Another step back. Far enough that I could press my eyes closed as I tried to stem the swirl of feelings inside of me. “Where is it?”
“The grail is hidden.”
Arran’s snarl filled the small room, careening off of the curved walls, crashing against the wooden ceiling, echoing through our bones. He was a second from shifting. I could feel it in the air, that strange charge of energy that always filled the space before his beast took over. The wolf would rip out her throat.
He threw himself at her, the fatal blade of his axe pressed against her throat. He’d cut through rope and skin in a second, and she’d be headless. Truly dead. “Chalice, grail, call it whatever you like. But where have you hidden it?”
Arran was going to kill her. And I was inclined to let him.
Except for that glowing white ember inside of him. The one he’d been keeping alive, even as I let my own die inside of me.
I wrapped myself along the strong golden thread that connected us, slid my soul deeper until it was fully entwined with his. I caressed that precious hope he’d nourished—desperately, unflinchingly.
She cannot tell us if she is dead, I purred to his beast.
Slowly, so wretchedly slowly, I felt the beast recede and Arran’s conscious mind take hold once more. His hand was in mine. He stepped back, lowered his axe.
Merlin released a slow, measured exhale. “It is no small thing to be master of death. It is not something that I can simply bestow upon you.”
I hooked one thumb around a scabbard, the weight of the mighty sword sheathed down my back suddenly heavy. “Arthur bestowed the scabbards and sword.”
“No. You pulled the Excalibur from the stone. Arthur was only able to give you the scabbards because they are an heirloom of your house. The human that forged the scabbards for the Sacred Trinity eons ago was a Pendragon.”
I actually laughed. “You cannot mean that I am human?”
And yet, it would explain so much. Why I had never manifested elemental powers, why the scabbards had come into my possession. Why I was fated to be the one to banish the succubus.
“A distant ancestor was,” Merlin said with a shrug. “Tens of thousands of years have passed since the forging of the Sacred Trinity. Human and fae were not always as estranged as they are now. Is it so difficult to believe your mighty line might have a human or two mixed in somewhere?”
No, it wasn’t.
Once, maybe. But after everything I’d lived through in the past months, I knew better than anyone that history recorded only what its authors deemed most important. Elementals prized lineage over everything else. If there had been a humannamed Pendragon somewhere in my ancestry, the elementals would certainly have erased them long ago.
“It does not matter,” I said slowly, to myself and to the thoughts tumbling through my head. Because it didn’t matter. Iwasfated to banish the succubus. I’d already accepted that. But maybe, just maybe, the cost would not have to be my life. “Where is the grail?”
Merlin spared no glance for Arran. She stared into my eyes as she said, with that irritating ring of prophecy, “You must find it for yourself.”
I understood. “Finding the grail is some sort of test.”
She nodded. “A quest.”
I’d thought from the moment Arran dragged her in here that she was ready to die. That assessment had been correct. She’d die before she told me the location of the grail. Guarding it was her destiny, just as banishing the succubus was mine. I was ready to die for my fate; why shouldn’t I expect her to be as well?
But Arran’s thoughts had taken a more practical turn. “Does that mean she must find it herself?”
Merlin smiled. “I did not say that.”
“Fucking priestess,” I swore, spinning away. I paced to the door and then back again. On my second turn, Arran intercepted me.
“This is more than fickle hope, Veyka,” he said, taking both of my hands in his. “This is real.”
It hurt to hope. It hurt so much.
But I didn’t stop him when he went to the door and wrenched it open. Elora and Barkke appeared immediately. The expressions on their faces said all—they had heard every word of the interrogation.
Somehow, I managed to keep my throat from closing as I gave the order. “Summon Cyara and Osheen. We have an amendment to their quest.”
19
