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“Where is the demon?” Lancelot had noticed Grinn’s absence, namely because the angry dark cloud was missing.
“He mumbled about needing to ‘fetch something’ and fucked off.” The other man shrugged. “Probably for the best if he’s off the battlefield anyway. He’s just going to protect himself and not help the others.”
That was quite true. The demon’s disappearance was cowardly, but not unexpected. The bastard had been known to run when the odds were even. Which brought up another question that Lancelot could not help but ask. “What will happen? You must know.”
“I know what’s likely. I don’t know what’s real. It’s like a—”
“Lighthouse. I’ve heard the speech.”
“Have you?” He hummed. “I don’t remember.”
Wizards.
Lancelot was convinced at this point in his life that he had the patience of a damnable mountain. “You do not remember much.”
The wizard snickered into his mug of coffee. “Yeeeahh…”
“Will you stand with us, or against us?”
“You know me. I stay neutral. I’m merely here to observe and watch this fuckery play out in real time.” He smiled, but there was an odd, faraway look in his eyes. As if he could see exactly what was going to happen, and he simply wasn’t telling Lancelot the truth.
Knowing all that was and all that is led quite quickly to a person, in Lancelot’s humble opinion, being entirely insane. He did not bother to ask what the wizard’s prediction was. He already knew the answer.
More than fifty elementals had answered his call and rallied to see the Prince in Iron brought low. A force that the island had not seen in a very, very long time—if ever.
We are going to win.
Mordred is going to die.
* * *
Mordred stood upon the rampart and gazed out at the woods beyond. He knew today would be the day. He did not know how, precisely. But he could sense it. After a millennium and a half suffering Lancelot’s presence, he could predict the knight’s actions as well as his own.
And something about this day—about the weather, about the feeling in the air…There was an urgency to it. Perhaps it was his own link to the magic of Avalon and the lingering gifts from his mother Morgana.
Cracking his neck from one side to the other, the tension releasing with a series of loud pops, he braced himself for what would inevitably follow.
An army would come from those trees—how many in number, he did not know. But he supposed it did not matter. He would have the advantage of numbers and six dragons, where Lancelot would only have the one and whatever elementals he could cajole to his side.
Would it be all seventy-something who had once dwelled on the island? Or zero? Mordred hated the uncertainty.
There was one person he could add to his own ranks, perhaps…Gwendolyn. A fire elemental would be useful. But…she would remain in her room, in chains.
He was concerned for her safety on the battlefield. It was one thing to learn to pick up a sword and stand properly—it was another thing to actuallyfight.He would also be distracted by the need to ensure she was safe. And he had to focus in the thick of a battle.
But that was only one side to his thinking. The other was that he simply did not trust her.
She had been convinced by the demon to betray him once before. Who was to say she would not do it a second time? With the nature of her strange attachment to Grinn still a mystery, he simply could not risk it.
No. She would stay in her room where it was safest forbothof them.
The late morning sun added nothing but a false cheeriness to the sight before him, the breeze rolling over the long grass in waves, giving it an almost waterlike appearance. It was beautiful.
Too bad it would soon be filled with the screams of war. Of the dying. Of fallen iron soldiers and corpses alike.
Galahad, Percival, Tristan, Bors, and Gawain were already prepared for the fight, their dragons lurking nearby and ready to enter the fray. Mordred was uncertain how many would make it through the day. He hoped all his knights survived.
Save for one.
