is serious, but I catch the slightest twinkle of humor in his eye. Without another word, he bends over his composition notebook and starts writing who knows what.
Unbelievable.
I lean over and hiss, “I made myself remember.”
His pen stops moving, but he doesn’t raise his head. “Remember what?”
“Are you seriously—” I’m cut off when an olive-skinned boy with a buzz cut passes the roster to our row. I grab it and scribble you know what! before passing it to Nick.
“Your handwriting is atrocious.” He signs his initials before passing the clipboard down. Irritation is a barely contained scream behind my gritted teeth.
Dr. Ogren calls our attention again. “All right, let’s begin with a thirty-minute pretest.” Groans again. Dr. Ogren smiles. “Relax, it won’t be graded. It’s just an assessment to see, generally speaking, where everyone falls in their knowledge before we begin the term, or what you remember from the last time you studied genetics. Work with a partner, share your ideas, record your answers.”
“Work with a partner” is easily the second-worst classroom phrase after “group work.” But today I couldn’t be happier to hear it.
“Partner?” I ask primly.
Nick studies me, evaluating his options. “Fine.” He opens up to a fresh page in his notebook.
The TAs distribute large stacks of worksheets. I grab a copy and send the rest along. We spend the first few minutes actually reviewing the pretest. The worksheets are fairly straightforward and a combination of multiple choice and short answer. Nick is as smart as he is good-looking, because of course he is, but he hasn’t covered the material as recently as I have. I stow my questions for now and take the lead to help move things along.
“We’re at the short answer portion now”—I flip my own notebook over to a blank page—“and we’ve got to write these together.”
“Mmm, yeah.” Nick scratches at the faint white-blond stubble on his chin. “I’m not one hundred percent sure on this one…” He reaches across and taps his finger over question ten.
“ ‘Common DNA processes include replication, transcription, and translation. At a high level, describe the distinct functions of these processes.’ ”
“I can’t remember the difference.”
“It’s easy to get the terms mixed up. Replication is making more DNA, transcrip
tion uses DNA to make RNA, and translation has to do with ribosomes. They use RNA to make protein.” I sketch a diagram on my notebook. “Visuals help.”
Nick examines my drawing, and his eyes flicker up to mine. “Visuals do help. A lot, actually.” I’m unprepared for his small, appreciative smile. Even at a low wattage, it is warmth and sunlight and summer and entirely distracting and it makes me squirm in my seat.
We speed through the remaining five short answer questions and finish with ten minutes to go. Ripping a sheet out of my notebook, I scribble down a few words. When I shove the sheet into his hands, he braces himself like the paper might explode on contact. I watch his eyes dart over the list of words—Shadowborn, Legendborn, Page, Onceborn, mesmer, Merlin, Kingsmage, aether—before he crumples the page in his fist and shoves it into his pocket.
I lean into his space. “I’m not gonna let it go.”
Nick takes a slow, steadying breath, still facing straight ahead. “How are you… doing this?”
“Not sure.” I push against the wound in my mouth. “Pain, I think,” I murmur. His eyes snap to mine in concern, but I wave him off and whisper, “Better question: How do the Merlins do it?”
He shakes his head. “Whatever questions you have, I promise you, the answers aren’t worth it. You should act like last night and the Quarry never happened.”
“Pens down!” Dr. Ogren directs our attention back to the front of the classroom.
“Can’t do that.”
He turns to me then, his eyes flashing a warning. “Here’s what’s gonna happen: I am going to ask Dean McKinnon to assign you another mentor, because if we’re seen together on campus, it’ll raise suspicion. You are going to stop asking questions and move on with your semester, because this conversation is over. I’m sorry, Bree, but that’s final.” He turns back to the front of the classroom as if that’s that on that. Like he’s just handed down a decree.
