“She’s stable, for now. But you can’t keep drugging her with this… this poison. It’s been three days, isn’t that enough?”

“Not your decision, Sitterson.”

Three days.

Three.

“Will—” I breathe, blinking between waves of nausea. Eyes open, fluorescent light, burning.

William’s arm wraps around my shoulders, guiding me to sitting. The scent of his aether cocoons around me, a comforting thing in a jarring existence. Citrus, warmth, William.

Max sighs loudly from the doorway. “Can she walk?”

William looks me over. There are dark circles under his eyes, a strange tension down the line of his neck. “Can you walk?”

I squint, test my limbs. “Yes…? Where are we?”

He helps me to the floor and kneels to slip shoes over my feet. “I hope this is the last time.”

I grimace. Try to manage words around my dry, thick tongue. “The… last time…?”

His eyes shine with unshed tears. “Yes.”

“Get her moving. I need to check in with Erebus,” Max calls from the hall. Silence follows.

William looks stunned by Max’s departure. He holds a shaking finger up to his lips. He wants me quiet. Wants to be sure Max is gone.

Merlin feet don’t make any sound.

While he waits to see if Max will return, I take in the room around me. There are no windows, no sunlight or moonlight to tell me the time, but the bright fluorescents flood the room in harsh white. I’m on the covers, fully clothed. Beside me on a tray is a plate with the crust of an eaten sandwich and an apple core. A half-empty glass of apple juice. A meal I don’t remember eating, but the flavors seem familiar and my belly is full.

After another beat of silence without Max, William must decide he is gone. He leans in close to my ear, as if to rub my back, and whispers quickly. “Something’s different today. This is the first time he’s left me alone. The Council has been mesmering you. Wiping your memories of each day so that you can’t build a lie between interrogations and so you forget what they’re doing and planning.”

Mesmers? I’ve been mesmered? He keeps talking, words coming so fast I can barely keep up.

“The Rite was an ambush. They drugged you with a serum—must have created it by studying Legendborn blood, to target our inheritances—”

Legendborn blood. Inheritances. Something is right there at the edge of my awareness. An unfocused thought… a detail…

“They dose me with it, too. Not as much as you. Enough to block Gawain’s strength, make swyns harder. I don’t know where we are, some sort of institute. There are labs, bedrooms. I don’t see a way out—”

“Wait.” I stop him. The thought grows sharper until it becomes words. “ ‘’M not just Legendborn….”

“What?”