CHAPTER TWENTY #4
In the obvious silence between us, I started going through the list of the people I’d betrayed in Camelot the way you pick at a wound.
Of course, first and foremost was Arthur.
But that one didn’t upset me. I still felt towards Arthur the way I’d always felt towards him.
A hatred mixed with desire that was completely unhelpful.
The harm against him was real, but the math was complicated, and complicated things are easier to carry.
Then I thought of Lance and the history between us that was less black and white.
I felt guilt over that one, even as I also realized what had happened between us was inevitable.
What was more, I could look at Lance and argue, at least to myself, that whatever I’d taken from him was something he’d overcome because he was precisely who he was.
A warrior. A mountain. He was a man who didn’t sway from things like emotion, I was convinced.
It was just as he’d said it was: that I was dead to him. And that was the end of that.
But Percival. Percival was a different subject altogether.
Percival was a guilt, and it was one that hurt.
And it hurt precisely because of the fact that he’d introduced me to the stars.
He’d told me about his gift once, quietly, on a bench in the rose garden because I’d asked what it cost him, and he’d answered honestly instead of deflecting like everyone else did.
Percival had seen through Lioran from the start: not the lie of the name or face, but the loneliness underneath all of it.
He’d seen me for me, but he’d decided to be my friend anyway.
And I’d let him.
That was the thing I couldn’t argue my way around.
I’d known what I was doing, but I’d still accepted his friendship.
I’d known about the fact that eventually, I’d backstab him, even when I laughed at his jokes, when I told him something small and true to make him feel trusted, when I let him mean something to me because it made the mission easier to bear.
I allowed him to become my friend because I wasn’t strong enough to keep him at arm’s length.
And also because he was genuinely the kindest person I’d ever met.
He wasn’t wrong to be done with me. That was the part that sat the heaviest in my chest.
“I didn’t expect to miss it,” I said.
My voice came out even. I hadn’t planned it to, but there it was. Of course, he didn’t say anything, but I hadn’t expected him to.
“Your friendship,” I continued. “I just... want you to know that... I... I didn’t expect it to hurt as much as it does.”
It wasn’t an apology. I wasn’t sure I’d earned the right to one yet, but it was just a statement that in my own mind had to be said. So, I put it in the room and left it there.
And it was met with silence. He adjusted his stance, and his weight shifted from one foot to the other. Then he squared his shoulders, and the conversation was over. Not dismissed, just absorbed, filed somewhere I would never have access to.
And then, just once, he looked at me.
It lasted less than a second, but his blue eyes found mine across the room, and what was in them wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t even disappointment, exactly.
It was grief. But it was the settled kind, the kind that has already done the acute work, mourned the loss, and moved on.
It was the kind of grief you see in a graveyard: after the body is long cold, in the ground, and the grief dissolves like mist over the dirt.
He’d already mourned Lioran, and he wasn’t going to start again for me. And I didn’t and couldn’t blame him because I understood.
His gaze went back to the door as I pulled myself to my feet and moved to the far side of the cot. I just needed to put as much of the room between us as the room allowed. Once there, I sat down with my back against the cold stone wall and didn’t try again.
But I wanted to. That was the honest part. I wanted to keep talking, keep pushing, keep looking for the right combination of words that would make him look at me like that again, even if it hurt, because even grief was contact, and contact was something.
But that wanting was mine and only mine. It had nothing to do with him.
Percival stood his post as I sat against the wall.
Outside, the guards had moved on from the horse and were now talking about the horse’s owner.
The candle on the table burned down a visible measure as I realized that this was exactly what my disloyalty looked like.
Not a confrontation I could replay and pick apart afterward.
Not an argument with clear positions to examine.
Just a room, and two people in it, and one of them no longer believed the other one existed.
Galahad had told me not to mistake Percival’s kindness for weakness, but he’d gotten it wrong. Percival’s kindness wasn’t a weakness. It never had been. It was the reason I couldn’t talk my way out of this, the reason none of my usual tools worked, the reason the room felt like it did.
You couldn’t charm someone whose goodness was the exact thing you’d used against them. What was more, the worst liars were the ones who knew exactly what they were doing, but they did it anyway. And I’d always known. I just hadn’t expected to care as much as I did.