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“She is nearly fifteen. Old enough for a betrothal, certainly. Regardless, she visited every lady still here and flirted with every knight under the age of twenty-five. Already she is the talk of Camelot.”
“In a good way, or in a bad way?”
“Who can say? But everyone loves gossip, which means they love Guinevach. She has meal invitations for every night this week, and the next, as well.”
“Interesting. Thank you, Brangien.” Whatever Guinevach was here to do, she was playing a more complicated game than Guinevere had anticipated.
It takes so long to create the city. Everything is shaped just so. Everything is ready. Waiting.
The darkness takes form at the bottom of the city. She looks around, and then she laughs.
Why?
Because they are coming.
Why do you care?
The question makes no sense. It is not a matter of caring. It is a matter of fact. They are coming, and they will need this city, and it will be ready for them. For him. There will be a wizard, and he will help with the sword. And then—
Well. When the infinite now became the future and then, the Lady would choose.
I am bored, the darkness says, buzzing and humming and thrumming. Come and dance with me. She is movement and chaos, brightest life and sharpest death. There is no patience in her, no sense of the power of performing the same action over and over and over until eventually a different result is achieved.
Still, the Lady loves her, because the darkness is life, and the Lady loves life above all. She nourishes it and makes it possible. It is painfully dear to her, even if she is always separate from it. The Lady flows down her silent and waiting streets and greets the darkness at the end in a joyful embrace. And for that moment, the Lady feels alive.
Guinevere awoke and sat up with a gasp, looking down at her hands. They were hands. She was real. She blinked until her eyes settled on her own room, her own bed.
She lay back down, trying to calm her racing mind. Another dream that belonged to someone else. The Lady of the Lake. If the dream was to be believed, Guinevere officially knew where Camelot—the mysterious city on the hill, the wondrous waiting miracle—came from. The Lady of the Lake carved it herself. When Guinevere had mused that it seemed like Camelot was designed to give Arthur status and power, she had not realized how close she was to the truth.
The joy the Lady had felt at embracing the Dark Queen shocked her, though. And it made her deeply, uncomfortably sad. Because she knew how that story ended. On the shore of the lake, with the Dark Queen calling for her ally and receiving no answer.
Apparently they had been more than allies. They had been so unalike, and yet capable of understanding each other in a way no living creature could. And the Lady had turned her back on that in favor of Arthur and Merlin. What had the wizard done that undid centuries of the Lady’s careful anticipation and work? She had betrayed the Dark Queen for Merlin and Arthur, and then she had betrayed Merlin, as well. Was it really all because of Guinevere? If Merlin had gone to such lengths to erase the Lady from Guinevere’s memories, there had to be a more sinister reason. Something more complicated.
But what was more complicated than families?
Doubtless done with sleeping for the night, Guinevere sat and lit a candle at her bedside. Normally she did not mind the dark, but with the embrace of the Dark Queen lingering in her mind, not as something terrible but as something joyful, she wanted the distraction of fire.
“My queen? What is it?”
Guinevere startled. She had forgotten that Lancelot would be sleeping there until Arthur returned with Excalibur. “Another dream.” Guinevere stared at the tiny flame a few seconds longer, wishing
with desperate, painful longing that she could get it to whisper her real name to her. One thing—just one—that truly belonged to her.
But she had given it up when she came here, and that was that. She blew out the candle.
“Of the Lady?” Lancelot asked.
“Yes.”
“Was there anyone else in it?”
“The Dark Queen.” It made Guinevere sad, remembering.
“No one else?”
“It was a long time ago. When Camelot was new.”
“Oh, when she made it.”
