CHAPTER FORTY-NINE #2
Raw but gone before I could reach it. “You would have called it a lie.”
“I would have investigated—”
“—you would have called it a lie,” she said again, only quieter this time, more certain.
She was close enough that I could see the shadows under her eyes and the way her collarbones pressed too sharp against her skin. Galahad had fed her on air and prayer for weeks, and she was still standing here, chin up, not asking me for a single fucking thing.
She needs us, the dragon said. She has needed us. But you left her there. YOU left her—
“Enough,” I said out loud, my voice too sharp.
Her brows pulled together as I stepped closer. I hadn’t planned to, but the distance between us became nominal anyway, and I could feel the warmth radiating off her skin, could see the slight quickening of her breath, could see the exact moment she decided not to step back.
Tell her, the dragon urged. The pressure of its need built behind my eyes, behind my ribs. Tell her you would have—
No.
She looked up at me, and the violet of her eyes appeared more intense than I’d ever seen it before. The dragon roared something wordless, something that was enormous, and every muscle in my body pulled toward her like iron toward a lodestone.
“I go back to what I said earlier,” she continued, her eyes narrowing on me. “It didn’t matter what I would have told you, the truth or anything less, because you don’t care about me, Arthur.” She held her chin up even higher. “And that’s the cold, hard truth.”
I wanted to say: I should have never left you in Galahad’s care.
I wanted to say: I know what he did.
I wanted to say: It won’t happen again. I swear it on my blood.
My mouth opened, but those words didn’t come.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t care.”
Her face didn’t change; she didn’t even look hurt. She simply looked like she’d expected my response, and that was somehow far worse than any flinch she might have given me.
I turned and walked out, slamming the door behind me.
The guards posted outside her door jumped slightly, and I suddenly felt like I couldn’t get far enough away.
I hurried down the corridor, which was empty and cold.
Once I was alone, I pressed my palm flat against the wall, dropped my head, and breathed hard.
Fool, the dragon hissed. Coward. She stood there bleeding, and you—
—shut up.
Go back. Tell her the truth.
“No.” I took a breath. “I told her the truth.”
No, you lied like the coward you are. You are weak.
“I said shut up.”
My hand curled against the stone, and the wall was cold under my fingers. I pressed harder against it, focused on the texture of the stone, how rough it was, how gritty and real.
The dragon didn’t stop. But it never stopped. Instead, it turned in my chest like a thing caged too long, furious and grieving in the same breath, and I breathed through it the way I’d learned to breathe through everything.
Slowly and without ever letting it show.
-GUIN-
I woke up to find the room dark, and the ceiling was wrong.
Stone, yes. But it was dry, and there were no watermarks threading the mortar, no damp that crept into the lungs.
The pallet was gone. Beneath me was a mattress with actual give and sheets that didn’t rasp against the welts on my back.
A fire was burning low in the hearth, now reduced to orange embers.
Tapestries hung on two walls, faded and a little moth-eaten but present.
Galahad’s bed chamber had no tapestries.
I sat up slowly and let the pieces of that night return in whatever order they came: the assault, then the binding fracturing, and the cold exploding outward from my hands in a wave I couldn’t direct or stop.
I remembered the ice on the floor, ice on Galahad’s face, and the guards flooding the doorway, too afraid to enter.
I remembered the corridor lit with torchlight and full of faces, all of them frightened. Of me.
Then I remembered Tristan walking through the storm and his hand on my arm.
I could remember the warmth of his chest when my legs stopped working, the way he spoke into my hair, how his voice was low and steady.
Some syllables I didn’t understand, and I assumed he was speaking his native language.
But the ice stopped forming, the air warmed, and my hands unclenched from whatever shape terror had made them.
Then I remembered Mordred’s hands on my temples. I touched the inside of my wrist where the binding sat like a second pulse, muffled rather than strangled this time.
Then Lance and Galahad.
And that was when I forced myself to stop remembering because remembering hurt too much.
A knock sounded at the door, which was strange because it was still the early hours of the morning. What was more, it wasn’t a guard’s knock; there was no sharp authority in it and no warning. It was something much lighter.
Before I could even think of getting up and out of bed, the door opened a few inches.
“I’ve brought you breakfast,” a woman’s voice sounded from behind the door. “May I come in?”
“Yes,” I said.
She walked through the door, and I felt my heart drop and then speed up when I recognized her.
Isolde. But what was she doing here, in my borrowed chamber?
I felt my brows furrowing as I watched her enter.
There was a gown folded over one of her arms and a tray balanced on the other.
She put both down on my bed and then stood up as she gave me a smile.
She was wearing practical boots, and her auburn braid was loosening at the nape: those were the first two things I noticed about her.
Then I noticed she wasn’t dressed for court.
It appeared she was dressed for somewhere else entirely and had detoured here.
I didn’t know what to say and allowed my gaze to travel to the tray she’d brought.
Bread. Cheese. Dried fruit and a cup of something steaming.
Probably tea. The smell arrived before I could organize a response to it.
It was real, warm, the kind of breakfast Galahad’s Drenath regime had made theoretical.
My hands moved toward the tray before I’d decided to move them, and realizing what I was doing, I pulled them back. My stomach cramped in protest.
Isolde noticed, or at least I thought she did, but she didn’t comment. She slid the tray closer and said, “Eat first. We can talk after... if you’re obliged.”
I ate because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had breakfast.
Not only that, but a hearty one such as the breakfast she’d brought me.
I intended to eat with dignity, but four bites in, the hunger overrode the intention, and I tore the bread with both hands and closed my eyes, and the performance of restraint collapsed entirely.
She looked at the fire, which was now out, and gave me the window of not being watched. That simple gift was so unexpected that something tightened in my throat, and I had to stop chewing until it passed. When the tray was empty, I wiped my hands on the sheet and looked at her.
“Why are you here?”
“First, I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Isolde... from Corbenic.” No title. No framing. Just a name and a place.
“I know who you are.”
She gave me a smile, and I figured it was only polite that I introduce myself, even though I was sure she already knew who I was as well. “I’m Guinevere, Arthur’s prisoner and Merlin’s daughter. You might refer to me as a spy or a witch.”
She gave me an apologetic smile, and I realized I was being ungrateful. “I’m happy to refer to you by your given name, Guinevere.”
“Why... why did you come?”
She was quiet for a few seconds as she appeared to be processing my question. She then tapped her long fingers against her full mouth.
“Because... quite simply... I couldn’t not come.”