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Her hair had grown, I noticed. When I had first met her, it had been chopped roughly, as if she had cut it with a dull knife. Now the curly, brown locks nearly touched her shoulders. She was not the broken girl who had first come to the temple, running from my brother’s assaults.
“I need to talk to Draven alone now,” I said slowly.
She nodded and turned to go. Guiltily, I saw her touch a hand to one of the bed posts and wince. If I had been drained, so had she.
“Thank you. For whatever you did. Thank you, Guinevere.”
She smiled briefly. “I am here to serve,” was all she said before she left the room.
I turned to Draven, trying to dismiss the disconcerted feeling Guinevere had left behind.
“He knows. We need to go. Tonight.”
I might have summoned Nightclaw to our window. We could have flown into the night without the need to sneak past guards or creep down dark corridors.
But after the Battle of Brightwind, after all we had already put the exmoors through, and more importantly, after Sunstrike had been injured, there was no way in hell I was going to ask the battlecats for anything else.
They would join us on this journey as companions. And that would be enough.
But to use them again as my father and his people used the exmoors, as mere mounts rather than sentient partners? No. Perhaps not ever again.
Besides, it was not so difficult to make our way past the guards King Mark had stationed around the palace.
Draven veiled us so that we blended with the dark shadows along every hall. He made us appear disinteresting, dull, and dark. Guards marched past us, talking without sparing a single glance.
We wound our way down through the levels of the seaside castle, reaching the undercroft, and then finally emerging through a passage beyond the palace walls.
The moon cast a silvery glow upon the sand as we stepped out onto the quiet beach.
A horse whinnied, and I turned, expecting to see the two mounts Draven had arranged to have left there.
Instead, I saw a hulking, dark shape break away from the castle walls, the towering figure a looming silhouette against the night sky.
Another figure stepped away from the wall. Then another and another.
“I told you this is what they would do.” The Bearkin’s voice rumbled across the beach. Hawl still wore the leather breastplate they had equipped for the Brightwind battle. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I?”
“Crescent!” I narrowed my eyes as the dark-skinned slender man stepped up beside Hawl, looking sheepish. “You told them?”
“They already knew,” he said.
I looked around. Crescent and Galahad, we had expected to be there.
Hawl, Lancelet, Guinevere, Gawain, Sir Ector, and Dame Halyna, however...
“You cannot all come,” I exclaimed. “There are reasons...”
Draven stepped up beside me, a hand on my shoulder. “I thought we’d already discussed this. Crescent, Galahad, we’ve made plans...”
“And those plans are not changing.” Galahad held up his hands. “We didn’t invite them here, Morgan.”
Lancelet moved to stand beside Hawl. “No, he certainly didn’t.” The look she gave me was painfully accusatory. “Nor did you, Morgan. Just tell me why.”
“I...” I struggled to put the right words in order. “You can’t come with us. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Lancelet rolled her eyes. “It’s like she forgets we all just fought a battle two days ago.”
“I know,” I said desperately. “And you survived. Again. Incredibly. But before that? What my brother put you through? Your arm is hardly healed.”
