I meet Nick’s eyes across the room and across hundreds of people, centuries of history, secrets and truths—and I feel the familiar tug between us. If you can be brave, I can be brave. If I can, you can. Call and response. In a way, Nick and I are already bonded. We have been since that very first night. In that second I am in two places at once: here with Nick and back in the hidden memory from my mother. I see the same qualities in his eyes that I saw in hers: faith, hope, pride. Camlann is coming and, like my mother, I have a choice: fight or flight.

Take risks. Follow your heart. And move forward.

I am my mother’s daughter.

“Yes,” I call, loudly and clearly. “I do. I accept Scion Davis’s offer.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, the crowd explodes again.

The ballroom becomes a storm of exclamations, gasps, and outraged shouting. Lord Davis calls for order, even tapping the mic. It’s no use. No one is listening. An attendant moves Nick offstage. He’s protesting, they’re pushing.

“You stole this from my son!”

I flinch. The woman next to me sneers, disgust turning her face into a hideous mask. It’s Vaughn’s mother, Rose member Schaefer, who had been kind to me before. Tonight, the slurs in her eyes rain on me like daggers.

“This is his future, you… you nappy-headed little—” Someone pushes her back, but another man with a graying beard takes her place, his teeth bared.

A pair of strong arms—Sel’s—wraps around my middle, pulling me backward through hands that grab at me. Hands that try to pull me close so that they can inspect me, judge for themselves. I twist in his arms to find Nick, but he’s gone.

Insults fly as I pass.

“Gold digger!”

“Onceborn cheat.”

“Charity case!”

“Come on! Her blood is dirty. She’ll taint the Line!”

That sets me off. I swing around for the culprit. “Who said tha—”

Sel twists me out of a Vassal’s grip. He manages to get me off the dance floor without being harmed, but it takes Whitty, Greer, Sarah, and Evan forming a wall behind us to hold off the grown men and women ready to come after me with pitchforks. Behind the crowd, the stage is empty. Sel hauls me to his side, halfway lifting me off the ground, and bolts to the locked doors on the far side of the room. Two Lieges move out of his way—just in time—before he kicks the doors open and sprints down the long hallway, shifting me onto his back as he runs.

“Fucking assholes!” His curses reach my ears over the rush of air.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Away!” We’re heading toward the exit. “From the aforementioned assholes!”

“Fuck them!” I bat at his arms. “I need to see Nick!”