AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 13 - MORGAN
After the events ofthe night, I hadn’t gotten much sleep. Even after returning to my room, I’d tossed and turned, my mind on Galahad and the young man I had watched die on the healer’s table.
Over the course of the day, I was irritable and cranky. I spent a few hours in one of the temple reading rooms, searching the small library for mentions of Excalibur and the grail.
By evening, something had snapped in me.
Perhaps that was why I was now standing in the doorway to Lancelet’s chamber, my arms crossed with carefully feigned arrogance over my chest as I looked in at her.
“If you want to duel, I’m ready when you are.”
She glared back at me, her blue eyes filled, as they always seemed to be now, with cold fury.
“Duel you? I don’t want to duel you. Close the fucking the door.”
“No.” Instead, I took a small step forward into the small room. “I see your bed is as tiny as mine.” I kicked at a shirt lying on the floor, deliberately trying to provoke her. “And that you’re as messy as always.”
Clothes and pieces of armor were strewn around the floor. Her weapons she treated slightly better. I saw a sword in its scabbard laying on a wooden chest.
An unsheathed dagger sticking out of a pair of trousers caught my attention.
“You’re going to trip on that and poke an eye out,” I observed, seeing the furious gleam in her eyes.
I was poking a sleeping bear.
But then, politeness hadn’t worked out for me so far.
And continuing to just ignore one another was not an acceptable solution to me. I wasn’t ready to accept it as the status quo. To pretend we didn’t know one another. To accept there would be no going back to what we used to be.
Lancelet bared her teeth and actually growled, reminding me a little of Hawl, though not quite so gracious. “So? Perhaps it would be an improvement.”
“Is that what this is about? You think you’re, what? Ugly now?” I laughed. “You couldn’t be ugly even if you tried.”
Maybe it was a slight exaggeration. But it was what I truly believed. Even with her scars, Lancelet was beautiful. She always would be to me.
“What are you? My mother? There’s a fucking hole in my face. No one in their right mind would think I was anything but a...” She stopped, biting her lip.
“A what? A monster? Is that what you want us all to believe you are?” I shook my head. “Try harder.”
She smiled coldly. “Not everyone, Morgan. Just you. And you do, don’t you? You look at me and you see a reminder of the girl you left behind. Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
I stared at her in shock. “That’s not at all what I see. And I wouldn’t want you to go anywhere. Don’t you understand how glad I am that you’re stillalive?”
Had I even said the words once? I should have shouted them up and down the corridors of the temple. I realized that now.
“If seeing you reminds me of my guilt, it’s only what I deserve. Don’t think I don’t know that. Vesper pulled me away. I know you won’t believe it, but he overpowered me. I wish...” I paused, swallowing hard. “I wish I had stabbed the bastard then and there.” The bastard I’d thought I was falling in love with. “But I didn’t. And I know it doesn’t matter. What I did was unforgivable. I left you behind. I left you for dead.”
Lancelet sneered cruelly. But I knew I deserved it. And in the end, maybe this was why I was really here. To force her to punish me. “You went off with your boyfriend, Morgan, while I was being fuckingeaten alive.”
“I did. I also killed him. Myboyfriend.”
“You what?”
“I killed him,” I said bluntly, enjoying the look of surprise on her face. “He poisoned me first. I haven’t exactly had a chance to tell you. He dragged me away so he could poison me and use me to get Excalibur. He had a plan all arranged with Arthur. He...” I paused to exhale. “He didn’t care about me at all. Not really. In the end, he stabbed me and basically left me for dead.”
