“Oh, no. Wretched city. No, I would not go back to anywhere. I would just walk until I found a place that felt true to me.”
“But if you left, people would miss you. Lily would miss you.”
/> “I am replaceable. Your sister, dear thing, will love anyone who is kind to her, and is loving enough she should be able to find kindness here.”
“But would you not miss her? Or your friends?” Surely Anna had friends in the castle by now. She was warm and friendly, easy to talk to. Usually. Guinevere felt this conversation like an itch between her shoulder blades that she could not reach.
Anna frowned, tilting her head in consideration. “For a while, perhaps. But when I think through the consequences, there are not many. At most, it would inconvenience a few people. At least, they would barely notice. And if I can remove myself from my life here with the merest ripple, do I truly belong? Do I have a reason for being here? Is Anna of Camelot really who I want to be for the rest of my life?”
Guinevere wanted to argue with her. Needed to, almost desperately, and she could not understand why the idea of Anna getting up and walking away from her entire life here made Guinevere feel panic, until she realized it was because everything Anna was saying, everything she had described…Guinevere realized it could apply to her, as well.
If she had followed Mordred into the trees, what would have happened?
She felt the pieces settling in her mind, the path that Arthur and Lily and Lancelot and Brangien and Camelot as a whole would have taken, and she yanked her mind from that brink before she could follow the lines of thought to their conclusion.
She stood, feeling like she did not quite fit in her own skin, like she needed to move or she would come apart at the seams.
Anna looked up at her with concern. “Can I get you something, my queen?”
Arthur was with his men. Lancelot, too. Guinevere could not interrupt Arthur, or pull Lancelot away from belonging. Dindrane and Sir Bors were slipping away, hand in hand. Lily and Sir Gawain were standing scandalously close in conversation. She did not know or love the other women and was not loved by any of them. There was nowhere for her to go, no one for her to seek refuge in.
“No, I need nothing,” Guinevere said, the day still brilliant in gold and blue all around her, everything a part of that, everything belonging.
She looked down. She was wearing green.
* * *
Guinevere nodded in approval of the placement of Arthur’s sun crest flag. The flags had been staked around the perimeter of the festival, a reminder of whose leadership made both this record harvest and the festival to celebrate it possible.
“You have been very involved this time,” Brangien said, arm in arm with Isolde. Isolde would return to the castle before the festival began—she had no desire to be in a crowd—but she was enjoying walking around in the pre-bustle. Preparations had begun before dawn and would go until late afternoon, when the festival started. The celebration would last all night and into the next day.
“What do you mean?” Guinevere asked.
“Planning Lancelot’s tournament seemed like torture for you. But I have barely seen you, you have been so busy with this. And you were willing to make the trip across the lake twice in one day to be here this morning before returning in the afternoon!”
“It has to be perfect.” Guinevere squinted down the line of booths and rising tents. The air was filled with the sounds of hammers and shouting and laughter, nothing compared with how loud it would become.
“It has to have food and drink and no one will complain.” Brangien eyed a cart trundling past filled with apples and dried fruit. “You should declare that we have to sample all the food before it can be approved….”
Isolde laughed and Guinevere joined in, just a second too late. It was true that she had thrown herself into planning the festival, filling every hour of the past two weeks with the details, meeting with merchants and farmers, helping direct the filling of the silos and granaries, and otherwise making certain that there was never any space in her mind for quiet.
For thinking.
For doubting.
She hated to take any of Merlin’s advice, but in their last conversation in that blank dreamspace where she had met him, he had told her to fight like a queen.
She had forced herself to remain as a nebulous in-between. Not queen, not not-queen. She could not keep standing in both worlds. Her life since returning from Maleagant and the Dark Queen had been nothing but waiting, suspecting, searching. Hurting. She had to choose what she had already chosen. It did not seem fair that a choice would demand she keep choosing it, over and over. But she would. She had to be the Guinevere she claimed to be. The Guinevere whose life she had claimed. She owed it to everyone.
She glanced back at where Lancelot stood, giving them a polite distance. No longer right at her side. It hurt. But it was for the best.
“Guinevere!” Lily rushed toward her, golden braids streaming behind her. She wore blue and pink and the ring Guinevere had given her. The ring that should always have been hers. “There will be jugglers and actors! Plays all evening! We got the same players from the theater in Camelot. Oh, they are wonderful. It will be hard to go anywhere else. But I am excited to see Sir Gawain try to catch a chicken.” She giggled, wrinkling her nose. That had been one of her ideas: setting cross chickens loose in a pen with knights competing against chicken maids to see who could catch the most chickens the fastest.
A man with light hair and the thick, powerful build of someone who had labored all his life stopped near them. His hands were an angry, splotchy red, perhaps from the work he was doing spreading rushes on the ground where it was muddiest. The rushes would help, though the entire festival was hardly tidy. There was so much activity. With the harvest complete, all the extra workers who had hired themselves to landowners were here for one last job before returning to the various places they had come from or settling in Camelot for the winter.
“I am glad you are here,” Guinevere said.
“Me too!” Lily embraced her, kissing her cheek. “I love having my sister back.”