Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter 3

3

SIXTY-TWO HOURS

AFTER brIANA MATTHEWS DISAPPEARED

Mariah

“MY DADDY WOULD be rollin’ in his grave if he knew where we was headed right now.” Aunt Lu scowls at Valec from the back seat of his expensive SUV.

“Wudn’t he cremated?” I ask, barely holding back a smile.

“Hush, Mariah,” Lu snaps. I grin wide and settle deeper into the heated leather of the front passenger seat.

“It’s a fair question.” At the steering wheel beside me, Valec chuckles, a flash of white teeth against his brown skin in the dim cabin. There aren’t any streetlights on this back road. He glances at Aunt Lu in the rearview mirror. “You got ole Ephraim in an urn on your and Hazel’s mantel; don’t lie.”

Lu’s ready for him. “You can bite your tongue too, Valechaz.”

“Sure I can,” Valec drawls. “Right after I remind you that I was there when Ephraim was born, so I sure as hell remember where y’all put him when he died.”

“Valec,” I ask, “why’re you always reminding people you know where the bodies are buried?”

He frowns as if I’m not making sense. “Exactly because I know where the bodies are buried?”

“And cremated, apparently,” Lu murmurs.

“That too,” Valec says. He glances at Lu again. “You cold, Lucille? Take advantage of the heated seats, niece. Not like I bought ’em for me.”

“I know, I know.” Lucille pokes at the button on the rear door. It’s a rare moment when Lucille actually lets Valec treat her like he’s the elder and she’s the one who needs caring for. She grumbles at him all she likes, but he’s the only family member that she lets dote on her. She’ll never admit it, but I always notice. So does her wife, my Aunt Hazel. And, as evidenced by his wink at me after Lucille turns on her heated seat, so does Valec.

“You gonna make me hit the button, Riah? It’s your body heat droppin’, not mine.” He takes one look at me and punches the heater on my side of the car to high.

“Yeah, yeah.” I pull both hands out of my down coat’s pockets and hold them out to the vent with palms open. My fingers tremble a bit. Curling them into fists helps them feel steady, but when I open both hands again, the tremors remain. I stuff them back in my pockets.

I study Valec in the dim light of the dashboard. I haven’t seen him in a couple weeks. Not since we left my Aunt Hazel’s house in the country. Today he’s dressed in a more subdued version of his normal Crossroads Lounge attire: heather-gray slacks and a matching vest, a deep yellow-ochre dress shirt rolled up at the elbows, and slick but functional black boots. His dark curls are freshly washed and gelled. His cheeks are the same deep warm brown, his eyes a brown deeper still, and his fangs peek out from below his top lip.

To anyone from the normal human world, Valechaz looks like a nineteen-year-old boy dressed in expensive, old-school, classy attire, out for a late-night ride with some family members. Instead, he’s a two-hundred-and-five-year-old half-human, half-demon cambion driving a twenty-year-old Medium and her aura-reading Grand Dame aunt across state lines for reasons no human could follow.

Valec glances at me while I study him. “All good there, Riah?”

I look back out the front windshield. It’s a moonless night. With only Valec’s headlights to guide us, the solid white lane marking down the middle of the road feels like it could go on forever. “We’ve been on the road for six hours. I think I passed ‘all good’ two hours ago.”

“Almost there.”

“Just feels like we’re driving straight into the lion’s den, that’s all,” I say.

“Naw, these are just the cubs,” Valec murmurs. “The real lions don’t show up ’til tomorrow. We got time to get in and get out.”

“But Legendborn are still gonna be there,” I insist. “They still got three Merlins on the property. Selwyn—”

Valec nods. “The girl they got stationed up at this chapter, and—”

“That Mageguard boy who was at Volition,” Lu adds from the back. “The one they left behind when the rest ran off.”

I scowl at the mental image of the retreating Merlins and the Council members, Erebus and Cestra. Any satisfaction I had at their departure was lost in the outrage that they’d dared violate Volition in the first place. That they’d taken Bree. And even all that had been put on the back burner in place of the immediate concern for Alice’s and Sel’s unconscious bodies under our care.

“?’Course the guard ran off,” Valec mutters. “Once their superiors were gone, why stick around? Especially after the ancestors broke the earth. Cowards. Wish I’d been there to break them .”

