Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle #3)

Chapter 18

18

EREBUS RETURNS EARLY the next morning as the three of us are in the kitchen, hunched sleepily over our respective breakfasts.

He materializes in the foyer, out of sight, but we can hear his arrival. The small pop of air molecules being shoved aside by atoms suddenly filling the space, the whoosh and crackle of shadow magic surrounding his body. After months in this house, I can easily imagine the way he materializes out of the smoke. Often, he is already moving, wisps of gray and black trailing behind him as he departs one location and arrives at another.

The twins scramble up from their barstools to greet him. I don’t bother. I hear his voice, distant before it gets far: “Back to your food.” They return to their seats without a word.

I don’t miss Elijah’s eyes flashing crimson when they pass over me, sparking against my skin. He glances down at my uninterrupted meal of toast and a fried egg over medium as I cut into my yolk. I know he and Zoe resent that Erebus doesn’t require me to stand or bow in his presence the way he expects the twins to. Elijah had asked about it within days of my arrival, and neither Erebus nor I gave him an explanation. Erebus simply told Elijah that it “was not his concern.” After our adventure at the Rat last night, however, I find myself feeling chagrin.

I send Elijah an apologetic glance, and he sighs, nodding back. Apology accepted, I hope.

I glimpse Erebus’s profile as he passes the kitchen archway and goes upstairs. Even in that quick passage, I try to catalog as much as I can about his movement, his general countenance. Gauge if he is well-rested or fatigued.

These slight shifts in his demeanor are the only details that suggest weakness in the most powerful demon in the world, and today, they are details that I cling to.

I have learned that shadow traveling is an energetically expensive ability and one that only he can do. And yet rarely does Erebus appear out of a shadow walk looking weakened. Today, there’s light discoloration beneath his eyes. Skin drawn too tight over high cheekbones and chapped lips. Beneath his long coat, his shoulders are carried high and tense, and I’m reminded of a wild predator with haunches raised. He is run-down, then. Low on energy.

Hungry.

I grip my spoon tightly enough that it bends.

“Whoa, can you stop destroying the utensils?” Zoe’s voice interrupts my thinking, and I blink up at her.

“What?” She points down at the spoon in my hand, bent backward into a U shape. “Oh. Sorry.” I try to bend it back, but the dip in the middle seems here to stay. I’m usually better about my strength, but I must’ve gotten carried away.

“Uh-huh.” Zoe moves to the sink to rinse out her cereal bowl. As she rinses her dish, I fall into another swirl of thoughts about my mentor.

The Shadow King seems to have no equal. He is his own kind of greater demon, maybe the oldest, and possesses abilities I didn’t think possible. And yet he is not invulnerable. I don’t know how much he consumes of either humanity or aether, but it must be a great amount for him to continue as he is.

The greater the demon, the greater the hunger, Elijah said.

I consider, for a brief moment, whether there is a way I could give my power to him so that he stops going after the Rootcrafters… but dismiss that fairly quickly. He has never once consumed my power in our time together or seemed interested in trying. He says he won’t do that until I am at my strongest.

I move to clean my own dish, and Zoe shifts to the side at the sink. My mind is turning over everything I know again and again, searching for a way to stop him from feeding. And then, a way to rescue the girl I saw, who may or may not be his next victim.

The plate snaps in half in my hands.

“Oh,” I mumble.

“That one’s a goner.” Zoe takes the broken pieces out of my hands and drops them into the trash.

“Briana!” Erebus calls from another room.

By the time I walk slowly to the kitchen entrance, Erebus has already descended the steps. He stands in the living room, rising wisps of anger radiating from his shoulders, telegraphing his mood.

After the initial shock of Erebus’s sharp baritone, my body responds just as I’ve trained it to when in the presence of my mentor, my bloodmark holder, and my fellow king: with even breaths. I will my heart to slow from its racing pace. I imagine the rushing blood in my veins turning sluggish. Slow belly breath out, pushing down all the adrenaline and jitters, because I have nothing to fear.

I have had to adapt. Although Erebus has not fed on my negative emotions, he can detect them the way a hungry animal can smell a warm meal nearby. He knows when I am upset, and I have learned to bury those emotions down deep in his presence, lest they betray me.

