Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter VI

VI

I WAKE UP in a strange room, on a strange bed, with my cheek pressed into a faded gray comforter.

Somehow, a day has passed since my first training session with Erebus. The last thing I remember was facing him alone, and the darkness that followed.

Early morning sun casts itself through a pair of black-framed, stained-glass arches directly in my line of sight. Through my half-opened eyes, the multicolored panes seem to wink and shimmer.

I roll over with a groan. The room around me is plain and small. Wide-planked wooden floors. White plastered walls with a couple of framed landscape paintings. A small antique writing desk sits in a corner with a heavy, gilded mirror leaning against the wall beside it. A rug beneath the bed in tight red and gold and green patterns. A pocket door leading to what looks like a tiny closet. The twin four-poster bed beneath me takes up the entire wall opposite the dark wooden door. I could cross the entire room in six steps, tops. It is the most guest bedroom-y guest bedroom I’ve ever seen.

The twisting, tugging sensation of hunger clears my head some and heightens my awareness of my body. I wiggle my toes in my socks and feel that my boots are gone. I can tell by the way the fabric digs into my hips that I am still in the same borrowed jeans I put on when I left Northern. Just like I’m still in my borrowed T-shirt. The clothes that…

I blink.

The clothes that…

Blink again.

The clothes… someone … gave me.

I shove up on my elbows, brows drawn tight as I stare at the pillow, searching my memories. Someone gave me these clothes—I’m sure of it—but I don’t know their name.

My stomach growls, but my hunger is accompanied by something heavy and unsettling.

I shuffle into the tiny attached bathroom, only big enough to fit a toilet and a small sink, and relieve myself while I put my thoughts in order.

As I make my way back to the bed and lie down, my mind is clear, and my thoughts feel ordered, and yet I still can’t think of the name of the person whose clothes I’m wearing. But I used to know their name, I’m sure of it. I knew it yesterday, but today… don’t.

Alarm and unease rattle through me now, growing stronger with every breath as I search my memory. Where that someone, that person, lives in my mind is simply a shapeless gray mass bathed in mist. No name. No face. No body. No distinguishing features. I don’t know their personality, their smile, or how we know each other.

It’s like they never existed.

No. There’s… something.

When I think of them, I feel a single clear emotion: gratitude.

That makes sense; if this person gave me clothing to wear, they must be a friend. And if they gave me these clothes recently, before I left Northern, then they must be Legendborn.

But everything else about them is gray mist and shadows.

I mentally walk through yesterday again, retracing my steps. I woke up. I put on these borrowed clothes. I went to the hill at Northern. I burned my ancestral stream, restored Excalibur, called for Erebus. I bargained with him. He took someone away—

Wait. Who was that someone?

When I focus my inner eye toward this second person, I come up blank again. Like everything I know about them has been removed from my mind.

They are a gray, identity-less figure.

No. There’s more. Even if I couldn’t identify this second person in a lineup, an emotion rises within me at the thought of them. I squeeze my eyes shut, reaching for it, then I feel it: guilt. An immense, immeasurable, consuming guilt.

Beyond that, I don’t know anything more about them.

What happened after Erebus took that person away?

There was a third person who ran after me just before we left. They were chasing me, trying to stop me from leaving.

Again, no details. Gray mist and shadows. And again, there’s a single emotion. It is muted loss and deep pain, together. It is… longing.

If this third person was running to keep me from leaving, then they must have wanted me to stay. I longed for this person… and yet I ran from them?

Confusion floods me.

I think frantically about anyone else, other friends and other people I know, but everywhere I look in my old life, there are blanks. Gray, misty faces and bodies. Nameless companions and friends and even enemies. All gone.

If there are emotions attached to these people, I can’t immediately locate them. Not when my heart is starting to race with apprehension and worry.

Let’s start with the basics.

I remember my mother. All of her. Every moment and detail. I see her clearly. Feel dozens of emotions over time, all attached to her.

