“Speak, Lady Nyneve,” the queen commanded, no trace remaining of the smiling woman sitting by a fire with her friend. “What do you believe you have just stumbled upon?”
Nyneve stepped forward, holding her hands up in a peaceful gesture. “You and Morgana,” she said. “You’re in love. I’m happy for you. I would never speak a word to anyone.”
Guinevere held the Druid girl’s gaze for a long moment. Then the queen turned to Mordred, arching a brow.
“I believe we can trust her,” he said softly.
The queen nodded and looked back toward Nyneve with a heavy sigh. “Yes,” she said, stroking the tassels at the end of the shawl. “She does not stay at court. In the past, we have become too... comfortable. That is dangerous. So she comes for three months each year during all the autumn festivals and hunts, when Camelot’s court is the most distracted. Three months. That is all we can have.”
Guinevere’s voice was wistful and delicate, like it might break under the smallest amount of force, so Nyneve moved toward the hearth and settled onto the floor. She looked up at the queen, hoping that her face conveyed the understanding she felt.
Guinevere and Mordred glanced at each other again, and then the queen continued. “But,” she began, “when I told her of Merlin’s return, she agreed to a short visit. Upon her arrival, she saw him and his monks, the influence he held over Arthur... and she could not in good conscience stay away any longer, nor could she refuse to be my titled sorceress.”
“Morgana is fearsome,” Mordred added, his tone hushed. “She is experienced. She knows more about High Fey magics than any other mortal, Merlin included.Andshe is the king’s half-sister. That insulates her more than any marriage to a knight could ever protect you, Nyneve.”
Like a girl, she blushed at Mordred speaking of marriage. With great effort, she redirected her mind. “How did Morgana learn so much of Fey magics?” she asked, crossing her legs beneath her skirts. “Even the Druids have limited knowledge.”
Mordred drew in a deep breath, glancing between Nyneve and Guinevere. “You both know,” he said simply, “what I am. Morgana does, of course, as well. No one else.”
Nyneve drew back in shock, unable to stop herself from staring up at Guinevere. The queen arched one brow, a sharp smile easing over her mouth. “You are wondering, I’m sure, why a queen permits her own court to be infiltrated by the High Fey,”Guinevere mused, leaning forward and resting her jaw on her open hand.
“Something like that, yes,” Nyneve admitted.
“Mordred is a powerful ally,” the queen said, her dark eyes sliding to the faerie knight, who lounged casually in his chair as if they were telling old stories by the fire. “To have an emissary from the High Court is a boon, not a threat. And to be frank, I had grown too fond of him by the time I discovered the truth.”
“Well,” Mordred added with a rueful smile, “I knew your secret, too.”
“You, my handmaiden Lysanor, and Mordred,” Guinevere said, meeting Nyneve’s gaze. “Only you three know of... my relationship with Morgana.”
“I am honored to be given your trust, milady,” Nyneve said, meaning it.
The queen sighed, pulling the shawl from her shoulders and folding it up, though she kept it in her lap, staring down at the shimmering fabric. “I am becoming careless,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “Forgetting there is more at stake than my own happiness.” She paused, but neither Mordred nor Nyneve spoke.
“I was raised to believe peace was a lack of conflict,” Guinevere continued. One of the candles on the hearth burned down to the wick, beeswax dripping over the mantel. “When Arthur bent this region to his will in his quest for a united kingdom, I thought peace was obeying a single leader who, in my eyes, had the common good at the forefront of his mind.”
The queen’s mouth twisted, and Nyneve felt the weight of Guinevere’s sorrow in her own chest. It is a heavy thing for one’s world to come apart at its seams, Nyneve knew. A heavy, terrible, and often necessary thing.
“It is all right to grieve the future you thought you had,” the Druid girl said softly, reaching out to touch the hem of Guinevere’s gown. “That does not make you selfish.”
Guinevere let out a quiet gasp, brushing away tears with the back of her hand. “What makes the ordinary person selfish,” she whispered, “makes a queen monstrous. But I appreciate the sentiment.”
Nyneve said nothing, because she did not know how to tell the queen that perhaps she should be a monster. Instead, she watched Mordred hold a hand out to Guinevere. The queen took it, her fingers gripping the knight’s palm hard. Rolling her shoulders, Nyneve released some of the anger that had been rattling around in her chest. Guinevere was not her enemy.
“I think of peace differently now,” the queen said as she stared off into the distance, the candlelight turning her teardrops into strange jewels. “I think you cannot have peace if you do not have justice. Justice for the poor and the ailing. For the people who grow our food. For the men crippled by our wars. For the women widowed by our taste for violence. Justice for them all, or there is justice for none.”
Nyneve looked up at Guinevere from her seat at her feet, their skirts pooling together on the stone floor, and wondered if, for the first time in her life, she had found someone she would follow into battle. Tentatively, she opened her mouth to speak, but then a knock at the door made all three of them jump.
“Milady?” a handmaiden called. “Are you still in there?”
“Yes, Lysanor,” Guinevere replied, getting to her feet. Mordred immediately rose to stand as well, offering a hand to Nyneve to help her up. She accepted it and immediately regretted the choice, her body lighting up like an equinox bonfire.
“The king is looking for you,” the handmaiden said from the other side of the door. “The court is gathered and ready for the Queen’s Sorceress to receive her title.”
Nyneve took another sip of her cider, sweeping her gaze around the throne room. She’d seen two knightings during her time at Camelot, both before Merlin’s return, and she couldn’t help but notice the lack of festivity. No bunting draped the walls. No lively music of bells and pipes. No one had made speeches about Morgana’s strength and loyalty or cracked a few jokes about her less-than-chivalrous qualities.
“Do you think tonight is so different because it’s for a woman?” Mordred asked in her ear. “Or because of Merlin? Perhaps both?”
Nyneve looked up at him, startled that he had been thinking precisely the same thing. “His monks seem to take personal offense at anyone being happy,” she observed sourly. “But it’s hard to imagine Morgana’s womanhood has no impact.”