It doesn’t matter what Erebus does or how many masks he wears; he is an ancient demon of near-limitless power—and like every other full-blooded demon, it is not in his nature to be generous, kind, or humane. Closing myself off has helped me survive.

“Yes, Erebus?” I ask as I enter the room.

It doesn’t matter that I’ve lived in his home for months. It doesn’t matter that I’ve seen him eat like a human being, rest like a human being, even drive a car like a human being. I remind myself every day that a well-decorated, comfortable home is part of his mask. Wearing finely tailored clothing is part of his mask. Even his niceties are part of his mask.

He holds out his arm. An invitation that I, as always, have no choice but to accept.

It surprises me that he shadow walks us both to our training location, but then I realize that it’s not the usual spaces: his wooded backyard or the basement beneath his home. Today, we stand before a clearing where a single gray warehouse sits in the middle of a gravel driveway.

“We are just outside of town.” Erebus answers my unspoken question.

Without needing to ask me to follow, he begins walking toward the warehouse. “The original Erebus’s family, the Varelians, own this property. There’s no one around, but as your magic can be quite bright and potent, it will be better to fight inside the training center.”

“You were Erebus yesterday,” I comment.

A few steps ahead of me, he pauses and turns, waiting for me to catch up. “Yes.”

I pull a hair tie out of my back pocket and begin to twist my twin braids into a bun, away from my neck. Not for the first time since I’ve come to live at Erebus’s home, I consider what his time with the Regents must be like. The Order stripped him of his every power fifteen hundred years ago. Brought him low. And the Morgaines, who were part of the Order before they themselves were exiled, ensured that he could not even begin to claw his way back to the power he once held. I know from experience that demon and cambion natures are passionate—and sometimes temperamental and violent. How can he sit at Cestra’s side while actively plotting her downfall? How can he uphold the Order’s mission, knowing all the while that it is his mission to destroy it—forever? The depths of his ancient patience and simmering rage are difficult for me to fathom, or maybe I just don’t want to.

Erebus tilts his head curiously at my thoughtful silence. “Really? No questions? No request for details about my time with the Council or Legendborn?”

I finish tying up my hair. “You don’t answer any questions about my life from before.”

He dips his head. “This is true. And yet I am left to wonder if you are not asking because you know I won’t answer, or if you are not asking because you are no longer curious.”

“What’s the difference?”

His eyes narrow slightly, and his lips draw back in slight displeasure and impatience, as if I am a student who has disappointed him. “The difference is you , Briana. And what you want. Are you no longer curious about your past?”

I think of the girl’s face beneath the bathroom stall door. Her eyes widened with fear, then narrowed with determination when she ordered me not to follow. I can still call up the stench of her captor and the sparkling triumph in his eyes as she went willingly with him. Is she held somewhere, now, at knifepoint until Erebus leaves to consume the root flowing through her?

“Not particularly,” I say, and feel the truth of it in my bones.

His deep red irises seem to bore a hole through my face.

“I see.” He pauses. “But you are curious about something else.”

No reason to lie. “Are you hunting Rootcrafters?”

If he is surprised by the question, he doesn’t show it. “Not currently.”

“Have you fed from them?”

“You know I have.”

I grind my teeth. “Recently?”

“No.”

“Would you hire a warlock to hunt them down for you?”

At this, his mouth twists. “No. I have not, nor will I ever, hire pact magic mercenaries to do what I could easily do myself, and have done since before humanity invented the wheel .”

“Tell me how you really feel,” I say dryly.

“Warlocks are an abomination and a stain on the worldly activities of demonkind.”

I huff. “I didn’t mean that literally.”

“Then I hope my answers suffice,” Erebus says as he walks away.

I don’t know if I can believe him. I never know. But I follow him anyway.

The wind whips around us, sending the long-faded leaves of oaks and maples swirling in circles among the remnants of hay in front of the warehouse. The building itself seems well taken care of, and the painted exterior is a dark charcoal. Too fresh to have been left to bleach and crack in the dry winter sun.

I wonder if the Varelian family still cares for this place, or if Erebus himself pays to have staff tend to it to keep up appearances.

Again, he seems to read my mind. “The Varelians are all long gone now, but their funds help keep the place running. I have taken young Merlins from the academy here from time to time, for a change in scenery and cooler weather when the Asheville summers grow too hot for their comfort.”

