Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter I

I

THE SHADOW KING could destroy me.

I can feel it. When the ancient demon’s magic swallows us both, I sense my own ruin, but there is nothing I can do to stop it.

His swirling black wisps tighten like a fist around my rib cage, then… pain . Squeezing, crushing, breath-stealing pain.

On the grassy hill above the Northern Chapter’s Keep, his myrrh-and-sap-scented smoke turns opaque, obscuring my view of Nick running to stop us. The King’s magic billows, until all I can see is Nick’s aether armor glinting in the sun. His outstretched hand. His blue eyes burning for battle. My final memory of the Keep is Nick, fighting to keep me safe.

There have been so many fights and losses, just to keep me safe.

Volition, a haven destroyed because I took shelter on its ancestral grounds. Lu, Hazel, and Mariah’s Rootcrafter refuge, compromised because they offered me sanctuary. Alice, in a coma after I struck her down in the throes of possession. Selwyn, succumbed to demonia after consuming my power to bring me back to myself. And Nick, risking his life by returning to the very same Order that sent Merlin assassins to kill him. Too many fights. Too many losses.

The King grasps my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Nick, to everyone, to myself.

I avoided Nick before I climbed the hill because if anyone could stop me from leaving, it would be him. Nick’s eyes see too much, too clearly, and always have. He would offer understanding when I don’t want to be understood.

Not for this.

I whisper, “Please know that I—”

Then, we are traveling through shadows.

Blackness surrounds us in thick, inky streams. My body knows we are moving. I feel the leaps across space. Sometimes, when slivers open wide enough in the whirling dark, I glimpse visions of terrifying places—blackened fields burning under a darkened sky, miles and miles of gravestones at night, the deepest parts of the ocean—before the cyclone closes again. My stomach lurches when the world reappears, and twists when it is gone.

This is what it means to travel through shadows , I think—before I begin to suffocate.

In this here-and-there vortex, there is no air. I wonder if I might die before I’ve even begun this new life.

No.

The thought sharpens my oxygen-deprived mind. I clench the hard hilt of Excalibur to my side.

I will not die here.

How much time has passed? Seconds? Minutes? I don’t know.

Then suddenly, without warning, we land.

My knees buckle, hitting cold white marble. My grip loosens; Excalibur clatters to the floor. The sharp scent of cleaning supplies catches in the back of my throat, and I cough. Wheeze out a curse. Gasp for air. Try to get my bearings.

We are in a long, empty, windowless corridor inside a building I don’t recognize. Coughing still, I raise my watery vision to the mass of smoke before me. Where a face might be are obsidian eyes with shining crimson centers. A demon so strong that this close, even his casual scrutiny sears my skin.

The Shadow King, inhuman.

While he observes the messy humanity of me panting and clammy on the floor, I notice a tendril of dusk has wrapped itself around the security camera mounted on the wall behind him, blocking the lens. Wherever we are, the Shadow King has already ensured that our presence will go undetected.

The black cloud draws my attention again. It churns slowly, then melts, then hardens into the familiar, solid form of Erebus Varelian, Mage Seneschal at Arms of the High Council of the Order of the Round Table.

Erebus watches me with a single brow raised and both hands clasped at his belt. His eyes are now those of a middle-aged Merlin’s: heart-blood red with human black pupils. His thick raven hair is perfectly combed back in the Mageguard undercut, and a dark overcoat lies flat on his shoulders, draping down his torso to his knees.

This is the man who fooled the world’s most powerful and ancient secret society into believing he was one of them, for who knows how long. Even now the Order believes Erebus to be their highest-ranked, most loyal Merlin soldier. Only he and I know the truth—that he is the Order’s greatest enemy. And only we know that I, the Order’s own Crown Scion and king, have left the Round Table to become his pupil.

My next inhale is a shaky one. What have I done?

“Can you walk?” When Erebus speaks, his voice is low and unimpressed. The deferential respect he showed when we first met is absent.

“Why did you,” I croak, “take me before I could—”

“And what would you have said to Nicholas Davis,” Erebus murmurs, his expression unreadable, “had I not traveled you away?”

My mind flashes to those final images again. Nick’s armor. His hand. His eyes. His fingertips straining to meet mine. Our call and response, left unfinished. I grit my teeth. “None of your business.”

Erebus’s brow lifts. “Then I was right to remove you when I did.”

“What does that mean?”

“If Nicholas Davis had touched you, he would not have let you go.” Erebus’s lips purse. “He will be a nuisance enough as it is.”

Fear is a quiet, cold trickle inside my chest. The High Council of Regents wants Nick dead because they can’t control him; my absence won’t change that. I rise to my feet. “Nuisance?”

