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It was the worst kind of dream, because every part of it was destructive. The Mordred of her dreams was not the real Mordred, and she did not need rescuing. Not from this.
Arthur lingered close to her at the table where she sat watching the dancers. But she sensed his tension as he glanced toward a gathering of lords and kings from the region. Allies and information just a few steps away.
She elbowed him gently in the side. He wore relatively simple clothes. A vest of deep blue over a clean white tunic. The silver crown on his shorn head was his only adornment. He turned toward her with a questioning smile and she felt the familiar pulse of affection. Her handsome, good king. She would work on patience.
“Go on, talk politics.”
He grimaced guiltily. “I do not want to leave you alone.”
“How can I be alone?” Guinevere gestured to the packed room. It was like a battlefield, with combat fought in dance and gossip and drinking contests. She was not skilled in any of it. “Alone would be gloriously preferable at this point.”
“Can we dance later?”
“I do not know any of these dances. Merlin never saw fit to push that information into my head.” She flashed a quick smile at Arthur as he left. What would she have lost of her past if Merlin had taught her to dance? Did it even matter? At this point she had so little left of who she had been, it was like she had not even existed before becoming Guinevere.
She should pretend that was the truth. Forget the fear of what she did not know about herself, her mother, her past. Go back to Camelot with a clean slate. Free from both her own past and the real Guinevere’s. No more Guinevach, no more Lady of the Lake, no more Merlin. Only Guinevere and the family she had chosen.
Brangien and Dindrane stood before her, each taking one of her hands and pulling her up.
“Where are we going?” Guinevere asked.
“To dance!” Dindrane laughed. “It is my wedding, you cannot tell me no.”
“You are dancing?” Guinevere turned to Brangien, shocked. Isolde was sitting on a stool near the door, beaming as she watched Brangien.
Brangien lifted Guinevere’s good hand in the air, then somehow shifted it to force Guinevere to spin in a circle. “I love dancing.”
“You do not!”
“I do!” Brangien slipped into the circle of dancing members of the wedding party and mimicked their moves expertly. None of the other maids were dancing yet, but Brangien enjoyed special status as lady’s maid to the queen. She was assured and graceful and happy. Guinevere wondered in that moment if she had ever seen Brangien truly happy before now, dancing in a room where her love was free to watch. Knowing at the end of the night, they could be together. At the end of every night from now on, they could be together.
Guinevere laughed, Brangien’s happiness infectious.
“Come on.” Dindrane eased Guinevere into the circle, constantly correcting her movements. But it was not done meanly. It was done as fun between friends. Sir Bors, who was not dancing, watched with the same lovestruck awe that Isolde did. Guinevere could not help but check if she was being watched with love, as well.
She wished she had not. Arthur was deep in conversation with a circle of men, not watching her dance. But in a way that made it easier. No one cared what she was doing. Guinevere relaxed and let Dindrane instruct and guide and correct her, and before long she was spinning with all the other dancers as musicians filled the room with as much noise as there was drink and talk. Her shoulder was sore, but that did not lessen her enjoyment.
Laughing and clasping hands with Dindrane and Brangien soothed some of her fears. They had their own loves now, but they were still her friends. She had gained a new friend in Isolde and, if not a friend in Sir Bors, someone she respected. And her role in creating this match assuaged some of the guilt she felt around Sir Bors for what she had done to his mind to protect the dragon. At least one of them had come out on the other side better off.
As Brangien twirled her out of the group and then back in, Guinevere discovered that someone was watching her. Lancelot never took her eyes off them. Guinevere, giddy with movement, stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. Lancelot’s watchful gaze cracked and she smiled, shaking her head.
Guinevere wished she could pull Lancelot into the dance. But she was the queen and Lancelot was her knight, and she had to respect that. The smile shared between them finished sealing away the pain of the past few days.
She chose this life, and she loved it and was loved in turn by so many people in it.
Guinevere danced until her feet ached as much as her sides did from laughing. She retired to the table with Brangien and Dindrane, joined by Isolde. They formed an island of sisterhood, sealed away from everyone else as they ate and drank and giggled. There were jellied fruits and nuts in crystalized honey. Even the gossip was sweet, Brangien and Dindrane filling Isolde in on all the wonders that awaited her in Camelot. Guinevere forgot that they were there for a wedding until the men started banging raucously on the tables.
“To the bed!” they chanted, over and over. Sir Bors looked at the men with such a
ggressive displeasure the chanting faltered.
He walked to Dindrane, then bowed and held out his hand. “If you are ready to retire?”
Dindrane, who did not seem nervous so much as excited, stood and took his hand. “I am.”
A few brave souls shouted encouragement and whistled as they left, but Sir Bors’s glower had managed to defeat any of the more crass sentiments and certainly cut short any ideas about following the couple.
Guinevere remembered her own wedding, how odd and new everything had felt. How determined she had been. Scared, but certain of who she was and what she was doing there. It made her feel sad, thinking about that girl. That was the night she had given her real name away to a flame, snuffing it out forever to avoid the temptation of revealing it. If she knew then what she knew now—the layers of Merlin’s manipulations, the false premise of her entire role in Camelot, the damage already done to her mind—would she have made the same choice to willingly sacrifice what little she had of herself?
