My recollection of the road was hazy, mind drawn inwards by the need to focus on each delicate breath. Eventually, the sound of bickering opened my eyes.
“Careful!” snapped a female voice.
“I’m not going to drop her,” I heard Accolon say, as his warmth left me, my body unfurling onto a soft surface with a spike of pain. “Are you sure we shouldn’t find help?”
“She doesn’t need anyone but me.” The reply was lilted, full of disdain.
“Alys?” I said.
“Morgan, cariad.” A hand cupped my face and she hove into view. “You’re safe and I’m going to make you better.”
“Were you in the forest?”
“I was waiting on the road. I wanted to go in, but he wouldn’t let me.” She threw a severe look at Accolon, standing anxiously beside her.
“He was right not to,” I managed, shifting up to look around.
Stabs of agony tore through my side, sudden and white-hot, snatching air from my chest. I cried out, but it was more breath than I could spare. Rib shards piercing a lung, I thought abstractedly, before the world darkened and pain replaced thought.
“Leave us,” Alys commanded, over a deep French murmur of protest. “Now.”
A door thudded shut against the violent sound of rending fabric and the struggle for my next breath. Before panic could take hold, a weight fell on my chest and an immediate warmth descended across my body, pain washing away like sand marks under the tide. I wondered at it briefly, before relief overcame me and I fell into a deep, grateful sleep.
I jolted awake as if from a dream, and for a horrifying moment I thought I was back at Merlin’s. Fear rushed in, recalling the last time I had woken from such profound unconsciousness: a child, torn from my body and carried away; my life’s path forking in an instant; the new, deep scars that would never stop aching.
But I was not in the sorcerer’s prison, but rather on a different bed, in a low-lit room I didn’t recognize. The sky outside showed full night through long windows, flecks of stars just visible. Without thinking, I sat up, and discovered there wasn’t any pain. My body felt strange but pleasant, almost lively, humming with a definitive vitality.
A narrow object slipped from my chest and I caught it, blue-and-white leather giving a direct shot of pleasure: Excalibur’s scabbard, its power singing through my veins. I felt quickly around my ribs and found no breaks or bruising, breath easily filling my lungs, as if I had never encountered Merlin’s monstrous snake at all.
“Morgan!” Alys rose from a fireside chair and hurried over, shadows encircling her eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Completely healed,” I said. “Remade anew, almost.”
“Thank goodness.” She sank down on the bed. “I didn’t know if the scabbard would work or how to monitor your condition. I’ve just been waiting in hope.”
I studied the scabbard with fascination. “My lung was punctured, my ribs crushed—I would never have mustered enough strength to cure myself. Neither of us could have healed me like this.”
“My God,” she said tremulously. “But for the scabbard…”
“But for you, who brought it along.” I pulled her into an embrace and held her there, savouring her presence. Over her shoulder, I discerned that I sat in a large bed of pale oak, devoid of hangings, within a long, uninhabited chamber. Sheeted furniture hulked in the shadows. “Where are we?”
Alys let me go, fiddling with her hands, and held something out to me: my father’s ring with its trio of sapphires. “Fair Guard. At long last.”
“My mother’s manor?”
“Your manor,” Alys said. “I showed the chamberlain the ring and he let us in directly. His name’s Sir Ceredig. It’s a small household, but they’ve all been so kind.”
I slipped the ring back on and rose, stepping cautiously into the room, as if discovering a place from deepest myth.
“So you’re back in your homeland, Alys of Llancarfan. With the Welsh.”
She smiled modestly. “I’d like to think it helped with the welcome.”
“What of Camelot?” I asked. “Is Yvain there?”
“He’s due back in just over three weeks,” she said. “The nurses’ reports have been coming to me, via the King. They say he’s healthy and cheerful, constantly chattering away.”
I paused and looked back at her. “And Urien?”
“By all accounts, a kind and diligent father. More attentive than most kings, and he and Yvain get on famously.” She scowled. “Even monsters have other faces, it seems.”
I said nothing, weathering an ache of regret.
“Morgan,” Alys said. “Where…?”
“There’s no new child,” I replied. “He lived, and is safe, but not with me.”
Her eyes widened and I had to turn away. In brief, difficult words, I explained enough of what had occurred for her understanding, but not all she would later have to learn. At length, she rose and put her arms around me, until she was sure I could stand alone.
“I would have died,” I said, “if you hadn’t found me.”
“Not me,” she replied. “Sir Accolon found you.”
I couldn’t let myself think of him just then. “How did you find me? Why?”
“We went to the inn, as you arranged. Tressa stayed behind in the service of Lady Clarisse, in case something went awry. Which it did—you never came.”
In the midst of my grief over the lost child, surviving Merlin’s obsession and my fervent descent into mastering death magic, I had barely remembered the plans I made, or the letter I wrote for Accolon before I left with Ninianne. My escape plot had developed no further than crossing the moat and chasing the sorcerer to Camelot.