“That many Merlins? The Mageguard?” I frown. “They mighta killed you.”

“They mighta tried , y’mean.” Valec chuckles low beside me and turns away from the road so I can see his eyes flash red. “I’m more demon than all the Mageguard combined, baby cousin.”

I roll my eyes, and he laughs. Valec and me aren’t blood related, but we are family. Technically. My second Aunt Lu’s grandparents on her momma’s side are descended from Valec’s human half-sibling… or something. I narrow my eyes at Valec and try to imagine him going up against that many Merlins at once. I’ve never seen him fight, but my Aunt Lu says he ain’t nothing to mess with in a brawl. Guess having two hundred years under your belt and being half-demon will give you an edge over even Order-trained Mageguard. He’d handed Selwyn Kane his ass once, I’ve been told. Sorta wish I’d seen that, to be honest.

“And what about…” Valec runs his tongue over his teeth. He isn’t one to hesitate over his words, ever. Valec is, in general, smooth as hot maple syrup. Even when he’s outta his depth, he’s comfortable… but the next words take a minute. By the end of that minute, I already know who he’s thinking about.

Bree.

“What about the powerhouse?” he asks.

“You know everything we know,” Lu says from the back seat. “Which ain’t much. The Merlins ambushed Volition. That Cestra woman manacled Bree, and that’s why the ancestors broke the earth—”

“I know why the ancestors did what they did, Lucille.” There’s a tic in Valec’s jaw. He understands what fueled the ancestors’ rage better than anyone. He lived through enslavement. Lived past it. He’s a walking memory, and sometimes I forget.

Lucille’s apologies are rare, but she offers one now. “Apologies, Uncle,” she says quietly. “Didn’t mean to offend.”

“Accepted,” Valec replies with a tight smile. “I understand why Volition looks like it got hit by an earthquake. What I don’t understand is what happened after. Cestra and Erebus cuffed her, their own king ?”

“Yes, but she wasn’t just Bree when they took her. It was Bree…” I pause, knowing that the Rootcrafter way would be to honor the living spirit that embodied my friend, but Arthur Pendragon is not a spirit who deserves my respect. “And Arthur.”

His brow lifts. “Bree and Arthur.”

I nod. “Possession. Total. After she let him in, she didn’t come back.”

“The Order couldn’t have exorcised her,” he says.

“No, they could not,” Aunt Lu says. “Still not sure where Arthur sent her, to be honest. Somewhere deep. Somewhere a Medium can’t bring herself back from.”

“Bree fought him,” Valec says. His voice holds something like faith. “I know she did.”

I shake my head. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see what I saw as a Medium. That spirit is old and strong ,” I say, and remember the silver curls at Bree’s temple. Arthur’s touch, with her all the time. “Arthur had already claimed her as his. Been claiming her, at every blood walk.”

“Mariah’s right. Arthur was one sonofabitch spirit.” Lucille tuts. “Still not sure how those boys got Bree back. A Legendborn Kingsmage and a Scion with no exorcism experience?”

Valec’s jaw works back and forth. “Those boys mighta helped break Arthur’s hold on Bree, wherever she was, but they didn’t bring her back. I know that, and I wudn’t even there. Don’t need the whole story to know that girl brought herself back—and them, too.” His eyes narrow as he peers out into the darkness. “Here’s our turn.”

He flips on the left-turn signal, and we ease down a single-lane paved road marked PRIVATE DRIVE . A few low security lights stand between trimmed hedges on either side of the road, but they’re only enough to illuminate the dense pine trees that rise directly above us.

“A Merlin’s ward,” Lu warns. “I can feel it.”

“Mm-hmm, and I can See it.” Valec slows to a stop and puts the car in park. He points from one side of the windshield to the other. “It’s faint, but there. Runnin’ all the way around the grounds, I bet. We’ll avoid it. Stay on the outside.”

Valec’s Sight is better than both of ours given that he’s half-demon, but Aunt Lu can feel the ward in a way I can’t. As an aura reader, she’s more sensitive to living magic. That’s what a ward or barrier is: a bit of the caster tucked into the layer of magic itself. The Volition barrier is more my territory than hers. Mediums are better with the true dead and the magic they create.

