I'm at the edge of the steps. The thing, the pillar of salt that once was my friend, stands immobile, faintly sparkling. And I want to scream.
I spin around, still on the ground, and look back towards the chapel doors, panicked, desperate, praying that one of them, any of them, all of them, will make it out of the smoke. But I can't see anything. Barely see any human forms, let alone who's who. Just swinging limbs, flashing steel, smacks, and cries. Cacophony.
But they're not looking at me, are they? I can leave, I can get away, I can go. sSlowly, tentatively, and then all at once, I shoot up, right at the edge, and I'm ready to jump off the steps, ready to...I don't know what. Sprint for Camlann House. Beg the Lady of the Lake for help. Scream my lungs out as a distraction, even though I can barely breathe in the smoke-tanged air.
But someone seizes me. The Prior. Both wrists in one hand. Squeezing so hard, it feels like the blood has stopped.
"Your champions are failing," he says. And I realize it's the first time he's spoken to me directly. "Your friend is gone. Your confession changed nothing."
"Please," I say, trying one last time. "Please, I'll do it. I'll fix it. I'll be what you need me to be. Just, they don't have to die for this."
“To be what you need to be,” he repeats. "The arrogance. The arrogance of a woman. It is too late,demoiselle.”
Anger, impulse, instinct carries the words from my mind to my mouth before I can stop them.
"Arrogance? You yourself said it was me. Said I was marked."
"There can be no perfection in what you are," he says, "for the woman always desires. She is the double-edged sword, wanting all things at all times. Changing without resolving, mutable, never satisfied. She thinks she can be the holy one, while she acts nothing but the whore. She thinks herself worthy, she thinks herself deserving, she thinks herself inscrutable, and yet her nature is inconstant. She cannot be both! She cannot be all!”
The words, the words he's saying, something about them snags in my memory. The thunder, perfect mind. The poem I'd read, back in Camlann, with Cal, that Emrys had picked out.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the one who has been hated everywhere
and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death…
And then something else, another voice. Morgan's, from weeks ago, back in her room.
Think as much as you want, Gwenna, just make sure they're your thoughts.
"But you," the Prior's grip on me tightens. “You are deceit, you are lies, you are inconsistency and trickery.”
Another voice. Emrys's.Why were you not Gwenna?
“You are boastfulness, you are emptiness, you are?—"
"No," I say, quiet but certain.
"No?" If the prior has shown any amusement, ever, it comes through now in his voice.
"No," I say. "I'm not."
"You hear her speak?" he says, gesturing at the Brothers who approach now, unarmed, as if the conflict has subsided. "You hear her declare this? Who does she think she is?"
The riddle, the Lady of the Lake, the question I need to answer and never could. But I realize, I know, the Prior hasn't asked me the way she did.
