CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX #3
I watched as the candle threw shadows up the wall behind him. They were long and unsteady, and for a moment he looked like a figure from some old storybook.
“I don’t know what it means,” I continued. “I don’t even know if it means anything at all. Maybe it’s the binding: just Mordred’s work affecting how I receive my own thoughts and feelings?” I said the words as if I believed them.
Tristan said nothing. He had a gift for that, too. Then he stood, and without asking, he came and took my hand, leading me to the bed. He sat down, then tapped the empty space beside him. Once I sat down, I realized we were close enough that his shoulder pressed against mine.
Then he smiled down at me. “You look like you’re nervous.”
I nodded. “I am nervous.”
“Why?”
I frowned at that. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged. “I’m not nervous.”
That wasn’t surprising because I’d never seen him be or act nervous, ever.
As to why I was nervous? I wasn’t sure. I just...
didn’t know what we were or weren’t to one another.
I’d assumed we were friends, but there was definitely the glimmer of something more in his eyes, and I imagined that glimmer was echoed in mine, even if I didn’t know how I truly felt about anything anymore.
But, regardless, Tristan just sat there, solid, warm, and present, and I was grateful for it and for him.
After a moment, I leaned sideways and rested my head against him, and it felt good to do so. It felt like it had with Lance before... before all of this had happened.
When I thought of Lance, a deep dread settled in my gut because I had no idea what future awaited him.
All I knew was that Arthur wasn’t a man who forgave easily, and that made me nervous for Lance.
But for as worried as I was about him, I also couldn’t stop thinking about how close I’d come to death earlier.
Galahad had absolutely planned on running my throat through with his blade.
Had Arthur kept the dragon to himself, I’d most likely be dead now.
And that was a thought I had trouble holding.
“I keep thinking,” I said, “about how many people in that hall agreed with Galahad: that I was someone who should be destroyed.”
“Some,” Tristan said. “Not all.”
“Galahad’s people.”
He nodded. “Though Galahad’s people were already decided.”
That was true enough.
“Why did you rescue him?” he asked.
I shook my head as I thought about it. “I don’t really know… I just… I suppose there was just no part of me that would allow him to burn when I knew I could stop it.”
“Even after he’d attempted to take your life?”
I shrugged. “I suppose so.” Then I laughed. “Does that make me a fool?”
He shook his head and his expression was serious. “No. It makes you… rather incredible, I’d say.”
Then his hand came up and rested on my back, between my shoulder blades; it was just a small pressure, as if he wanted to let me know he was there for me, that I wasn’t alone.
“Are you thinking of leaving?” I asked because I was suddenly worried that maybe after all the commotion and everything that was unraveling in Camelot, he might have opted to return home.
He was quiet for a breath too long.
“Are you thinking of returning to Lyonesse?” I was suddenly worried by his lack of a response. I sat up enough to look at him. “You’re not from here. You don’t owe this place anything. If things are going to become worse now—”
“—Guin.”
He’d started calling me by my shortened name a week or so ago, and I had to admit I liked it. And I liked him. My feelings were in shambles in general, so I couldn’t say how deep that “like” registered, but it was there, all the same.
“I would understand if you wanted to leave,” I continued. “If I had a home I could still return to, I’d—”
“—I’m not leaving.” He took a breath. “Arthur released a mandate that said no one is to leave.”
“Oh,” I answered in a small voice.
“But even if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t leave anyway.”
I studied this man who had followed a poet’s road into a court that regarded him charming, decorative, and dangerous with his death magic.
I looked at this man who’d sat beside me at dinner when no one else would, who’d come to me with wine and no agenda on the worst night I’d had in this castle since Galahad.
He was looking at me with an expression I recognized, because I’d seen it building in him for weeks the way weather builds on a horizon.
And I felt the shift in the air between us, the way it changed when two people were close enough and honest enough with each other that the next thing becomes obvious.
He leaned toward me, just slightly, just enough.
And I leaned back.
Not far. Just enough to put an inch of distance between us that hadn’t been there before. His eyes found mine, and I held them because he deserved that much: to be looked at directly when I said what I needed to say.
“Tristan.” My voice came out quieter than I intended. “I care for you. I want you to know that, because it’s true and because I think you should hear it plainly.” I took a breath. “But I’m not there yet. I don’t know if I’ll be there for a long time.”
