“Hey, you! Girl!” A rough, rude voice yelling my way. Shiny, wide planks of oak stretch out beneath me. I will pause here for a moment, but tomorrow I will run again. Lifts it to reveal a hidden cubby of earth and rotting wood. She leads me to a door set into the floor at the back of the house. I do not know this woman, but “girl” is uttered with urgency and sisterhood both.

Her warm, strong fingers grip my shoulder. I am being ushered into a home by a Black woman with sharp brown eyes that dart over my head the way I have come. I am Selah: Vera’s daughter, now grown and pregnant with her own child. When my eyes open, the room around me is gone, and I am no longer Bree. Feel and hear my nails scrape the floor, a desperate sound in the night.

I twist to my side, gasping, and squeeze both eyes shut. Covers shoved off the bed, skin and spirit stretched tight. Now, in the wee hours, I lie in bed at the Lodge, the historic home of the Legendborn. But fear not, you will not bear it alone.’īut her words were not a personal farewell they were an ancestral welcome. Vera seemed to say goodbye: ‘There is a cost to being a legend, daughter. Gone wherever spirits go when they are done possessing their Medium descendants.Īrthur fell silent. When the battle was done and I’d finally fallen into bed I thought they’d both faded. Even though they’d lived centuries apart, they’d each used magic to lock power to their bloodlines, and to me. Last night, as I’d raised Excalibur high, two spirits were pounding inside me like dual drums: Vera, my ancestral foremother, and Arthur Pendragon himself. The Briana Matthews who held Excalibur had been broken apart-and forged into something new. Twenty-four hours ago, I pulled Excalibur from its stone. MY VEINS BURN with the spirits of my ancestors.

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