Something cruel flickers through the Seneschal’s gaze. “Once he recovers from the shock of your disappearance, whom do you think Nicholas will pursue first? You… or Selwyn?”

My stomach dips. I don’t have an answer, but I know I don’t want Nick to look for me.

Erebus chuckles at my silence. “In either case, the boy will be chasing ghosts: I will ensure that no one finds you, and Selwyn is a lost cause.”

That quiet fear doubles. I asked Erebus to take Sel to his mother in the hope that she could reverse his descent into demonia, but even the king of demons could not guarantee that Natasia Kane could save her son. Sel trusted me to control Arthur, and because I trusted myself in a moment when I shouldn’t have, he sacrificed his humanity to save me.

My breath hitches and my eyes burn. It’s done. It’s all done , and nothing can change it.

I swallow hard and meet Erebus’s gaze with a fierce one of my own. “I think Nick will pursue you . He saw you, after all. Saw Erebus take me away.”

Erebus’s facial features fade in his brown skin until they become gray mist. Until he is not Erebus, not the King, not anyone , exactly. A shadow in the shape of a man.

“Did he, now?”

My heart stutters at the reminder that Erebus is a face the King chooses .

I wasn’t looking at the Shadow King in that final moment on the hill; I was looking at Nick. The King can mimic the identity of an endless number of murdered victims. Unlike part-demon, part-human cambions, full demons like him don’t possess humanity; they steal it. They kill us, then wear us. Like clothing.

Bile rises in my throat. “If Nick saw you like this, then who does he think I left with?”

“No one, I suppose. Or anyone.” The King’s body shudders. Now in place of Erebus’s figure is a tall, narrow-faced person I don’t recognize, with pale, freckled skin and gray-and-brown-streaked hair.

Fear and horror take a back seat to the anger that roils up from my gut. “Do you even remember the name of the human whose face you’re wearing?”

“His name was not important,” he replies in this new body’s voice. Without another word, the Shadow King turns on his heel to stride down the corridor in long, swift steps. When he is not waving gloomy wisps at cameras ahead of him, his hands are shoved into deep pockets.

I scramble after him, grasping Excalibur to carefully rest it at my hip, pointing the blade down and back. I really should have found a scabbard before leaving. “Where are we?”

Erebus the Seneschal would have answered his Crown Scion’s question, but this demon is not that Erebus, and I am not his Crown Scion. Those were just the masks we wore—and his always fit better than mine.

I am the Bloodcrafted descendant of King Arthur. I am a Rootcrafter and Legendborn, or I was before I deserted both groups. Now I am the Shadow King’s bloodmarked investment . I am a power source that I’ve asked him to teach and help grow, even as he plans to use my power to eventually help him triumph over the Order we both despise. With him, I will become a weapon—one he will wield when I am strong enough.

I have a feeling the Shadow King won’t let me forget that in leaving with him, I chose this identity—that of a weapon—above all others.

The King’s demon feet make no sound, but my human ones do. The soft brown boots Greer found and left in my room at Northern create a shuffling noise as my strides lengthen to keep up with his. Greer had also left a pair of loose jeans and a band T-shirt; their clothes, I think. I wonder if I’ll be able to find more wherever we end up, or if this will be it. Perhaps I should have packed a bag and not just a sword.

Ahead, the Shadow King turns a sharp left and pushes through a door. I follow, struck mid-thought by the brightly lit room we’ve just entered—and its contents.

On either side of the King’s direct path through the room lie Egyptian sarcophagi behind large glass display cases. With a flick of his wrist, the King obscures the cameras mounted evenly along the high ceiling. I call out to him. “Where—”

The King’s new voice reaches me as he walks. “The British Museum.”

“In London ?” I squeak.

When I look at the sarcophagus in front of me with fresh eyes, a quiet sense of injustice creeps through the dissipating fog of surprise. According to the white placard at the base of the case, I’m looking at a young woman who lived in Thebes in 800 BCE. The beige, yellow, and red paint illustrate her face across the wooden casket—and I’m reminded sharply of another young woman who would not wake. Alice. I breathe through the clawing memory, the guilt. Shuttle them both away.

This shouldn’t be her resting place, I think. Not stuck here behind glass in collectors’ hands. This isn’t where her people imagined she’d be. My fingertips itch to touch the sarcophagus to see if the girl’s spirit lies awake inside. It’s a Medium’s instinct. One I’m not even sure I can act on after what I’ve done to my ancestral stream—

The King clears his throat by a door at the far end of the gallery. I shift the heavy length of Excalibur to my other hip and jog to join him. The door is labeled CURATORS ONLY . When I reach his side, he holds out a hand. For a moment, I am confused.

“The sword, Briana.”

