Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter IV

IV

ELIJAH GASPS AND gags, spitting on the ground. “What is this?”

I sit up with a groan, holding my head with both hands, vision still swimming. But at least the strange magic of the barn seems to have left my system; I don’t feel like running away.

“Gahtdamnit!” A gargled shout from Zoe draws my focus. To my left, she claws at her face and tongue. She curses at me, eyes watering. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I respond. “I didn’t do a damn thing, believe me.”

“Then why does this fugging burn —”

“You have always been too eager, Zoelle.” Erebus’s voice is mild and unamused. All three of us turn to see him standing ten feet from where the twins remain on the ground, grimacing in pain. “Too impatient.”

Zoe fixes me with a glare. “Gonna tear your throat out—”

“No, you will not.” Erebus blurs between us.

“Why?” Zoe shouts. “She burned us!”

“Briana did not burn you,” Erebus corrects. “Her power did, without her control.”

I blow a rough breath from my nose as conflicting emotions rise within me. Frustration at myself for forgetting my bloodmark and begrudging gratitude for its existence.

Erebus tuts. “I never guaranteed that you could consume Briana’s power.”

Elijah groans in his sister’s direction. “Told you.”

Erebus nods, pride glimmering in his red eyes. “Good ear, Elijah.”

He plays word games, even with them, I think.

“A good ear for trickery and misdirection doesn’t make this… discomfort go away, sire.”

“No,” Erebus replies. “I had hoped your logical mind would prevent you from following your sister into a bad decision.” The King turns to me. “This is always the way with them, Briana. Zoe rushes, Elijah follows. They are driven by hungers of different stripes.”

When his brow lifts, frustration and humiliation wash over me—and I realize that he set us all up. Me and the twins. “You knew I’d fail to hide my power,” I say, climbing to my feet.

Erebus’s chin dips. “I am a teacher, Briana. I know my pupils well.”

I bristle at what feels like an audacious inclusion of me as one of his “pupils” but then shove it away. Indignation has gotten me far, but I suspect it won’t help me here, not while I am indebted to the Shadow King in more than one way. His education is what I wanted, I remind myself. This is what I bargained for.

“You knew the twins would try to consume my magic no matter what, and what would happen to them if they did.”

Zoe jumps to her feet in a blur. “Wait, what?”

“That power belongs to her, but it’s somehow connected to you, isn’t it?” Elijah guesses. He sits back on his knees and drags a hand across his mouth, head tilting in thought as he stares at Erebus.

Erebus nods. “What you experienced was her magic triggered by my bloodmark.”

“What the hell is a bloodmark?” Zoe asks. Erebus shoots her a chastising glare, and she swallows, bowing her head with gritted teeth.

“Sire?” Elijah stands, solemn expression and presence adding silent support to his sister’s question.

Even though Valechaz explained to me what a bloodmark is, I find myself eager to hear the ancient demon king’s explanation myself, straight from his mouth. While I am the ninth descendant in my maternal bloodline to bear his mark, I am the only one who ever learned that it even exists—and who applied it in the first place.

“Before demon contracts were written and signed in blood, we had bloodmarks,” Erebus explains. “A bloodmark has two purposes: it permanently binds a human to their agreed-upon debt, enforcing that they will pay when the time comes, and it marks for other demons that the bounty that human possesses is already claimed and cannot be bargained away to another. In this case, I marked Briana’s ancestor but have not yet taken my payment, so she was born with my mark, having inherited it from her maternal bloodline.”

“A simple ‘hands-off’ sign seems like it would suffice,” Elijah grumbles.

“Briana’s source of power is truly unique on this plane,” Erebus continues. “An unending furnace Bloodcrafted into her body via an unregulated bargain made between her ancestor Vera and the spirits of the dead to whom Vera pleaded for aid. Unbeknownst to Vera, I joined that open plea to stake my claim on the furnace within a future daughter in exchange for providing a measure of protection to her descendants. When someone attempts to consume Briana’s magic forcibly, my bloodmark flares her power to life, burning the thief away.”

The twins stare at me with new eyes, and the concentrated sensation of the eyes of two cambions and the Shadow King scalds my skin. Makes it crawl.

For a moment, I feel like the dead Theban girl in the museum. A prize collected by hungry hands, a valuable artifact that had once been a whole person. A girl who had once been alive, now trapped behind glass in a land and time she never could have imagined.

Zoe’s cheeks flush a deep reddish brown. “You could have just told us—”

“No.” Erebus’s eyes swivel to hers. “You, in particular, learn things the hard way, Zoelle.”

Zoe winces.

I hate that, even in my own waning discomfort, I am suddenly eager to learn more. The past half hour of running and fighting seems a minimal price for the knowledge I might gain in return. This education is valuable. Is worth a price. I need what the Legendborn and Rootcrafters couldn’t teach me. What my own ancestors could not or would not teach me. I need what Vera did not and could not know. The Shadow King is a demon who is equally incentivized to both make me stronger and prevent my death at the hands of anyone else. A demon who, I must begrudgingly admit, appears willing to teach.

Erebus surveys the twins, his gaze casting farther to include me. “Inquiries?”

Elijah raises a hand. “What would have happened if we had kept going?”

“Too vague,” Erebus corrects. “ Specificity, Elijah.”

