Her maids came as normal, laundering their clothes, turning down their bed, dressing her for events and meetings.
Guinevere’s gowns were darker now, crimson silks and midnight velvets. It was not mourning, it was armor.
Lunete told her she looked severe — dangerous — in her new wardrobe.
Lancelot told her she looked devastating.
He stayed by her side. No longer a secret, but a shadow. His sword was hers. His silence belonged to her.
His rage?
Leashed.
For now.
She hadn’t met the infant yet, but the young boy was set to be baptized this morning.
Were this a different child, a different set of circumstances, he would have been baptized the same day of his birth, but Arthur wanted an audience.
Morgana wanted to be in attendance.
So they postponed the baptism until three days post birth.
The bells tolled before dawn. Not for mourning, but proclamation.
A new prince.
A new line.
A new era.
Guinevere dressed in silence.
Her gown was black this time, trimmed in garnet embroidery that caught the candlelight like blood. Her maids fastened her cloak, pinned her hair, adjusted the gold circlet atop her head — all without speaking the obvious. This child, this claim, might mean the end of her.
Lancelot buckled his sword belt in the corner. He didn’t wear court colors anymore. His tunic bore no sigil, no crest. Only plain, ash-dark wool — the color of storm clouds.
“You don’t have to stand beside me for this,” she said, eyes on the mirror.
His gaze met hers in the reflection. “There is nowhere else I would stand.”
She didn’t smile. Couldn’t. But she let him take her hand.
Outside, the court gathered like crows. The chapel smelled of incense and rose oil. Banners hung heavy from the stone rafters, their silks stiff with embroidery: the Bendragon crest alongside Morgana’s ancestral sigil — a snake wrapped around a flowering tree.
Arthur stood at the altar, golden-robed and expressionless, hands folded behind his back. Every noble in Camelot had come to witness it. To kneel. To bow. To bear witness to the so-called future.
Morgana entered to a swell of harp and horn, the baby swaddled in white velvet, a crownlet already tied around his brow. The child did not cry.
Guinevere walked just behind her, Lancelot at her side. Theylooked like monarchs in mourning — shadows carved from obsidian. The hush that followed them as they took their place beside Arthur was not reverent. It was wary.
The bishop stepped forward, intoning rites in Latin. Water shimmered in the font like glass.
“Name this child,” the bishop said.
Morgana’s smile did not reach her eyes. “Mordred.”
Gasps moved like wind through the congregation. The name had power. Old power. Wild and prophetic.
