Bloodmarked, p.1
Bloodmarked, page 1
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For every Black girl who was “the first”
THE ORDER OF THE ROUND TABLE
PROLOGUE
MY VEINS BURN with the spirits of my ancestors.
Twenty-four hours ago, I pulled Excalibur from its stone. Now, I am paying the price.
The ancient blade shattered me. Who I was. Who I could be. Who I’d never be again.
I became shards of myself.
The Briana Matthews who held Excalibur had been broken apart—and forged into something new.
Something new. Something powerful. That’s how William described me.
Last night, as I’d raised Excalibur high, two spirits were pounding inside me like dual drums: Vera, my ancestral foremother, and Arthur Pendragon himself. Even though they’d lived centuries apart, they’d each used magic to lock power to their bloodlines, and to me. Vera, with a plea to her ancestors. Arthur, with a spell for his knights. When the battle was done and I’d finally fallen into bed I thought they’d both faded. Gone wherever spirits go when they are done possessing their Medium descendants.
Arthur fell silent. Vera seemed to say goodbye: ‘There is a cost to being a legend, daughter. But fear not, you will not bear it alone.’
But her words were not a personal farewell; they were an ancestral welcome.
Now, in the wee hours, I lie in bed at the Lodge, the historic home of the Legendborn. But I am not resting. I am painfully awake. Covers shoved off the bed, skin and spirit stretched tight. My curls lay damp against my neck.
I twist to my side, gasping, and squeeze both eyes shut. Crawl to the ground. Feel and hear my nails scrape the floor, a desperate sound in the night.
When my eyes open, the room around me is gone, and I am no longer Bree. Instead…
I am Selah: Vera’s daughter, now grown and pregnant with her own child.
It is night. Long ago. I am being ushered into a home by a Black woman with sharp brown eyes that dart over my head the way I have come. Her warm, strong fingers grip my shoulder. “Hurry, girl. Hurry!” she whispers. I do not know this woman, but “girl” is uttered with urgency and sisterhood both.
She leads me to a door set into the floor at the back of the house. Lifts it to reveal a hidden cubby of earth and rotting wood.
I will pause here for a moment, but tomorrow I will run again.
I blink—and the Lodge bedroom returns. Dark and familiar. Shiny, wide planks of oak stretch out beneath me.
Inhale. Exhale.
Close my eyes. Open them.
I am in a diner. My name is Jessie. I am twenty years old.
My hands hold a stack of menus. Fifties music plays from a jukebox.
“Hey, you! Girl!” A rough, rude voice yelling my way. “Girl” is uttered with such clear derision that it barely cloaks the word he really means. That slur is written all over his face. I find the white man in the booth near the entrance, wearing the smug grin of someone who knows he will not be stopped. “Service, please?” he sneers, voice sarcastic. A jeer and a lure. Daring me to talk back.
A flare of anger, the furnace of root in my chest lit and growing—but a smile on my face as I walk toward him through the restaurant.
I’d like to ignore him, or shout, but I can’t.
Not here, not today. But somewhere, someday.
As I pass by another booth, a white woman in a black-and-silver dress whips around. Her hand shoots out, fingers gripping my elbow. Her deep amber eyes narrow, and sparks of suspicion dance across my face. A tendril of spiced smoke hits my nose, like a match just lit, ready to grow.
All at once, I know who she is. She is one of them. The Order magicians my mother warned me about as a child. “Don’t let those Order Merlins catch you. Don’t let one get you alone. If you see their blue flames, run.”
Heart racing, I swallow the furnace. Douse it. Hide it away.
“Ma’am?” My voice is clear and steady.
The Merlin woman looks me over. Doubt flickers across her face. A beat passes. Can she hear my heart? My fear?
Finally, she says, “Never mind. My apologies.” Her fingers loosen, then drop, and she turns back to her meal. The scent of her magic fades—a weapon, sheathed.
I sigh with the escape. The close call.
It’s not just the man who deserves my rage. One day, I hope to face the Merlins, too.
Not here, not today. But somewhere, someday.
When I return to the room in the Lodge this time, Bree once more, my sweaty palms have stained the hardwood floors.
Inhale. Exhale.
Eyes close. Eyes open.
My name is Leanne. I am fifteen. I am walking past a park at sunset with a friend. We are giggling. Silly.
In the darkness, faint and yards away, a creature. A near-translucent glowing hound in the park—and a figure surrounding it casting weapons made of light. The figure moves faster than they should be able to. Ozone fills my nose. The smell of honey, burning.
I freeze. Draw a silent breath. Become as stone, just like my mother taught me.
My friend stops, her brown eyes confused and laughing. “Leanne, what—”
I don’t hear her speak. All I hear is the mantra I inherited from my mother. Her voice is hushed and furious in my ears: “Never let a Merlin find you. If you see one, run. You hear me? Run.”
I slip off my shoes, down to my stockings. Quieter that way. Mumble an excuse to my friend. And I run.
I am flung back and forward, writhing between time and space.
