Bloodmarked

Bree wakes up in a van. She tries to defend herself but is weak and confused. Erebus tells her that they’re dosing her for safety. Bree passes out again. She hears William scolding the Merlins who drugged her, but they warn him not to “chitchat.”

Bree wakes up in a small room with Regent Gabriel and his Seneschal, Tacitus. Gabriel says she’s been drugged to temporarily quell her “ancestral inheritances.” Gabriel asks her what she’s told her father about the Order and why she joined the Order. Afterward, Tacitus orders Bree to sleep.

The next time she wakes, she’s with Cestra and Erebus. Erebus plays a video he took of the Rite. They ask her about her red root and the Medium abilities that allow possession. They order Bree to sleep.

Three repetitions of “Good evening, Briana. Then” (157) indicate that Bree is undergoing many such interviews, and is then mesmered to forget each one.

Bree hears William beg the Merlins to stop drugging Bree. When Max steps out, William quickly explains that the Regents planned the Rite as an ambush and have been mesmering and drugging her for days to check the veracity of her story. She tells William she can resist mesmer by tapping into pain; he scorches her with aether to help her.

Max leads Bree to the Regents. They reveal that they’ve been monitoring her with Tor’s help. They discovered that she and William snuck Alice into the Order and mesmered away anything Order-related from her. The Regents plan to keep Bree imprisoned, and they tell her Legendborn chapter that Bree went into hiding and bestowed authority to the Regency. Erebus wants to study Bree’s abilities.

Bree calls out their hypocrisy: They claim “the Line is Law” (168) but imprison her, demonstrating that they only believe it until Arthur’s heir “looks like me” (168). Lord Davis admitted anti-Black racism was behind his attack on Bree, while the Regents lie to hide the same motivations. Gabriel protests that Bree “is the Scion of Arthur by rape” (169), denying the racial and sexual violence that informs her powers. Cestra briefly turns on Gabriel, siding with Bree about the “brutality” of men in authority.

Tacitus mesmers Bree to agree with everything the Regents said and forget the conversation. He senses that she might be resisting the mesmer and warns that he’ll hunt her if she escapes.

As Erebus walks Bree to her room, she observes the institute where they are keeping her. It’s modern, which makes her think the ancient rituals and chivalry are mere tools used to indoctrinate young Squires and Scions. Erebus tells Bree he’ll start his examinations in several days. Alone, Bree realizes the Regents will do anything to keep power, and they’ve been planning this since her Awakening.

Bree is kept imprisoned for two days; she realizes they’re drugging her food. At dinner, she finds an earpiece in a case in her food; the person on the other side of the line says they shut down the magic that keeps the door closed and coach Bree out of the building, racing the clock until the Merlins can reset the magical wards. She barely makes it outside before the wards re-engage. Alice is waiting for her in a Jeep.

Bree recognizes her combat trainer, Gillian, in the back seat next to a Black woman named Samira, who was the person in the earpiece. The white woman driving is named Lyssa Burke. All three are Lieges: Scions and Squires who’ve aged out of inheritance.

During the Rite, William sensed something was wrong and gave Alice Gill’s number before telling her to run. Gill says that after Alice’s call, she put together what happened and called a group of like-minded people whose “allegiance is to one another” rather than the Regents (188).

They arrive at a private jet piloted by a tall white woman named Ophelia. When Bree gets inside, she sees William.

Lark arrives with Sel. Lark pledges his loyalty to Bree, the rightful king. He leaves so the Mageguard don’t suspect his betrayal.

While flying, Bree and William ask about the rest of their Chapter. They’re dismayed to learn that their peers believe the Regents’ lies. Gill and Samira made sure the Lieges watching Bree’s dad are on their side.

Gill says the Regents have taken control of the next in the Line of Lancelot after Nick: They can’t control Bree, but they can sequester Bree and kill Nick, thus forcing his inheritance to someone under their control.

Samira and Gill present a choice to Bree, William, Sel, and Alice: either use the intel they’ve gathered to try and rescue Nick or go into hiding. Bree and Sel choose the former; William and Alice want the latter. The decision is Bree’s: She wants to save Nick.

That night, Bree sees Arthur’s memory of the first Camlann in her dreams; she later realizes she’s inadvertently “bloodwalking.” After a gruesome battle, Lancelot confronts Arthur about how many more people he’ll let die in the war. Bree wonders if she can control the dream. She reaches out to Lancelot like she did during the Rite. When they touch, he becomes Nick again.

Nick is in disbelief but happy to see her. Mageguard have been following them, but Isaac, his father’s Oathed Merlin, protects them. Nick already knows about the Regents’ plot to kill him. Bree tells him the Regents scapegoated Sel. Nick says Bree can’t look for him because his father thinks Bree has “stolen [their] future” (209) and wants to kill her.

Bree tells Nick how Vera inherited the Line of Arthur instead of his ancestor. He apologizes to her and Vera. Arthur begins to pull Bree away, and Nick kisses her goodbye.

Arthur is in Bree’s ancestral plane. He wants to make a bargain with her: She’ll Summon him in the real world so he can show her how to use his power, and, in turn, he’ll provide her with memories of Lancelot so that she can summon Nick again. She agrees on the condition he won’t possess her without consent.