My hip tingles with the memory of heated fingers pressed against my skin through a borrowed dress. Scorching palms beneath my thighs, bark scraping my spine, lips hot and burning. “Because Merlin bodies run hot,” I reply automatically.

“Hm.” Erebus turns to me, eyes sharp. “And how would you know that? What Merlin bodies have you had such close contact with that you know of their core temperature?”

I blink. Those hands, those fingers… the trails of heat… they were from a Merlin. A flush seeps through my neck and cheeks.

When I don’t respond, Erebus rolls his eyes and shudders. “Teenagers are the same in every era of time. Unrelentingly driven by their hormones and libidos. I don’t need to be told what happened in order to infer it.”

I scowl. “I’m not talking to you about my hormones or any… happenings.”

“I have trained teenaged Merlins for long enough not to want to ask you about any happenings either,” Erebus says with a groan. “But I can’t help wondering: What exactly were you thinking with him, Briana? Truly, you can do better. He was a waste of talent.”

I don’t have to know this boy to hear the cruelty of Erebus’s words. “Don’t say that about him. About anyone.”

“If you prefer.”

Then, it’s my turn to stop. “Are you saying I was with the Merlin boy?”

“To my torment, yes,” Erebus mutters, distaste evident in his deep red irises. “You were entangled with the very same reckless, arrogant Merlin boy who sacrificed himself for you.” He pauses as if considering, then releases a new detail that he has not yet shared. “He was a Kingsmage.”

My throat sticks. He was a Kingsmage. “I didn’t know that.…”

“And what does that knowledge change?”

I exhale sharply. “Now I know he was a guardian as well as my friend, as well as—” I gaze around the winter landscape, heart speeding up. “He was important. To more than just me.”

“And now he is gone,” Erebus states. “Sent away to his mother, to suffer.”

I feel as though I’ve been physically struck. The guilt comes in new waves, reaches deeper and wider. The Merlin boy was a Kingsmage, which means he is missed in more ways than one. Not just by me or his friends or the Scion of Arthur he was mistakenly bonded to, but from his own duties. From himself. Just like I’ve gone missing from myself .

And I was a part of that.

Sent away to his mother, to suffer.

But there are other things I know: I know the Order can be wrong, and I know their own knowledge is incomplete. I know there was a Kingsmage who somehow retained their humanity against all odds and in secret. Which means there’s a very good chance that this boy isn’t missing forever.

That he’s not really gone—just absent.

He was a Kingsmage. Erebus has told me too much. Words meant to amplify my guilt have found a way to transform it. Hope sparks inside the wave, a tiny beacon of defiance.

Erebus mistakes my silence for sorrow.

“In your own words, you left the Order because they asked far too much of you. They wanted your suffering. Their demands of you were unfair for a teenage girl, a grieving girl.” He sighs, long and deep. “I do not wish to bring up topics that pain you.”

“Then why do you?”

“Because I want you at your strongest.” His face betrays nothing.

I eye his placid face, his dark, fathomless eyes. “Why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything you say?”

“You have asked me this many times,” he replies. “And I will say again, I will not lie if you ask me a question directly. Beyond that, you must rely on your other senses, your other knowledge, in order to determine whether you can trust me. This is true in every case. With every opponent.”

“ Are you my opponent?”

His mouth quirks. “That, also, is up to you. But I would not advise you to consider me one. Even you cannot fight a mountain, or bring down the wind, or stop the sea.”

“Bold words.”

“I have earned them.” Erebus looks up at the sky for a moment, watching the clouds pass. “Do you know what a quest is, Briana?”

“Something a knight goes on to save a maiden. Slay a monster. Retrieve a treasure. Like an adventure, but with a purpose.”

He tsks. “Knights have staked a claim on the term, it’s true, but they don’t own the very idea of a quest. Anyone can embark on one. Try again.”

I huff. “A quest… is a long journey that someone goes on to search for something.”

He hums. “Better. Nearly every culture on the planet has produced a quest story, although they may call these journeys by different names. While the purpose of a quest is often defined as an external achievement—slay the dragon, save the maiden—the true end product is not external but internal.” He looks at me. “The beginning of a quest is often loss. A great and necessary loss, to spark the first step down the road unknown.”

“Are the missing people in my life a necessary loss?” My voice comes out too hot, too angry, but Erebus does not comment on it.

“You’ve gotten stronger in your time here,” Erebus observes. “They were holding you back.”

