Legendborn (Legendborn, #1)

by Tracy Deonn

The boy beside me waves her away. “Get outta the shot, Tor!” Tor rolls her eyes. “You need to leave, Dustin!” Her vicious glare sends most of the gawkers running. The something is still there, beyond the blond girl’s head. Heart hammering, I take in the scene again. No one else has noticed the silvery mass hovering and flapping above the boys’ heads—either that, or no one else can see it. Cold dread creeps into my stomach.

Grief does strange things to people’s minds. This I know. One morning a couple of weeks after my mother died, my dad said he thought he could smell her cheesy grits cooking on ...

I heard her humming down the hall from my bedroom. Something so mundane and simple, so regular and small, that for a moment, the prior weeks were just a nightmare, and I was awake now an...

exhale through the memories, shut my eyes tight, open them again. No one else can see this, I think, scanning the group a final time. No one… Except the figure on the other side of...

Selwyn Kane. He glares upward, his expression calculating. Irritated. His sharp eyes watch the there-not-there shape too. Long fingers twitch at his sides, silver rings flashing in the shadows. Without warning, through wisps of smoke rising in eddies and waves over the campfire, Selwyn’s eyes find mine. He sighs. Actually sighs, as if now that the hologram creature is here, I bore him. Insult spikes through my fear. Still holding my gaze, he makes a quick, jerking motion with his chin, and a vicious snap of invisible electricity wraps around my body like a rope ...

The word materializes in my brain like an idea of my own that I’d simply forgotten. The command brands itself behind my eyes and echoes like a bell rung deep inside my chest until it’s all I can hear. It floods my mouth and nose with dizzying scents—a bit of smoke, followed by cinnamon. The need to go saturates my world until I’m so heavy with it that my eyelids drop.

When I open my eyes again, I’ve already turned to face the direction of the parking lot. In my next breath, I’m walking away.

LEAVE.NOW. I’m leaving. Now. That seems right. Good. Best, even. Beside me, Dustin is leaving too. “I need to go.” He shakes his head, like he can’t fathom why he hadn’t left the party already. I find myself nodding in agreement. Tor told us

to

leave and we should do as she says. We’re on the gravel path now, the lot a few minute...

I trip on a branch, lurch to the side, and catch myself against a trunk, hands slapping against jagged pine bark. The quick, stinging pain from my already-scratched palms cuts through the smokiness of Leave and the lingering spice of Now, until both words dissipate. Instead of pressing on me l...

I gulp oxygen until my thoughts feel like my own again, until I’m in my body enough to feel the sweat-damp cotton T-sh...

Selwyn. His bored expression. His mouth spilling words into the night like a cold wind until they swept away my intention to stay and replaced it with his command that I leave. His will wrapped around my memory of the flying creature and ground it down into a pile of dust and fractured images, then rearranged that pile into something new: an unremarkable blank space above the campfire with no creature in sight. But that new memory doesn’t feel real; it

is a thin, flimsy layer created from silver smoke with the truth visible and concrete underneath.

He gave us both false memories, but now I remember the truth. That’s impossible— A voice sends me ducking behind a tree. “It’s just these four. The rest made it to the parking lot.” It’s Tor, the blond girl who’d yelled at everyone. “Can we make this quick? I have a date with Sar. Drinks at Tap Rail.” “And Sar will understand if you’re late.” Selwyn. “This one was nearly corporeal. I had to wipe those last two kids’ memories just in case.” ...

together. Tor and Selwyn are visible between trees, circling the campfire, looking up. The murky green shape is still there in the sky, flashing in and out. The four drunk football players must be absolutely plastered, because they’re only now coming up for air. T...

Snark later. Hunt now.” Hunt? My breaths quicken. “Pot, kettle, black…,” Tor huffs, but reaches over her shoulder for something I can’t see.

Any choice I had evaporates when silver smoke appears from nowhere. It writhes and coalesces around Selwyn like a living thing, wrapping his arms and chest, blurring his body. His amber eyes gleam—actually gleam—like dual suns, and the ends of his dark hair curl upward, topped by bright flames of blue and white. The fingers on his free hand flex and contort at his sides, as if they’re pulling and churning the air itself. Impossibly, he is both more terrifying and more beautiful than before.