My heart stretches toward hope—but when I think of my father, there is another blank.

I know the last time I saw him we were at Waffle House. The emotion I feel about him? Regret.

Dread pools in my belly. People can’t just be wiped off the board and erased from my history, can they? Not without… magic.

Like a mesmer.

Erebus mesmered me.

I groan and sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Of course. How could I be so gullible? So silly to think that he’d actually help me, when all he’s really done is take my sword, remind me that I am in his debt for an indeterminate amount of time, let his cambion wards attack me, and now manipulate my memories?

There’s a deep bruise on my knee from when I fell at the museum. I press my fingers into it—hard. The pain lights up my senses and makes my eyes water. I wait for the familiar burning away of a mesmer cloaking my mind—but it never comes.

I press the bruise again, even harder, apologizing silently to my battered body—but it doesn’t work.

The apprehension in my chest blooms to full-blown panic.

“Erebus!”

I storm through the house—every room is empty. Then, I’m back outside, running toward the field by the barn.

When I reach the field, Erebus is manipulating two green-silver hellhounds against the twins. They are each fighting one, dodging and rolling to avoid the quick attacks of his large constructs.

“What the hell did you do to me?” I shout.

Erebus’s eyes widen, and he tilts his head. His constructs fade. “What are you experiencing?”

The question takes me aback. “Your mesmer?” I say. “Obviously.”

“Answer the question.” His eyes glance back and forth between mine, as if digging into my mind. “Tell me what you are experiencing .”

I spread my hands wide. “I’m missing people! Missing my friends!”

He waits. Watches. Does not repeat himself again.

“Did you hit your head, new girl?” Zoe asks. Her eyes flick to the barn. “Against the barrier?”

“No, I didn’t hit my head,” I snap. “He took them away! I don’t know, or don’t remember them.”

Elijah steps closer, watching us warily but still giving us a wide berth. “Your memories are gone, or your friends are gone?” I shoot him a glare, but he only shrugs. “Just asking. For clarification.”

“My friends are gone,” I say with a huff.

“Entirely?” Elijah asks. “You still know they’re your friends, so obviously—”

“No, not entirely!” I shout. “But they’re just… blanks in my head. I don’t know anyone I used to know. Can’t see names or faces.”

“Fascinating,” Erebus says mildly. “Does this affect only your friends?”

“Stop pretending you don’t know what you did,” I say, pacing away. “I should have known—”

“Be explicit,” Erebus says. “Tell me more.”

“You did something to them!” I whirl back. “That’s it, isn’t it? You did something to my friends. You did something to my dad.”

Erebus sighs, shoving both hands in his pockets. “I did nothing to your friends and father. They are all as you left them. Where you left them. In whatever state you left them.”

I don’t miss the emphasis on those words. “I thought you couldn’t hurt me—”

“Through my fulfillment of my bargain with Vera, I can’t physically harm you by my own hand, it’s true,” he replies. “And I did not do so here.”

“So, you did do something,” I accuse. “Some sort of… super mesmer?”

“There’s no such thing as a ‘super mesmer,’?” Elijah interjects, rolling his eyes.

I whirl on him, and he puts his hands up, stepping back. I glare at Erebus. “I can break a mesmer, you know.”

“You can break a mesmer?” Zoe asks.

“She can. If it was a mesmer, she could break it,” Erebus says. “But you have already tried that and failed, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I admit.

“I did not manipulate your mind,” he says. “I gave you what you needed to meet your own objectives. The loss of your ‘memories’ of other people, if that is indeed what you’re experiencing, is unexpected—even to me.”

That worries me. Erebus did something, gave me something, but didn’t anticipate this result? I swallow. “Whatever you did, reverse it .”

His hands spread wide. “I cannot.” We hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, and I haltingly, frustratingly, almost believe him.

“Then tell me how to reverse it.”

“You cannot either.”

