I left Arthur still contemplating the night sky but standing taller, and walked through Camelot’s deserted Great Hall. After a day of industrious work and Sir Kay shouting himself hoarse, the vaulted room was resplendent with ceremonial glory for the tournament’s first formal banquet: new dragon banners hanging from rafters and walls with garlands of red and white roses; tables set with gold plate; each name from Kay’s strict seating chart inscribed on rectangles of wood.
A pleasant, featherlight peace descended as I wound my way past High Table and its pair of thrones, my own seat nearby. Somehow, despite the grief of the past week, I had begun again, and the rush of hope felt strange, God-given. Nine days, then the future; there was nothing that I could not overcome.
I stepped outside onto the small, pillared courtyard, bright moonlight arching along the tiled path. In the centre, the fountain trickled its delicate song, marble horses obscured by an incongruous shadow. I moved closer and the dark shape refined into a tall, sleek figure perched sideways on the sill, head bent and one hand trailing in the silver-streaked pool.
The half-lit profile I would have known anywhere, the colour of his tunic a deep-blue memory. In my chambers, slipped within the bindings of the Ars Physica, was a makeshift kerchief in the exact same shade.
Accolon, my unmet challenge, deep in thought, sitting his own private vigil at the water’s edge.
I stilled, but he had already glanced up and seen me, lit boldly by moonlight. He inhaled in surprise, taking me in with an unreadable gaze. I let him do it, watching him watch me, my every sense heightened, poised.
His eyes held mine a heartbeat longer, then, in a graceful arc, he turned his face back down to the water. Whatever it was, this strange communion, it was over.
His dismissal sent a riptide of wrath through my body. For a moment, I had wished only to melt away, leave him to his solitude, but we were far past good will. If Accolon wanted peace, then he should have gone to a church.
I strode directly over to where he sat. “How dare you come here,” I said. “How dare you stay.”
Accolon straightened but did not rise. My height as I stood over him felt lofty, superior.
“My lady,” he said uneasily. “I don’t wish to argue. Let’s stop this.”
“I didn’t begin this.”
My tone elicited a hard glare. I sensed argument in the stiff pitch of his neck, but instead, he rose. “To that,” he said, “there is no fit reply. I bid you good evening.”
He offered me an entirely sardonic bow, then turned on his heel and sauntered away, leaving my body afire with unspent quarrel.
“What’s wrong?” I called to his retreating back. “Can’t the great Sir Accolon of Gaul form a sentence without his guard-dog cousin here to speak for him?”
He halted as if hearing a sword drawn. “Don’t bring Manassen into this,” he said over his shoulder. “He seeks only to protect me.”
“So he does have a voice!” I exclaimed. “And what could a man like you—so lauded, so charming, so honourable—possibly need protecting from?”
Slowly, purposefully, The Gaul turned and walked back until we were two steps apart.
“Is there something,” he said quietly, “that you wish to say to me?”
I tilted my chin up, expecting to meet his detached, empty gaze, but for once his eyes were alive, storm-coloured depths stirring with a melancholy anger, and beneath, something wilder, more complicated, that I did not want to decode. To catch him unmasked was a shock, his look of candour an aching note of remembrance, played between two souls. In that sudden, vivid moment, Accolon was not gone, and I knew him still.
It took every tensed sinew of my body not to shy away. “Leave,” I said. “Go from here and never come back.”
At last, he cut his gaze free, looking beyond me. “Why would I do that?”
“Are you so wilfully ignorant?” I said. “Because I am here. This is where I live. You don’t belong at Camelot.”
“I don’t believe that’s for you to decide, my lady.” He kept his tone even, but still he wouldn’t look at me, and my blood thrilled a little that I had succeeded in goading him.
“You sound just like your ferocious cousin,” I said. “Do not think it’s so simple, your grand plan to join the court. One word in my brother’s ear about our past, and you’ll both be turned out into the road.”
“I know enough about the King’s ideals. Doing so would destroy your standing alongside mine.”
“That’s my risk to take. Maybe I am so galled with the idea of seeing your face that I would do anything.”
Accolon paused—barely, but it was all I needed to see, the thin fissures in his unbreachable guard, lit up and fracturing.
“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t.”
“Are you sure? Enough to stake your good name on it?” I moved forwards, into the orbit of his presence. Up close, I could see the jolt of uneven breaths in his chest, the quick flex of his jaw. “It sounds like you have a good life—fame, riches, your pick of tournaments or command. What’s a place in a strict, virtuous court to you?”
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
I nodded thoughtfully. “I can ruin you.”
Accolon’s eyes found mine again, dark and bleak in the cerulean light. He gazed down at me as though he were on a precipice, contemplating what would happen if he let himself fall.
“You won’t ruin yourself for me,” he said.
“Try me,” I replied.
For several hammering heartbeats he held my stare, and I felt myself bracing for something I could not name.
I stepped back and cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Camelot’s court is prestigious and full, with a hundred more suitable candidates waiting to join. You’ll compete in the tournament, it will end, and you will leave.”
“Alors, you have nothing to worry about,” Accolon said. “Though the King seems to enjoy my company, and there’ll be plenty of other tournaments.”
I eyed him, towering over me, his expression unnerved but determined. His demeanour said he would keep turning up, no matter the consequences. He wanted something, I realized; wanted it enough to withstand my threats and the dangers of our past.
And what do you want?
Alys’s question echoed back to me, and this time I knew the answer. I wanted to win; to regain everything I had once possessed; to hold power, not just over my future, but anything I chose. First, I wanted to slip myself inside Accolon’s arrogance, his weaknesses, and prise him apart until he broke.
“Nevertheless,” I said coolly, “the High King takes advice on who would be best to enhance his vision for the realm. You’d have to win the tournament—difficult and unlikely—or receive a convincing endorsement before you’re even included in the conversation. Of course, I have Sir Kay’s ear and, more importantly, King Arthur’s.”
Accolon’s top lip curled in a half smile. “If I didn’t know better, Lady Morgan, I’d say you were trying to wager with me.”
“What if I was?” I asked. “Are you tempted?”
“Name your terms, and we will see.”
“Very well,” I said. “The moment you lose in the joust, you will leave at once, and never come to the Royal Court again. In exchange, I won’t sully your name with the High King or anyone else. Presumably, you’ll keep your captaincy under Arthur’s banner, the spoils he shares out, everything he has awarded you already. That is no mean life.”
“Yet it’s what I already have,” Accolon mused. “I wish I could accept your paltry, unfair terms, my lady, truly I do. But I rode a very rough sea to be here.”
“Then what will it take?” I asked.
“Nothing too arduous,” he said. “If I win the tournament, you will speak to the King and Sir Kay and suggest in very positive terms that my cousin and I would be great assets to this court. Make me part of the conversation.”
I inclined my head. “And if I win this bet, you swear you will leave, without hesitation or argument?”
“Upon my honour, Lady Morgan. If I lose, you’ll never see me again.”
He bowed in mock courtesy and extended his hand. I wanted to take it, to dig my nails into his palm, shock his confidence and feel the race of his pulse, but I resisted.
“We are not children, Sir Accolon,” I said. “The agreement is made, and let this be an end to it.”
“Or the beginning,” he said carelessly, but his expression was keen, questioning. Could he trust me, he wondered; did I trust him? Was I more or less likely than him to keep my word? I watched it ignite within him, the spark of competition. He had seen the chessboard laid out between us and chosen, once again, to play.
But for all we had played, he had never once beaten me.