Guinevere yanked her hand free, scrambling back. Whatever had taken the boar was still there. It had seen her. It knew her.
The patchwork knight wiped his sword clean on the boar’s flank, then sheathed it. He grimaced, holding his side. The boar had hit him hard and he wore no armor. Guinevere could not quite make sense of the knight. He was different. Without his armor, he—
“You are a woman,” Guinevere gasped. That was the secret. Not a fairy. A woman.
“And I am bleeding,” the patchwork knight said. She lifted her red-coated hands from her side. Guinevere rushed to the knight and peeled back her tunic. The knight hissed in pain.
There was the faintest tickle against Guinevere’s arm, and then a sting. She looked down to see an elegantly sinister black spider with its fangs embedded in her arm. She brushed it away, leaving two tiny pinpricks of red circled by white. The white spread, and turned purple as she watched.
“Oh,” she said, and then darkness claimed her.
* * *
“She should have woken up by now.”
“Keep going. There, not too much. Ailith, you next. If you start feeling dizzy, stop.”
“What did this?”
“I have never tasted such darkness. And I kissed your brother once.”
“Girls. We need to focus.”
“Can I help?”
“No. Save your strength.”
The voices pulsed in and out as though heard from a great distance. Everything hurt, but the pain was dulling from a lightning-bright tempest to a punishing rainstorm. Guinevere felt fingertips at her hairline, smoothing stray hairs back from her forehead. And she felt something else—soft but insistent—on her arm.
“Spider,” Guinevere whimpered.
“No, dear. The spider is gone. We are taking care of you.”
Her eyelids protested, but she cracked them open. The room was dark, her vision blurry. Someone was sitting next to where she lay on a cot. And someone else was—
“Sucking on my arm?” Guinevere tried to sit in shock but was unable to move.
“It was infecting you. Nasty and very fast. But we almost have it all out.”
“You—you will be poisoned.” The spider and the pain and the darkness. The boar had failed, but something much smaller had succeeded. Guinevere remembered the poison from the wolf’s attack, how fast it raged through Tristan. These women did not know what they were doing. They would be killed.
“Women are strongest when bearing one another’s pain. We each take a little on ourselves. No one dies, and we all heal together.”
“Thank you,” Guinevere whispered, closing her eyes.
“Rest, and let us help you.”
“And be grateful you never have to kiss Gunild’s brother,” another voice said. Guinevere let the bright laughter and long-suffering shush push her back into sleep.
* * *
When she awoke again, only her arm hurt. Two points of agony, but to her relief, they were just pain. There was no darkness, nothing in her that was other.
She sat up, groaning. She was in a shack, a small, dim space with a low ceiling. But the packed-dirt floors were covered with fresh straw and the cot she lay on felt clean. Sitting against the wall was the patchwork knight. She held a blood-soaked cloth to her side, her eyes closed.
Guinevere crossed the room to the other woman. “Did you bring me here?”
The knight nodded.
“Thank you for saving me again, then,” she said, kneeling. “May I?” When the knight nodded, Guinevere gently pulled the cloth back. The wound was deep and still seeping blood.
Guinevere gazed up at the knight. Her eyes were a warm, lively hazel, large and gentle. “You helped me, and I can help you. But first, tell me why you were there. In the forest.”
The knight grimaced. “I wanted to see the king.”
“To hurt him?”
The knight’s eyes widened. “I wanted to see the hunt. Why would I hurt him?”
“I have seen you with Rhoslyn.”
Light flooded the room as a woman entered, backlit by the sun. “How do you know my name?”
Guinevere stood so fast she nearly fell over. “You!”
“Have we met?” Rhoslyn let the mat covering the entrance fall back into place and Guinevere blinked as her eyes readjusted to the dim interior.
“I was at your trial.”
“Oh. That.” Rhoslyn took Guinevere’s place next to the knight, looking at the wound with concern knitting her brow.
Guinevere scanned the room for a threat. There was nothing. “This was all you. The boar! The knight waiting for me!”
“Child, I cannot even control my own daughters. Controlling a wild boar is far beyond my skill.”
“But you were banished from Camelot for magic! And now you seek revenge.”
Rhoslyn sighed, turning her attention back to the knight’s wound. “This does not look good. I have sent for my sister, but it will be a few hours. Stay still.” She stood, wiping her hands on her skirts and eying Guinevere appraisingly. “I have no thirst for vengeance, and no energy to pursue it even if I did. It takes all my strength just to keep my family alive. Not to mention the occasional lost noblewoman who has gotten herself infected with dark magic.”
Guinevere bristled, grateful at least Rhoslyn did not seem to know who she was, only that she was nobility. “How do I know that it was not you?”
“Why would I have saved you if it had been my poison?”
It was a fair point. “But surely you hate Camelot and everyone who lives there.”
“It seems to me,” Rhoslyn said, sitting with a weary grunt, “that it is man’s work to hate and want to destroy what he cannot possess. I was sad to leave Camelot, yes. But it has its rules, and I did not follow them. In the end, we did not fit with each other anymore. Would I like the protection of walls and soldiers and law? Yes. But not so much that I was willing to give up the power my mother learned from her mother, who learned it from her mother. Camelot asked more than I was willing to give. I overstayed my welcome. I harbor no ill will. None of us do.” She paused. “Except maybe Ailith, who mentions Gunild’s soldier brother’s shortcomings so often I suspect she is still in love with him.”
“What about your knight?” Guinevere gestured toward the woman, whose face was going ever paler.