“What happened to your arm?” Arthur asked, his voice softer. He guided her to his own chair, pulling her onto his lap.
“Hild—the ship captain’s brothers tried to hold me for ransom. I made our friends leave me and called the dragon.”
“The dragon? Sir Bors’s dragon?”
Guinevere nodded, pressing her face against his shoulder, wishing she could slip into the darkness behind her eyes. “It burned the village and I escaped, but it—they injured it and I made it limp away into the woods alone and hurt. I could have left the dragon unbothered. I could have waited. You would have ransomed me. I was so determined to save myself, and it got hurt and I got hurt and I used the dragon. I never even considered how the dragon might feel. It was cruel of me, Arthur.”
“But it is a dragon.” He sounded confused about how she could have hurt a dragon emotionally.
Guinevere shook her head, trying to figure out how to explain it. And to tell Arthur the next part, the part about Mordred. But there was a knock on the door. Arthur slipped free, moving her gingerly, aware of her shoulder. Guinevere turned her back so no one would see her crying when he opened the door.
“Yes, of course. I can speak with him now. The queen is resting.” Arthur closed the door softly behind him, and Guinevere was left alone. If Arthur could not understand about the dragon, how could he ever understand how complicated her feelings about Mordred were?
The room purpled with twilight. Guinevere did not wait for Brangien to come help her but fumbled and tore at her ties until she finally managed to get out of her dress. Her shoulder was stiff and sore, but she could move it. She curled into a miserable ball and tried to sleep.
Sometime after dark, Arthur climbed into bed. She had half expected him to be gone all night and was surprised. She was even more surprised when he pressed his body against her back. “You did what you had to,” he whispered, cradling her. “Once we return to Camelot, it will be easier. Guinevach is gone. We know we can match the Dark Queen in whatever she attempts. You hurt people, yes, but you hurt bad people. Men who hurt you and others. Let these things you had to do go. Do not think on them anymore. As your king, I command it.”
She let out a small laugh, closer to a sniffle. “Oh, you command me now?”
“I do. At least in this matter.” His tone grew serious. “This is the pain of being king. Of being queen. Making choices that will hurt some but save others. And often not knowing until it is too late who will be hurt and who will be saved. I am sorry you have to share it, but I am glad to have the company.”
“Me too,” she whispered. It was unfair of her to think Arthur would not understand her pain. He might not understand everything, but he understood
this. He did not see all of her, but he saw enough. And they were bad men, King Mark and Ramm both. Like Uther Pendragon had been. Like Maleagant had been. If Guinevere could not accept that she would have to hurt wicked men to protect others—and herself—she would not be a very good queen or witch.
The choices would always be hard, and she would have to live with the consequences. She could live with knowing King Mark and Ramm had suffered because they had stepped into her path and tried to stop her.
But Arthur did not know the whole story. The specter of Mordred rose behind her closed eyes. She had tucked the flower into her pouch and even though it was not magic, she could feel it pulsing nearby, declaring her duplicity.
She would throw it out in the morning. Mordred—dream Mordred, real Mordred, both—was wrong. She had made the right choice. And she was making the right choice now by not telling Arthur his traitorous nephew was more complicated than good or bad. If Arthur had to face Mordred someday, he needed to be able to do so with a clear head. Guinevere would feel conflicted enough for both of them.
Guinevere stared out the thick glass of the sitting room window. She had awoken this morning with Arthur still beside her for once. It filled her with strength and determination to shrug off the haunting guilt. This was Dindrane’s wedding, and she was here to support her friend. But supporting Dindrane through a wedding was almost as challenging as giving herself permission to accept what she had done to King Mark and Ramm.
The world was warped and distorted through the window, a vision of blue and gold she longed to be out in, instead of sewing in this stuffy room with a dozen women. The walls were stone, whiter than the gray of Camelot, but that made them look dingier with their years of stains from smoke from the fireplace. The rooms were all small and tightly crammed with furniture. This particular room was tightly crammed with women, as well. Guinevere wondered what it would be like to grow up in a building of labyrinthine hallways and tiny rooms, all access to the outdoors shut away by windows and bars and fenced courtyards. Was Dindrane ever allowed to run free? To explore?
She still longed to know what childhood looked like, what it felt like, all the different ways it was experienced. She knew the general shape of Arthur’s—spent serving Sir Ector and Sir Kay and learning from Merlin—but Brangien had not spoken much of hers. She seemed to feel warmly toward her parents, at least. Guinevere knew so little of Lancelot’s past. Or Mordred’s. Was he raised by Morgan le Fay, his mother and Arthur’s half sister, the sorceress who had wanted to kill Arthur when he was an infant? How well had he known his own father, the Green Knight, one of the Dark Queen’s offspring and fairy protectors? Had he spent much time with his grandmother?
It seemed like vital information. She wanted to take their pasts and absorb them, make them part of herself, learn all the pieces that went into making the people she knew now. Maybe then she could understand them. Maybe she could even come closer to understanding herself. Fill all her gaps with other people. Push out Merlin and the holes where the Lady of the Lake had been removed.
“And then the queen asked me to be her personal guide to the complexities of Camelot. She found it quite overwhelming.”
Guinevere looked up, lost to the flow of conversation, nodding only half a second too late to Dindrane’s story. Because Dindrane had not been living here, she had not had time to gather the necessary things for a bride to take to her new home. And it was important that she have her own things. That, along with the money being exchanged between Sir Bors and Dindrane’s father that evening, would ensure that even if something happened to Sir Bors, Dindrane and any potential children would not be left destitute.
Guinevere liked this practice in theory. She liked the part where she had to sit, sewing, far less. Still, she tried to smile and act pleased to be there to combat the air of resentment from Blanchefleur and other relatives. Brangien and Isolde had joined them, though they kept to the edges of the room and spoke with no one.
“I wonder what the men are doing,” Guinevere said, trying to keep the longing to be anywhere else out of her voice.
“The men?” Dindrane did not pause from stitching a serviceable tunic. “Oh, I imagine they are drinking or bragging or fighting.”
An ancient aunt looked up with a milky-eyed glare. “Sometimes they have tournaments, but I doubt the boys could really enjoy it with a king present. Everyone would have to be careful not to hurt him.”
Guinevere felt a spike of defensiveness. “King Arthur is more than capable.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Of course.” The woman nodded, her neck skin folding like the cloth in her bony hands. “All men are serviceable with a sword or spear when they want to be.”
“And when you would prefer they not be,” one of Dindrane’s sisters-in-law said, snickering. Her face was pinched around a prominent, bony nose. It gave her a hawkish profile, which was not helped by the way she watched them all with careful, predatory eyes.
“Always wanting to spar in the middle of the night,” the other one agreed.