She could be satisfied knowing he would never best Arthur. She would have to be satisfied with it, because she feared her life held very little more for her. This, then, was how she protected Arthur. Not with magic, not with power. With silence.
“I will never tell you,” she said.
“So there is a way.” He smiled, and finally it touched his eyes. The lines there told a history of violence, of cruelty. And promised a future of it, as well. He stood, grabbing her arm and yanking her up so roughly she yelped in pain. The men at the door opened it and Maleagant pushed her over the threshold. She teetered on the rocks there, staring down at a grasping, rushing river.
She scrambled to get back into the building, but Maleagant was behind her. He held both her arms, lifting her in front of himself. She dangled, helpless, over the river.
“Do you know what else my man at the docks told me? The pretty young queen of Camelot is terrified of water. Everyone remarked on it. You should do better to hide the ways to break you.” He shook her and she screamed, staring down.
The water. Dark and eternal, over her head. The light, so far above, but she could not get to it, could not—
And it was cold—
And there was a voice, calling to her—
Calling—
Not Guinevere. Calling who?
Maleagant shook her again. She held his hands, trying to grasp his wrists.
Mordred was a spark.
Arthur was steady, warm power.
Maleagant was cold.
She went limp, closing her eyes. She had always known water would be her death. Had she known what was coming for Merlin? Had it been coming for her, too? She wondered if Merlin himself had put the terror of water into her, the same way he had pushed in the knot magic. To keep her away from the Lady’s grasp. To keep her safe.
It had failed.
She tried to think of Arthur. Brangien, who would mourn her, but who would always have Isolde now. She would miss Lancelot’s knighting. And Mordred. Had he come back to find her missing? She remembered the spark, the fire of his lips on hers. It was dark and wild, unsteady, hungry. She caught onto it, pulling it deep inside, where Maleagant could not touch it. Arthur’s strength, too, she tried to recall. To hold against herself like a shield.
“A channel island,” Maleagant shouted, his mouth against her ear. “Surrounded by a rushing river. No prison could hold you better.” He let her hang for an eternity of seconds, and then at last pulled her back in. He threw her into the building. She landed hard on the floor, crawling toward the center. As far from the river as possible.
“Next time, I take you swimming. Think on that, and decide whether the king who does not love you enough to save you is worth it.” Maleagant turned to his men. “No one touches her,” he said. “Yet.” Then he left.
She curled around herself, shivering. She could find a way. She would have to. No one was coming for her.
One of her fingers pulsed, swollen from how hard her heart was beating. Swollen around the three hairs from Merlin’s beard. She unwound them, then pretended to fidget with her own hair, knotting her dreams to his. She was finally desperate enough to seek him out.
“Please,” she whispered, closing her eyes and trying to find sleep—her only hope of help.
She walks backward through time.
She trails through her stay in Camelot. Sees each person there who grew to mean so much to her. Slowly releases them to be strangers of her future. Dindrane. Lancelot. The knights. Arthur, bright, shining pillar, fades last. Once more he is simply a name, a belief, a hope. She walks back through the forest that ate the village. Back to her first meeting with the knights, with Brangien. With Mordred. The nuns and the convent pass in the blink of an eye, hardly worth noting.
She steps past her time as Guinevere, and finds…
Arthur has not faded. Not truly. If she is in her own past, how does Arthur stay so bright, like a beacon? Why does she feel such hope—such sadness?
Where is she?
She has left Guinevere behind to find Merlin. And instead, besides the dream of Arthur, she finds…
Nothing.
She stands suspended in a field of black, beneath a starless sky. Everything around her shimmers, moving gently and slowly. Her hair drifts around her. Blue amidst the black.
“What are you doing here?” Merlin asks.
She turns toward his voice. He struggles to get to her, moving his arms in a strange sweeping motion. His beard flows behind him, trailing like a silver river.
“You should not be here,” he says.
She knows. Now that she is here, she does not like it. She came here for a reason. She expected the cottage. The lessons. She had planned to interrupt Merlin during a lesson, to talk to him in her memories. But she cannot find them. Once she stepped out of the convent, this was all that remained.
“I need your help,” she says. Her voice is layered, infinite. Sweet and cold.
“You have to go back! She is not watching me because she thinks me trapped, asleep. But if she senses you here, you are in terrible danger.”
“I think I may already be in terrible danger.” She lifts her hand. Her arms are bare, pale and glowing. Something is missing. Her wound. The skin. Lancelot. The tournament. Arthur. She grasps hold of the threads of her future, clinging. “I have been kidnapped. Merlin, I have been kidnapped!” She laughs, delighted to finally remember. “I need help.”
“I cannot help you in the affairs of man. You know that.”
She shakes her head. “I know nothing. You told me lies. Arthur did not need me.”
“He does need you. More than either of you knows. He is the bridge; you must guard his way safely over the blackest waters. Be the queen. Fight as a queen, not as a witch. And remember, whatever else happens, that you chose this.”
She lowers her arms, and the future falls away again. “I am in a bad place. I do not want to go back to it. I will stay here.” She pushes Guinevere away from herself. “It is too hard, Merlin. Merlin.” She tilts her head, trying to find more truth here in the darkness. “Why do I not remember my mother? Why could I not find my way to my past?”
The world trembles. The blackness around them ripples, then swirls. She has left all fear in her future. She is not afraid. She feels…infinite.
But Merlin is afraid. “Go now, foolish creature! Do not look for me again, or she will find you!” He pushes against her forehead, sending her spinning head over feet, circling and circling as the black field blurs and then—