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I nodded. “I can do that. If you tell me first what happened to you. Tell me you’re really Rychel.” I clenched my fists. “None of this makes any sense.”
“Did you ever expect me to make sense, Morgan?” Rychel whispered. There was a twinkle in her faded eyes.
The answer was so very Rychel that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I took the grail,” she continued, her voice strained. “I went... to your father.”
I froze.
Behind me, the tent flap opened.
Draven.
“What’s all this about?” he asked quietly, taking in the elderly woman and child. He crouched down beside me. “Hello, my lady. I understand you are not well. Is there anything we can do for you?”
“Hello, brother,” Rychel said—and I felt my heart crack and break. “I believe I shall die tonight. No, I don’t believe there is much you can do. Not now. Besides put my mind at rest.”
I watched Draven’s face as it transformed. As he took in the small form, the wrinkled skin. As he told himself he didn’t know this woman, then took in the once-luminous green eyes, the heart-shaped face.
“No. It can’t be.” He looked at me, his eyes wide and helpless like a boy’s, and I pitied him. I wished I could have lied. I wished I could have told him the old woman dying in the bed was not his little sister.
Instead, I nodded slowly.
“Rychel?” he asked, looking down at the old woman. “What happened to you?” His voice was a plea.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her milkish eyes transfigured with grief. “I’m sorry, Draven.” She lifted a frail arm as if to touch him, then dropped it, shaking, as if the strain of merely lifting it had been too much for her.
She drew a shaky breath. “I took... the grail. Went to the Valtain. To Morgan’s father.”
“Yes, and then what? Did he do this to you?” The muscles in his jaw tightened.
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “Yes... and no.”
“What do you mean? How can that be?” he demanded.
“The grail was taken from me. I was... naive... to think he would let me do my work.”
I glanced at Draven. That came as no surprise.
“Were you mistreated?” I asked.
“Not... then,” came the response.
But she had been. Eventually.
I could almost feel Draven’s fury. Hot and palpable. Murderous. And directed entirely at my father. First Gawain, I could almost hear him thinking. Now Rychel. It could not stand. It would not stand.
“Later?” His voice was hard.
She nodded slowly. “After. When he was... angry with me.”
“After what?” I asked, trying to keep the impatience from my voice.
There was a rasping sound. I realized she was struggling to draw breath. Glancing at Draven again, I wondered how much Amara had told him. Did he understand this was the end?
“I got past his guards. Got to the grail,” Rychel gasped, her frail chest rising and falling.
“Why couldn’t you do what needed to be done back in Myntra?” Draven demanded, his face twisting with grief and anger. “Why did you have to leave, Rychel? What good was giving him what he wanted?”
