Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter 13

13

TWO MONTHS

AFTER SELWYN KANE APPEARED

Natasia

AUDIO LOG—ENTRY #32

The original Merlin, a balanced cambion born from an incubus-and-human union, was also a demonologist and scholar. By all accounts, he was gifted with a keen sense of curiosity and a drive to enrich and enhance his natural abilities.

Over Merlin’s long lifetime, he gained for himself three sorcerer abilities that did not seem to exist in other cambions of that era, those being the abilities to create constructs, cast mesmers, and deepen his natural affinities for aether.

Merlin was able to teach his human mage apprentice, the young Morgaine and half sister of Arthur, how to create constructs, but the other two abilities seemed beyond her reach and tied to his demonic heritage. While it is said that Morgaine could not wield all three abilities, Merlin’s children could . And so he created his own version of the Legendborn Spell of Eternity to enshrine these abilities into his descendants’ bloodlines, creating thousands of Merlins since who are born sorcerers, including myself and my son.

As imbalanced cambions with only slivers of demonic heritage, the descendants of Merlin appear human until we reach the age of seven and grow increasingly richer in our demonic traits as we grow older. Our strength and speed manifest first, alongside our heightened senses. Our connection to aether, what some call “aether sense,” grows deeper with every year, just as every year our humanity seemingly slips away.

In addition to embedding his three unique sorcerer abilities within his version of the Spell, Merlin embedded what he believed was a therapeutic measure for his descendants—the practice of magical Oaths.

When we Merlins administer and act in service to our Oaths to the Order, it slows our inevitable descents into demonia. The Oaths tie us to humanity on a cellular level, which counteracts our increasingly otherworldly natures. As long as we are in service, we are in control, but demonia, or “succumbing to the blood,” as the Order calls it, is still expected to be every Merlin’s eventual fate.

In my research, I have found that while it is true that the hierarchy of needs of an imbalanced cambion shifts toward baser demonic instincts—the hunger for negative human emotions, such as anger, fear, remorse, et cetera—I do not believe this so-called descent is inevitable.

Over the centuries, the Order has applied a layer of what I might call religious moral values to the progressive stages of an imbalanced cambion’s “demonic” development. This externally applied ideology has made Merlin’s descendants mutual participants in their own Oathings—and in their own eventual incarceration. We may progress in a way that the Order does not deem suitable, and certainly we may progress in a way that could harm the human beings around us if we are not properly supported, but what if we cast this progression as a naturally occurring development rather than a “succumbing”? What if “succumbing” is the language of those who most benefit from our ignorance about our own natures? I posit that even the term “demonic” is value neutral. I do not believe an overabundance of desires, impulses, and hungers is inherently immoral, but I do believe those drives do not fit the Order’s grand design.

When studying balanced cambions, those beings born directly from concubi-human unions, what I have found most evident is that the more they embrace their demon natures, the more they eventually and truly exhibit the “balance” for which they are named.

Using Faye Matthews’s generously shared knowledge of herbs and plants, I was eventually able to devise an experiment to prove my theory over many years of study and research. The result of this experiment was a… treatment? No. No, that’s not the right word. That’s what the Order would use to pathologize us. My experiment was… [A groan.] An intervention? Yes. An intervention. One that was successfully self-administered amid my own so-called descent, and it has allowed me to maintain my humanity and my demonic strengths well into my fourth decade.

However… when I attempt these same applications with my son, Selwyn… I… [Clears throat.] I have found that when I attempt to assist my son —

“It doesn’t fucking work.”

I release the button of my recorder, dropping it, and turn to Selwyn in a blur.

He sits on his bed in the back bedroom of my cabin, leaning against the wall in the darkness. It is past three a.m. “Selwyn, I… I’m sorry, I thought you were resting.”

His eyes blink back at me from across the building, two red orbs glowing in the shadows. He does not respond. That, I expect. What surprises me most, and what has left me in shock now, is that he spoke at all.

I frown. “Is that really the first thing you say to me in two months? ‘It doesn’t fucking work’?”

The cabin is pitch-black. We can both see in the darkness, so I know he knows that I can see the glint of his fangs. A sardonic, sour grin in the night.

“Back to not talking?” I ask.

He slides down farther on his bed.

He has been drinking the herbal tonics after I explain what they are and what they should do. He seems emotionally stabilized by them, but his physical condition remains the same. The tonics should have reversed some of his hungers and their accompanying physical transformations so that we can attempt the next steps together. So that he can think as clearly as he needs to in order to make informed decisions about how to proceed.

But the tonics are not working—and his hungers and physical changes only continue to become more severe. It does not matter how much I feed him now; if his system wants to consume human pain instead, his body will continue to adapt to make that more possible. Soon, human food will not be enough.

He’ll get stronger. He’ll get faster. He’ll be able to scent human misery from a distance—and manipulate a human in order to make their emotions worse. I am fortunate that so far, he hasn’t seemed interested in leaving the house.

I’ve warded the perimeter so that no one can find us here, but not warded it to prevent his escape. I won’t do that unless he proves to me that he needs to be restricted for his own safety—or for the safety of others. And even then… I hesitate.

I have been imprisoned. I do not wish to imprison my own son.

“I thought at first that speaking was painful, or that you’d been injured in some way,” I say. “I was worried that Erebus had hurt you. Then I realized you were choosing silence.”

