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“He gave me his heart…”
Here, she chuckled evilly, at a jest only she understood.
“…but something, some stubborn notion still remains. I cannot root it out.”
At this admission, Lancelot knew a small flare of hope.
Did Arthur have doubts? Did he regret his choice?
But she was already continuing on:
“I cannot be with him everywhere he goes. I have my own affairs to attend to. I have the perfect solution, however.”
She speared him with a gimlet stare.
“You, my dear, noble knight, will be my guard for him. You will see to it that he does my bidding as surely as if I am with him. In return, I will give his body the occasional reprieve it requires to draw out its remaining days. Depending on how well you serve me, Arthur might even live a long, albeit painful life.”
Lancelot had clearly not expected this when he sought her out. Even though he knew he could not best her, the maddened side of him thought he might try nonetheless.
His hand gripped the hit of his sword so hard, it rattled at his hip. But for the life of him, he couldn’t pull it out. All she had to do was stare at his hand, and it refused to obey his will.
“What will it be, my gorgeous knight?” she purred once more, eyeing him like a predator before its immobilized prey.
“Do we have a deal?”
For a moment he thought to agree; how would she know if he lied? If he played along, which was against his very nature to be false, but if he truly tried, perhaps she would be none the wiser. Perhaps he could still help Arthur survive her, if not get away.
She chortled with amusement as if she heard his thoughts.
“Oh, you poor innocent youngling. You cannot deceive me. For, this bargain requires a token of good faith. How else can I put my trust in you?”
She crawled on all fours to the edge of the bed and rose to her knees, now at a height to meet him eye to eye.
“I would have your heart for this,” she hissed.
“Which you will personally carve out of your own chest to lay on a platter at my feet. And before you ask, I know what you are. Just as I know you will still exist without it. It is but an inconvenient muscle, is it not? Don’t you hate it when it squeezes and pangs with those sharp, unpleasant feelings? You won’t even miss it. I promise.”
Lancelot couldn’t believe he was considering her words seriously. Yet, he knew somehow that she didn’t lie.
He also knew that she didn’t have to bargain with him at all. She was killing Arthur by slow degrees. He could see the agony writhing beneath the surface of the stoic mask the King always wore.
Arthur was not like him. Arthur was only a man, surely? How long would he be able to endure this demon’s ravaging of his body? His soul?
So, he took a dagger to his chest and wordlessly cut out his beating heart. The pain of the act was dulled by whatever spell the Lady had used on him, but the emptiness his missing heart left behind was staggering.
She took it from him, bloody and raw, and raised it to her mouth, whereupon she took a big bite out of it and swallowed him down.
He felt the devouring of his heart more keenly than the carving itself. Suddenly, his will was no longer his own. His body weighed him down like lead. And his consciousness began to fade…
Much later, he awoke upon a flat stone surface, naked and chained. His chest had healed itself, but the hole within remained.
Guinevere sat upon him, his rigid staff inside of her. She was moving forward and back, bucking against him with vigor. She carved bloody streaks up and down his torso and arms, anywhere she could reach. She leaned down to lick it off him as he bled, reveling in his taste as she took his life force into herself, making it her own.
He watched her undulate and writhe above him, took in her savage delight with a distant numbness, as if he wasn’t really there. It was just his body she took, not him.
Was this what happened between her and Arthur?
Was this what “lovers” did?
