We all watch, frozen, as Nick takes a shuddering breath, then draws up to his knees. His head falls back, and Arthur’s deep voice emerges from his throat.

“Though I may fall, I will not die, but call on blood to live.”

Nick rises to his feet in one movement, then turns to face the stone that holds Excalibur.

‘She’s here,’ my grandmother whispers, her voice so loud in my head that I’m sure everyone can hear it.

The resolve in Nick’s shoulders grows with each step he takes to his destiny.

Who?

Sel heaves up from the moat, gasping for air, searching for Nick. But Nick is already at the stone.

‘The old mother. The oldest. Vera.’

Nick reaches for the sword’s hilt and, with a deep breath, pulls.

My grandmother fades.

The sword does not move.

Tor gasps. Lord Davis makes a choking sound. Even the goruchel’s hellish eyes grow wide.

Nick pulls with both hands gripped around the hilt—but the ancient sword does not yield.

He steps away, his face a mask of confusion and shock.

Inside me, a bomb explodes. My house blows part.

Time slows.

Stops.

Freezes.

A single second, suspended.

The old mother of my family fills my every limb. Arrives, just as I’d asked.

Her voice is rich and smooth, liquid steel on its way to a blade. It drapes over me, a warm blanket with sharp edges.

‘What do you want to know, child?’

“Everything,” I whisper.

‘Why?’

I could say the demons. Davis. Nick. The innocents. The world.

But I don’t.

I think of my mother. Her fights. Her triumphs. Her pain. And how they’re mine now too. Mine to hold. And mine to wield.

“Because her life counted. And I want to make sure her death counts too.”

I feel her appraisal, and pleasure.

‘Then I will give you the power to do so, wound tight with truth.’

She pulls me into her memory.

I shatter.

54

A WALK.