My Merlin Awakening (2 page)

In the square, the commoners who’d been watching at a safe distance started to approach their new king with eager faces. It didn’t take long for the knights of Camelot to also come out of their stupor, forming a barrier around Arthur. They started to shepherd him back inside the main castle keep. A young boy broke through the barrier of knights. One knight rushed to catch the boy. Arthur held up a hand to stay the knight. He kneeled down on one knee to speak to the excited lad.

The kindness of the action rekindled my hope. I looked at Vane. “He will bring us out of the shadows. You will see. He is the bridge between us.”

“The bridge? You have no idea what that actually means, do you?”

I ground my teeth. Nothing with Vane was ever easy. It had been like that since we were children. He always had to have the last word. “The Lady said we would not know the future until the sword had been lifted. Whoever removes it determines the course of our future.”

Vane snorted. “And since you’ve had no visions beyond what happened today, you’re forced to take her word for it.”

I put a hand on the weathered trunk of a thick tree. Its rough edges scraped my fingers. I could feel the power under its coarse exterior. “She promised us a greater destiny. She wouldn’t lie about that.”

“You put too much faith in her.”

I twisted to face him. “Then why did you help me with Arthur? Without you, he would have never have had the skill to pull out the sword. He would not have passed the trial.”

Vane didn’t answer. His attention fixed on Arthur and moved just to the right of the new king. A young woman, dressed in a fine gown, was being escorted away from the crowd. Vane frowned. “Who is she?”

I almost groaned. “Guinevere.”

“Really?”

“His betrothed.” I added quickly, “She’s very much devoted to him.”

Vane raised a brow. “You sound as if you know her well.”

“As a friend,” I said with measure.

“I sense a hint of disappointment.”

Against my will, my jaw clenched. I felt power surging inside me. My eyes must have flashed—I was told it was a terrifying sight to see a man’s eyes glow with a blue radiance—but Vane’s only reaction was a smug expression.

I sighed and the power subsided instantly. Vane was the only one who could make me lose control so easily. I asked again, “Why did you help me with Arthur?”

Vane’s lips curled up into a slow smile. “That should be obvious, Merlin. I want to change my destiny and as a friend of the king, I can do just that.”

CHAPTER 1 - HOME

CHAPTER 1
HOME

I was tired of being real. All I wanted to do was put on a smile and fake it until my teeth hurt. I wanted to go back to a time when everything was simple. I wanted to go back to that person who didn’t need to question everything, who didn’t have to fight for every inch of space, who didn’t have to remember to breathe. I wanted to go back to just being the nice girl. I wanted to go back to being me. If only I knew what “me” meant anymore.

A lacrosse ball whacked me on the head. I turned to glare at the perpetrator.

“Wake up, DuLac!” Vane yelled from the sidelines.

I gnashed my teeth and rubbed my head. The score was ten to two—not in our favor. Possibly the reason our new coach may have been so pissed.

Vane, or Dr. Vivane Northe, had joined the staff of Acton-Concord High School during the winter break. He’d taken over the position left by Ms. Bedevere, my European History teacher, who’d not only gotten married during Christmas vacation, but was now expecting a kid. Her new husband was our Physics teacher, a short energetic man, and apparently, not shooting blanks. Really, it was possible to know too much about your teachers.

I glared at Vane. He wore navy blue sweatpants, a wool cap, and a matching blue hoodie. I had on thin windbreaker pants, no jacket, and no warm cap. The cap was my fault. It was sitting in my gym bag inside the heated locker room. Of course, Vane refused to let me go back inside to retrieve it. All in all, I preferred to be curled up in bed with a book, rather than standing in the middle of a field on a bone-chilling winter day in Concord, Massachusetts, clutching an icy lacrosse stick.

Vane smirked back at me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking and had zero sympathy. “Stop daydreaming and pick up the pace, Ryan.”

I wanted to take the ball and hit him in the face, but I didn’t. I wasn’t the sort… Unfortunately. My name is Arriane Morganne Brittany DuLac—you can imagine why I chose to go by Ryan instead. I turned back to face the girls on the other team and forced myself to concentrate.

I was a little shocked to realize I didn’t even know how many girls were playing. Vane had divided the lacrosse team for the scrimmage. My side wore practice jerseys of blue and yellow, the other team wearing red and black. Another girl on my team grabbed the ball and started weaving through the opposition toward the goal. I ran, keeping just behind her, but kept to the outside.

Bitterly harsh wind that chilled New England at this time of year slapped against our backs with relentless persistence. Mounds of untouched snow sat at the edges of the lacrosse field. But here, in the middle of the field, enough snow had been cleared to reveal sludgy mud and crunchy grass. This snow looked about as attractive as the black-tarred stuff that lined the edges of the roads all over town. The romance of Christmas had worn off. We were deep into February, and we faced several more months of sheer cold.

Obviously, Vane was into torture. It was the only explanation for making the team practice outside in the middle of winter.
How had I wound up dating such a psycho?

Not that Vane was the only mental case out today. On the field next to us, the boys’ football coach, not to be outdone by the girls’ coach, had also thrown his players into the frosty milieu. I saw my brother Grey’s brown hair bobbing around in the throng of boys in sweatpants and muscle-clinging spandex thermal shirts.

“Get to the front, DuLac!” Vane yelled, jogging parallel to us on the sidelines. “Move your ass!”