Silver smoke materializes and surrounds the boys. They don’t even blink—because they can’t see it. But I ...

When Tor takes a step back, I finally see what she’s holding: a dark metal rod curved in an arc. A downward snap and it ...

At the sight of her weapon, the taut football players shout and...

from a hidden quiver between her shoulder blades and nocks it without looking. Takes a breath—and in one powerful motion, pulls the bow up and the arrow back to her ear. One of the players points a shaking finger.

Where do you want it?” Tor asks, as if the boy had never spoken. Cords of muscle strain at her bicep, in her forearm. Selwyn tilts his head, assessing the creature. “In the wing.” Tor aims; the string tightens. “On your signal.”

Tor’s arrow has pierced the shimmering mass. For a split second, I see wings in the campfire smoke. Claws. A thud—and it’s writhing on the ground, scattering leaves and dirt, half the arrow sticking up. Whatever it is, it’s not much bigger than a possum. But just as angry as one. I shudder. A possum, with wings.

The football players reach me, and I duck out of sight as they pass. My blood runs cold when I see their expressions: mouths slack, eyes unfocused. They move as if drugged. Is that how I’d looked? A screech splits the air, yanking my attention back to Selwyn and Tor. A hiss. A voice like metal scraping across glass. “Merlin…” I blink in confusion.

Merlin as in King...

Selwyn advances on the flickering creature twitching from Tor’s arrow. Five needle-thin points of light appear at the fingertips of his extended hand. He snaps his wrist, and the light spears fly into the ground. The creature screams; Selwyn’s pinned it in place like a butt...

The creature hisses again in pained rage....

There’s a quick flash of light and a bone-shaking scream, and the creature’s flickering shape explodes into green dust. My feet are glued to the earth. They’re going to find me, I think, because I’m too terrified to run. “There could be more.” Tor pulls her bow to rest. Sel’s head lowers in thought. “Sel?” Silence. “Did you hear me?” His eyes cut to hers. “I heard you.” “Well, we huntin’ or not, Kingsmage?” she huffs. He turns to face the woods opposite my hiding place, tension radiating across his back and shoulders. He comes to a decision. “We’re hunting.” He mutters a word I don’t understand, and the silver smoke from before returns, swirling around the campfire until the flames die, sending the clearing into darkness. “Move out.”

I hold my breath, but Tor and Sel don’t turn my way. Instead, they step into the section of the woods he’d been scrutinizing. I wait until I hear their voices recede. Even without the fear of what they’d do if they found me, it takes that long to get my trembling limbs under control. Finally, they’re gone.

A beat of silence, two, and the crickets begin singing again. I hadn’t re...

what to say before, then I definitely don’t now that I’ve seen the way law enforcement interacts with these so-called Legendborn. I spend the rest of the drive reviewing my earlier words to Alice and end up both relieved and terrified. Relieved, because I said nothing in Norris’s presence to

indicate that I knew what really happened at the Quarry. Terrified, because I witnessed something that I was not meant to see, and if Selwyn Kane had wanted to do something about that, Deputy Norris would not have stopped him.

Three thoughts chase one another the entire ride to campus until they bleed into a single stream of words: Magic. Real. Here. Norris drops us off in front of Old East, the historic building that houses Early College students. We ...

When I was little, I loved the idea of magic, the kind that lives in Percy Jackson and Charmed. Sometimes magic seemed

like a tool that could make life easier. Something that could make the impossible possible. But real magic includes creatures that feed on humans. A small voice inside me thinks that, if they hunt those creatures, the Legendborn must be good. They must be. But when the night slips into early morning, that voice grows quiet. By the time I fall asleep, my ears ring with echoes: that boy’s sharp cry of pain when Sel forced him to his knees; Dustin’s slurred mumble as he marched to the parking lot; and the isel’s scream when Sel destroyed it.

