Page 67 of Avalon Tower

“Darkness.” My voice is hoarse, and a cold chill settles in my bones. “Death. It’s coming…something is coming, and it’s going to destroy everything in its path. There’s a single drop of clear blue water, and it’s being swallowed—” I yank my hand away, desperate to turn off the horror. “Gods.” I somehow feel angry, though I’m not sure at what. “What was that? Is this what you feel all the time?”

I’ve never seen her with such a grim expression before. “Yes, for the past few days. The future is getting darker. Something terrible is coming for us all. And I think we’re going to die.”

A cold shudder traces up my spine. Overhead, the sky seems to cloud over.

“There was a little drop of water,” I say. “Magical, somehow. Something that might hold off the death. Then a glassy clearness, like the surface of a lake. Moonlight glinting off it. But the shadows are trying to smother it, devour it.”

Tana’s stare is unwavering. “Oh, that’s you. The glassy lake.”

I blink at here. “I’m the what, now?”

“To stop the encroaching death, we need you.”

“Because of my Sentinel powers?”

“We don’t need a Sentinel. We need you. The Lady of the Lake. Do you know there hasn’t been one in thousands of years? Not since Nimuë. And things didn’t turn out well, did they, after what she did to Merlin.” Tana smiles brightly. “But I think it’s you. I keep seeing you in Nimuë’s Tower.” She grips my arm. “You must pass the Culling. You need to stay in Camelot. And you absolutely cannot get kicked out or culled, or we are all fucked.”

I’ve never heard her swear before, and she does it with a sharp vitriol that surprises me.

“What happens if she does get kicked out?” Serana asks.

Tana shrugs, and her dark gaze flicks up to the clouds. “The future isn’t easy to understand. All I managed to glean from my visions and the cards is that Nia has to stay at Avalon Tower and join MI-13.” Her gaze sharpens and lands on me again. “So you cannot fight with Tarquin. He’s consciously trying to get you expelled. He’s baiting you. If you lose your temper with him, his family will have you tossed out of Camelot. And then, I’m fairly certain we’ll all die. Horrible, lonely deaths full of despair and regret.”

I swallow. “Oh. Well, no pressure, then.”

“And you cannot let anyone know about your diametric magic,” Tana says emphatically. “Or the world ends. At least for us, but possibly for everyone.”

“We can tell everyone about your vision,” Serana said. “They’ll listen to you. We’ll go to Sir Launcelot or Viviane and—”

“No!” Tana snaps. “You can’t tell anyone. If you tell them, they’ll try to keep Nia in a bubble, hidden from the Fey king. They won’t let the Lady of the Lake out of Camelot, and we need her out there. We need her to go on missions. Learning. Fighting for us. We need Nia.”

My pulse starts to race. “Hang on. What do you mean, keep me hidden from the Fey king? He has no idea who I am.”

“Oh, he’ll know.” Tana glances at the gathering clouds again. “The Fey have psychics of their own. They will see what I see, eventually. The Lady of the Lake. And when they do, they’ll try to destroy you. But Nia, you cannot tell anyone what I just said. Not even Raphael.”

CHAPTER 21

Iglance down at the handwritten note in my hand—a summons from Raphael. Meet me in the Merlin Library. Sentinel training.

My body glows with heat inside the tower. It’s July, and there’s not a hint of air conditioning in this place.

Tonight, instead of Raphael’s office, we’re meeting in one of Camelot’s many ancient libraries. As I reach a stone landing, excitement flickers through me. I’m about to see inside the very place where Taliesin once penned his haunting poems. And some dirty ones, too— about fleshy orbs, rigid pillicocks, and pearly showers, and other phrases that people apparently found sexy way back in the Romano-British era.

I glance up at the carved mahogany doors. The metal knocker, shaped like a severed hand with long, clawlike fingers and an eye inset into the center of the hand, looks disturbingly real. If I were full-blooded Fey, I’d recoil from the iron, burned by the touch. But as I’m demi-Fey, I feel nothing as I reach for the knocker. It creaks as I raise it and bring the iron fingers down twice against the wood.

It’s a moment before Raphael pulls open the door, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A tendril of his dark hair tumbles in his eyes, and he flashes me a half-smile.

His silver eyes pierce me. As always, his masculine beauty immediately makes my breath catch. You’re weak, I tell myself. Remember what he did.

Walking past him, I survey the soaring ceilings. The sixty-foot walls are covered with faded, colorful, and leather-bound spines marked with gold letters and esoteric symbols. Ladders on wheels stretch up to the higher shelves. I breathe in the scent of leather and parchment and faintly recognize it as him. Raphael spends a lot of time here, I think.

I feel awestruck by this place and at one with the cozy, flickering lights of the many candelabra.

At the far end of the hall, a brass spiral staircase leads all the way up to the back side of the clock. The ticking of the second hand echoes off the ceilings—the beating heart of the library. I stare at the back of the clockface, an ancient mechanical marvel, its brass gears illuminated by the library’s dancing torchlight. The hands move rhythmically, ticking and tocking. I can almost picture Taliesin in here, scribbling away.

But my task is different from Taliesin’s. Unlike art, my task involves pain when I mess up. And there, in the center of the room on a carved oak table, is the veil box. In the little trunk, it shimmers and buzzes, making the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

Raphael pushes his hair out of his eyes. The warm firelight caresses his beautiful features. “Let’s get to work, then. You still need to master your control over the veil.”

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