Selah. Mary. Regina. Corinne. Emmeline. Jessie. Leanne. I even see a glimpse of my mother, Faye.
Eight visions. Eight sets of memories that aren’t mine. Eight bodies that I inhabit, sucked down into lives I’ve never lived. All running.
Every daughter of the Line of Vera in the last two hundred years has run from the Order. Every mother has passed on the warning. And here I am inside its home.
Eventually, I slide into a shadowed space with no walls. In front of me, a pair of naked brown feet surrounded by flames.
“Daughter of daughters.”
I push to standing to see Vera. She is much as she’d been before: a woman in an empty, dark world. Blood and flame swirl around her deep brown arms, hair stretching up and wide like it is reaching for the universe.
“Where—?”
“This is the plane between life and death.”
The plane between… I look around at the darkness and feel the waiting of it, and the completion, too. Like smoke, ready to become matter or dissipate. Sound, ready to be heard or silenced. This is an almost and already place.
“You… you brought me here before,” I pant. “When I pulled the sword.”
She nods once.
I speak around the tears, through the memories that ache in my chest. “All of those lives… all of the running—”
“You had to see, because you need to understand who you are.”
“ ‘Who I am’…?”
“You are the point of our arrow.” Her voice grows louder with every word. “The tip of our spear. The bow of our ship. The flare of our long-simmering heat. You are the living embodiment of our resistance. The revelation after centuries of hiding. The pain-welded blade. Wound turned weapon.”
“I know…,” I say. “I know…”
“No. You do not.”
The flames on Vera’s skin glow brighter. “From the first daughter to the last, our furnace has grown. Each life burns hotter than the life before. You are my lineage, at its sharpest and strongest. With all that flows through you, you have the power to protect what evil would destroy. You can face what must be faced.”
Her words flow directly into my chest, searing me from every direction.
“We ran for many reasons. We ran to protect ourselves. We ran so we would not die, so that our daughters could live.” Vera steps forward, and her voice is slow, rich lava against my skin. “But one purpose, one dream reigns above all others. Do you know what that is, Bree?”
I shake my head, gasping. “No.”
The flames on her skin grow higher, her hair extending out and up so that I cannot see where it ends. I blink again… and I am a shivering, sweat-soaked teenage girl on the floor of a historic home. I am sucking air into burning lungs. I am shedding tears that are mine and not mine.
If Vera’s voice was once volcanic flow, it is now cool obsidian. Razor-sharp.
“We ran… so you would not have to.”
PART ONE STRENGTH
1
THIS IS THE part where I hesitate.
Logically, I know I’ll be fine. I’ve escaped half a dozen times, no problem. Wards are barrier magic, but the one outside my bedroom window was cast to keep intruders out, not to lock occupants in.
Still… it feels like a smart idea to test the silent, shimmering curtain of light that surrounds the Lodge before I fling my whole body through it. Just in case.
I raise a hand to the open window and press until my palm hits aether. The silver-blue ward flares at my touch, but doesn’t put up a fight. Instead, it ripples in a sluggish wave over my knuckles and wr
Excellent.
The wind picks up, blowing a wave of harsh scents in my face: Bright, spicy cinnamon. Warm whiskey. Smoke from long-burning logs.
Sel usually recasts his wards in the early evening before Shadowborn activity rises, so his aether signature is still fresh. He can only place barriers around specific and immobile locations. Buildings, circles of land, a room. I was moved into the Lodge—against my wishes—precisely because it sits behind a fortress of protective wards. This one in particular wraps the brick and stone and is stronger than the ones he used to cast, making it impossible for someone to enter the home without the assistance of a Legendborn or Merlin.
I’ve only been the Scion of Arthur for a month and already I know a little of what Nick must have felt his whole life. Stifled. Trapped. Powerful and powerless, all at the same time. Restless.
“Phew.” Another gust hits my sensitive nose. I wince and turn. Glance at the bedside alarm clock. Ten thirty.
Almost time.
I fall back on the bed with a huff. Sel and the Legendborn are probably just now reaching the first stop on their patrol route, the small tract of woods down near the south end of campus. No matter how hard I try to relax, my entire body is a coiled spring. Even my jaw is clenched tight while I wait.
A biting breeze blows through the open window, this time tickling my cheeks with the chill of early fall. A reminder that winter is on the way, and that time is passing us by.
I shouldn’t be here.
The same phrase runs through my mind every day. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, those words will bubble up from somewhere deep in my gut, flow up the back of my throat, and sort of… crash around in my brain.
I shouldn’t be sitting in this English classroom, listening to a lecture. I shouldn’t be eating a four-course meal in the Lodge dining room. I shouldn’t be sleeping on a soft bed, safe behind the Lodge’s walls.
I’m certain my friends have guessed what I’m feeling by now. How could they not? Greer sits beside me in that classroom, so they see my bouncing knee. They can probably tell that I’m ready to launch out of my chair at any moment. I sit down for the four-course meal, but Pete is right there at my elbow when I poke at the food on the plate and forget to eat it. When the Legendborn return at two a.m. from their late-night patrols, I am always awake, waiting at the door to greet them.
