Eleven o’clock—not quite three hours since we met. Close to campus. In an old building. Historic home, maybe. All clues, folded together.
He narrows his eyes in speculation. “If you know I’m Legendborn, then you must know you’re speaking within the Code. You can answer me freely. How do you know that word?”
I chew on my bottom lip to buy myself time. The way he says “Code” sounds as if there should be formal trust between us. Sure, Tor and Sel possess an easy ruthlessness that I can’t, at the moment, find in Nick’s face, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. If he’s Legendborn, he could be dangerous. “What will you do to me if I answer that question?”
Surprise ripples across his features. “Do to you?”
I nod, my heart thumping in my chest. “Threaten me? Break something I’d rather keep in one piece? Turn me over to the cops?”
His blue eyes dim, a storm cloud crossing the sky. “I’m not going to do any of those things.” He gestures toward my arms. “Why would I bring you here to our healer if I wanted to injure you? If I wanted you to end up with the police, why didn’t I drop you off in front of a hospital?”
“Maybe you still plan to dump me at a hospital,” I shoot back. “Maybe the police are on the way.”
A wide smile spreads across his face, and just like that, he’s Nick from the dining hall again: amused and wry. “Bree, short for Briana. Pushy and stubborn. She doesn’t accept what she sees with her own eyes, won’t accept what she hears with her own ears.” He appears to turn an idea over in his head before pinning it to me with his eyes to see if it fits. “Or at least, that’s what she’d like me to believe. Is ‘Bree’ even your real name?”
Bristling, I ask, “What about my memory? You could still erase that.”
His grin falls away. “No. I couldn’t.”
Fear makes me bold. “Not a Merlin?”
“You know I’m not.” His eyes narrow, and the corners of his mouth turn down in a mixture of resignation and disappointment. His low chuckle is laced with fatigue and the tiniest thread of anger. “All right, I get it. You know about Merlins and their mesmers, so you’re Oathed, but you’re not a Page from our chapter. Who sent you, then? Was it Western? You here to evaluate me?”
My mouth opens, then closes, because I have no idea how to answer. Who does he think I am? Who do I want him to think I am?
I decide we’re playing a strange sort of game, he and I. Each searching for the knowledge that the other has before we reveal any more of our own. I know why I want his answers, but I don’t know yet why he wants mine.
I lift my chin, a spark of my earlier determination coming back alongside a tiny bit of After-Bree under the surface, just enough to fuel a wild card challenge that won’t make me look ignorant and might be just sharp enough to make him reveal himself. “I know Legendborn love to hunt isels like the one that I helped you find tonight.”
The wild card backfires.
“Oh, you want to test me, is that it? Fine.” Nick pushes up from the window seat, eyes flashing in a way that startles me. “First, that wasn’t just any isel. That was a ci uffern, a hellhound. Lowest intelligence of the Lesser demons, no speech capabilities, but the most ferocious next to the foxes. Partial-corp, so it was still invisible to Onceborns, but able to injure living flesh. Another few aether infusions and it would’ve been as solid as you and me. And second…” He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture that’s part disbelief, part frustration.
It’s a welcome pause, because even though I’m lying down, the word “demon” has shifted the world beneath me. Nick’s unfinished sentence has me perched in terrifying hesitation at the top of a roller coaster. His next one tips me over.
“Second, you didn’t help me find it, Bree. You ran straight toward it. You baited a hellhound, unarmed and untrained, and almost lost both arms for your trouble. Whoever ordered this little recon mission sent you here with more ignorance than I’ve witnessed in a Page in years. I’ve changed my mind. If this is a game, I’m not playing anymore. Answers. Now.”
A demon.
Both arms.
Aether.
I swallow around the fresh fear swirling in my throat. “I… I didn’t know they were… demons. I—”
“Christ, you’re either incredibly stubborn and committed to this ruse or you’re so brand-new they rushed you out here right after your damn Oath.” Nick runs a hand over his face and sighs heavily. “Yeah, they’re demons. This is basic information. Kiddie stuff.”
Demons. The word raises a childhood memory: my mother, taking us to church for worship in hot, humid summers, all packed pews and paper fans on tongue depressors. I’d sit beside her, miserable, with sweat dripping down the back of my polyester dress, white tights sticking to my thighs, and flip through the pew Bible to take my mind off the heat. The colorful, whisper-thin pages of art tucked in the middle realized what the text could not: St. Peter at gates made of gold, ribbons of sun shining through white clouds that stretch on forever; holy light blazing around Jesus’s head; invisible impure spirits—demons—tormenting gaping believers with lies and deception.
“Like in the Bible?”
Nick takes in my expression. When he sighs, the severity falls from his frame one fraction at a time, like a dropped cloak. He steps forward and reaches for me, then stops when I flinch. “Not gonna go through the trouble to heal you and then turn around and hurt you again,” he says, and waits for my response. After a moment of hesitation, I nod, and he gingerly takes my right hand in his to unravel the gauze in slow loops. He shakes his head. “Half-educated Page it is… I can’t believe the jerk who put you up to this without even teaching you the fundamentals. Honestly, you should tell me who they are—they need to be reported for this kind of negligence.” When I just stare at him, he scratches the back of his head. “I can’t let you leave here without knowing the basics, or else you’ll end up in a bwbach pit or strangled by a sarff uffern, or worse.
“The Shadowborn—what we call demonkind—come to our plane through Gates they open between our world and theirs.”
Shadowborn. The strange word lingers and loops through my mind, but I’m too frightened to stop him for an explanation.
“No one knows where a Gate will appear, but they cluster in some places more than others, almost always at night. Most of the Shadowborn that cross are invisible and incorporeal. They come to our side to feed on and amplify negative human energy—chaos, fear, anger. Those emotions sustain them. If they get strong enough to use aether, they’ll use it to go corp—corporeal—and they can attack us physically then, too. We don’t hunt the demons just to hunt them. We don’t do it because we like it, no matter what other chapters say. We do it to protect humanity.” His fingertips leave warm trails behind on my skin. As the material falls away in his hands, it releases the bright, tangy smell of citrus trees and damp soil.
When I glance down, my skin looks like it was splashed with acid—not tonight, but maybe weeks or months ago. Streams of shiny, pink tissue run in a drizzle from palm to elbow. The new skin is sensitive; when he wraps his palm around one arm, carefully turning it so he can examine me, I feel the callouses from where he’s spent long hours practicing with a weapon.