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She cocked her head and looked at me astutely. “Or perhaps you were just running away from something else?”
I flinched. The words hit too close to home.
But Lancelet was preoccupied. She was sitting up. “Fine. We’ll go out. There’s a way I know of. One of the tunnels beneath the temple. It leads into an alley near one of the city squares. We can walk around for a while. You can look your fill. We won’t talk to anyone. Then we’ll head back. Half an hour at the most.”
She snapped out each word as if she were Sir Ector drilling us back in the training courtyard.
I couldn’t hide my smile. I had won. I had gotten to her. She was actually going to go somewhere in my company. I could hardly believe it. “You’re coming? Really?”
I just hoped I wasn’t about to get us both killed. Or worse, arrested.
She scowled at me, and I tried to wipe the smile off my face. “I’m coming to make sure you come back in one piece. Merlin has been through enough. Besides, if you fuck up, then you’ll be no good to us. I don’t know how Merlin is planning to get you back into Arthur’s good graces, but I doubt she would want you getting publicly executed before she can even make an attempt.”
“Is it really that bad? You make it sound like executioners lurk on every corner.”
She shrugged, then picked up a wrinkled tunic off the floor and sniffed it. “Depends on what you consider ‘that bad.’ After Meridium, well... I’m sure a few rotting corpses in the marketplace won’t be enough to put you off your food, right?”
I thought of the Blood Rise competition in the Umbral Court. “Right.”
She started to shake out the tunic, then glared at me. “Do you mind?”
“Oh. Right.” I stepped out into the hallway just in time to narrowly avoid the door hitting me as it slammed shut.
When the door opened, Lancelet carried a dark cloak over one arm as well as a long scarf to wrap around her face.
I hesitated as I tugged my own scarf around my face and pulled up my hood. “Will we look... out of place?”
Lancelet shook her head and started walking. “I doubt it. Our spies say more and more people are choosing to go out in masks and cloaks. No one wants to be seen these days. Some of them are probably deserters who don’t want to be sent back to the frontlines. Others just don’t want to draw any attention to themselves, good or bad. The king’s city guards patrol everywhere, day and night. We’ll still have to keep our heads down.”
She glanced back at me. “And I hope you aren’t hungry. Because if you thought the food in the temple was bad...”
“It’s been fine.” Not the best food I’d ever had. But basic fare.
It was obvious from the way she moved that Lancelet had become very familiar with the temple. I followed her from corridor to corridor, almost losing track of where we were in the complex. Finally, she led us into a room with a set of stone stairs leading downwards.
At the bottom was a new maze of halls. Lancelet ushered me down a dark passage that had water dripping from the ceiling.
“We’re eating like kings compared to most people in Camelot,” Lancelet said bluntly, as she walked gingerly around a large, dark puddle that I hoped was only water. “Your brother has warehouses and stores of food, mostly grain. He allocates some each month to be sold in the markets, but it’s nowhere near enough to meet demand. With the kingdom at war, farming is supposed to be a priority. But Arthur stripped many farms of their best workers when he conscripted them. So production plummeted. We can’t import food from the other kingdoms even if we wanted to, obviously.”
She glanced at me almost shyly. “Enough about Camelot. What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“You went to another world. Another continent. You saw fae. You lived among them. You are fae now.”
“I always was,” I said.
There was so much I could tell her. So much I was choosing not to say. About my powers.
About Draven.
“The Siabra are cursed,” I said instead.
“What?”
“There are two groups of fae.” I’d already briefly told them this. “The Siabra and the Valtain. They used to be one. When the Siabra poisoned the Valtain children, the Valtain retaliated. Applied some sort of a curse so that the Siabra can’t bear children at all. Or, well, hardly ever.”
I thought of Draven’s little daughter. Would she have lived if she had been allowed to?
