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“But—but no—I can’t do this without you. I can’t—what am I supposed to do?”
He gently cupped her cheek in his palm, uncaring for the fact that she was still ablaze. “I have faith in you, my firefly.” Lowering his hand, he turned to Zoe. “Three hundred years within the Crystal.”
“No. One year for every year suffered by all of us. Together.” Thorn cackled. “Three hundred years by how many of us? A hundred and more? Thirty thousand years in the Iron Crystal shall do it!”
Mordred growled. “You have lost your mind if you believe I will agree to such a thing!”
“That is unreasonable, Lady Thorn,” Zoe interjected. “I am not in favor.”
“One thousand,” Galahad spoke up, his deep voice carrying through the halls. “Will you serve one thousand years, Mordred, Prince in Iron, for your crimes?”
Mordred’s jaw twitched. He whirled from the proceedings, his cape flaring out around him. He paused, halfway out of the room. “I ask for one day and one night before I surrender.”
There was coldness in his voice—a deep darkness that would probably have been terrifying to Gwen, if she hadn’t known it for what it was.
Grief.
Tears slipped from her cheeks, sizzling as they hit the stone beneath her.
“Come, Gwendolyn.”
Gwen looked around the room. At all the elementals in attendance. Most were watching her with curiosity, some with thinly veiled hatred. Some with almost a look of sympathy—almost.
She debated how to react. Cuss them all out? Tell them all where they could sit and spin? Set the place on fire, see how many she could take out before they overpowered her? Shaking her head, she decided it wasn’t worth it.
She followed Mordred, putting out her fire. She caught up to him as he reached Tiny. He was petting the dragon’s nose.
“What…what’ll happen to them, if you—” She couldn’t imagine it. She really couldn’t picture him gone. Trapped in that Crystal. Better that than dead, I guess.
“They shall remain.” He let out a heavy breath. “You must look after them.”
“I—don’t talk like that. I said if. If. There has to be a way out of this. A loophole, a?—”
“There is no way out of this, Gwendolyn. If I do not surrender, they will unite against me. Against us.” He shut his eyes. “I will not see you harmed.”
She wanted to argue and say that she could take them on—but he was right. She really couldn’t. She could barely figure out how to fly, let alone defeat a hundred pissed off elementals. “I don’t want you to go.”
He smiled at her weakly. “Neither do I wish to.” He held his arms out to her. “Come here, my love.”
She half ran into his embrace. He held her tight, lifting her feet off the ground as she clung to him, her arms wrapped around behind his neck. He kissed her, not caring that she was crying.
This couldn’t be goodbye.
It couldn’t be.
A thousand years isn’t that long, right?
Right?
Mordred held Gwendolyn close to him as his dragon took them back to his home. He would spend his last day and night in his keep, securing matters for his long departure.
A thousand years.
A thousand.
How strange, it was less than the time that had lapsed behind him. He considered it barely more than a blink of an eye, in some ways. But now that he knew the number that reached ahead of him, it felt like an eternity.
Perhaps it was the company he would be lacking that made the proposition so sour. For it was not the absence of Avalon that he would mourn—it was the absence of her. The young woman who was sitting sideways in front of him so that she could tuck herself closer as they flew.