My mind tosses up images from last night like dark, confusing confetti. I want to tell Alice what I witnessed, but would she believe I saw a golden-eyed boy who uses magic to hypnotize students and a girl who carries a bow

and arrow in her back pocket? And what about the deputy—maybe even the entire Sheriff’s department—who almost definitely knows the truth and helps keep it quiet? Alice didn’t see the isel, but she saw Selwyn dismiss Deputy Norris. She might agree that that hadn’t been a typical encounter between a police officer and a teenage boy, but would she leap with me from the shores of not normal to the wide, unknown ocean of absolutely terrifying?

He strides around the desk to take his own seat. The sun sends a wide band of light in through his office window, and it bounces white, blue, and gold off the silver nameplate that sits crooked on the front edge of his mahogany desk. He pulls up a file on his computer and starts to scroll through it while we wait. His hair is shorn close to his temples and graying, but the color looks premature. Like working with thousands of students has aged him exponentially. Probably has. I’m probably one of them.

Beside me, Alice sits ramrod straight and still, but my knee bounces in anticipation. I’d been mentally composing my Don’t Kick Us Out speech since the elevator ride up to the second floor of the SASB. I’m not going back to Bentonville. Especially not after what I saw last night.

Alice inhales sharply. I could kick this man. Dean McKinnon leans back in his chair and releases a long sigh. “You’re exceptional students or else you wouldn’t be one of the thirty high school participants admitted to the Early College Program. It’s common for students your age, upon experiencing unsupervised residential life, to make mistakes. Fortunately, the Durham County Sheriff’s office has graced you both with a warning rather than a citation. Likewise, I don’t intend to expel you. Consider this your first and only strike.”

I will be placing phone calls to both of your parents after this meeting, and you will both report to a peer mentor the rest of the semester. A second-year Early College student who has excelled in the program by making better choices.”

It’s like she slapped me clean across the face. Hot tears press against the back of my eyes. “Go home? Home to what, exactly? Go back to being the Girl Whose Mom Died in that small, gossipy town?” Carolina had been our dream. She stares back, and I can see it in her eyes: sometime in the last twenty-four hours she’d already imagined doing this alone. Without me. The wall inside me grows. I let it stretch so tall and wide that I can’t see its top or its edges. The barrier slides into place so completely that all of the muscles in my face go still at once. I envision a surface that is flat and impenetrable, and I feel my eyes become flat and impenetrable too. “My turn. How ’bout you grow up and get a life instead of blaming me for your choices?” Alice steps back, and the crack in her voice goes straight to my heart. “I don’t know who you are right now, Bree.” She stares at me for a moment longer and then bends to gather her things. I can’t move, or speak. All

I can do is watch her walk away.

Now the new memories of the hospital wage war against the old ones, until finally, the lies dissolve. Selwyn and the police officer. Both chanted a spell of some kind. Both bent my mind to their will. My eyes snap open. The first time I saw magic was the night my mother died.

My first class, English in Greenlaw, goes by in a blur. I don’t remember walking there. I sit at the back of the classroom. Questions run through my mind on a loop: Was the officer at the hospital like Sel? A Merlin? A Kingsmage? How big is the Legendborn network? Why did I remember what Sel wanted me to forget? Why am I only now remembering what happened then? What other memories did that officer take? And why? Was an isel there at the hospital that night too? Did it attack my mother? Is that what killed her? How much do I really know

By the time my second class is over, one thought has burrowed in my mind like a splinter: Someone used magic to hide what really happened the night my mother

died, and I’m not going to let them get away with it.

Victoria Morgan. Goes by Tor. A serious legacy. She adds a couple of thumbs-down emojis. What’s her deal? Her daddy and granddaddy and whoever else all the way back to whenever went to UNC. Couple years ago, her fam donated so much $ to the B School they renamed a building after them. Old money good ol’ boys. Legacy kids waltz in, get whatever grades, and leave 4 years later with great internships and jobs lined up Old money and good ol’ boys. Why am I not surprised? This is the South. Tight-knit groups, lots of loyalty, established networks, plenty of resources. Perfect for the Legendborn, I bet.