I grasp the hilt in my fist. “It’s mine.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

He hisses, lips pulling back. “You have no authority here, girl.” His voice turns harsh and otherworldly. “No court of children to kneel for you, no Regents to scramble over your lineage. You are not the Crown Scion in my presence. And if I choose, I will take the sword Caledfwlch by force. ”

A raw, primordial terror streaks through me. Every instinct inside me screams that the Shadow King is far, far more powerful than the Merlin he pretends to be. That he is far stronger even than the goruchel mimic demons the Legendborn Order most fears. That his true demonic nature is unknowable and hidden and older than the oldest mountains. He just whisked me across the planet, bending space and light and matter to his will… but I chose this. I can’t let him bend me, too.

“I need it—” I begin.

“For what reason?” he snaps.

Strength. Power. Control. They are what I need more than anything. They will make the running worth it. And now that I have reforged Excalibur, it is more my weapon than ever.

“For training.” I lift my chin, set my jaw. “As Erebus, you train Merlins and command the Mageguard. As the Shadow King, you’ve seen every Camlann, every demon uprising, and every Legendborn victory. As the Hunter, you’ve watched every woman in my family since Vera. You know what we’re capable of.”

“All true.”

“You agreed to teach me,” I say. “And I’m ready to learn. We have a bargain.”

The corners of his lips curl upward. “An unregulated bargain.”

I narrow my eyes. An unregulated bargain, made without a third-party broker, is something I am very familiar with. “It may have been unregulated, but I made my terms clear.”

“ Your terms were clear.” His face shifts to Erebus’s once more. “But mine were not.”

My breath catches.

“Did Valechaz never explain the anatomy of a demon bargain to you?” He circles me slowly, expression amused, and tuts softly. “That is unfortunate.”

The furnace in my chest opens without my permission. My root, rising to meet a threat. “Valec taught me plenty,” I respond. “Unregulated bargains make it easy for demons to claim whatever they wish from a human, but I told you exactly what I’d be willing to do and what I needed from you. I agreed to go with you and stay by your side if you took Sel to his mother. Our bargain is negotiated and complete.”

He continues as if I’d never spoken.

“For each demand made in a bargain, the opposing party has the right to make a demand in return. As a broker of repute, Valechaz regulates such bargains to ensure that every demand has been addressed and accepted, thus allowing the bargainers to close on equal footing. This regulation is critical, because unless and until every demand is addressed and accepted, the bargain cannot be closed at all.”

My heart freezes in my chest. “Meaning?”

“Meaning the party who has yet to state their requirements at the time of closing walks away with an open, unfulfilled debt.” He smiles. “An ‘I owe you,’ if you will.”

“No.” Fear kicks my heart into a sprint. “I… we—”

“You said you would go with me and stay by my side if I performed a single favor, and yet you made not one but two demands of me, Briana.” He holds one finger up. “The first, that I take Selwyn to his mother. You said, ‘If you take him to her, I will go with you.’?”

I glower at him. “I know what I said—”

“But do you remember what you said?” His voice turns derisive. “What you demanded before you asked me to transport one Kane to another?”

“What other—”

“You demanded my knowledge . You want to learn strength, power, and control. ‘Only a king may teach a king.’?”

Blood drains from my face. Pools in my stomach in a dizzyingly cold vortex.

“Two demands, and only one fulfilled. You owe me, Briana.” His smile spreads. “We are as good as Oathbound, you and I.”

“No, I… I…” I flounder.

“Yes.”

“It was… a bargain—”

“What is a bargain if not an oath? And what is an oath if not a promise with a price? Call these what you will. All are cut from the same cloth—a cloth woven of intention, will, and sacrifice. Your power is bound by my bloodmark. Your death is bound to my triumph. And you are bound to me by your very own words.” The Shadow King drops both hands into his pockets. “If I am not able to name my return for educating and training you, then we are out of balance, and the deal can be struck in its entirety.”

“Then don’t teach me! I’ll… I’ll learn on my own,” I say, even as I don’t mean it. Even as I know he knows I don’t mean it. That I can’t learn on my own. That I’ve already tried—and failed.

Instead of saying what we both know to be true, his voice grows quiet. A whispered threat. “You do not wish to see what happens when you break a fair bargain with a demon, Briana Matthews.”

My chest heaves as I search for the cold disconnect I’d found on the hill at Northern. The confidence. I can’t find it. “This isn’t fair —”

“It will be fair when your debt is paid. If it is not, you will be in breach, and your breach will earn my vengeance tenfold .” He steps closer, fangs glinting in the light. “First, I will see to it that Selwyn Kane dies. Next, a Mageguard will slit Alice Chen’s throat while she sleeps. And Erebus will be certain to carry out the Regents’ plan to murder Nicholas Davis.”

