“ ‘Onceborn’?” Valec barks a laugh, tossing his head back. “Oh, they have gotten you good, haven’t they? The Legendborn with all of their honorifics and hierarchies, who gets power and who doesn’t, who is worthy and who isn’t. I’ve been around long enough to know that it’s all several dozen layers of assholery. There’s a reason a dragon’s skull sits over our threshold.” Valec’s voice lowers. “The Pendragon and his ilk are not welcome here. The Kingsmage is lucky he’s here suffering without his charge, because if the Scion of Arthur were here tonight, this crowd would tear him apart. In fact, I’d kill him right before Kane’s eyes just to be able to watch them both suffer at once. With joy.”

I swallow hard. “Is that so?”

Valec releases a long, frustrated breath. “If you of all people have fallen for their falsehoods and perversions of history, then you’re perhaps more silly than I’d previously imagined.”

“Me, of all people?”

He tilts his head. “A daughter of the enslaved. Your ancestors were once considered property by the colonizers and their descendants. Your body viewed as a means to an end. The Order is still upholding thousand-year-old traditions as if they had been written yesterday, so why would they release a four-hundred-year-old one?” His eyes flash. “Whatever knowledge or power these white folks have deigned to give you, whatever little Oaths they’ve let you make, it’s all a gesture. You’ve seen the Regents’ true faces. They may allow one of their precious Scions to share their knight’s gifts with you, but instead of honoring your sacrifice, they’ll demand your gratitude. When you die in service to the Order, instead of celebrating your life, they will brandish your death as evidence of their benevolent inclusivity.”

Everything he says is true. I’ve seen it. I know it. Nothing about what he has said is off the mark. Perhaps the only thing I could clarify is that it doesn’t even matter if I represent the very crux of those thousand-year-old traditions. They will still find a way to claim my power as their own. Ignore its origins, because those origins discomfort them. And expect my humility for surviving the violence of a system they helped build, maintain, and benefit from.

“Thanks for the reminder,” I whisper, nodding. “And the warning.”

He hits the button, shaking the elevator to life. “A warning you best listen to before it’s too late.”

I step onto the roof, and immediately shield my eyes from the bright glare of stage lights. The rooftop of the Crossroads Lounge is high enough to look out across miles of pine forest into an endless night sky.

The view would be beautiful, if there weren’t an audience on one end and a stage stained with old blood on the other.