Chapter 62
Dinas Emrys was cold and drafty, a grey stone monstrosity with too many rooms. Katarin was restless, her blood itching, her dreams filled with things she’d rather forget but never would.
Every night since they’d arrived here, she’d walked into the past, to the moment she’d driven a sword through her cousin’s chest and watched him die.
Sometimes, it was Mordred as the child she remembered dying in her arms. Sometimes it wasn’t him at all, but her, and she looked on as she killed a version of herself.
Two faces…
Sometimes, Kat saw Halymere. She liked to think he’d gone to Inanna, as he believed he would, but she didn’t know what happened after death.
She only hoped, wherever he was, he was at peace.
There were so many things she hadn’t been brave enough to say to him in life, so she said them in her dreams and hoped that he heard them. Mostly, she told him she was scared.
Scared of the future and what it would bring. Scared of giving up her life and starting a new one. Halymere, in her dreams, would tell her she’d already taken the hardest step. She’d reunited with the girl she once was, as the Two in One had said she must.
But now Katarin wasn’t sure who she was. Part of her wanted to go back to her ship and disappear on the ocean, but the other part knew she couldn’t do that. There were trees in her eyes and a beating drum in her chest that she was trying to ignore.
For now, she needed to stay with her brother.
Arthur was constantly surrounded by people.
He spent a lot of time with Gaheris, and he’d let Agravaine leave.
Kat wasn’t sure that was a great idea, but Gaheris had insisted his brother wasn’t a threat anymore.
Arthur also spent time with the blind Seer, Elaine.
Olwen assured Kat that Elaine wasn’t dangerous, but considering the woman had been in Mordred’s ear, Kat found it difficult to let her suspicions fade.
If it wasn’t their uncle or the Red Sister, Arthur was besieged by people from Kernou or Kunis.
He never turned anyone away, not even when the shadows beneath his eyes were the colour of plums. He listened to every person who wanted to talk to him.
He spoke with shifters and skinroamers, men of the Sacellum who, if Kat had her way, would be in one of the cells below the castle.
Arthur allowed those who had fought on Mordred’s side amnesty.
They were free, but, at her insistence, under guard.
The question on everyone’s lips: what now?
Kat left Olwen sleeping and went in search of her brother.
It was just after dawn, so surely she’d be able to snatch a moment or two before someone else came looking for him.
He didn’t answer his door, and wasn’t in the Hall, the kitchen…
no one had seen him. Panic thick in her throat, Katarin hurried through the castle.
As she passed a window, she spied a lone figure with a head of familiar brown, curly hair on the battlements.
By the time she reached him, she was sweating, irritated and hungry.
Arthur stared out over Camlann Plain. The sun was rising, golden fingers reaching to caress that carpet of brilliant green. Katarin stared at the grass and wanted to weep. She moved to her brother’s side.
‘This is where you’ve been hiding.’
‘I’m not hiding,’ he murmured, then, with a sigh, ‘Alright, I am. I needed a moment to breathe.’
‘You don’t have to explain yourself,’ she said.
Silence slipped between them as the sun continued to climb into the sky, illuminating the Nemhain Mountains in the distance.
To anyone who didn’t know what had gone on here, they’d never guess that this place had recently been drenched in blood and filled with screams.
Kat closed her eyes against a flash of memory. Halymere, then Mordred. How long would she see them for? She sighed as the sun touched her face, and when she opened her eyes, there were trees in her vision again.
Always trees. She’d almost forgotten what the ocean sounded like, what it smelt like.
‘You’re a king now,’ she said.
‘Not really,’ Arthur said. ‘I’m just a man who was on the right side of this madness.’
Kat folded her arms. ‘Are we back to this?’
‘No,’ her brother said. ‘I will do what Merlin has told me I must. It would be an insult to those we have lost not to. I don’t know where to start.’
‘Me either,’ Katarin admitted. She sighed, rubbing her cheek. ‘Gaheris thinks I need to return to Cruithea.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘In a way, I’m not sure I have a choice. Everything in my life keeps circling back to Cruithea, to this role, no matter how often I try and think of a way around it.’
‘Whatever you decide, I’ll support you,’ Arthur said.
‘You’d better,’ she warned playfully.
‘Olwen?’ Arthur prompted, a smile tugging at his lips.
‘Coming with me apparently – seems I’m stuck with her,’ Kat said, shrugging. It was a one day at a time thing. She wasn’t good at relationships.
‘I’m happy for you.’