He didn’t say anything. He just watched me with those dark eyes and waited.
“My heart is still...” I stopped, because the honest version of the sentence was harder to say than I’d anticipated.
“It still bleeds. For Lance. And for Corvin.”
The names felt like stones in my mouth, heavy and specific.
“I don’t have the strength left to give another man that part of me right now. Even one I trust. Even one who deserves it.”
I shook my head. “I’d only be giving you the hollow version of me, and you’re worth more than that.”
Something moved across his face, but it wasn’t quite hurt. It was more like the quiet of a man who’d heard something he already suspected confirmed.
“I understand,” he said. And the thing about Tristan was that he meant it. It wasn’t the performed understanding of someone accepting a rejection gracefully. He actually meant it: he did understand.
“There’s something else,” I said, because I owed him the rest of it too.
“Even if I were ready…” I looked at my hands for a moment.
“I couldn’t let you do this. You’re already in a precarious position here. You’re foreign-born, your magic makes half the court uneasy, and Arthur already watches everyone in his orbit with more attention than is comfortable.”
I looked back up at him. “If he thought you and I were—” I didn’t finish the sentence.
Tristan’s expression shifted. “Is that a genuine concern?” He asked the question carefully, like a man picking his way across uncertain ground. “Does Arthur...” He seemed to then search for the right word. “Does he have a claim on you? Beyond the political one?”
I was quiet for a moment.
“It’s complicated,” I finally said.
“Complicated,” he repeated.
“Yes.” I held his gaze. “But if you’re asking whether he harbors feelings for me… then yes. I believe he does. And I don’t know what to do with that, and I’m not asking you to make sense of it either. I just...” I exhaled. “I can’t be the reason something happens to you. I couldn’t bear that.”
Tristan was quiet for a long moment. He looked at the fire, then back at me, and something in his face had settled into something gentler and more resolved than it had been before.
“I’m not leaving because of Arthur,” he said. “And I’m not staying because of whatever this is between us.” He gestured slightly with one hand, indicating the space where the almost-kiss had just lived and died. “I’m staying because you’re my friend. And because you need one.”
I nodded. “Can that be enough for now?”
“Yes,” he said. “That can be enough.”
There was silence between us for the count of a few seconds, both of us just listening to other breathing. Then he stood. “I should probably go.”
I nodded, because he was right: that was the best thing for him to do at the moment. Especially with the way he’d been looking at me. “Thank you. For the wine. For staying.”
“You didn’t even drink the wine.”
“I know.” I almost smiled. “But I was glad it was here. Just as I’m glad you are here.”
He smiled at that, smaller than his usual smiles, but more real somehow, and reached the door.
“Goodnight, Guin,” he said when he reached the door.
“Goodnight, Tristan,” I responded.
-ARTHUR-
By the time I came to a conclusion, the fire had been reduced to ashes. As to the decision I’d reached, it was a sound one.
I’d been sitting in my chair for two or even three hours. The candle had gone out, and I hadn’t tried to relight it. There was now no source of light except the fire, which was gradually dying too. I watched the last log being consumed by the flames.
Not for the first time, my mind turned to thoughts of Lance.
He would have been the one I’d called. Not Kay, not Mordred, but Lance.
That was the reflex, even now: to turn toward him.
We’d spent enough years working through problems side by side that the habit of it had worn grooves into me, and even now, sitting in a dark room with the fire gone to ash, the instinct was still there.
He would have sat down across from me without being invited, would have poured two cups of ale without asking, would have listened to the full problem before he said a single word.
That was one of the things I’d valued most about him.
He didn’t rush toward answers. He had patience for the shape of a problem.
But that was the man I’d believed him to be.
The man I’d believed him to be hadn’t looked me in the eye repeatedly and said nothing.
That man hadn’t stood in this room, at my table, in my counsel, and let me make decisions about her based on information he knew to be incomplete.
Lance had known what he’d done. He’d also known the shape and the weight of it.
And yet he’d said nothing. All of that steadiness I’d trusted had been built on a lie of omission so significant that I didn’t yet have words for the specific quality of it.
It wasn’t the act of him fucking her itself.
Or it wasn’t only that. I wasn’t so naive or pigheaded as to think that men didn’t make choices in the dark that they wouldn’t make in the light.