The Legendborn are in a holding pattern. I am in a holding pattern. We have been, ever since the events of the ogof y ddraig, the cave of the dragon. Ever since I—we—faced murder and betrayal and ever since bitter truths were revealed.
Ever since Nick was taken from my side as I slept, abducted by Isaac Sorenson, the powerful Kingsmage bound to Nick’s own father. No one has heard from or seen the three of them since.
Frustration lives in my stomach like a piece of coal these days—and just thinking about Nick’s capture stokes it into a painful flame, bright and familiar.
A month ago, deep under Carolina’s campus, the spirit of King Arthur Pendragon Awakened into the world—and within me, his true descendant. His Awakening signaled that Camlann, the ancient war between the Legendborn and Shadowborn forces, was coming once again. And the very next day the Regents, the current leadership of the Order of the Round Table, instructed us to do… nothing. We are to attend classes, take tests, even go to parties if we’re invited. We can’t afford to draw attention to the chapter—or to me—while the Regents’ intelligence agents gather intel about our enemies and about Nick’s capture by a well-known loyal servant. Until further notice, the Legendborn have been ordered to sit tight and stay here.
For us, here is weeks of holding our collective breath while on the brink of war. But for me, here is sitting alone inside my room in the Lodge while the Legendborn are out hunting our enemies.
My father already knew the Order as an old academic student group. Knew Nick had invited me to join. But after he found out about my sudden move to their off-campus housing, he’d demanded an explanation. It took the dean of students, my best friend Alice, and my former therapist, Patricia, to convince him the Lodge was legitimate and safe. I couldn’t tell him the whole truth, but I told him there was nowhere more secure. That’s not a lie, it’s just that…
I shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be here.
So recently… I have decided I won’t be here.
At least for a few hours at a time.
Another glance at the clock. Ten forty-five now. That should do it.
As I climb up on the sill, I have to chuckle. Even with Arthur’s strength, I never would have considered jumping out of a two-story window if I hadn’t experienced Sel do it from three—with me on his back.
“Thank you for the inspiration, Kingsmage,” I murmur with a grin as I balance on the narrow strip of wood.
The difference between a jump and a fall? A decisive, hard push off the Lodge’s stone exterior.
“One.” I inhale. “Two.” I grit my teeth. “Three!” I jump.
When I land, I hear my trainer Gillian’s voice telling me to take the impact intentionally, bending my knees rather than locking them. Back when Gill was first training me, before I inherited Arthur’s preternatural strength, my legs couldn’t have absorbed even a half-story of shock. A jump like this would have sent all that force from the ground straight up my ankles into my knees and hips.
Now, Arthur’s strength keeps me from breaking something, but it does nothing for my balance. When I stand, I wobble a bit but manage to remain upright. Progress. I’m only one step away from the building before a voice stops me.
“He’s going to catch you one of these nights, you know.”
I twist back to see a figure emerge from the shadows. William, in a green denim jacket and blue jeans, wearing a wry smile.
“And do what?” I cross my arms. “Yell at me again?”
William’s mouth twitches. “Yes. Loudly.” He tilts his head up to my darkened window. “Not a bad jump. Or landing, for that matter. You’re acclimating to Arthur’s strength.”
“Yeah, well”—I shake my head—“strength is not enough.”
“It never is.” William would know what strength is and what it’s not. For two hours a day, he is the strongest of us all. Stronger than me. Stronger than Sel. Stronger even than Felicity, the Scion of Lamorak.
Silence. I bite my lip. “You here to stop me?” He could, if he wanted to. He probably should, but…
William sighs and slips his hands into his back pockets. “No. If I stop you, you’ll just keep sneaking out. In increasingly creative ways, I imagine.”
The first time William met me, I’d been injured by a hellhound. He healed me while I was barely conscious, without knowing my name or even asking for it. Not long after—when he knew enough to suspect that I wasn’t being fully honest about why I was joining the Order—he healed my injuries again. William understands the value of secrets and doesn’t judge others for keeping them. A blessing, really. Especially tonight.
In lieu of judging, he watches me with a mild expression, waiting for me to own up to my crimes. I sigh. “How long?”
“Have I known you’ve been sneaking out?” He nods toward my right arm. “Since Monday morning when I spotted the poorly wrapped burn on your wrist at breakfast.”
That was four days ago; the burn is mostly healed now. I tuck my arm behind me. “Thought I hid that under my sleeve.”
“You did. From everyone other than me.”
I am grateful for how much William just… knows… without saying anything. But I don’t want to discuss the burns I’m not yet skilled enough to prevent.
“Sel would have spotted it, too, if he’d seen you that day.”
“Well, he didn’t see me that day,” I mumble.
William doesn’t comment.
“I thought you’d be out patrolling with the others.” I gesture between us. “Or is this another one of y’all’s bodyguard shifts?”
“Bree.” William regards me for a long moment, letting the gentle admonishment settle like a soft weight around my shoulders. “You can’t blame us, can you?”
