There is a girl. Naked. Pale and trembling, arms wrapped around her legs, face buried in her knees. She has made herself as small as she can, and still she is not small enough.
The dark queen pushes through the dream toward the girl. The dream pushes back. Eventually she is as close as she cares to be. What she had taken for pale skin is more complicated. There are knots everywhere, woven into the very veins, webbed over the skin like scars, binding and holding. Strands of blue-black hair flow down the girl’s back, and the queen can almost see what the knots are doing there. Can almost tell what—
The girl looks up. Her eyes are bottomless. Empty. The dark queen recoils. The cave is not the trap. The girl is the trap. Because in those eyes, she sees—
“It will unmake us,” the girl whispers. “And I will let it happen.”
* * *
The moth dies.
* * *
The dark queen claws her way out of the darkness screaming after her, the darkness wanting to swallow what is left of her. She feels something she has not felt since the usurper king drew his cursed sword.
The dark queen is afraid.
What did Arthur bring into the castle?
“Market day!” Brangien chirped, throwing the bed curtains wide. Guinevere had not recalled drawing them. Perhaps they were the reason her dreams were all of darkness and being trapped. “The king requests your presence at his side.”
As much as she was determined to spend every moment preparing and hunting for the impending threat, she had to admit a day at a market sounded fun. With people there for a reason other than her wedding, it would be less overwhelming than their time at the lakeshore. And she would have to get used to crowds. People were mysteries to her, which would not do for a queen.
She had gone so long without knowing them. It had only been Merlin before the convent. This reminded her of Arthur’s question. Merlin had been with Arthur until a year ago. Guinevere had been with—
“My lady?”
“Yes?” Guinevere snapped to attention.
“I said, what colors would you like to wear today?”
Guinevere smiled. “Something joyful. Unless you think I should be somber?”
“The people love their king. They want to see him happy. Showing them a joyful queen at his side will endear you to them.” Brangien hummed softly to herself. Her voice was clear and sweet and sad. Guinevere liked it immensely.
Brangien laced and tied Guinevere into a long flowing underdress of green, then draped a delicate yellow robe over it. A silver belt cinched them together.
Frowning, Brangien held up several hoods. The hood would engulf Guinevere’s head like a cave, with two long strips of cloth coming down nearly to the floor on either side in the front, keeping the hood anchored.
They all looked the same to Guinevere. Like ropes to bind her.
Brangien shook her head. “Not quite right. As a married woman, you can choose whether or not to cover your head. And there are no rules for your hair. The style is plaited, of course. Elaborate braids crowning your head are in fashion. But your hair is so striking. What if we braided it back from your face but then left it long and undone, trailing down your back like the waterfalls of Camelot?”
Guinevere did not like imagining her hair as waterfalls. But she trusted Brangien to present her well. “That sounds perfect.”
Brangien got to work. By the time she was done, Guinevere’s hair glistened and rippled. There was a burnished metal mirror in her room. It gave more of an impression of her looks than truth, but the impression was pleasant.
After a careful examination, Brangien nodded. “There is no reason to try and make you look like a stuffy old wife. You are young and lovely. Oh, Sir Percival’s sister will simply loathe you.” Brangien smiled wickedly. “She used to snatch me up every time she found me alone, treated me like I was a common servant. I do not seek pleasure in others’ unhappiness, but I might accidentally find some today.”
Guinevere laughed, taking Brangien’s elbow. “I fully support that accident.” Brangien was already dressed, so they were ready to leave. It was odd, being the latter to wake up. In the forest, she had woken with the dawn. So many long conversations with Merlin. Lessons. Sweeping the cottage. Running from rain and sheltering in a cave.
She could not quite remember the details of the cave. Or she did not want to. It was as though the girl she had left in the forest had ceased to exist. Just like dead Guinevere. They had both of them been replaced. Perhaps the source of her memory gaps was that simple. She had to fill her mind with so many new things, the old got pushed out. And every magic had its cost. She knotted away tiny parts of herself constantly. What had Merlin pushed out when he pushed in the knowledge of knot magic?
Trying to shake off her troubled thoughts, Guinevere let Brangien escort her down several flights of stairs to the main hall of the castle. Because the castle was shallow and had been painstakingly carved from the mountain, it had been built upward instead of outward. Everything was stone. The steps, the walls. And most of it was seamless. It was not plastered together around openings. Instead, the openings were dug from the stone.
“Who made the castle?” Guinevere asked.
“I do not know, my lady.”
“Does anyone know?”
Brangien shrugged in apology. “It is older than anyone here. Uther Pendragon discovered it. But I doubt even he knew who carved it free from the mountain.”
They entered the great hall. Arthur was there already, standing in conversation with Sir Bors, Mordred, Sir Percival, and a few knights Guinevere did not yet know by name. A slight pang hit her: they spent more time with him than she ever would. She was his wife, after all.
She was not his wife.
How quickly she forgot! Playacting had muddled everything. There was a dangerous magic in pretending. Pretend long enough, and who could say what was real?
But when Arthur looked across the room and his entire being lit up with happiness at seeing her, she forgot again. She beamed at him as he rushed to her and gave her an exaggerated, silly bow. In the space of crossing the floor, he had transformed from conquering king commanding men twice his age to…Arthur.
“I thought we could visit the smithy tents today.” He took her hand and put it on his arm. Brangien walked several steps behind them. The knights fell in as well, orbiting Arthur. If the way they had orbited her on their journey here had been dutiful, the way they orbited Arthur was determined. Purposeful. He was not a task to them. He was everything. “I wanted to have something made for you. You can give the instructions yourself.” He winked at her. Not jewelry for his queen. Iron thread for his secret sorceress.