The Camelot Betrayal (Camelot Rising 2)

“Guinevere?” Lily prodded. They had stopped, but Guinevere made no move toward the door.

“Can we go to your rooms?” Guinevere turned toward another set of stairs that wound behind a curve and up to the next flight. She wished she had not blocked the interior stairway between their rooms, but she would have that undone tomorrow. Though in retrospect, knowing who Anna was, it had probably been wise.

Guinevere’s head pounded ferociously, probably due to an aftereffect of the potion. Lily led her up the stairs and opened the door to the sixth floor.

A man stood in the hallway. He wore the livery of a page, but it fit him poorly. Though there was only one torch lit, there was something familiar about him. His fists clenched. They were bright red and splotchy, but not from spreading rushes, as Guinevere had assumed when she saw him earlier. They were burns, not yet healed. Something about his shape made her positive he had been the one to bump into them earlier, as well.

She stepped forward, putting an arm out to block Lily. She pushed Lily back toward the door. “I think we are in the wrong place.”

The man did not smile. Now that she really studied him, she knew his face. It had been obscured by a beard before, but it was familiar. “Your sister?” He nodded toward Lily.

“No, my lady’s maid. Can I help you?”

He shook his head, pointing one shiny, burned finger at Lily. “Your sister. I heard. I had sister. Hild. I no longer have sister. You no longer have sister.”

Guinevere could not catch her breath from the blow of pain his words delivered. Hild. Hild was dead. She had killed poor Hild, who had just been trying to help her brothers. Who had never done her harm. Guinevere had saved herself and flung out damage and death in her wake. “I am—I am so sorry. I never meant for her to be hurt.”

The man clenched his fists again and stalked toward them.

“Run!” Guinevere pushed Lily. Lily, panicked, turned right instead of left, going farther up the stairs. Before Guinevere could correct her, Hild’s brother was behind them, blocking their retreat to the fifth floor, where a guard was waiting. Just out of reach.

Lily lifted her skirts, taking the stairs two at a time. Their ascent was too swift, dangerous even during the day and doubly so in the dark. Guinevere knew they did not stand a chance if they faced him. She doubted she could even use magic fast enough to prevent him from hurting Lily.

Her choices had destroyed Hild; now they might kill Lily, too. She had taken this man’s sister, and still he had not made enough of an impression on her for her to remember his name.

“Right!” she shouted. Lily pivoted toward a branching set of stairs. These floors were unguarded. Every servant in the castle was at the festival. There was no help. There was only a hope—a desperate hope—that Guinevere knew something about the castle this man did not. That even she herself did not know, except for the time she saw it in a dream. “Left!”

Lily was breathing hard, and so was Guinevere. She could hear the man’s steady progress behind them. Hild’s brother did not need to rush. There were only so many flights of stairs left, only a handful of doors they could use. There was nowhere to hide.

They passed Mordred’s alcove and went around a sharp corner. This flight of stairs led only to a series of decorative columns. Guinevere glanced over her shoulder. The corner had cut them off from their pursuer’s view, but not for long. The end of the delicately columned platform dropped off into empty air. The last column, carved like a tree, jutted over the edge.

“Behind there!” Guinevere pointed to the edge.

“What?” Lily looked at her, confused and terrified.

“There is a secret chamber. Be careful! Do not fall in!” She grabbed Lily’s hand and half threw her around the column. Lily scrambled for a grip, and Guinevere had a moment of horror that she was wrong. That her dream had been wrong. That it had been just a dream after all, and there was nothing back there but more rock. Lily would die.

And then Lily disappeared. “Come on!” she whispered. “We can both fit!”

“Stay silent!” Guinevere walked back to the middle of the platform and stood, the wind whipping her hair and cloak. In their scramble she had lost her crown.

Hild’s brother rounded the corner. He was barely out of breath. He looked at Guinevere, then leaned to see past her. “Where?” he growled.

“Not here. She took another stairway.”

He glanced over his shoulder, frowning doubtfully.

“I am sorry,” Guinevere said. “Truly, I am so sorry. I never wanted Hild to get hurt.”

“You are a witch. You brought a demon. All our homes, gone. Hild, gone.”

Guinevere felt the impulse to argue. To remind him the reason she had called the dragon was that he had decided to ignore his sister and help Ramm hold Guinevere ransom instead. But whatever the reason, whatever the justification, the result was the same. Guinevere was alive, and Hild was dead.

“No help tonight,” the man spat. “I killed your dragon.”

Guinevere staggered in shock and devastation. The dragon had not escaped. She had called it, used it, and sent it away. And they had hunted it down and killed it. Everything she had done to Sir Bors to protect the dragon, undone by her own actions. A piece of true wonder, of magic, was gone from the world. Not by choice, burrowing into the earth to go to sleep. But by violence. Violence Guinevere had triggered. If she had known the dragon would die, Hild would die, she would never have done it. She would never have done any of it.

Merlin had always known. He had known the cost of his actions, and he had done them anyway. Morgana’s story clung to her, whipping around her like her hair, obscuring her vision and making everything sting. Merlin had sown death and destruction and absolute heartbreak, and then he had simply sealed himself away from the world. Left them all to pick up his pieces. To keep moving along the paths he set for them, doing his will and suffering the consequences.