After the events of tonight, what must my choice to stay in Nick’s room feel like to Sel? Now that his title and ability to keep me safe have been so publicly questioned? When another Merlin has been assigned to protect me?

“Erebus is right, you know,” he says. “About taking into account what the Council and the Order will need from you if you are to lead. And I am right about how you treat William and the Legendborn. Your priorities, your relationships… all of them have to change.” He looks over my head to Nick’s door once more, then back to me. “All of them.”

My eyes sting. I know that things will change between me and Nick when we get him back. I know things between us can’t be the same as they were. But still… I hate that Sel might be right.

An unreadable expression crosses Sel’s face. An emotion that could become words if given the chance, but he presses his lips into a line, burying it. “I should go.”

I don’t want to end things like this, with remorse and pain beating between us like drums. “Sel—”

“Good night, Briana.”

And with that, he’s gone in a blur. Down the stairs, out the front door, and into the night.

5

THE NEXT MORNING, I am awakened by the muffled sounds of doors opening and closing downstairs and footsteps rushing up the stairs.

“Open up, Crown Scioonnn!” A voice sings on the other side of my door. “Your stylist is heeeeere!”

I check the clock: seven thirty—and the first day in weeks that the rest of the house is up and moving before I am.

I shuffle out of bed with a croaked laugh and am halfway there when another voice chimes in. “And she’s got biiiiiscuiiitsss!”

Greer and Alice are grinning like fools when I open the door. Greer’s wearing slacks and a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The exposed fabric under each cuff is tawny yellow in color, a subtle nod to their Scion’s bloodline. The formal cloak of the Line of Owain is draped over their shoulder, still in the plastic dry-cleaning bag. Alice is in a buttoned-up blue-and-white-striped blouse over jeans, sporting an emerald-green leather wrist cuff on her left hand and holding a bag of Bojangles in her right.

“Crown Scion,” Greer says with an exaggerated bow. “May I present Vassal Alice Chen?”

Alice does a mock curtsy. “To be in your presence, Crown Scion, is the most—”

“Oh my God, shut up!” I say, and yank her inside. She bursts into laughter.