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Arthur crossed the room to her, kneeling in front of her chair and putting his hands on top of hers. “You are useful to me.”
“My strengths are a liability here. You know it is true.”
His hands tightened around hers. Her breath caught, waiting for what he would say next. “Merlin sent you here. That is reason enough to stay.”
“But—”
He pulled her suddenly close, wrapping his arms around her. Her chin was on his shoulder, the side of his face against hers. “Guinevere. Please. I want you in Camelot. Do not leave. Promise you will not leave.”
She closed her eyes. The heat of his cheek against hers, the slight roughness of his skin. It made her feel real. She had only just learned how to be Guinevere. She worried that alone in the forest, hunting, she would become something new. Darker. Maybe that was how Merlin could justify hurting others; when you lived your life apart, it was easy to forget how real other people were. He had done terrible things to create Arthur, to protect him. What would she be willing to do?
“What if the darkness comes here?” she asked.
“It will. It always does. It will come tomorrow or in a year or in fifty years.” He released her, slyness in his normally clear, direct eyes. He smiled. “And you will only know when it is here if you are still here, too. So you cannot leave. As king, I forbid it.” His tone had shifted from serious to teasing.
A part of her wilted in disappointment. She had wanted him to say something else. The hope lurked, nebulous and hungry. She wanted him to want her to stay because he wanted…her. She wanted to stay for him. Not for King Arthur. For her Arthur. It was why she should leave.
It was why she would not.
“I will stay for as long as you want me to,” Guinevere said. “But you must let me spy on Rhoslyn and the patchwork knight.”
She had not expected the sheer relief on his face as he nodded. “We will make plans. But not tonight. We are going on a hunt tomorrow, and you will accompany me.” He stopped, then smiled hopefully. In his tunic, in the dim light, without his crown and sword and armor, he was so young. Her heart gave a painful squeeze as he said, “If you want to come. I want you to.”
If she could only be herself around him, perhaps it was true that he could only be himself around her. And she suspected Arthur desperately needed to be an eighteen-year-old boy sometimes, instead of the hope of all Camelot. This was a different type of protection she could offer him. It was certainly not what Merlin had in mind. But, oh, she wanted it. Because if Arthur was eighteen, she was only sixteen. She was not a weary, ancient dragon, ready to fade, or a gnarled old wizard content to retreat to his forest shack and mutter inscrutable prophecies.
She wanted to live. She wanted to live here. She leaned forward, batting her eyelashes. “Will it be terribly dangerous?”
“Oh, very much so. You will have to talk to Sir Percival’s wife.”
“Save me!” She threw a hand over her forehead and pretended to swoon. He laughed, catching her against himself. He pre
ssed her to his chest and she felt and heard as his steady heart began to beat faster. Her own matched its pace. He stood, slowly, pulling her up with himself. “Guinevere,” he said, his voice as soft as the night around them. She wanted to touch his hand, to feel him. To feel if what was sparking in her like flint trying to catch a torch was also inside him.
They stumbled a bit as she rose, and she knocked into Excalibur leaning against the wall. Her fingers brushed the hilt and—
Oh
Oh
No
Darkness and void and nothing
Nothing, so much nothing she spun in it, she fell in it.
But falling is something falling has a destination falling stops and this this would never stop could never stop—
Her fingers left the sword. She ran from the room and into hers, emptying her stomach into the washbowl. Over and over, her body spasming, until at last her head stopped spinning and her heart stopped twitching. She ran her hands over her body. She was here. She was here. She was real.
“What is wrong?” Arthur asked, concern tightening his voice.
“I do not know,” Brangien answered. Guinevere had not even realized Brangien was there holding her hair back. “Maybe something she ate.”
Guinevere sank weakly to the floor. It had not been magic. She would have recognized a magical attack. This had been…the opposite of magic. If magic was chaos and life, this was a void.
And she had felt it when she touched Excalibur.
What was the sword?
