Chapter 37 #2
Instead, he sighed and spoke with a rare softness. “I’m sorry. No one should have to lose family that way.”
“Thank you,” I replied, and meant it. I considered him anew, still pale from blood loss, propped against the bedhead, his skin marked red from his duel with death. His healing blood meant he carried no scars, but the mark of his pain would remain somewhere, written deep beneath flesh and bone.
“Is it me who has done this to you?” I asked. “Is it this captivity for which you want to end your life?”
“No,” he replied. “My actions have only ever been driven by what resides within me. My own great weaknesses.”
As always, his candour played a chord in my chest. “There is still much might left in you,” I said. “Isn’t it said Sir Lancelot du Lac has the strength of ten men?”
“I do not speak of my body or sword arm, but my mind—my soul… ” Just as quickly, his eyes went flat, as if I had ceased to exist. “Never mind. It is not in you to know the truth of me.”
His sudden coldness stung in a way I didn’t expect.
“My God, you never stop, do you?” I said fiercely.
“Pretending all we share is the conflict of your virtue and my corruption, when we have journeyed far beyond that. I know things of you that you don’t even know yourself.
Of wonders within your own body. Miracles running through your veins. ”
The word sharpened his gaze. “What do you mean?”
“There is healing in your blood,” I said. “Restorative powers, natural and strong, lying dormant within you because you never understood. Only I can feel what you have.”
He frowned and held up his red-streaked hands. “In my blood? All my life, I have been this way?”
“Probably,” I said. “You said that you heal faster than most and rarely scar. However long that has been true, your blood has been the reason.”
“Lady Ninianne never told me of such a thing,” he countered. “She has far greater powers than you.”
“She does, though not in physic or healing,” I replied. “She sensed the same affinity in me when we first met, but could not discern what the feeling meant.”
He sighed in slight annoyance. “I suppose you will tell me next that only you can show me how to use this…talent. Except you would not, because it is in your interest to have me weakened like this.”
“That’s not true, and beneath you to suggest it,” I said. “If you had not woken, I would have healed you as much as I could. Whatever has gone between us, if we are to do battle, I do not want you weak, Lancelot. I never have.”
His stern, beautiful face lit with surprise, then an emotion I found hard to read.
“So what now?” he murmured. “If I am to be fully restored, I must let you… ”
I shook my head. “I will not lay hands if it causes you discomfort. You are recovered enough that you can heal naturally in a week or two. Or, if you want to be restored more quickly, you have the power to do so.”
“Heal myself?” he exclaimed, and I nodded. Lancelot regarded me in wonder, then dropped his eyes. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
I considered him briefly, then looked out at the shadowy chamber, candles burning low, the night turning its gaze away. Anything was possible here, in the forgiving half-dark.
“I can show you,” I said, opening my palms. “Give me your hands.”
Lancelot looked up at me from under dark lashes. With slow decision, he offered himself up, and lay his hands on mine. His blood across our shared skin was a heavenly chorus in my senses.
I slid my fingers up to encircle his wrists, where his pulse thudded hardest. “Close your eyes,” I said. “Gather your mind, and focus on the rhythms within your body, the flow of light where the source of life lies. When you find it, you will know.”
I let my own lids flutter shut, feeling his concentration tighten as he drew into himself, seeking what I had told him. His muscles tensed under my touch, skin prickling with heat, the untrained power of his healing rising to the encouragement of my own golden force.
Gradually, I felt him grow stronger within, then the rush of his affinity came faster, his blood surging in replenishment, internal damage receding until it was no more. In its wake came a burst of glorious fortitude, his power of ten men returned.
Lancelot snatched a hard breath as his exhilaration swept through me, the innate knowledge of healing to fulfilment. I smiled in satisfaction and opened my eyes.
For the second time that night, he was already looking at me, eyes glittering like diamonds.
When he moved, it felt as though time slowed; he lifted a hand and trailed his fingertips along my jaw, drawing my face closer.
Before my mind could decide what was best, Lancelot reached out, I leaned in to his touch, and he was kissing me.
It was different to how I had imagined it, his mouth yielding against mine in a warm, tentative caress, once, twice, three times.
I expected realization, retreat, but none came, and his touch grew bolder, his kiss searching, hungry, fingers pushing into my hair, then entwined at the nape of my neck.
Though it was impossible, he tasted like honey.
Still I waited for his mind to change, but in a swift movement his arms were around me, sweeping my body closer with the ease of his renewed strength.
I let myself be taken as he pulled me atop him, my hands at his face, his throat, trailing down to the carved relief of his back, our embrace fervent and abandoned in a way I had only ever envisioned alone in the depths of the night.
When he reached up and pushed my robe from my shoulders, I knew then he wouldn’t cease; that here, now, he wanted this as much as I had.
Pulling myself away, I caught his hair in my fingers and tugged his head back, so he would see me clearly, and understand what this meant for us.
“You have enough regrets,” I said. “I refuse to be another.”
Lancelot looked up at me, eyes wild and gleaming, a fallen saint glorying in his fate. With a roll of his neck, he twisted free of my grip and kissed me again, a definitive answer.
I could do it, I thought, so easily. I could lay him down and bind us together, amidst his singing blood and the shadows and our furious connection.
What we could become together, the potential that could rise from our pleasure and complexities, felt limitless, ferocious, a force fit to extinguish the stars.
But that’s what we were—an incendiary collision, an abyss, two weapons clashing in sparks.
Lancelot did not love me, nor I him, in any way beyond our inner damage.
Real love was light, where he and I resided in darkness, our desire mixed with the urge to tear the other apart.
However bright we burned, our fascination did not make us fit for one another.
I let myself taste him for two more heartbeats, then arched my body upright and took my mouth from his. Immediately, he reached for me again, but I held myself at bay and put a hand to his blood-streaked, impossible face.
“You are not a faithless knight,” I said.
I watched the words sink into him, invoking the memory of another time, a moment when we had stood on a precipice, and he had chosen who he wished to be.
His hands softened on my waist, so I gathered my willpower and slipped free of his arms. I perched on the edge of the mattress, coursing with want and the soaring song between his blood and mine.
Lancelot shifted out of the bed and sat alongside me, his breath still slowing from the intensity of our embrace.
“Was that…?” he began. “Was I…?” He put his hand to his forehead. “The thought of doing something unwanted—”
“Of course not,” I cut in. “It wasn’t…unwelcome. Just inadvisable, for us both. I have been to bed with men I did not much know—it’s not difficult. But you and I know each other too well, in a way. Nothing good can come of what is so… ”
“Tangled,” he concluded, with a brief, melancholic smile.
“Something like that.”
We sat for a long moment, still looking at one another. Our peace grew into a pause, then a question; another choice. It was no good, staying like this; for our shared sickness, there was only one cure.
I stood up from the bed and walked towards the door.
“Wait,” Lancelot called after me. I stopped and looked back. “Don’t go.”
“I have to, don’t you see?” I replied. “The way we are, this game we play that we cannot seem to bring to an end—it is bad for us. It always has been.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care. You saved my life, told me about myself. This night cannot be over.”
Slowly, he got to his feet, approaching with delicacy, as if afraid I would fly away. It didn’t matter; I was captured, a moth to a flame. When he reached me, his shadow enveloped my body like fine dark silk.
“Please,” he said. “Stay.”