I feel my heart racing beneath my rib cage. Anger turns to panic under my skin, in my lungs. “Well, who can?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No one can.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“He doesn’t lie,” Zoe says confidently. “Not to us.”

“How would you know?” I pace, filled with the sudden urge to hit something. To strike out. To tear and to rip. “You don’t know how much he lies. How much his entire life is a lie.”

“Watch your mouth, new girl!” Elijah steps forward.

I sneer at him. “You really think I care to watch my mouth right now?”

“Zoe is not wrong,” Erebus says calmly. I turn back at that and see him glance at both Zoe and Elijah in turn. “I will offer you the same agreement that I have offered the twins. In your time with me, however long that lasts, while I will not always tell you all that I know—and I know that neither will you—if you ask me a question, what I do say will be the truth.”

“Lies of omission are still lies,” I say.

“I won’t argue with that,” he replies evenly. “But what are your other options?”

“Go back to—”

“Go back where?” he asks, eyes glinting. “And to whom?”

I hesitate.

“If you remained as you were yesterday,” Erebus says, “that question would have resulted in a stream of your magic spilling out, unbidden.”

I open my mouth. Close it. He’s right. “But—”

“Now that your emotions are not muddying the waters of control, let us see what you can do.” He raises his hand, thumb and forefinger poised together. “Step back, Zoe and Elijah.”

The twins take a large step back in unison on either side of us, out of the pounded earth and gravel and into the scraggly weeds at the edge of the field.

Erebus snaps his fingers, and the world turns dark.

Overhead, a black aether dome bleeds around us, curving into the earth until we are trapped within a massive glass marble.

At first, the inside of Erebus’s barrier is silent. Then, a hot wind picks up, as if we are in an open desert at midday instead of a barrier made of night. “What is this?”

“What all aether workings are.” The voice that reaches me feels as though it is being whispered at the curve of my ear. I shudder away, but Erebus is fifteen feet in front of me—and his mouth has not moved. “My intention, made manifest.” Sweat drips down my spine. A flash of silver lightning streaks across the false sky, white and blinding. “The twins cannot see or hear us. We can speak plainly.”

“Then speak plainly,” I shoot back. “Tell me what is happening to me, or I’m leaving.”

“Even if you were not in my debt, you don’t know the people you left behind. If you return to them, how do you think they will feel when you suddenly reappear and don’t know a single thing about them? When you know everything about yourself and your own history? When you remember the Christmas gift you received when you were nine and the grade you earned in your English class months ago and your last very good meal? How do you think they’ll feel when you remember everything about yourself, but not them?”

My jaw tenses. I don’t know how he knows, but he’s right; I know all of those things.

“You said it yourself,” Erebus begins, musing aloud, “you are missing people. To you, they have been erased. But to them , would it not appear as though you simply… forgot them?”

My body grows chilled. “I didn’t—I would never forget them—”

“Do they know that? You did, after all, volunteer to leave them,” he says idly. “Is it not possible that your friends and family might feel as though they weren’t important enough details in your life for you to hold on to?”

“Stop,” I say. “They’ll understand when I tell them what happened.”

Erebus continues as if I’d never spoken. “What will happen when you don’t recognize your own father’s face? Or recognize the boy you last kissed? Or know the name of the best friend you sent into a coma?”

My father, missing from my reality.

The boy I last kissed? Missing.

The best friend that I sent into a coma—abruptly, the last moment I shared with this nameless girl returns. She was lying in a bed, weakened, breathing magic. Then an emotion rises: worry. So, so much worry.

“I—”

“What of the Merlin boy who sacrificed his humanity to save you?” Erebus prompts, voice quiet and curious—and knowing. “And whom you then sent away?”

I suck in a breath. I remember that someone sacrificed themselves to save me. That person was a Merlin boy? And he was the person I sent away at Northern?

Guilt still rises within me when I think of the boy, but with this added information from Erebus, guilt not only rises but it takes me over in a crushing wave. So deep, it could swallow me into its ocean. So heavy, it threatens to drag me beneath its depths and never let me go. The type of guilt that claws at my heart from the inside out, threatening to shred it open.

