“He is the bridge,” Guinevere whispered, remembering. “He is the bridge between the violence that was and the peace that might be.”
“Move, Mordred.” Arthur tried to go around, but Mordred followed, keeping himself and Guinevere between Arthur and the Dark Queen. Guinevere could hear her behind them, could hear the skittering and creeping. The growing.
Arthur stepped closer. Guinevere shuddered, her whole body convulsing with the same existential dread she had felt from the tree. She pushed back against Mordred, needed to get away, to be away, to be far away from that thing. From Excalibur.
“If you come closer to her, she will be unmade. Look, she can barely stand.” Mordred stepped toward Arthur, pushing Guinevere nearer to the sword. The world spun. Darkness swirled, eating away at her vision. She was underwater. She was trapped. She was—
Arthur backed away. Guinevere drew a shuddering breath.
“I will let you choose,” Mordred said. “Your mother never had a choice. I am more merciful than Merlin. If you want to end the Dark Queen, you can. But you will have to go through Guinevere to get to her. Excalibur will kill her, too. That is your choice. Kill them both, or kill neither.”
Guinevere knew it was true. She would not survive if Excalibur could reach her. It was not hunger radiating from the blade. It was the absence of hunger. It would devour magic and never be sated, never be full. It did not eat to survive. It ate to end.
But the Dark Queen would truly be dead. The chaos she nurtured forever over. The people of Camelot would be allowed to grow and learn and live and die on their own terms, subject only to each other, not to magic they could not understand or control. She looked into Arthur’s warm eyes. The boy king. He carried the weight of a kingdom.
She nodded. “Do it.”
Arthur held her gaze. And then the king disappeared, leaving only her friend. Her Arthur.
He sheathed the sword.
She is free.
For so long, she has had a thousand eyes, a thousand legs and bodies. And now she is formed, she is real. But she is not safe. She can feel that horrible tool, the unmaking of her, the unmaking of magic.
Her beautiful boy is nearby. And so is the queen-not-queen. Her savior. There is a mystery in her blood, her sweet blood. The dark queen, the true queen, swirls with happiness. She has form, she has a mystery, she has a goal. Before, she tried to defeat men in battle. Now, she will destroy them from within. She will rot them, decay them, grow new life from their corpses feeding the forest.
But for now, she has an enemy still too dangerous to face. Too much has been taken from the land. She tries to draw from the trees, but they are dead. Worse than dead. They have been erased. It is horrible. She cannot make a stand here.
Follow me, she whispers with the buzzing drone of a thousand black flies bringing plague in the wet heat of summer. Bring her.
Guinevere heard the Dark Queen slithering away, into the trees. Faster than shadow. Faster than flight. She was risen, and she was gone, and both were Guinevere’s fault.
Mordred laughed, backing away from Arthur. He dragged Guinevere along. She was too weak from the loss of blood and the sickness of Excalibur to fight him.
“Leave her,” Arthur commanded.
“Come after us and you will have to fight me. That ends with one of us dying. I am ready to kill or die. Are you?”
Arthur dropped his head, shoulders slumped. Defeated. Whatever Mordred had done, he was still Arthur’s family. Guinevere knew, as Mordred did, that Arthur was not willing to kill him.
Mordred picked up speed. Guinevere dragged her heels, pulled against him, but he did not slow. One of Maleagant’s horses wandered by. Mordred whistled and the horse trotted to them. Mordred threw Guinevere up onto it, then mounted behind her. He kicked at the horse’s flanks, sending them deeper into the forest.
“Whatever they have told you,” Mordred said, his arm tight against her waist, his mouth at her ear, “they have lied.”
“Merlin—”
“Merlin is the worst liar of them all. You think he cares about you? The man who walks through time? He would have seen this. He would have known it was coming. And is he here?” Mordred gestured to the darkness around them. “No. He is not.”
“He is my—my father.”
“You cannot even say it without tripping over the word. Your heart and your tongue know a lie when they feel it, even if your brain tells you it is true. Merlin is no more your father than Arthur is your husband. They trapped you in the prison of Camelot, bound you in dresses, stripped away everything that was real and created their queen. They molded you into a form that suited them. Because you are terrifying. You are more powerful than any of them. Do you know what Excalibur is? What it does?”
Guinevere shook her head, closing her eyes.
“People think it is magic. It is the opposite of magic. It is the end of magic. Magic is life. Excalibur is an executioner. That is why you cannot stand to be around the sword. Your core is magic, your veins flow with it, your heart beats with it. Your soul knows that Excalibur is not your defender. It is your enemy.” Mordred’s grip was now not holding her captive so much as holding her up. He rested his cheek against her head. “Merlin has always forced his will on the world. Through magic, through violence, through deception. And now that he has decided magic must end, he has made you complicit. He made you a prisoner of his plans. Did he tell you anything true?”
She wanted to answer. She could not. Had she known everything, what might she have done differently? What might she have chosen? Merlin insisted she chose this, but she had a head full of things he put there and so very little else.