Legendborn Read online

  Praise for

  LEGENDBORN

  An Indies Introduce Selection

  “Rich and explosive debut.”

  —SLJ, starred review

  “Don’t look over sea or under stone—this is the fantasy novel for all once and future fans of suspense-filled storytelling.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS

  “Legendborn is a thrilling and tense fantasy that weaves Arthurian adventure with southern Black culture into a story that had me shouting. It will hook readers from the very beginning and leave them breathless until the final, mind-blowing revelation.”

  —KWAME MBALIA, New York Times bestselling author of the Tristan Strong series

  “Legendborn is a remarkable debut that should firmly place Tracy Deonn on every fantasy and contemporary YA reader’s radar. Deft and insightful blending of Arthurian legend and Southern Black American history make for an engrossing tale of mystery, romance, and finding your place in the world—an absolute must-read!”

  —ALYSSA COLE, award-winning romance author

  “Legendborn is an enthralling, standout modern fantasy about history and power, and Deonn is an author to watch.”

  —KIERSTEN WHITE, New York Times bestselling author of The Guinevere Deception and Slayer

  “Perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare and Kiersten White, Tracy Deonn’s unique reimagining of Arthurian legend is full of magic and heart. A brilliant debut!”

  —ASHLEY POSTON, national bestselling author of Geekerella

  “A King Arthur reimagining that adds seats to the Round Table, inviting new readers to find themselves within its lore, Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn braids southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery.”

  —DHONIELLE CLAYTON, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles

  “Legendborn is intoxicating and electrifying, and resonates with a deep understanding and vulnerable adoration of what it is to be a Black girl searching for the magic of herself. Tracy Deonn captivates you from page one with her perfect pacing, exhilarating plotting, and a command of storytelling that cannot be ignored. This book will hold everything you are hostage until, page by page, you discover how it has actually set you free.”

  —L.L. MCKINNEY, author of the critically acclaimed Nightmare-Verse series

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  For my mother

  PROLOGUE

  THE POLICE OFFICER’S body goes blurry, then sharpens again.

  I don’t stare at him directly. I can’t really focus on one thing in this room, but when I do look, his face shimmers.

  His badge, the rectangular nameplate, his tie clip? All the little metal details on his chest ripple and shine like loose silver change at the bottom of a fountain. Nothing about him appears solid. Nothing about him feels real.

  I don’t think about that, though. I can’t.

  Besides, everything looks otherworldly when you’ve been crying for three hours straight.

  The police officer and nurse brought me and my father into a tiny mint-green room. Now they sit on the other side of the table. They say they are “explaining the situation” to us. These people don’t feel real, but neither does “the situation” they keep explaining.

  I don’t cry for my mother’s death. Or for myself. I cry because these strangers in the hospital—the nurse, the doctor, the police officer—don’t know my mother, and yet they were closest to her when she died. And when your people die, you have to listen to strangers speak your nightmare into existence.

  “We found her on Route 70 around eight,” the police officer says. The air conditioner kicks on. The sharp scents of hospital-grade hand soap and floor cleaner blow across our faces.

  I listen to these people I don’t know use the past tense about my mother, the person who brought me into this world and created my present. They are past-tensing my heart—my whole beating, bleeding, torn heart—right in front of me.

  It is a violation.

  These uniformed strangers carve me open with their words, but they are just doing their jobs. I can’t scream at people who are just doing their jobs, can I?

  I want to.

  My father sits in a vinyl padded chair. It creaks when he leans forward to read paragraphs of fine print on pieces of paper. Where did this paperwork come from? Who has paperwork on hand for my mother’s death? Why are they ready when I am not ready?

  My father asks questions, signs his name, blinks, breathes, nods. I wonder how he is functioning. My mother’s life has stopped. Shouldn’t everything and everyone stop living too?

  She was crushed inside our family sedan, body half-crumpled under the dashboard after a hit-and-run. She was alone until some nice, probably frightened Good Samaritan saw her overturned car on the side of the road.

  Bloodred twine connects the final words I said to my mother—last night, in anger—to another night in February. A night when my best friend, Alice, and I, sitting together in the basement of her parents’ split-level home, decided UNC-Chapel Hill’s Early College Program was our dream. Bright high school students can earn college credit at Carolina over the course of two years, experience life in the dorms, and become independent. At least, that’s what the brochure said. For Alice and me, Early College was two minority girls’ ticket out of a small town in rural North Carolina. For us, Early College meant bigger ideas and classrooms—and adventure. We’d filled out our applications together. Marched right into the Bentonville post office after school together. Dropped the envelopes in the chute together. If we could get into EC, we could leave Bentonville High and move to a university dorm four hours away from home—and away from parents who held us so tight that sometimes we couldn’t breathe.

  A decade before I was born, my mother was an undergraduate at Carolina. A burgeoning scientist. I’d heard the stories for years. Seen the framed photos of elaborate chemistry experiments: beakers and glass pipettes; protective goggles resting across her high cheekbones. It was her fault, really, for planting the idea in my mind. That’s what I’d told myself, anyway.

  Our letters came yesterday. Alice’s parents knew she was applying. They’d beamed like they were the ones who’d been accepted.