His voice comes to me through the darkness, dry and bored. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

I sigh. My eyes trail over the makeshift lab I have created in my dining room. “The tonics are not working yet, but that does not mean the Regents are right about us.”

Sel stares, unmoved.

“If you heard me earlier, then you know I do not believe what the Regents believe. What Erebus believes.” I pause, frowning. “Do you?”

This time, my son’s silence is its own answer.

“You may think yourself to be the proof of their knowledge, but you are also proof of my negligence. I should have taught you what I suspected long before I left.”

“I was five years old when they told me my mother died,” Selwyn states, his voice a crackle of electric anger. “I grew up thinking you were killed on a mission. I thought you were dead. ”

My throat constricts. I knew this, but hearing it from him is another thing entirely. “I’m sorry. Your pain must have been… immense.”

“And my father was so foolishly, hopelessly, stubbornly in love with you that he decided to get remarried—to his own grief.”

I knew this, too, and it makes my heart clench. “He is a good man, and he deserves help.”

“Did you know that at the academy I was proud that you had fallen in battle? That you had gone out fighting like some legendary warrior?” He huffs sourly. “But that was a lie, and I was a gullible little boy soldier.”

“If I had told you more, taught you more—”

He scoffs. “Stop wishing for an imaginary son. He is not here. I am.”

“I know that—”

“Maybe this imaginary son who knew how to resist his demonia—”

“Your demonia is not a failing to surpass—”

“Maybe the son who could resist his demonia is the son you didn’t leave behind!” Selwyn snaps. “As it is, it is your absence that I have learned to overcome, Mother. You left. My demon didn’t.”

We stare at each other for a long, painful moment.

“You’re right, Selwyn,” I whisper. “I wasn’t there for you, in many ways. But I am here now. You’re right that my tonics aren’t working as I’d hoped. But I am a sample of one. How things progressed for me is not necessarily how they will progress for you.”

He stands in a blur of movement and is at the living room entrance in a second. His eyes narrow on my face, and if I were a different person, I might be frightened by his cold, stony glare. “Is that based on science or a wish?”

I’m the one who taught him that look in the first place, so it doesn’t work at all.

“I have been doing other research, you know,” I say idly, gesturing with my chin over to my desk and piles of papers and notes. “During the day, when I go out, I have been working the contacts in my… less savory networks to learn as much as I can about Martin Davis’s death and the circumstances of your separation from Nicholas. If you’re up to talking, perhaps you can fill me in? That might help me understand exactly what occurred to your Kingsmage Oath, how it happened, when it happened. It would be helpful to know if there are other variables at play here.”

He leans against the doorjamb and waves his hand in an invitational half circle, as if to say, Tell me what you’ve learned .

I resent how much of my attitude this boy has inherited. Was I this arrogant?

I answer him anyway. “Well, I have learned that in my…” In my grief. That’s what I want to say. In my terrible, harrowing, haunting grief for my friend, who I have missed so much of the last seven months.

I think of Faye. Her accident. The hospital. And then, her daughter. Young, in shock, and so very lost.

The last thing I want is for Faye’s daughter to be caught up in the Order’s interminable, vicious, ruthless war.

Selwyn clears his throat—shaking me from my thoughts.

“S-sorry,” I stammer, frowning, “just lost my train of thought. What was I saying? Oh… I… um, as I have gone digging, I realized that I have missed much in the last seven months. I felt Martin’s death but assumed that it was either by natural causes or because he had finally found a way to earn the valor he so desperately wanted. I had no idea that he had kidnapped his own son, that the Lines had been called, that Nicholas pulled Excalibur—”

“Nicholas did not pull Excalibur from its stone.”

I blink up at him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

He sighs, turning against the doorjamb to rest the top of his spine against it. He leans back, head against the wood, eyes closed. He snaps his green aether into existence in his palm, clawing the magic, feeling its shape, then releasing it.

“Selwyn—”

“Nicholas was never in line to be king,” he mutters without looking at me. “And neither was his father.”

I shake my head. “No, that’s… that’s not possible—”

One of his glowing red eyes peeks open. “We were, both of us, bonded to impostors. Unwitting impostors, but impostors all the same. And we’ve both suffered for their lies. Like mother, like son.” He shifts, heading back to his room and away from our conversation.

“Wait!” I say, stepping forward. Resisting the urge to grab my son’s shoulder, twist him around, demand more. “Who… who is the Scion of Arthur, then, if it’s not Nick?”

He pauses. Turns his head over his shoulder, just far enough that I see the slow elongation of his mouth exposing a single fang to my view. It is a quiet, knowing gesture. One meant to mock and taunt me for what I do not know. For what I’ve missed.

But my son’s smile stops my indignation short and steals the breath from my lungs, because it is not a smile I thought I would ever see on his face.

It is the smile of a starving dreamer, savoring an image he will not share.

It is the smile of a hunter, imagining his prey.

The taunting grin of a prowling demon who doesn’t care for the kill, but craves the pursuit.

Does the very thought of this Scion of Arthur, this innocent person Called into our world’s most powerful title, elicit such a… hungry response in him?

I find myself suddenly worried about this individual and what my son wishes to do with them once they are reunited. Does he want to serve them, protect them, worship them… or devour them whole?

Without another word, Selwyn turns and walks into his room, slamming the door shut behind him.