William’s question takes me by surprise. Am I sure? After tonight, am I truly sure? I think of my father and our conversation on the library steps. I can hear his voice even now. “… This thing that’s happening to us… I feel it too. I know it feels real bad.” He feels this pain, and yet he goes to work every day. Lives in our house with the echo of my mother every day, when I could barely stand it. I think of my mother and the stubbornness—no, the weakness—that kept me from speaking to her after a foolish fight.

Our Brave Bree.

I inhale again, stronger this time. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he says, standing up. “If you’re dead set on being here, then you definitely need that Legendborn crash course. But first, you need tea.”

William wasn’t kidding about the tea.

He makes me wait outside the bathroom for a few minutes while he goes down the hall to a kitchenette. When he comes back, he presses a steaming mug of lemon-ginger tea in between my palms and orders me to nurse it while we talk.

I’m beginning to understand why Sel didn’t fight William’s will. He’s imperious without being arrogant, and has an uncanny knack for being right.

Plus, the tea is delicious.

He sweeps in front of me and leads us down the hall to a navy door at the far end, opposite the elevator. “How many basements does the Lodge have?” I ask.

“Two. The infirmary and training rooms are on the one above, plus some recovery rooms for seriously injured patients. Down here is all the other secret stuff we can’t risk anyone seeing by accident. Artifacts and member documents”—he jerks a thumb at a door we’ve just passed—“are in a cold storage room where we have more control over the temperature and lighting conditions. Fortunately, the oldest items have been so infused with aether by Merlins over the years that we don’t have to worry about them crumbling to pieces.” He reaches the door and punches in another code on the keypad near the handle. “But this is what you really need to see.”

I squeeze the mug between my hands. My heart gives a rowdy thump so loud I worry he can hear it. “No demons, right? You’re not throwing me into a medieval fun house of horrors as some sort of hazing thing, are you?”

He laughs, loud and light. “No”—he opens the door and leans in, searching the interior wall for a light switch—“but ‘Medieval Fun House of Horrors’ would make a great band name.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m grateful for his humor. Another sip of tea, and my stomach is almost calm.

He finds the light switch, illuminating not another room but the landing at the top of a wide spiral staircase.