I was still in his arms when I awoke, roused by a breeze like feathers across my bare back. Sometime during the night, the raging storm had blown itself out, taking the oppressive heat with it, leaving cool, sweet air through the open window and benign sunlight dawning in a fresh blue sky.
Accolon lay fast asleep, handsome face tilted into the pillow, chest rising and falling with the depth of his breaths, one arm slung across my waist in casual possession. Mine again—or so it had felt hours earlier, when we collided like dark and light. Our reconciliation was not destined to be brief and we had savoured it, moment by moment, every kiss, every hungry touch and snatched breath an act of contrition against lost time.
The memory trembled through me, and he stirred, limbs loosening into a stretch. His eyes opened, blinking against the light, considering my presence through sleepy lids. Then, like a fleet breeze, he smiled, wide and genuine, so unexpectedly beautiful I felt it as an exquisite pain.
“Good morning,” he murmured. “What better sight could one awake to?”
“That depends on whose sight,” I said archly. “I still don’t like your beard.”
He laughed, sweeping me to his chest and kissing me with languorous grace. The scent of sleep and heat lingered on his skin, heady in my senses.
“For you, I’ll shave it off,” he said when we parted.
Unease drifted through me, soft and chill like first snowfall. “Don’t make rash promises on my account,” I said.
Extracting myself from his arms, I swung my legs out of bed and cast about the floor for my robe. My fingers found the crumpled silk and I pulled it on.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Accolon caught hold of its edge. “The sun isn’t at the window yet. There’s no need to rush.”
I said nothing, tying the belt in a knot. A shadow of realization crossed his face. “You are in a hurry to be gone.”
He let the robe slip from his fingers and sat up, leaning bare-chested against the headboard, sheet taut across his waist. In the blurring ochre light of the night before I had not seen him so clearly, and the sight of his body in repose fluttered hot in my abdomen.
I knelt back on the bed and sought his hands with mine. “I’m just…not where I should be.”
He smiled. “And if Lady Alys finds out, she will have me conveyed to the dungeon and order them to cut off my…head.”
“If you’re lucky,” I jested, though the thought of Alys finding out settled ominously on my shoulders. “Besides, you are leaving for the King’s hunting trip.”
“So are you,” he replied, and I shook my head. “You’re not coming? Why?”
His disappointment thrilled up my spine, but I could not let myself feel it.
“Many reasons,” I replied. “I have work to do in the library, and some peace is long overdue. I’ve even sent Alys to visit an old friend.”
“Six weeks without seeing you. What will I do?”
He rubbed a thoughtful hand across his abdomen, over a long, silvery scar that ran between the ridges of his stomach muscles, its origin unknown to me. So much of our lives, our older selves, were a mystery now, our connection tied mainly to memories a decade old or more—though it hadn’t felt that way back in the stormy depths of the night.
“You’ll survive, I’m sure,” I said. “Things will feel different the moment you ride out of Camelot’s gates.”
Accolon considered me with frank intensity. “I cannot imagine things feeling different to how they did last night. After this…how it was…”
The thought hovered in the air, enough to undo us both. Slowly, he lifted my hand and kissed the centre of my palm, then lower, where the lines of Life and Fate cross. His touch rang through me like a nightingale’s cry.
It took all of my strength to pull away. “I have to go.”
“Morgan,” he called as I reached the door. He sat forwards, hair dishevelled, arms still outstretched in the motion of letting me go. “Do you regret this?”
“No,” I replied, so quickly it must have been true. “Never regret, not with you.”
I opened the door and slipped out, before he was fool enough to say the same.
Later, I kissed Alys and Tressa farewell in Camelot’s Entrance Hall and sent them off with a stab of guilty relief that neither one had noted my distraction, or sensed the remnants of Accolon’s touch, which I still felt like fever on my skin.
The hunting party would pass the priory and leave Alys and Tressa there, returning for them on the way back. I watched from a high window as they rode out of Camelot’s courtyard amidst a long line of guards, knights, ladies, heralds and servants, passing under the portcullises of the towering gatehouse.
In the centre of the procession, Arthur rode proud on his pure-white courser, gold-clad and surrounded by red dragons—on his guards, draped across his horse, carried aloft by standard-bearers enclosing the royal party. Guinevere rode beside him on a highly bred palfrey, her snowy mount and gold mantle matching her husband’s.
Regret plucked at my heart at my brother’s distance, our irresolution. It had never been this way between him and me, nor did I know how to fix us.
On Arthur’s other side, clad in his cool, vibrant blue, was Accolon, talking amiably with his King, charming smile high on his face, riding away from Camelot, and from me. I watched until they vanished, then turned from the empty glass.
Camelot’s sprawling library was in disarray—half-empty bookcases, tables piled with disordered, unbound pages, unopened storage trunks still full of the valuable manuscripts given to the King and Queen as gifts.
It was partly my fault; I hadn’t had time to go there in the year since Arthur entrusted its organization into my care. Gathering up a pile of pages, I settled at a table near the front of the room under a large window and the advancing afternoon light. What my brother wanted was a fine Royal Library; what I had was chaos. However, there were worse ways to spend a six-week than in the company of books.
I took up the unfiled pages and read awhile as the sky outside softened, sun tilting towards a golden evening. Camelot’s riding party would have reached Arthur’s Kingswood by now, arriving to red and white pavilions amongst the trees, lanterns strung above banqueting tables strewn with meadowsweet and dog violets. Goblets of pear wine would greet them from barrels cooled in a nearby stream, the smell of the huntsman’s venison already mouth-watering. Later, bards would spin tales of fairies and woodland trysts, followed by music and dancing late into the night, under leafy branches and starlight.
I thought of Accolon, full of wine and good humour, and missed him so completely that it hit like a hawk strike. His life was out there in Arthur’s wood, amidst sporting talk, flower-crowned ladies and air enchanted with possibility. Soon, he would realize that the lure of past fruit could never taste as sweet as the orchards before him now, no matter how intoxicating, how transcendent, one night could feel.
Biting my lip, I forced my eyes back to the pages, but the words ceased to flow, the tale dull and inevitable; the same heroic story that always ended with the world returned to a pre-ordained ideal, no matter how much those within fought or wished otherwise.
I leaned on the table, drawing a tired hand over my face. Beyond my fingers, a blur of shadow disrupted the stillness, falling across the lavender evening light.
I glanced up, breath catching in my throat.
Accolon stood in the open doorway, one shoulder leaning against the frame. A slow smile rose on his face.
“I could watch you read all day,” he said, and I ran to him.