“What of the boy you ran from who only wanted to keep you safe and close?”

The boy I ran from, the boy I longed for, wanted me safe… wanted me close. The confusion there is enough to choke my voice away.

Gratitude. Longing. Regret. Worry. Guilt.

What can I possibly do with these remnants? What can I possibly expect to take back to those five people who elicit these emotions, much less anyone else in my life? If I returned, why would they accept me back at all?

Especially when I look at them as though they are strangers?

“Some oaths, Briana,” Erebus murmurs, “we make to ourselves. And to no one else.”

As he speaks, the emotions that felt unmanageable begin to recede. A thunderstorm waning. A wave pulling back out to the sea. I can breathe again. “What is happening to me?”

“Do you know what oaths you have made to yourself? What commitments you have made, in the silent parts of your being?” Erebus continues speaking. “Have you ever been asked, by anyone? I know it cannot be to win a war that doesn’t belong to you or to defeat Arthur Pendragon’s ghost. Is it revenge?”

“No… I…”

“The Order has taken so much from you, girl.” Erebus steps closer. “From you, your mother, your maternal line. Arthur himself took you over without your consent, spoke through you, fought through you, destroyed through you. Is revenge so difficult to imagine?”

“No, but—”

“But?”

“I told you what I wanted to become.”

He nods. “Indeed you did. You want your power and your pain to belong to you. That is your intention. And so our lessons continue. Forge a construct.”

I sputter. “You know I can’t—”

“Forge a construct.” He raises a hand overhead, fingers like claws to the sky, like his crown—demanding the very stars down to his fingertips. “I will strike you with my power in ten seconds unless you can create a construct to stop me.”

I stumble back, eyes above, where the darkened sky has started to churn into swirling black clouds. “No, stop!”

“Aim your intention outward!”

Panicked, I reach for my root—and my fists ignite. Not red but a deep, dark purple.

“Make your mind a void!”

Lightning gathers, splitting the sky—

“Channel an intention into a single word. A single desire!”

His lightning cracks down, aimed right at my skull— I find a word. Utter it like a weapon.

“Protect!”

The lightning lands like a bomb. My ears pop. Dust and stone blast up from my feet, clogging my nose and mouth. I am nearly blown to my knees, but I fasten my feet to the ground, bracing for impact… but it never comes.

“Open your eyes, Briana.”

My eyes open to slivers.

I expect destruction, but the world has gone quiet. Gone still. And I am standing in the center of a crackling, glowing purple sphere embedded a foot deep into the ground—and fed by the power at my fists.

This sphere is not an accident, not a hastily cast shield, a roar of root from my mouth, or a burst of flames from my hands, but a perfectly constructed dome.

The bomb wasn’t the King’s lightning. The bomb was… me. My barrier, erupting into place to protect me. He didn’t break me.

I broke the earth.

Erebus’s own casting, the dark marble, is already fading. It is nothing but crystallized pieces, sparking down to the earth around us. The twins stand beneath the shower, jaws dropped and eyes wide.

A laugh bubbles up from my throat.

I let it out. Let myself hear my own adrenaline-fueled wonder.

I meet Erebus’s burning crimson eyes through my glowing shield. “Congratulations are in order.”

“For passing your lesson?”

“Not my lesson. Yours,” he murmurs. “You became untouchable.”

Erebus and I, the Shadow King and the former Crown Scion of Arthur, face each other through a shield of magic made possible only through our collaboration. Through my decisions and his own.

I gave you what you needed to meet your own objectives.

I have no words… but I grant him a nod.

He looks up. “One word to take it down.”

I consider, then speak. “Collapse.”

My barrier falls.

As my very first construct fades away, it reveals the barn, the winter trees, and the late-morning sky overhead, all in utter clarity.

My new mentor crosses his arms over his chest. “Now,” he says, “we are ready to begin.”