  I knew it wouldn’t go that way for me; I’d applied behind my mother’s back, certain that once I got in, once I had that letter, she’d let go of her need to keep me close. I’d handed her the letter on blue-and-white Carolina stationery, grinned like it was a trophy.

  I’d never seen her so angry.

  My brain doesn’t accept where my body is sitting. It catalogs the last thirty-six hours in an attempt to find the how of this hospital room.

  Last night: she’d roared about trust and safety and not rushing to grow up. I’d screamed about unfairness, about what I’d earned, and how I needed to get away from dirt roads.

  This morning: I was still fuming when I woke up. In bed, I made a silent declaration to not speak to her all day. That declaration had felt good.

  Today: a nothing, normal Tuesday, except that, for me, it carried the stubborn undercurrent of We’ll talk later.

  Tonight: she drove away from work at the end of the day.

  Then: a car.

  Now: this pale green room and a disinfectant smell that burns when I inhale.

  Forever: We’ll talk later is not the same as W
e’ll never talk again.

  The twine from February closes tight around me like I will never take another breath, but somehow the police officer is still talking, shimmering and shining.

  The air around him looks alive. Like he is drenched in magic.

  But when your entire world is shattering, a little bit of magic is… nothing.

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  PART ONE ORDER

  1

  A CAROLINA FIRST-YEAR sprints through the darkness and launches himself off the cliff into the moonlit night.

  His shout sends sleepy birds flying overhead. The sound echoes against the rock face that borders the Eno Quarry. Flashlights track his flailing body, all windmilling arms and kicking legs, until he hits the water with a cracking splash. At the cliff line above, thirty college students cheer and whoop, their joy weaving through the pine trees. Like a constellation in motion, cone-shaped beams of light roam the lake’s surface. Collective breath, held. All eyes, searching. Waiting. Then, the boy erupts from the water with a roar, and the crowd explodes.

  Cliff jumping is the perfect formula for Southern-white-boy fun: rural recklessness, a pocket flashlight’s worth of precaution, and a dare. I can’t look away. Each run draws my own feet an inch closer to the edge. Each leap into nothingness, each hovering moment before the fall, calls to a spark of wild yearning inside my chest.

  I press that yearning down. Seal it closed. Board it up.

  “Lucky he didn’t break his damn legs,” Alice mutters in her soft twang. She scoffs, peering over the edge to watch the grinning jumper grasp protruding rocks and exposed vines to climb the rock face. Her straight, coal-black hair lies plastered to her temple. The warm, sticky palm of late-August humidity presses down on our skin. My curls are already up in a puff, as far away from the back of my neck as possible, so I hand her the extra elastic band from my wrist. She takes it wordlessly and gathers her hair in a ponytail. “I read about this quarry on the way here. Every few years kids get hurt, fall on the rocks, drown. We’re sure as hell not jumping, and it’s getting late. We should go.”

  }“Why? ’Cause you’re getting bit?” I swat at a tiny flickering buzz near her arm.

  She fixes me with a glare. “I’m insulted by your weak conversational deflection. That’s not best-friend behavior. You’re fired.” Alice wants to major in sociology, then maybe go into law. She’s been interrogating me since we were ten.

  I roll my eyes. “You’ve best-friend fired me fifty times since we were kids and yet you keep rehiring me. This job sucks. HR is a nightmare.”

  “And yet you keep coming back. Evidence, if circumstantial, that you enjoy the work.”

  I shrug. “Pay is good.”

  “You know why I don’t like this.”

  I do. It’s not like I’d planned to break the law our first night on campus, but after dinner an opportunity had presented itself in the shape of Charlotte Simpson, a girl we knew from Bentonville High. Charlotte popped her head into our dorm room before we’d even finished unpacking and demanded we join her for a night out. After two years of EC, Charlotte had officially enrolled as a Carolina undergraduate this year and, apparently, she’d turned party girl somewhere in the interim.

  During the day, the Eno River State Park is open for hiking, camping, and kayaking, but if you sneak in after the gates close like all the kids here have, it’s probably-to-definitely trespassing. Not something I’d normally go for, but Charlotte explained that the night before the first day of classes is special. It’s tradition for some juniors and seniors to host a party at the Quarry. Also tradition? First-year students jumping off the edge of the cliffs into the mineral-rich lake at its center. The park straddles Orange and Durham Counties and sits north of I-85, about twenty-five minutes away from Carolina’s campus. Charlotte drove us here in her old silver Jeep, and the entire ride over I felt Alice beside me in the back seat, shrinking against the illegality of it all.

  The jumper’s unfettered laughter crests the cliff before his head does. I can’t remember the last time my laugh sounded like that.

  “You don’t like this because it’s”—I drop my voice into a dramatic whisper—“against the rules?”

  Alice’s dark eyes burn behind her glasses. “Gettin’ caught off campus at night is an automatic expulsion from EC.”

  “Hold up, Hermione. Charlotte said a bunch of students do it every year.”

  Another jumper sprints through the woods. A deeper splash. Cheers. Alice juts her chin toward the other students. “That’s them. Tell me why you want to be here?”

