On the other side sits Regent Gabriel in a gray suit, with his jacket slung around the back of a chair that matches mine. He wears a practiced, pleasant expression. It is the smile of someone who wants the people around him to feel at ease. Right now, it does the exact opposite.

“What is this?” I croak.

“A secure facility,” another voice says. Behind Gabriel, in the corner, stands his Seneschal, Tacitus. The Master of Mesmer is dressed in a gray ensemble. Slacks, a button-down jacket. When he notices me studying him, his attention marches like fire ants across my skin.

A red light winks at me from over Tacitus’s head. A camera is mounted in the wall, its black iris pointed at me.

“We were at the Lodge…. The Rite—”

Gabriel temples his fingers. “That’s correct. Last night we were at the Lodge.”

Memories flood in, knitting my brow. The ogof. The needle. The van. “You shot me with something!” I surge to my feet—and nearly fall out of the chair in the process. Tacitus is at my side in an instant, lifting me carefully back into the chair before reappearing at his Regent’s side. Bile rises in my throat, threatening to spill out, then subsides.

“Please be careful, Briana,” Gabriel says in a low, soothing voice.

“Why did you—” Pain stops me short. For the first time, I feel the pricks in my right and left upper arms. I tug my sleeve up to reveal deep purple bruising around a constellation of small marks. Injection sites.

Gabriel answers before I form the question. “We have suppressed your ancestral inheritances. Arthur’s physical strength and your ability to manipulate aether.”

Alarms ring inside my skull as his words land, become concrete. My hand flies to my chest, clutching the shirt. That empty feeling I’d felt in the van is still there. A hole where my root furnace should be, where Arthur’s heart sometimes beats. I feel hollow.

“This is for your safety and ours.” His mouth twists as he watches me rub my sternum. “I apologize for your discomfort; it has taken us several attempts to get the dosage right. The serum is still experimental, you see? It works directly on your DNA, so the physical side effects are… not insignificant.” He sits back, crossing one knee over the other.

“Why?”

“You are undeniably the Scion of Arthur, but you are also something new. Your aether abilities have been temporarily neutralized because we would like to speak to you without… surprises or unpleasantries.”

I huff a laugh. “You could have just asked.”