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“We will talk later, niece,” he said. “I know I have been... remiss. There is much to discuss.”
Remiss? Was that what we were going to call it? Call him helping Arthur to kill me painfully with poison? Call putting iron shavings into the “medicine” I had trusted to protect me?
There was guilt in his eyes. He made no attempt to disguise it. This, more than anything, led me to nod briefly and then move on.
My eyes passed to the girl standing beside him, watching me steadily from out of large, doe-brown eyes. She was small in stature with a round figure that curved softly in a pale blue gown trimmed in dove gray. Dark, lavish lashes brushed against the honey-toned canvas of her rosy cheeks. I might have described her as sweet or even beguilingly pretty, were it not for the chopped, curly, brown locks that touched the tip of her chin. The hasty cut revealed jagged edges and loose long strands, as if she had taken a knife to her own tresses in an impulsive, violent attack.
There was something on the girl’s shoulder. No, not something. A bird. An owl.
The owl clung to the blue linen gown the young woman wore, delicately gripping the cloth with its curved talons.
The bird's plumage was a study in earthy elegance, a composition of intricately patterned gray, gold, and brown mottled feathers. Luminous, burnished gold eyes stared back at me, framed with stark-white feathers in the shapes of perfect circles, like lanterns bright with ancient wisdom. Delicate, peaked, horn-like tufts crowned its head.
As I watched, the owl let out a low, haunting hoot and then spread its wings. Lifting off into the air, it glided across the room and came to rest on Merlin's shoulder.
Reaching a hand upwards, the High Priestess gently caressed the owl's feathers.
“Her name is Tuva,” Merlin said to me briefly, meaning the bird, before turning back to the companions standing around the table.
I glanced one last time at the girl in blue.
There was a story there. Perhaps even more than one. But as I noted the figure standing to the girl’s right, I knew I was only piecing together a small part of it.
“You wouldn’t have met Guinevere yet,” Merlin said quietly from beside me, indicating the girl in blue. “Guinevere...” To my surprise, the high priestess looked discomfited. “As you already know, Guinevere comes to us from Lyonesse.”
“Lady Guinevere, it is an honor to greet you in person,” I said, meeting the eyes of the petite young woman. “I am well aware of your noble family. I wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.”
From the corner of my eye, I caught Merlin pursing her lips. “Indeed,” she murmured. “Perhaps we’ll leave it at that for now.”
I nodded and saw Guinevere nod briefly, too. “Very well.”
Fleetingly, I let my eyes rest on the tall and slender woman standing to the right of Guinevere of Lyonesse.
Lancelet de Troyes had been my closest friend and companion. Now she would not even meet my eyes.
Like many in the room, she had changed.
Before her harrowing ordeal, she had been strikingly beautiful and glowing with good health.
She was still lovely to my eyes and always would be.
But the horror that had befallen her had left indelible marks. Her face bore the worst of the scars. Most notably, a jagged, puckering wound along one of her cheeks that was edged with the unmistakable marks of small human teeth. Fresh, pink flesh around the scar’s edge hinted at the hope of healing, but for now, the remnant of the nightmare lingered. Her short, sun-streaked hair had been pushed back off her forehead and tied with a simple braided piece of leather, but even this could not hide the cruel gaps of pink flesh where her beautiful hair had been violently torn away.
I had no wish to gape, but neither did I wish to permit myself the luxury of turning away.
So I held my gaze, waiting for Lancelet to return it. Observing how closely she stood to the petite girl from Lyonesse.
As close as a king’s guard might stand to the king while they passed through a chaotic crowd. Was that how Lancelet saw herself? As Guinevere’s protector?
Finally, Lancelet’s eyes flickered over to me. Her mouth hardened into a grim line.
Still not pleased to see me then. I could understand and accept that. For now. Not forever.
Merlin stepped forward. “Shall we come to order?”
As Merlin raised her hands for silence, I watched as her fingers moved through the air, noting their delicacy, their frailty. The blue veins showing through the pale brown skin. Merlin, I realized with chagrin, was getting old. She could not live forever. And serving as High Priestess in times like these could not be easy for her.
But then, she was not High Priestess any longer, was she? Arthur had stripped her of that noble position. One she should have rightly held all her life. He had appointed another in her place.