She smiled, then followed Arthur inside to his room. It was plain, with a simple bed and an armchair. ‘You should get a better room,’ Kat declared.
‘This is fine,’ her brother said. He sat on the bed and pulled a book from beneath his pillow.
Curious, Kat drifted closer. ‘I found this in the Hall. At the back of the room was a door, almost unnoticeable. I was… I don’t know.
Exploring. In the tiny room beyond the door was this book sitting on a table.
Nothing else, just this, covered in hundreds of years of dust.’
‘What is it?’ Kat asked, perching on the bed.
‘Enyon’s journal,’ Arthur said.
Kat’s brow furrowed. ‘Should you be reading that?’
‘I feel like I need to, so I can know what happened to him,’ Arthur answered.
‘It’s not going to happen to you,’ Kat said firmly.
Arthur opened the book, running a trembling finger down the page.
A shiver skidded along Kat’s spine as he started to read.
‘“I can sense the Grail, that powerful vessel that holds the magic of the world, but no matter what I do, where I search, I cannot find it. It eludes me for now, but my will is strong. This world must break, and I shall be the one to remake it”.’ Arthur closed the book and sighed.
‘We’ve made a decision. We’re going to find the Grail and reshape the world, before someone else tries to do it for us. ’
Kat nodded. ‘Good. I don’t want what happened here to ever happen again. No one needs to go through what we did.’
Arthur licked his lips. ‘Kat, there is something you need to know. About Ordes and why he left The Excalibur.’
Warning prickled Kat’s skin. ‘I’m listening.’
Grief and anguish washed over his face, and a rock landed in Katarin’s belly.
She listened in disbelief as Arthur told her what Ordes had learnt about the Grail and his role in its use.
The more her brother spoke, the less Katarin heard.
Her head was filled with a dreadful buzzing sound that rattled around her skull. She couldn’t move.
Arthur murmured something, moving closer to her and putting his hand on her arm, but she barely felt his touch.
She had never felt more helpless in her life.
‘I’ll fucking kill him,’ she managed. Her head fell into her trembling hands as she realised her whole body was shaking.
‘Kat, it isn’t Ordes’ fault—’
Her head snapped up. ‘Not him – Merlin. I’ll fucking end him. How could he… how…’ Katarin’s fingers curled in the end of her shirt. ‘I can’t… I can’t…’
Gently, Arthur put his arm around her, pulling her into him. She flung her arms around him and sobbed.
Katarin hurtled down hallways and skidded around corners, heart ready to burst. Tears pricked her eyelids, but she dashed them away with the back of her hand. The stupid, selfless idiot. She’d talk some sense into him.
She had to, or…
She rounded another corner, colliding with a group of people, pushing through them desperately, not caring who they were.
Her heart was filled with drums that beat out a terrible rhythm, a death knell.
Her feet skidded to a stop outside Ordes’ door.
Panting, her stomach in knots, she hammered on the door with such force she was surprised it didn’t fall from its hinges.
She waited, shifting her weight from one foot to the other impatiently, and when Ordes answered, she threw herself at him.
‘You idiot. You absolute idiot, Ordes!’
He caught her, held her fists away from his body, startled. ‘Kat,’ he mumbled, his voice soft with understanding and she suddenly hated him for his selfless nature, for his need to always do what was right. Why couldn’t he look out for himself for once?
‘I can’t,’ she breathed. ‘I can’t lose someone else I care about. I can’t, Ordes.’
‘Arthur told you,’ he murmured.
‘And you didn’t!’
‘Kat,’ he said, but she shoved him backwards, pushing him into the room, her hand on the blazing heat of his bare chest. Jenyfer was standing by the window, wrapped in a sheet, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders.
‘You’re going to let him do this?’ Kat demanded of Jenyfer, who sighed, her shoulders curling in on themselves.
‘Yes,’ she whispered eventually.
‘But—’
‘Ordes has always given me the power to choose,’ Jenyfer said. ‘And that was one of the only things I wanted in the world – the ability to make my own choices, to set my own path. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t let him do the same.’
Katarin stared at her. ‘But you could stop him.’
‘But I won’t,’ Jenyfer said painfully. ‘Because this isn’t about me or him. This is about everything we have fought for and everything we have been moving towards.’
Kat snorted, close to tears. She blinked them away furiously. ‘The both of you are too noble for your own good.’
‘Maybe,’ Jenyfer said, and turned back to the window as Katarin’s heart broke anew.