I consider his comment and the conversation that led us here. Lies and truths. Enemies and mentors. Maidens and dragons and demons, and who gets to slay them.

My mouth moves faster than my brain. “Is the crown your great and necessary loss?”

He stills. A flicker of fury crosses his face, followed by the vibrating shimmer of grief—too quick to hold, too quick to catch. For most people, anyway. I recognize that sequence of expressions because I have felt them cross my own face. And shuttered them away like him too.

“My crown is none of your concern.” With a wave of his hand, a ward around the warehouse ripples in a thick wave of magic, then disappears.

In a few steps, we cross the previously warded gravel and stand before the heavy wooden beam that lies over the doors, barring us entry until one of us raises it.

I haven’t hit something in a couple of days, and I’m feeling… antsy.

A tiny figment of a warning runs up my spine before we step inside. I don’t know what it’s warning me against, exactly, except that it’s something about Erebus today. Something that I need to be watchful of. Something more dangerous than normal, more treacherous. When I realize what it is, I turn to him. “You’re upsetting me. On purpose.”

“Am I?” His eyes study me. Without warning, he grasps my right wrist.

“What—” I protest, but before I can say more, my chest burns to life under his scrutiny. My bloodmark, blooming in jagged vines, hot and bright from my chest, down my forearms, to my wrists, and right to his hand. Oud and incense.

He hums quietly and releases me. “You seem strong today. Steady.”

“I could have told you that.” I rub the bones of my wrist and thumb, delayed indignation from last night’s surprise bloodmark calling coloring my voice. “You don’t have to keep activating it.”

“Forgive an old man his paranoia. The Morgaines have magicked my crown so that it does not return an answer when I call. With your bloodmark, at least, I can keep an eye on my investment,” he says. “Each time I call it, I can feel that you are gaining power.”

I scowl.

“After you,” he says, and gestures for me to enter the darkened warehouse.

He navigates to the left-hand side of the dusty space, hitting a light switch that I can’t see. At once, a series of sconces embedded in the walls around the three levels of the warehouse begin to light up, traveling around us until the entire space is lit in a warm, golden glow.

The warehouse itself is massive and modern. The floor is laid with the same sort of bouncy black training surface I’ve seen in the Lodge. There are even three concentric circles, just as there were for the Page bouts in the Squire tournament at the Southern Chapter. The walls are reinforced, and the surface has been fitted with a variety of handholds, long spikes, and curved metal hooks. There are even hanging lengths of rope attached to heavy metal rings in the ceiling that I can imagine Merlin trainees using to swing from one end of the room to the other.

I wonder if Erebus brought the Merlin boy here at one point, or if he left the academy to join his Kingsmage post and missed out on training at the Varelian compound. I wonder if the boy even remembers his training, or if his past has faded away beneath the… cravings. He is missing, and so am I. Missing people, missing ourselves.

I swallow, blinking hard against the heat of unexpected tears in my eyes. My voice comes as if it’s from far away. “Have you brought the twins here?”

Erebus is watching me take in the space with unreadable eyes. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they lack focus.”

I blink, thinking of Zoe’s mercurial demeanor and Elijah’s laser focus on their missions for his king. “You could train them more often. They told me about being children of one of your Nightshades—”

“Children born from Shades are rare assets,” Erebus says curtly. “For now, I am training them to be emissaries. My eyes and ears. To negotiate on my behalf. Balanced cambions who can walk between the demon and human worlds are too useful to lose in a back-alley scuffle.”

Now I think of the frustration of Elijah and the impetuous nature of his sister. How powerful they could become if they were given a real chance. “You train me. The twins could train with us—”

“The twins have not experienced what you have.” Erebus’s eyes narrow. “You have walked with death in ways they have not, and I find that makes your potential, your hunger, sharper . In all things. And, of course, I need your strength to increase my own; the twins cannot offer me what you will at your peak.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I don’t. I walk to the center of the room, and something about the look on Erebus’s face sends my heart pounding.

The tone in the room has shifted.

This is the knife’s edge that I walk. Seeking—and gaining—information and perspective while living with the danger of the King.

Biding my time until he makes me strong enough to escape him.

Breathe in, breathe out. “Shall we, old man ?” I ask.

When I look at Erebus again, he allows himself a small smile. “Let us begin.”