By some unspoken agreement, Sel takes the first room down a hall to the left. Or at least, it seems like Sel will settle there eventually. He opens the door, takes a look, then closes it before stalking out into the woods, mumbling something about the perimeter, leaving me in the hallway.

“Guess we’re headed that way,” Alice says, gazing down the dim hall on the right. “William can take the left room with Sel, and we can take the other one together, right, Bree?”

Our room is the owner’s bedroom, if I’ve guessed correctly. In it is a full-sized bed and an en suite bathroom. Before we head inside, William jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll be down the hall. Going to take a shower.”

Alice chucks her boots off and immediately falls onto the bed. It takes me a minute to balance on still-weakened legs, but I slip my sneakers off and join her on top of the comforter. She tries and fails to mask a yawn against the back of her hand.

“I can’t believe you,” I murmur, shaking my head. “You helped stage a whole rescue operation.”

She grins at the ceiling. “I did, didn’t I?”

“How?”

“Pure adrenaline, mostly.” She chuckles, turning on her side to face me. “If you ask me ‘why’ I did it next, I’m going to punch you. Like, in the throat.”

I smile. “I won’t ask why. I’m good on injuries for a while.”

Her face grows solemn. “The suppressant… William said it’s some sort of gene-blocking serum?”

I nod. “All of our powers are magically tied to our ancestors’. Somehow the Regents found a way to block that connection in our blood.”

She blows out a breath. “With a big, global network and probably unlimited funding, they’d be able to put the resources into top-secret medical research like this. Gene therapy, I bet. It’s disgusting, but honestly? I’m not surprised they came up with something to control a group of magical teenage warriors.”

I huff. “Well, we were.”

“It was indoctrination,” she says gently. “Affecting the other Legendborn kids more than you, obviously, but even you learned the history of the Order from people who grew up with a paradigm. Misinformation baked into mythology. It’s a classic strategy. Everyone is swept up thinking of themselves as the heroes, the romanticism of it all….”

Everything she says makes sense, but it reminds me eerily of Cestra’s precise logic and psychological machinations. Not that it will happen, but Alice would make a terrifying Regent.

We lay quietly for a moment, listening to someone rustle around in the kitchen.

“Lord Davis was manipulated, too,” I say quietly. “His entire plan was based on the assumption that being the king actually mattered and that he and his son were the heirs to Arthur’s kingdom.”