Her hands were numb and useless, but she had her eyes. She searched and searched for something amiss, something that did not belong.
After several frustrating minutes searching the rubble and detritus of crumbling foundations, she realized her mistake. The magic was hidden in something that did belong. Almost. She reached down and picked up a perfectly smooth, rounded rock. Like the one Rhoslyn had dropped. This time, she saw what she had missed before. Someone had knotted magic into the rock itself. It held something. A spell, a memory, a curse—she could not tell. But she knew what she was looking for now.
She hurried through the night. Seven rocks at seven separate points in the city. Seven anchors of magic. She could not bring them into the castle—it would break their magic before she discovered what it was.
It was nearly dawn. If she left now, she could reach Rhoslyn within hours. But she would not be able to explain her absence or her actions. It would mean defeating the threat but destroying her role as queen. She could not easily come back to it.
The darkness enveloped her, bade her keep moving.
If she did this for Arthur, she would be fulfilling her purpose but losing her place at his side. She closed her eyes. She would prepare today, then leave tonight. It would keep until then. Sagging under the weight of the coming dawn, she hid the magic rocks and then hurried back to her room.
She only just beat the sun. As soon as night fell, she would hunt. She crawled into bed, planning her attack.
Brangien opened the door as soon as Guinevere closed her weary eyes.
“Happiest news, my queen!”
Guinevere sat up, her hands alternately freezing and burning, pricked with pins and somehow still numb. Her eyes could barely handle the dim light of her room after attuning themselves so thoroughly to shadows. “Yes?” she asked, forcing a smile.
“The king has sent for you! We must pack and leave immediately.”
“Oh no,” Guinevere said, sighing. Brangien paused, her arms full of cloaks. She lifted an eyebrow in surprise and alarm. Guinevere flinched, trying to cover. “I do not know what to wear.”
Brangien laughed and went back to gathering. “That is not for you to fret over. That is my job.”
Guinevere flopped back onto her bed, throwing an arm over her face to hide her expression. She had work to do, and no way of letting Arthur know she was needed here. She could feign illness, but maybe Arthur was asking for her for a reason. Maybe he needed her help, specifically. Why else would he send for her?
As long as she was by Arthur’s side, she could be certain he was safe. But it was aggravating. They were going to have to figure out better ways to communicate so Arthur would be able to help her efforts instead of interrupting them.
Arthur. The thought of seeing him again—it had been only days, but they felt an eternity—returned feeling to her heart, if not her hands. Very well. She would be queen today, and avenging protector as soon as she returned.
* * *
The wind whipped Guinevere’s hair, tugging it free from its plait with callous disregard for all the time Brangien had spent wrangling it into submission. If she could not be staging her attack against Rhoslyn and the patchwork knight, at least she was outside the city, with the wind and the wild and a horse. It felt almost like freedom.
“Whoa!” a guard shouted. To her dismay, her horse responded, slowing from a gallop to a trot and th
en an easy walk. Brangien had been left far behind. She was not very comfortable on horses, and it would take her some time to catch up. Guinevere wished the guard were in the same position.
The guard rode to her side, his expression horrified. “Did you lose control of your horse, my lady?”
“Yes,” Mordred interrupted, veering his own horse toward hers. “That mare often breaks into a gallop. I will ride next to the queen to see that it does not happen again.”
The guard nodded, satisfied, and gave Guinevere a polite distance again. Mordred leaned precariously far and put a hand on Guinevere’s mare’s neck. “Your horse is the most obedient and well-trained of our stable.”
Guinevere’s smile, much like her hair in the wind, could not be restrained. “I am sorry. But riding is—” She took a deep breath.
“Freedom,” Mordred said.
“Yes.” She had not realized quite how constraining being queen was. It was a weight that became unnoticeable until shrugged off. But putting it back on made it nearly unbearable. She should not have prowled through the night on her own. Darkness was a seductive freedom, and she had to stay focused.
Or she should have followed the shadows and gone straight to where Rhoslyn was hiding. She would have finished with it by now.
“You are a different person when you are outside,” Mordred said.
Guinevere reached up, trying to tame her hair again. Her hands fumbled the action. They still stung, numb and clumsy. She could feel nothing with them. “What do you mean?”
“You stop pretending.”