Each threat wraps my throat. I can’t breathe. Can’t finish a single thought, ears ringing —

He leans in to whisper the next words: “Or perhaps I will simply suggest to Aldrich that if we wish to draw you out from wherever you’ve run away to, perhaps your father, Edwin’s, life is not the too risky leverage I once thought it to be.…”

I suck in a breath. My father is innocent in all this. He knows nothing about who I really am. “What. Do. You. Want .”

All humor leaves his face. “Something that will cost you dearly to surrender. A price that I will reveal when the time is right, and not before.”

I shut my eyes. Living in unknowable debt to the Shadow King, for as long as he wishes, is worse than destruction.

“In the meantime,” he murmurs, “you will give me Excalibur of your own volition.”

There is no other choice.

Abruptly, I think of Nick again. He’d blood walked with me to the sixth-century origins of Legendborn power. Together, we’d watched the original Merlin cast the Spell of Eternity upon the original knights of the Round Table, initiating the cycle that allowed those knights’ descendants—their Scions—to inherit their ancestors’ magical gifts from one generation to the next. The core of the Spell is tied to my life as the Scion of Arthur, and being born the Scion of Arthur is what allowed me to pull Excalibur from its stone. After everything we’ve witnessed together, I wonder what Nick would say about me handing the symbol of the Order to its greatest enemy. Would he understand? Or would he want me to fight to keep it? Fight to make the blade my own?

Finally, I raise Excalibur by its hilt. An offering.

The King tugs the sword from my grip, and a high-pitched, metallic whine zips through my mind when it leaves my fingers. My eyes snap open. I have heard Excalibur’s war cry, but nothing so mournful as this.

As the King hefts the blade beneath his arm, his Erebus identity melts away until he is the freckled nameless man once more. He knocks twice on the door behind him.

After a moment, a muffled voice responds, growing louder as its speaker approaches. “When will you interns learn ?” The door cracks open to reveal a narrow-shouldered white man in a pale blue button-down. “If you continue to disturb me, I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Agaraz?” the Shadow King challenges in a low, crackling voice.

The man’s eyes widen. “Sire!” He drops to one knee. “I did not recognize—I was not expecting you.”

“Rise,” the King commands. Agaraz moves to his feet in a smooth, single motion, as if his limbs are attached to strings that have been pulled all at once. Goruchel. The third I’ve met after Rhaz and Kizia. At my gasp, Agaraz’s head whips around, his gaze burning my cheeks. He tilts his head curiously before he inhales, slow and intentional, in my direction. The King releases a long-suffering sigh. “I need your assistance with a blade.”

“Yes, of course, sire.” Agaraz’s eyes are drawn to Excalibur as the King walks past him into a dim room lit by a banker’s lamp on a wooden desk. Before Agaraz moves to follow, his gaze finds me again. The open hunger on the goruchel’s face startles me. The door closes shut.

I listen for voices behind the door but hear nothing. Even if Excalibur remains here in the museum, that doesn’t mean I can get to it. Are we staying here or returning to the States? If we return, how would I travel this far on my own?

My hands begin to shake as the threats the King so quickly offered settle deeper beneath my skin. I thought we were on equal footing of a sort, but I have already been outmaneuvered. My eyes are hot with sudden, embarrassed tears. Why did I think I could outsmart an ancient demon older than the Order itself?

Valec would have instantly known that my bargain with the King was incomplete. Alice would have stopped us to ask questions. But Valec isn’t here right now, and Alice isn’t even conscious . And Selwyn… Sel would have physically torn me away before negotiations ever began.

What have you done ? I flinch at the memory of Sel’s last words to me.

His contempt joins my own. What have I done?

My breath speeds. With each exhale, a wisp of red root flows from my mouth, floating toward the ceiling before it dissipates. I have breathed fire before, but this feels like breathing misery instead.

Abruptly, the door opens, and the King returns empty-handed. He pauses, nose raised to the air. The red root is gone, but I’m sure the scent of it remains.

“You already took one of my weapons. Will you take my root now too?” I ask. “Lock me away by keeping me weak?”

The King looks pointedly at the museum exhibits behind me before returning my gaze. “Greedy men collect what they cannot understand, and weak men destroy what they cannot control. A man who is both will attempt to recreate that which is beyond his comprehension, obliterating the original in the process.”

I remember the dead girl in the sarcophagus and eye him warily. “What do demons do?”

“I will build you into a girl whom no one can destroy. You won’t need a weapon. You’ll become one.” The King wraps his fist around my elbow, squeezing tight, cloaking us in the tendrils of his power.

“Deep breath, Briana.”

I do as I’m told, and we slip through space once more.