“You seem to have softened toward Mordred,” Guinevere said, watching his lithe form. He was lean, slender and almost delicate. A reed to Arthur’s oak tree. But he was lovely, and he moved with surprising grace. She remembered how he had swung his sword as though dancing with it. And she remembered the spark when his hand had touched hers.
She had been very careful not to touch his hand since.
Brangien nodded. “When I ran from the trees, certain the boar was still behind us and we were about to be killed, he was the first to me. I screamed that you were still in the woods and he did not hesitate. He ran straight in. He did not even have his sword. What he thought he would have done had he found the boar, I do not know. But his willingness spoke volumes. I might have misjudged him.” She paused. “Slightly. And I only said might.”
Guinevere had, too. She had thought him her enemy. But really, he loved Arthur as well as or better than anyone. She suspected he watched her so closely because he was the only other person who knew Arthur’s history with Elaine. He did not want Arthur hurt again. They were united in that.
And he had understood why she healed Sir Tristan. He knew they could not have magic within the walls, but he was not so rigid as to betray her actions in the wild.
When they entered the castle, Guinevere felt settled. Something that might grow to happiness had taken seed in her chest. This was a life. A real one. Not the one she had dreamed of, or thought she had, but one that she could fit into in time. Mordred bade them goodnight and she returned to her rooms with Brangien.
Together, they knotted the hairs for Brangien to visit Isolde in her dreams. Brangien thought it a sacrifice that Guinevere was giving up her own dreams night after night, but Guinevere did not want to dream. There was nothing for her to hope to see. And if Brangien and Isolde could only be together when sleeping, Guinevere would make it happen. At least her magic could accomplish this one thing.
Guinevere curled up into her own bed. She toyed with Merlin’s hairs, still wrapped around her finger beneath a silver ring. She could visit him the way Brangien visited Isolde. But she was still so angry with how he had misled her, and that he had chosen to let himself be trapped. How could a wizard so wise be so foolish?
She closed her eyes, grateful that she would see nothing.
Though Camelot had been buzzing with anticipation for two solid weeks, the tournament seemed to get no closer. Lancelot stayed out of the city—to protect her identity, Guinevere suspected, though in armor and with her voice lowered, Lancelot was not obviously female. But it frustrated those who wanted to have Lancelot in their homes and manors for meals, or to watch the patchwork knight train.
Finally, the night before the tournament arrived. No one was happier than Guinevere that the day was at last upon them. Not only because she hoped her friend would succeed. Or because she anticipated the excitement of watching.
No, mostly because it meant she would never again have to adjust seating plans twenty-two separate times to accommodate all the ladies and their knights and cousins and friends while keeping in mind who was feuding with whom, who hated whom, who would be terribly hurt if they were not in the front, and who needed to be reminded that they did not have the right to demand a place closest to the king and queen. She would rather have done battle on the field than battle over the seating arrangements.
But everything was as settled as it was going to be.
Guinevere wanted nothing more than to sleep until it was time to leave. But with Brangien far away in her Isolde dreams, Guinevere found sleep eluded her. She paced. She could not help glancing at Brangien’s face, jealous not of the slumber, but of the company Brangien kept there. Guinevere was itching on the inside. Like she had been trapped beneath a layer of ice all winter and could sense the coming of spring thaw.
She wanted out.
She wanted a release.
She wanted.
She used the secret passageway to knock on Arthur’s door and then enter his room, but he was not there. She went back to her own rooms, disappointed. She did not know what she would have done if he had been there, but she hated being denied the surprise of finding out.
There was an unexpected knock at her door; she opened it eagerly. There was no one in the hall. Puzzled, she closed the door. Then she heard the knock again.
It was at her window.
Which was in the middle of a wall high up on the side of the castle, with no walkway outside it. She rushed to the glass with a candle and peered out to see a face staring back at her. She barely muffled her scream, dropping the candle.
“Sorry!” a voice shouted, muted by the glass.
“Lancelot?” Guinevere could not believe it. She grabbed a cloak and wrapped it around herself. Then she snuck out the nearest door and leaned over the walkway. Lancelot still clung to the side of the castle, hanging by only her fingertips and boots.
“What are you doing?” Guinevere hissed.
With more ease than Guinevere navigated a flat walkway, Lancelot climbed over to her, jumping the last several feet and landing as light as a cat.
“I could not sleep,” Lancelot said, sounding sheepish. “I am sorry. This was presumptuous of me.”
Guinevere laughed. “No, it was madness, not presumption. How do you do that?”
Lancelot shrugged. She twisted her toes against the walkway, staring bashfully down. “I am nervous. For tomorrow.”
“Me, too.” Guinevere led them around a curve to a more sheltered portion of the walkway, then sat, pulling her cloak around her. She felt suddenly shy. Both because she was in a nightdress, and because when she had last been with Lancelot, it had been a time filled with mortal peril and intense distress. Now, cocooned by the summer night, changed by what she knew of herself, she was not sure what to say. “How have you been?”
“I have not encountered a single possessed boar, demon spider, or vengeful water spirit. The forest is quite dull without you there.”
Guinevere laughed, leaning back. Lancelot copied her posture.
When Lancelot spoke again, the playfulness had left her voice. “I am terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Of tomorrow. If I fail, then it is over. My dream is dead. I have nothing to build a future around. And if I succeed…I step past everything I have known into everything I have wanted. I feel like I am clinging to the side of a cliff in the dark, about to drop, and I do not know whether I will survive the fall.”
Guinevere understood. More than Lancelot could ever know. Except she had been walking confidently in one direction only to find herself stepping off an unseen cliff. In a way she felt as though she were still falling. Where would she land?
“Why do you want this so badly?” Guinevere asked.