I couldn’t breathe; the pain was so intense.
My hands found the nearest wall as I tried to remain upright, but even that was difficult. The stone scraped my palms, but I couldn’t say I even felt it. Instead, something inside me was screaming, a sound beneath sound, the kind that lived in the chest rather than in the throat.
Let me out.
My vision tunneled, going black at the edges, then the black began to spread.
Mordred caught me before I hit the floor.
“Breathe,” he said quietly. “It won’t kill you.”
-ARTHUR-
That fiery coil behind my chest signified that the creature within me was awake, whether I wanted it to be or not.
I’d sent my attendants out an hour ago and dismissed the guards from my inner chamber. Now I stood at the window with a cup of wine I hadn’t touched and watched the courtyard stones while Mordred worked below, and that had been fine. I’d been fine.
Then the binding on the white-haired witch must have snapped into place.
Because that was when I feltit. Anditwas the part I couldn’t explain and refused to examine: that Ifeltthe moment Mordred’s sigils closed around her magic. There was a sound like a lock turning, except the sound was inside my skull. And then something slammed against my ribcage.
SHE IS BEING HURT!
“Stop.” I had to brace myself against the window sill to keep myself aloft.
WE MUST GO TO HER!
“I said stop.”
The glass smashed on the floor. It wasn’t because I dropped it; my hand released it without my mind even wanting it to. I started walking, pacing the room, because I couldn’t stand there any longer. The heat was burning me. In my throat, my face, my chest. I looked at my hands, and there was gold around my knuckles, along with the slightest hint of scales.
SOMEONE WOUNDS THAT WHICH IS OURS!
“Mordred is restricting her powers. She’s not being injured in the slightest.” I kept my voice as even as I could. Long experience had taught me that arguing with the beast would do nothing but fuel it further, but saying nothing at all would be worse. “She’s a prisoner. This is how prisoners—”
The rush slammed into me like an enormous wave.
I gripped the table with both hands, and the wood gave a groan as I felt it compress beneath me. I forced myself to relax my fingers one by one.
TAKE HER AWAY FROM HIM!
My knuckles were growing even golder, the scales spreading. And my fingernails were beginning to arch into claws.
I made myself cross to the door and open it. There was no one there, thank the gods. The corridor air here was cooler as I stood in the doorway and breathed in and out until the gold receded from my hands.
-GUIN-
This cell was smaller than the other one.
But it still looked essentially identical. The straw was still matted into the same damp corners, the same iron ring bolted to the same stone. And aside from the sliver of window in this cell, nothing else had changed. Well, except for the number of very strange moths I’d seen earlier. Where a handful had been, now there were at least double that, all sitting on the stone wall.
But I couldn’t focus on them for long. Instead, Mordred’s binding sat on my skin like a coat I couldn’t remove. It felt both foreign and weighty. Everything felt somehow closer now too. Heavier and stranger.
I pressed my back to the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the cold floor. My wrists ached where the sigils had been drawn. Not cut into me, but drawn with something that smelled like sulfur and old blood and left no visible mark, just the sensation of something sealed. Something locked.
I tried, once, to reach for my water. There wasn’t even a trickle of response.
So, I stopped trying.