Valec checks his golden pocket watch and nods. “Almost time.” He cuts the engine. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

I scowl. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Extra coats in the back.” Valec opens the door to walk around to the back of the car, and I stubbornly hunker down in my seat and wait for him to reappear. He shows up with not only a couple of long winter coats for us to switch into but gloves and a pair of thick hats. Aunt Lu and I tug on our new attire as Valec paces out to the front of the car, listening for things we can’t hear and watching for things we can’t see.

When we come around, the crunch of our footsteps breaks the silence. Valec’s feet make no sound as he walks toward us and offers his arm to Aunt Lu. She slaps at him playfully. “I can walk on my own, thank you.”

Valec doesn’t look put out or surprised. Normally, he’d shoot back a wry comment about them both getting old, but the humor is gone from his face. As he hands us both flashlights, his eyes flicker red the way an animal’s might in the darkness. “Let me walk out front. Keep your beams pointed toward the ground no matter what.”

We do as he says. This type of environment—deep woods, pitch-black, cold as hell—is best navigated by a cambion. I don’t feel fear, exactly. Valec would protect us with extreme prejudice, but I’m not used to physical confrontations. At all. Most Mediums don’t see a lot of action, so to speak. Our powers aren’t as flashy as other branches of root. I’ve never even thrown a punch, much less fought a demon.

Not all of us are Bree Matthews.

Most Mediums don’t get to speak so directly to their own ancestors the way Bree has. We glean from them, we interpret, we imagine what they might want or need. Bree got to plead with her ancestors for aid during the revival at Volition, and it was hard not to envy her for the sustained contact. Bree’s ancestor Vera may not have given Bree the assistance with her abilities that Bree had asked for, but at least she’d given her some direction and made it clear that Bree is meant to be her family’s chosen one.

It’s not like I want to be Bree, but… sometimes, I wonder what it’d be like to not only have a plan but be the plan. Because that’s what Bree is—the end result of her ancestor’s bargain, a bloodmarked walking time bomb, the tip of the spear. Bree isn’t the thought; she’s the action. It just seems like no matter what Bree’s facing, she can barrel through it. Bree Matthews was born to be one of one. The right person at the right time to make the right choices.

The rest of us will just have to figure it out on our own. Get ready for our moment so we can move when it comes. Add the pieces up and hope they’ll fit.

“Come on,” Valec calls as he leads us into the darkness. The road is smooth beneath our feet, illuminated by the twin yellow-white cones of light from our flashlights. My ears aren’t as good as a cambion’s, but I’m listening for… something. Anything. It only takes a couple minutes before Valec pauses. “Over there.” He points and changes direction, sensing something that we can’t, because he guides us off the road and into the woods proper. Our steps are louder here, crunching on dead twigs and crackling leaves. Something about the forest throws the sound every which way—I know our footfalls belong to us, but the trees send the crashing echoes right back at me, making the forest feel fuller than it is. More dangerous.

I step on a pine cone and roll my ankle—Valec is at my side before I stumble. I didn’t even see him move. “Careful.”

I nod as he rights me, squeezing my elbow before he moves back into position at the front.

I can’t smell magic signatures the way Bree can, but I wonder if she’d be able to scent the pale golden wisps of magic that start to gather around Valec’s wrists.

I begin to ask him what’s got him gathering root when I see two glowing green lights about fifty feet away and coming closer. They are evenly spaced apart, about head height—and flickering.

My heart thuds against my ribs. “What the hell is—”

“Easy, Riah,” Valec murmurs. “He’s right where he said he’d be.”

I squint and step forward to stand at Valec’s side. Now I can hear the footsteps, steady and slow. And the flickering lights grow closer still and then flicker twice in quick succession—like a blink. As the lights come closer, I realize they’re eyes, and attached to the person we came here to meet.

“Scion Sitterson,” Valec says.

“Hello, Valechaz.” William Sitterson, the Legendborn healer boy with the gentle smile, appears out of the darkness, just barely lit by our lowered flashlights. The blazing emerald of his eyes moves over each of us. The glow is bright enough to tint his pale cheeks a faint neon green. “Mariah. Lucille. Thank you for coming.”

He nods at each of us in turn but does not extend his hand in welcome, because in his arms, cradled close to his chest, lies the sleeping form of Alice Chen.