“Strap in, Chen. Gonna be a bumpy ride.” The driver who barks a command at Alice is a white woman in her late twenties. Dark-haired, with a thick silver streak over each ear. Alice shifts beside me and buckles herself into the next seat, fingers trembling slightly as she clicks the belts secure.

“How the hell did you get here?” I gasp. “Tacitus said he wiped your memory.”

“Well…,” she begins with a sly smile. “He tried to.”

Before I can ask what that means, we’re interrupted. “Crown Scion,” says a wry, familiar voice behind me. My head twists around immediately.

“Gillian?”

My old combat trainer smirks at me from the bench at the back of the vehicle. She’s in tactical gear all over: a black sweater, black pants with one leg rolled over a sleek black prosthesis, and both feet in worn combat boots. Gillian’s a Liege with years of field time under her belt, mostly outdoors. With this ensemble, she could melt in and out of shadows, easy. She leans over to pass me a bottle of water, and even her hands are wrapped in black gloves. “Here, you’ve gotta be thirsty after what Samira just put you through.”

Someone scoffs. Sitting at Gillian’s left, directly behind me, is a Black woman with short salt-and-pepper hair. “I knew she could do it.”

The woman’s ensemble is similar to Gillian’s, except her cargo pants are rolled at the ankles and her black tank shows off broad shoulders and impressively curved biceps. Her brown face has barely-there smile lines and soaring cheekbones. She might be in her early thirties, only a few years older than the driver—but her hair color would indicate otherwise. She gives a two-fingered salute. “I knew you could do it, Crown Scion,” she repeats.

I recognize her voice immediately. “You guided me out.”

“Yep. And you did well,” she says with a nod. “I’m Samira Miller. Our driver up there is Lyssa Burke.”

Lyssa salutes me in the mirror. At her jacket shoulder is an embroidered patch displaying the gray wolf sigil of the Line of Geraint. On Samira’s jacket, I see the amethyst one-winged falcon of Bedivere.

Understanding washes over me. “You’re all Lieges.”

“Did the early grays give it away?” Samira smirks. “Took you a minute.”

I scowl. “I just ran for my life through total darkness with the strongest Merlins in the world on my heels. I think I get a minute.”

Samira raises a brow. “Gill said you had spark.”

“She’s got more than spark,” Alice butts in, eyes stern.

“That’s what the rumors say too,” Samira says, dipping her head in acknowledgment. She turns her head, calling out to the front. “How we doin’, Lyssa?”