To eighteen-year-old me, for choosing right.
And to my husband, for letting me choose him.
The castle breathes out a sigh, then breathes in, drawing her along. She trails her fingers against carvings, everything in sharp relief, perfect lines telling stories of light and darkness and struggle and love and growth and death, all the things that make the world what it is. Beauty and terror and the wonder that encompasses both.
She drifts on the breath of the stone, through halls and rooms and then out to the streets, running like channels of a river down to where the lake waits, cold and ancient and eternal. Water always finds a way back to itself. She turns toward the castle to find the streets are flooded, endless streams sculpting Camelot. The current rushes against her as she is drawn back to the castle, but not inside. She flows up the outside, along one of the curving staircases, not worn with time but precise and fresh. Slipping past the pillars of a hidden alcove, she finds herself above a sheer drop into darkness. She can hear it, far beneath her, waiting.
The water.
The lake.
The Lady.
The castle breathes out once more, pushing her off the edge, and she falls.
Guinevere’s room was dark, night more a cloak than the bed curtains she never drew. The dream clung like smoke, so real that she expected to find the surrounding stone newly carved and running with water.
She put a trembling hand to the wall behind her, fingers curled by dread that she would find the carvings there, fresh and recognizable. But they were only hints of memories beneath her fingers. The castle was as it had been since she arrived: ancient and worn with the passage of unknowable time.
Yet she could not escape the feel of that fall, air rushing around her, knowing what would meet her at the bottom. She climbed out of bed and pulled on her robe. Brangien shifted softly in the corner, lost in her own dreams with her beloved Isolde. Listening to her, Guinevere realized a horrible truth.
She should not be able to dream at all.
She had used knot magic to give all her dreams to Brangien for weeks now. Ever since her captivity at the hands of Maleagant, ever since Merlin had pushed her out of the dreamspace that connected them, ever since she was tricked by Mordred into giving the fairy Dark Queen physical form once more, ever since she chose to return to Camelot instead of escaping—no, not escaping, running away—with Mordred, she had had no desire to dream. Which meant that whatever dream she just had…it was not her own.
As she hurried through the night-black secret passage against the mountain that connected her room to Arthur’s, she folded her arms around herself, unwilling to touch the stone again. Distrustful of it. She was awake enough now to check that every knot she was connected to was still in place. The knot on the door to the secret tunnel entrance into Camelot that only she, Arthur, and Mordred knew about. The knot on her own door, her own windows, every way that the fairy queen—or her grandson, Mordred—might access Guinevere.
Nothing. Everything was as she had left it, all protections in place. Which terrified her even more.
She opened the door to Arthur’s room and drew aside the tapestry. She half expected him to be sitting at his table, writing letters or reading them, his candle merely a pool of wax and a flickering wick. That was how she found him most nights. But his room was dark.
“Arthur?” she whispered, moving toward his bed. There was a rustle of blankets, and then quick movements and the telltale hiss of a sword being unsheathed—along with the swirling sickness and overwhelming dread that hit her whenever she was near Excalibur.
“Put it away!” she gasped.
“Guinevere?”
She could not hear over the pounding in her ears, but she could feel as soon as Excalibur was once again in its sheath. She tripped against the bed and turned to sit on it. The shaking was coming, violent trembling that no amount of heat could warm away.
“Sorry.” Arthur pulled her next to him. He tucked the blankets over them both, holding her close as though he could stop her shaking by his strength alone. “I was not awake. It is always my first response these days, ever since…”
He did not finish. Neither of them needed him to. They had both watched the Dark Queen emerge, a creeping nightmare made real with the flesh of a thousand beetles, twisting roots, and Guinevere’s own blood. She did not question why Arthur’s reaction to being startled awake would be to seize their one true defense against that abomination.
“What did you need?” He brushed her hair from the pillow so that he could lie as close to her as possible.
“I had a dream,” she whispered to the darkness. It felt further away, less important now that he was holding her.
“A bad dream?”
“I should not have dreams at all. I knotted them away.” She had not told him about what she was doing for Brangien, or why. That was Brangien’s secret to keep or to reveal, not Guinevere’s. And with magic banned in Camelot, she would not risk her friend’s safety.
Arthur hmmed thoughtfully. They were so close that she could feel the vibrations in his chest. “Perhaps the knot came undone? Maybe you did not do the magic right?”
“Maybe.” Guinevere wanted to agree. It would be easier, safer, simpler if that were the case. But she did not think it was. There had been something so visceral about the dream. It was a dream with purpose, a dream with intent. And it had not been her own dream, of that she was certain. But…could she be certain? Her mind had been tampered with—holes created and holes filled by Merlin, whether or not he meant to. How could she say what her mind would dream?
“Do you ever feel like you do not know yourself?” she whispered.
Arthur was quiet for a long time. Finally, he answered, his voice gentle. “No. Though there are parts of myself I wish I did not have to know. Why? Do you feel that way?”
“All the time.”
Arthur settled, one arm around her, his hand next to her head, stroking her hair. The fight had left his body and she could feel him moving back toward sleep. Arthur was ready at a moment’s notice to face any threat, but he was also very good at accepting a threat was not there and releasing whatever was coiled to strike. She envied that ability. She had constant tension from her magic knotted into the rooms and surrounding city, and even if that had not been the case, she found herself perpetually mulling over the figurative knots of her life and her choices, checking for weaknesses, for where she could have done better.
“This is a problem I can help with,” Arthur said. “I know you very well. You are kind. You are clever. You have far more a sense of humor than any princess could.”
“But I am not a princess.”