“He’s taking over again,” I gasp. “I can feel it—”

Before I can say more, Nick’s lips crash against mine, warm and fierce. I don’t hesitate to respond, and then we are breath and rhythm. Hunger and satisfaction. Call and response, even here. Maybe especially here. What one of us wants, the other gives with lips, tongue, heat.

He leans back, panting, leaving us both dazed. “Please tell me I just kissed you and not a dead king.” When I shake my head, his eyes widen in shock. “Oh God, you’re Arth—?”

“No!” I grin, and his shoulders relax. “You kissed me. Not a dead king.”

Warmth returns to his gaze, and he pulls us together again until our foreheads meet. Until his yearning and mine find each other in the middle. “Good. I prefer my kings alive.”

I suck in a quiet breath. “Nick…” Do you wish it was still you… and not me?

A soft smile pulls at his mouth. “It was always you, Bree.” His voice is low and somber, thick with emotion. “Always you.”

With a snap, we part.

I am back in the plane between life and death, standing ankle-deep in the branch of the stream that belongs to Arthur. When I step up onto the bank, the mist floats up and around my knees.

Always me. First Erebus, now Nick. Reminders of the life I forget I’m living.

It is black as night and silent, save for the sound of water over rocks, but this time there is a cool wind rushing past my face. I hear a man whispering. Names, accompanied by sparking lights that flit around my head.

“Scion.”

“Heir.”

“The once and future.”

I see a silver wisp growing in the distance. The wisp comes closer. It is taller than me, broader. Almost the shape of a man. I find some satisfaction that while Vera was fully formed here, Arthur is still ghostly. It makes me brave.

“Daughter of sons.”

“Take me back to Nick,” I order.

“Who is… Nick?”

“He is Lancelot’s heir.”

Silence that feels like confusion, curiosity. “And you saw him? In my memory at Caerleon?”

I suppose it’s a good thing Arthur can’t see what I do and say when I pull Nick into his ancestor’s body. That what I say and do there branches off from his memory somehow. “Yes. I brought him into the memory.”

“And yet his appearance is not a memory that I possess. Your powers are formidable, Briana.” A pause. “In my time, there were women who claimed they could channel the dead. Walk the plane between life and death like a dirt path between one and the other. I did not believe them.”

I growl under my breath, impatient. “Can you take me back or not?”

Another pause. “Let us make a bargain, my Scion.”

I swallow. “I don’t like the sound of that.”