Sel joins Bree in the plane cabin. He’s stuck in anti-Merlin void cuffs that prevent him from calling aether. Sel still thinks he’s guilty of the charges against him, but Bree insists his actions were because they were tricked. There is an undercurrent of “electricity” and between Bree and Sel.

Before they exit the plane in rural Georgia, Bree asks Samira about her experience as a Black Legendborn. Samira says other Pages were jealous until they saw the toll of losing allies in battle. Samira says the “how” of Bree becoming Arthur is terrible, but the “why” might not be; Samira is glad to see a Black Scion of Arthur and tells Bree she is honoring Vera’s line. She says that she has connections the Regents don’t know about, and that their “roots run deep” (226). She writes something on a piece of paper and gives it to Bree in case she needs non-Order help. Samira and Gill hand Bree and her friend off to a Liege named Jonas, who will take them to a safehouse.

At the house, Bree and Alice go to their room and talk about how the Regents really run the Order. Arthurian mythology has been weaponized by the Regents as “indoctrination” into the “ideology” of anti-Black racism.

Alice says Samira gave her the ultrasonic acoustic device she used to incapacitate the Merlins when she sprung Bree from imprisonment. Alice thinks Tacitus’s mesmer didn’t affect her because of Bree once using root and Mediumcraft to call an ancestor’s help in order to bring Alice’s memories back after she was mesmered in Legendborn. This gives Bree the idea that an ancestor could help her control her Bloodcraft in battle.

Bree recalls that her blood on the Pendragon coin necklace that William gave back to her on the plane helped her get into Arthur’s memory. She thinks she can use blood as an offering on an ancestral item to bloodwalk in an ancestor’s memories.

Alice goes to shower while Bree helps Jonas with dinner. Jonas is gray-haired and has a persistent cough from “getting old” (234). Bree estimates he’s 35—the maximum life expectancy for Scions and Squires whose power was Awakened in their teens and twenties. This “Abatement” is the price of the Round Table’s Bloodcraft. Jonas says that Camlann has reoccurred periodically for 1,500 years, thousands of Scions and Squires have died, and no Regent has ever tried to stop the cycle.

Jonas asks Bree to get more pasta; when she reaches the pantry, a hand grabs her.

A goruchel named Kizia attacks Bree, and her root flares defensively, though she still can’t call aether because of the Regents’ serum. Jonas wants Kizia to kill Bree. William emerges, summoning his armor and calling for Sel, who barrels into Kizia. Jonas throws a dagger at Bree’s heart but Sel takes it in the shoulder. Since it’s midnight, William inherits Gawain’s strength, which can easily overpower any Legendborn or Shadowborn. He easily incapacitates Kizia.

Sel captures Jonas. Jonas blames himself for the death of his Scion, Lydia. The only way he sees to stop the cycle of Legendborn violence is to have a demon kill the Awakened Scion of Arthur to end the spell. He begins coughing blood: His Oaths of Service, Valor, and Fealty consume him because he purposely tried to hurt Bree.

William unwillingly helps Sel torture Kizia for information. Her employer brokered a deal for her to help Jonas. She’s fearful that “the Great Devourer” will know if she gives them information (254). Sel kills her.

Bree apologizes to William for never asking him how the death of his bonded Squire, Whitty, felt. William apologizes for not finding a way to stop the Regents; he is consumed with guilt about the violence he cannot prevent and must commit.

The four decide they still trust Gill and Samira. Sel calls Gill to inform her of Jonas’s betrayal and ask for new, trustworthy Lieges to be assigned to watch Bree’s dad and Alice’s parents.

Bree goes to her room to shower. She reflects on how the Regents easily found the next in the Line of Lancelot to inherit Nick’s powers after his planned murder. She expects they’re doing the same for her, with the barrier of enslavement’s effect on “Black American family ancestry” (265).

Sel is outside the bathroom, waiting to look for a first-aid kit. Bree talks to him while he dresses his wounds. She insists that Sel isn’t succumbing to his blood because he continues to protect her and William. Sel says he can feel his demon nature always encroaching.

Bree helps him dress the wounds on his back. Sel senses her heart pounding, which embarrasses Bree. They have a moment of romantic tension before Sel hears Alice coming down the hall with Bree’s dinner. Bree feels guilty for kissing Nick and experiencing romance with Sel in the same day.

When Bree wakes the next morning, Alice has left materials for bloodwalking by her bed. Bree offers her blood to her mother’s charm bracelet and returns to the ancestral plane. She sees memories of her mid-20th-century ancestor, Jessie. Jessie called her root but was followed by “the Hunter,” a man with black, red-pupiled eyes.

Bree wakes, overwhelmed, and calls her dad, relieved by his voice. He confirms he got two new employees, Lyssa and Ophelia, who Bree knows piloted her getaway car and jet.

When Bree returns to Alice, William, and Sel, she’s newly invigorated. She realized that the Regents locked her up because she has the potential to beat them. The other three decided that continuing to look for Nick is too dangerous.