“But who would be more interested in vengeance than a formerly incarcerated, more-demon-than-human, unstable Merlin? If not the Kingsmage, could it be the Line of Morgaine?”

He frowns. “Too many things don’t add up. I am the Sergeant-at-Arms of this chapter, trained to take this exact post since I was a child. If someone opened a Gate on campus on purpose twenty-five years ago and hellhounds in that number attacked Onceborns, why has that history never been shared with me? Especially if it was a Morgaine? Why would Lord Davis and the Master Merlins tell me that a Kingsmage had never been removed if it had, in fact, happened right here? And to Davis’s own Kingsmage at that?”

“Maybe it’s a cover-up.”

He considers this, looks for the holes in my logic, then sighs. “Lots of leaps here, but I’d buy that. If that attack was initiated by one of our own, that would explain why all of this was buried and why I was never told about it. And taking me out would be the best way to get to Nicholas.” He scratches his chin. “What I don’t get is the timing. If we go with your Kingsmage theory, why would they go after your mother almost three decades later? She wasn’t the reason this Merlin was stripped of their title, and she wasn’t connected to the chapter in any way. Further, why bother showing up and mesmering you? If they killed your mother, they shouldn’t have needed to meet you at all.”

My shoulders drop. It feels like we have all the pieces to the puzzle, but the picture doesn’t make any sense. Which means we can’t have all the pieces. We’re missing something.

Sel glances at his watch. “We have time,” he murmurs. “If we hurry.”

He speeds to his closet, pulling his boots on in a blur. Before I can say anything, he walks over to the window, unlatches it, and pushes it open to the night air. He leans both hands on the windowsill and looks at me over his shoulder. “Come here.”

I stand and walk over. “Why?”

“Reasons.” He grabs me around the waist in the blink of an eye and tosses me over his shoulder until I’m draped over his back, facing his room. I squirm, but before I can protest further, he wraps an iron forearm around my thighs, pressing them to his chest. Everywhere our skin touches leaves a trail of sparks.

“Please tell me you’re not jumping out of this window right now!”

“I’m not jumping out of this window right now,” he says. Then he promptly climbs up—and jumps.

38

HE LANDS LIKE a Merlin—light-footed, cushioning the impact with his knees—but his shoulder digs into my hips, and my stomach threatens to upend all over his spine. My right collarbone burns with a deep ache.

“Put me down!”