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“You are the point of our arrow.” Her voice grows louder with every word. “The tip of our spear. The bow of our ship. The flare of our long-simmering heat. You are the living embodiment of our resistance. The revelation after centuries of hiding. The pain-welded blade. Wound turned weapon.”
If Vera’s voice was once volcanic flow, it is now cool obsidian. Razor-sharp. “We ran… so you would not have to.”
“Aren’t you the heir to the throne of white dude magic?” Mariah waves a hand around. “You should be surrounded by bodyguards.”
I don’t have the energy to fight against white folks’ disbelief today.
The unsaid thing about funerals is that directly after the communal mourning for someone you love, after everyone is gone and the connected grief dispersed, comes a solitude beyond imagining. A great, gaping nothing where a whole person and life and future used to be. The other side of a funeral is abyss.
“Just because my hair takes up space doesn’t mean it’s dirty, Theresa.”
I could respond that I do, I do have an idea. But grief isn’t a competition. It’s not an identical pain that we all meet one day when death finds us. It’s a monster, personalized by our love and memories to devour us just so. Grief is suffering, tailored.
“What truly ties us together is not blood, but pain. When we love someone and lose them, that loss imprints itself on everyone else we love too.
“When white people say something’s ‘not about race,’ it’s usually because it is and they don’t wanna talk about it.”
“You won’t say it out loud, but I will,” I say. “I am the Scion of Arthur by rape. I am your proof.”
The Legendborn legacy isn’t power; it’s violence.”
“Black folks don’t need Oaths to take care of each other. We never did.”
This agony, I know. I remember. It is rage, expanding so fast and so hot that it fuels itself beneath your skin. Grief so deep you are only an open wound, only pain. Pain so fresh that the world itself feels like it should be burning.
“No other Merlin can protect you like I can, because no other Merlin feels about you the way I do. I want you to live, because I want you to be happy. Not because of a spell, but because so very many things would break and go dark if you weren’t in the world. Myself included.”
“A place of our own,” I say. “To rest.” Lu links an arm with mine. “Where we get to decide what to preserve, and how.”
“You don’t listen. You’re the most stubborn creature I have ever met.” I shiver. “And?” A pause. “And… you’re also the most wondrous being I have ever encountered, will ever encounter. And I believe there is nothing in this world that you cannot do.”
“No one I love is replaceable, Sel. The Order deals death so easily, accepts it so easily, but I refuse. I will never be a king who throws one life away for others.”
“I used to think that woman was my mother, and, through her, you. Tried it her way, and it didn’t work.” She tilts her head. “And why is that?” “Because you all didn’t give me my power.” I kneel to face the streams, thrust my hands into the earth from which they came. “I did.”