Elijah huffs, then studies me in a way that makes my skin itch. “If Zoe and I had persisted past the painful effects of the bloodmark and continued to feed on Briana’s power, would we have died?”

Erebus answers, “Remember that order favors balance. As you both are the product of a human-and-demon union, you are balanced beings, well suited to live on this human plane. If you had managed to endure the pain of my mark and truly consume Briana’s power, that power would simply intoxicate you. Beyond that point, however, it would lead to certain death.”

“So we could have accidentally ended ourselves?” Zoe exclaims, throwing her hands up. “And you let us walk right into it? Come on , old man…!”

“I knew you’d stop, Zoelle,” Erebus adds, almost gently. I wonder again what his relationship is to these two. Why they’re with him. How they’re so familiar and, at times, casual with the king of demons.

“And what if we were full demons?” Elijah presses. “What would have happened then?”

Erebus lifts a shoulder. “A full demon strong enough to bear the searing pain of the mark would gain unimaginable power. Which is why Briana’s power must be guarded.”

I have my own question to ask. “And how about an imbalanced cambion?”

Like a Merlin, I think. Like Selwyn.

The twins exchange a puzzled glance at my interjection. Erebus pivots slowly to face me. When his eyes meet mine, I know immediately that he is thinking of Selwyn too.

“An example?” he murmurs.

He’s going to force me to ask. “What would happen to a Merlin who attempted to consume my power?”

Erebus’s mouth twitches at my omission of Sel’s name, but he answers the question anyway.

“Chaos favors imbalance, and the Order’s Merlins are mostly human. Their fate would be worse by far than the fate of a full demon or balanced cambion.”

“Worse than dying ?” Zoe exclaims in disbelief.

“There are many fates worse than death, Zoelle,” replies Erebus warmly. “Shall I list them?”

Zoe grimaces. “Nah, I’m good.”

Elijah shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

“Yes,” I say. “Tell me what’s worse than death.”

“What the hell, new girl?” Zoe hisses. She looks at me with horror while her brother studies me with sharp interest. I ignore them both.

I couldn’t say goodbye to Nick. I can’t say goodbye to Sel. I don’t know how to let go of the two people who blood walked their way into a nightmare and refused to let me go. Refused to let me fall. Root burns against the back of my teeth, fighting to get out.

Erebus and I hold a silent gaze. “You know, Briana.”

“Tell me anyway ,” I insist.

“He is gone ,” Erebus snaps in a low voice. “Better to accept this now than to pine for the impossible.”

“Who—” Elijah begins.

“Tell me how,” I say, voice tight, fists tight on my thighs. “Tell me why.”

Erebus’s eyes narrow. “If an imbalanced cambion were to wield your power, say by creating a construct with it, they’d first become intoxicated. Deeply so. Slurring, disorientation, a lowering of inhibitions.” He looks at me pointedly, and I know why.

When we were on the run, I’d invited Sel to forge my root so that we could create a barrier against Erebus together. While it burned Erebus, it didn’t burn Sel. But it did leave him aether-drunk and delirious.

“However,” Erebus continues, “simply wielding your power is nothing compared to consuming it. If a Merlin’s gradual turn toward their demon nature is a slow descent, then the absorption of your power is an accelerated, fathomless plummet. Any Merlin who feeds on your power”—he pauses, with intention—“ whomever they are , would be wholly consumed by the raw instincts of demonia. Permanently altered to feed without reason or logic. A Merlin cambion in demonia has lost their humanity forever. They will crave aether and human pain, like all demons do.”

I swallow and look away. I know that’s the Order’s version of demonia. That Sel’s humanity is allegedly gone. But I still don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.

“Briana,” Erebus continues, stepping closer as his voice drops. “Wherever he is, if he is even capable of thinking of you, Selwyn is ravenous for more than your misery. If you were to face him, you would meet a demon driven to find out not only how much pain your human body can endure before it dies, but how much pain you can endure and still live .”

“His mother descended, and she retained her humanity.”

“His mother is singular, among both Merlins and demons. A once-in-a-lifetime scholar and sorceress,” Erebus says. “What you say is possible, but she had time to plan for her descent. Her son had none.”

I wince, remembering the way Sel’s body curled away from me and Nick. I remember his inability to speak. I remember not even recognizing him. But now, a horrible new puzzle piece slides into place in my mind: that Sel continued to consume my root even through the pain caused by Erebus’s bloodmark.

“He felt the bloodmark…,” I whisper. “And he still didn’t stop trying to save me.”

“He doomed himself,” Erebus says. “He knew what would follow.”

“What’s more human than sacrifice?” I snap.

Erebus’s eyes narrow.

“What’s more human than risking what you have and what you are for someone else?” My voice breaks. When I exhale, a curl of thick, rich red root floats out of my mouth and rises into the air above me.

Zoe covers her nose just to avoid the scent of my power—and my fresh misery.

Erebus glares at me. “Enough,” he says, voice like venom. “Leave us.”

“Why?” Zoe asks. Both twins turn to him with wide eyes.

“Your lesson is complete, and I won’t repeat myself,” says Erebus. “I need to speak with Briana alone.”

The twins exchange a glance and come to some understanding, then turn together and drift back through the woods toward the house, their silent cambion feet leaving no sound to follow.