  Because I can’t just sit in our room right now. Because ever since my mother died, there’s a version of me inside that wants to break things and scream.

  I lift a shoulder. “Because what better way to begin our adventure than with a pinch of rebellion?”

  She does not look amused.

  “Did someone say rebellion?” Charlotte’s boots crunch through the leaves and pine needles. The sharp sound stands out from the droning background of crickets and the low bass thump pulsing our way from the party’s speakers. She comes to a stop next to me and brushes her auburn ponytail away from her shoulder. “Y’all jumpin’? It is tradition.” She smirks. “And it’s fun.”

  “No,” damn near leaps out of Alice’s mouth. Something must have shown on my face, because Charlotte grins and Alice says, “Bree…”

  “Aren’t you pre-med or something, Charlotte?” I ask. “How are you this smart and this bad an influence?”

  “It’s college,” Charlotte says with a shrug. “ ‘Smart but a bad influence’ describes like half the student body.”

  “Char?” A male voice calls out from behind a raggedy holly. Charlotte’s face breaks into a wide smile even before she turns around to see the tall red-haired boy walking toward us. He holds a red Solo cup in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

  “Hey, babe,” Charlotte purrs, and greets him with a giggling kiss.

  “Char?” I mouth to a grimacing Alice.

  When they separate, Charlotte waves us over. “Babe, these are new EC kids from back home. Bree and Alice.” She curls around the boy’s arm like a koala. “This is my boyfriend, y’all. Evan Cooper.”

  Evan’s perusal takes long enough that I wonder what he’s thinking about us.

  Alice is Taiwanese-American, short, and wiry, with observant eyes and a semipermanent smirk. Her whole MO is dressing to make a good impression “just in case,” and tonight she chose dark jeans and a polka-dotted blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Under Evan’s scrutiny, she pushes her round glasses up her nose and gives a shy wave.

  I’m five-eight—tall enough that I might pass for a college student—and Black. Blessed with my mother’s cheekbones and curves and my father’s full mouth. I’d pulled on old jeans and a tee. Shy isn’t really my thing.

  Evan’s eyes widen when they take me in. “You’re the girl whose mom died, right? Bree Matthews?”

  A trickle of pain inside, and my wall snaps into place. Death creates an alternate universe, but after three months, I have the tools to live in it.

  Charlotte jabs Evan in the ribs with her elbow, sending him daggers with her eyes. “What?” He puts his hands up. “That’s what you sai—”

  “Sorry.” She cuts him off, her gaze apologetic.

  My wall works two ways: it hides the things I need to hide and helps me show the things I need to show. Particularly useful with the Sorry for Your Loss crowd. In my mind’s eye, the wall’s reinforced now. Stronger than wood, iron, steel. It has to be, because I know what comes next: Charlotte and Evan will unleash the predictable stream of words everyone says when they realize they’re talking to the Girl Whose Mom Died.

  It’s like Comforting Grieving People Bingo, except when all the squares get covered, everyone loses.

  Charlotte perks up. Here we go…

  “How are you holding up? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Double whammy.

  The real answer
s to those two questions? The really real answers? Not well and No. Instead I say, “I’m fine.”

  No one wants to hear the real answers. What the Sorry for Your Loss Crowd wants is to feel good about asking the questions. This game is awful.

  “I can’t imagine,” Charlotte murmurs, and that’s another square covered on the bingo board. They can imagine it; they just wouldn’t want to.

  Some truths only tragedy can teach. The first one I learned is that when people acknowledge your pain, they want your pain to acknowledge them back. They need to witness it in real time, or else you’re not doing your part. Charlotte’s hungry blue eyes search for my tears, my quivering lower lip, but my wall is up, so she won’t get either. Evan’s eager gaze hunts for my grief and suffering, but when I jut my chin out in defiance, he averts his eyes.

  Good.

  “Sorry for your loss.”

  Damn.

  And with the words I most despise, Evan hits bingo.

  People lose things when they have a mental lapse. Then they find that thing again from the lost place. But my mother isn’t lost. She’s gone.

  Before-Bree is gone, too, even though I pretend that she’s not.

  After-Bree came into being the day after my mom died. I went to sleep that night and when I woke up, she was there. After-Bree was there during the funeral. After-Bree was there when our neighbors knocked on our door to offer sorrow and broccoli casserole. After-Bree was with me when the visiting mourners finally went home. Even though I can only recall hazy snippets from the hospital—trauma-related memory loss, according to my father’s weird, preachy grief book—I have After-Bree. She’s the unwanted souvenir that death gave me.

  In my mind’s eye, After-Bree looks almost like me. Tall, athletic, warm brown skin, broader-than-I-want shoulders. But where my dark, tight curls are usually pulled up on top of my head, After-Bree’s stretch wide and loose like a live oak tree. Where my eyes are brown, hers are the dark ochre, crimson, and obsidian of molten iron in a furnace, because After-Bree is in a constant state of near explosion. The worst is at night, when she presses against my skin from the inside and the pain is unbearable. We whisper together, I’m sorry, Mom. This is all my fault. She lives and breathes inside my chest, one heartbeat behind my own life and breath, like an angry echo.