“Listen to me very carefully, Briana Matthews. I wanted to kill you. I imagined it. More than once. I never intended for you to leave that graveyard alive. For avoidance of doubt, let me be exceedingly clear: the hellfoxes that attacked us that night saved your life, because without their intervention, I would have taken it.”

I am bound to the seat, held in place. It has been a long time since Sel has looked at me this way. Like prey. He wants me scared, but his old tricks don’t work anymore. “Fine. You wanted to kill me, but you didn’t.”

He releases me. “Not for lack of trying. The only reason they let me keep breathing is that I am still bonded to Nicholas. I can feel whether he is in mortal danger. If it were not for the handy alarm system in my brain, I would already be in a Shadowhold, rotting in a triple-layered iron cell awaiting a painful decline and death.”

“You haven’t…,” I begin, not sure how to ask. “Have you?”

“Have I felt Nicholas’s life in danger?” His gaze goes blank as he focuses on something inside. Something deep and always there. “No. Not once.”

The knot in my chest releases an inch. “Good.”

He hums an affirmative. The engines seem to grow louder in our silence.

“You protected me that night on the road. And saved Lark. That counts for something.”

He rolls his eyes. “I am a Merlin, Briana. Saving you is not a choice; it is an obligation.” His head thunks back against the bulkhead. “And I am a Merlin who can’t use aether. I’m infantry at best. Good for muscle and speed, which are not enough to kill a demon.”

“Speak for yourself,” a voice says. Gill walks in and takes a seat at the table. “Lieges go on missions too, you know. We don’t stop fighting demons just because we age out of eligibility or lose our inheritances. I was never Called, so I’ve never had your ‘muscle and speed,’ and I do just fine.”

“And of those Lieges who were Called by a knight, they keep fighting for how long again?” Sel drawls. “Thirteen years before the Abatement takes them?”

Gill shrugs. “We all gotta go sometime, Kane.” She kicks his heel with her boot. “Don’t be an asshole.”

He laughs but says nothing as she hops up from the seat to open the fridge. I glance between the two of them, shocked a little at the interaction before I remember: Sel was bound to Nick at age ten, and Nick was trained by Lieges a year or two before. Gill has known Sel almost as long as she’s known Nick—since the two boys were small children.

“Gill,” I say, sitting up. “I saw Nick in a sort of vision. A Medium, ancestral… blood walk… thing.”