It doesn’t escape me that Tacitus is speaking about me, not to me. Like I’m not a real person. When your mesmer is strong enough to wipe whole people from someone’s memory, maybe no one is real. For the first time, I wonder if he was the Merlin who wiped Nick from his mother’s mind. Tacitus catches me staring and smiles, long fangs wrapped in a devil’s grin.

Gabriel hums. “Answer him, please.”

“I—I saw a demon attack boys at a party, and Selwyn and Victoria killed it. The next night, I saw another demon on campus with Nick. No one else could see these demons. I wanted to know why I could. I figured the Order had the answers.”

Gabriel regards me with narrowed eyes. “And had you seen demons before these instances?”

“No.” The truth.

Gabriel sits back, eyes thoughtful. “Other questions, Tacitus?”

The Seneschal tilts his head, regarding me with hooded eyes. “Had you always planned to go to UNC?”

“Yes. My mother went here, and so I thought I would too.” Not a lie.

“This is unlikely to be the sole result of family tradition.” Tacitus shifts his weight, sighing. “If the archives are to believed, the Scion of Arthur is drawn to Excalibur’s resting place. The girl and her mother share a bloodline, so the mother would also have been the Scion. It makes sense that they’d both be attracted to the university, even as they believed they were Unanedig. They could have written it off as a sense of alumni loyalty, connectedness to legacy, nostalgia, and so on.”

“Agreed. Your assessment, Tacitus?”

The Seneschal shrugs. “Nothing in the witness observation files suggests anything to contradict her statements. Faye Ayeola Matthews, née Carter, was mesmered and never indicated any retained memories of what she witnessed the night that Natasia Kane opened the campus Gates. Her mesmer was administered by my predecessor, Seneschal to your own. A Merlin particularly adept at memory replacement.”

“Jenna, yes, I recall.” Gabriel pushes back from his seat with a thoughtful expression. “We’ll stop for now. Let’s repeat these questions at the next session to be sure.”

Tacitus is at my side in a blink, hand hot and burning against my head, a blast against my consciousness. “Sleep. And forget.”

“Stop…” His mesmer pulls me down a quickly swirling drain.

“Good afternoon, Briana.”

I blink the small room into existence.

I am wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt I don’t recognize.

The back of my skull feels tender.

I am sitting in a chair at a table.

On the other side sits Regent Cestra in a black-and-silver blouse, hair pulled back tightly against her skull.

“Tch. She can barely hold her head up. Will she even be able to answer any questions?”