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I stepped towards the window—so close, my nose almost touched my friend’s.
“What the fuck was that?” Lancelet breathed. “You did something like that back in the temple with your blade when it touched that soldier’s.”
I nodded. “I can do much more.” I wasn’t one for pointless boasting, but I wanted her convinced. “When I say I will burn the walls of this castle down around us to get you out, I will do it, Lancelet. Do not doubt me.”
She studied me in silence, her eyes in shadow, then said at last, “Don’t waste your powers on me.”
“Waste?” I said sharply. “Waste? It would be no waste.”
“You’d free me and perhaps some of the others, but then what?” She shook her head. “You’d be captured, tortured, and it would all have been for nothing. My beatings. Your lies and spying. No, we need to think beyond ourselves, Morgan. When you use that power you have, it has to be for something great. Something more important than simply saving one person.”
I looked at her steadily. “I’ll decide how and when to use my abilities. If I think you’re worthy, you’re worthy, and I won’t regret what I do.”
“Well, then you’re an idiot,” she snapped. “I don’t need saving.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “It’s not that at all. It’s that you want to die in there, don’t you? This is exactly what you’ve been hoping would happen all along.”
“You’re mad.”
“I’m not. It’s true. You saved Guinevere. You must feel very satisfied with that. You can die knowing she got away. You’ll be a martyr in your own mind. Dying for both causes. But you’ve never told her you love her, Lancelet.”
“Shut up.”
“And she could still die. She’s still not safe,” I pressed on. “She still needs you.”
“Shut up, Morgan. I’m warning you.”
“What are you going to do? Stop talking to me? I’ll shout into your cell until I wake the guards.”
“They already think I’m mad. I shout to myself half the night just to piss them off.” Lancelet grinned demonically at me from the shadows.
I bared my teeth, not about to back down. “You stay the fuck alive in there. Do you hear me? Don’t lose hope, and don’t resign yourself to an easy death.”
“Easy?”
“Yes, easy. You don’t get off this easy. I don’t care what’s happened to you. I don’t care if you have a shitty friend like me who let you get half-eaten by fucking rabid children, you still have to stay alive. Guinevere needs you.Ineed you!”
Lancelet said nothing, she simply glared at me with hostility. I glared back at her.
“Fine,” she said at last.
“Fine?”
“Fine. I’ll do my best. Now will you get out of here?”
I whipped my cloak around myself. “Fine! But I’ll be back.”
“It’s your funeral,” she whispered as she backed away. “Now close that stupid window.”
Muttering under my breath, I did as she’d suggested.
“Well, that went well,” I whispered to myself as I walked back down the passage.
And there was still another visit to be made.
I had no chalk directions to follow for this one, but I thought I could find my own way.
The barracks attached to the main keep of the castle were a sturdy stone structure built within the inner bailey walls. They provided lodging for the knights and soldiers of the king. Functional but basic, most consisted of rows of bunk beds with simple straw mattresses, wooden footlockers for storing a few personal belongings, and a central hearth.