Beside me, a girl giggled at Vane’s harassment. My eyes narrowed. Ramanajan. Newly up from junior-varsity, she’d taken over the vacant spot Alexa left… which would have been okay, had she not played it so well. I wanted time to miss Alexa. I wasn’t ready to just move on.

My sister deserved to be mourned.

Anger proved to be the impetus that forced my tired legs to battle against an invisible enemy of lady winter. My lungs stretched in my chest until it hurt, but somehow, I pushed and pulled myself ahead of my team. I still stayed on the outside. The other team blocked the goal with a solid defense line. Ramanajan, a slender girl with long, black braids, had the ball in her lacrosse stick and ran in place as she tried to find a hole.

Without ever glancing my way, she lobbed the ball straight at me. A linebacker of a girl tried to intercept the ball, but I edged her out, using my shoulder to block as I leaped up and raised my lacrosse stick. The ball landed with a solid thwack into the net of my stick.

I had a good shot at the goal. Another teammate jumped up and down, waving her stick in the air. She was a little closer to the goal, but stood at an odd angle. It was a risk, but I hooked the stick and shot the ball forward to her. She caught it and sent it flying to the goal. We all held our breaths. The ball slammed into the top of the post. Luckily, it went down instead of out and sailed into the goal.

On the sidelines, Vane blew the whistle. Scrimmage was over.

Ramanajan ran up to me and bumped shoulders.

I forced a smile.

“Good call, Ryan. Just like I watched you and Alexa play—” Ramanajan cut off when my smile faltered. She sobered. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said… well, good pass, Ryan.” Quickly, she walked away from me to high-five a few of the other girls.

I stared out at the quiet field. I blinked hard to restrain the suffusion of emotion that hovered just behind my eyelids. The linebacker girl whom I’d blocked to get to the goal thumped my back. “We all miss her, DuLac.”

“Thanks, Christine,” I said. I glanced at Vane, who was still on the sideline just behind us. The team surrounded him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to him, but I heard the exclamation points. Vane made a reply, which caused the girls to squeal with laughter. Ramanajan put a hand on his bicep and squeezed. My eyes narrowed.

“Ugh,” Christine said. “How are we ever going to get through the season when all they want to do is drool over Coach 007?”

I grimaced. Between his British accent, lean-muscled physique, and deadly-but-hot looks, Vane did have a Bond-esque quality to which no one seemed immune.

Christine hit my back with another hard slap. “Come on, let’s get inside before we turn into ice. Oh, I ordered those foam boards like you wanted.”

“Good,” I said. “Who knew prom would be so much work?” Christine was on the planning committee with me.

She grinned. “I put in my vote for you.”

I groaned. I really didn’t want to be prom queen. I didn’t want to be any sort of queen. A picture of a sword embedded in stone flashed in my mind, and the irony of the statement didn’t escape me. I started walking slowly back toward the gym with her.

“Bowler, DuLac, hang on.” Vane came up behind us with the rest of the team in tow. “Bowler, take this back to the locker room.” He handed Christine a bulky duffel bag.

She grunted at its unexpected weight, but gave Vane a beatific smile that bordered on simpering. “You know my name?”

He gave her a brief nod. Her smile widened.

I winced.

A gust of frosty wind spurred us to hurry.

Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”

Chat
. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.”

“Yes, Coach,” I said between clenched teeth.

The girls who had been heading quickly towards the gym slowed to a crawl and looked at me curiously.

Vane’s lips curved up into a cold smile. “What was that? You had a clear shot at the goal. Why didn’t you take it?”

My feet turned inward. I chewed my lip. “We’re here to practice, right? How can the rest of the team do that if I’m taking all the shots?”

Vane leaned his face down to mine. The top of my head only reached his shoulders. His breath hot in my face, he growled, “You aren’t taking all the shots. You’re not taking any of them. That’s the problem. You are their leader, DuLac. Act like one.”

I didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure what to say. What could I say that he would understand? I had been trained by Vane to be a leader, a champion, but I didn’t feel like one. I had just gotten lucky.

Vane continued, “Play like you did today, DuLac, and I will bench you. There are plenty of others ready to take your spot if you can’t straighten up.”

I huffed. “I did fine in our last game.”

“Fine isn’t good enough for co-captain. We lost the game.”

“Twelve to eleven,” I said.

We must have been talking loudly because the other girls stopped pretending to be going back to the gym and halted completely. Ramanajan and Christine turned around to look at Vane and me first. The rest of the team followed their lead.

I shot him an angry look. “We’re adjusting. We lost our captain. Remember? You haven’t picked a new one. Our old coach would have it straightened out by now.”

“Ramanajan!” Vane barked.

The slender girl jumped slightly.

“Congratulations, you’ve made captain.” Vane looked at her. She beamed a wide smile at him. He looked at the rest of the team. They returned his gaze like a pack of abused dogs—eager to please with a dash of fear.

“I know it’s difficult losing a team member and your coach almost at the same time, but we can’t dwell on that. You are varsity. Many of you are graduating. To have a chance at scholarships, you need to keep your eyes on the target. Playing here is not just about winning a few games. This is about your future. Show them you’re the champions you’ve already proven yourselves be. We were first place in our division last term. There is no reason why we can’t do it again… if you can keep focused.” Vane rounded on me. “What do you say, DuLac?”