“Sir Accolon wanted to ride out immediately,” Alys continued. “He was sure something was wrong. I convinced him to wait in case of delay or wrong dates, but discovered he’d been going out to search in secret. He’s an entire fool, given I was the only one who knew where to look. The next day I caught him and said we might as well do things correctly. That’s when we found you.”
The idea of their reluctant companionship raised a bleak amusement. “Is he here?”
“Of course. I kept him out while you were healing, but the last I saw, he was curled up in the hallway outside.” She sighed with a sad inevitability. “He doesn’t know you were pregnant, nor anything more than the letter said, but he understandably has many questions.”
If Alys thought Accolon deserved consideration, then there was no delaying it. “Will you send him in?” I said. “Then try to get some rest.”
She held me briefly again, then left the room. I rewrapped the scabbard in my torn cloak and stowed it under the bed, then retrieved the work notes from the stitched pouch in my bodice. No matter what battles I had lost, or what Merlin was busy claiming at Camelot, I still held enough proof of my dedication to Arthur to win the war.
There was a soft knock and the door creaked open. “Morgan?”
At the sight of me, Accolon snatched a breath and rushed over, but hesitated from touching me. “Mon coeur, are you all right?”
I nodded. “My injuries are healed and I slept a long while. Has Alys gone to bed?”
“She muttered something as she passed,” he said. “Lady Alys is still not my greatest admirer. She brooked no interference when caring for you.”
We shared a rueful smile, eyes meeting, and the moment rounded into a firelit pause. A warmth took up within me, as if I were only now realizsing it was Accolon who stood there, after an absence of more than a year.
With simultaneous haste, we reached for one another, kissing hungrily, his hands gripping me close. My arms went around his neck, trying to hold on to him, to keep time and reality standing still.
“God, I missed you,” he said between kisses. “Every day, every hour we were apart. When I got back to Camelot and you weren’t there…when you didn’t come to the inn…I don’t know what I thought.”
His concern turned my blood cold, but I couldn’t make myself let go. He deserved the truth, but I wanted to keep kissing him, to take him to bed and trap us there until only our love remained, crystallized in an endless present. I couldn’t bear for this to be our last tender moment before I tore our world to shreds.
Eventually, he drew back. “What happened? Why were you in the forest?”
I couldn’t answer, or bear his anxious, questioning frown, so I slipped from his arms and went to the fire, leaving his confusion palpable in the air.
“Morgan, please,” he said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I sighed into the flames, an endless, echoing sound. “I told you I wasn’t what was best for you, Accolon. I tried to warn us both. Everything I do turns to dust or disaster. You deserve a better life, much more than I can offer.”
“Mon coeur, what is all this?” He followed me to the hearth, turning me to him. “None of it’s true, but even if it was—a life with you is all I wish for.”
“We can’t have it, don’t you see? You don’t know what this past year has wrought upon us. You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“So tell me, and I’ll understand,” he said. “I love you, that’s all there is. Nothing you’ve done could drive me from your side, ever again.”
He embraced me and I allowed it, leaning against his warm strength as my bones grew colder. I buried my face into his shoulder, feeling his hand stroking my hair, the rocking motion of his arms, bearing me up, loving me—he thought—without condition.
“It’s all right,” he said in low, reassuring tones. “Whatever happened, we’re together now. I will keep you safe.”
I could let it be, I thought, forget all of my qualms and keep him with me. Accolon wouldn’t know I had ruined his life, his future, if I just kept him here like this and never told him what he had lost.
But as the thought came, so followed the guilt, slithering around my body like the giant snake. To conceal the existence of the child—his child, ours—for my own selfish needs was as careless and brutal an act as letting the loss happen in the first place.
You gave away his son, I told myself. He would never forgive you, and you should not forgive yourself.
“No, Accolon. That’s not all there is.”
I broke away from his body, setting him free.
“You had a son,” I said. “We did. A child I was unknowingly carrying when you left Camelot. I delivered him in the spring, intending to greet you with him upon your return. But after he was born, he was taken and sent to be raised elsewhere, where he can never be found. We had a child and he’s lost forever, because of me.”
I saw it reach him like a sudden chill—the realization I was deadly serious, and he could never have conceived of something so bleak. “Morgan, what are you saying? We had a child that you gave away on purpose?”
“No!” I cried. “To keep the pregnancy secret, I made a deal to go to Merlin’s and submit to his teaching, on the promise that no one in court would find out, and Arthur’s reputation would not be sullied. Merlin bound us by magic oath, and I thought I had solved it all. But the deal was a trick, and when I awoke after the birth, the baby was gone, he…”
I buckled, falling to my knees and gasping for breath, panicked with the horror of speaking such awfulness aloud. Instinctively, Accolon swooped to soften my descent, murmuring in comfort. “It’s all right. I’m here. Breathe slowly. I’m here.”
He knelt beside me on the floor, leading me in steady breaths until I had recovered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
He thudded down onto his side and stared at me with raw, stunned eyes. “Where did he go? The child.”
“I don’t know. The restrictions of the oath meant I could never hear of it. I was asleep when they took him…I never even gave him a name or saw his face.”
I choked back a sob, my head in my hands. Accolon put his arms about my shoulders.
“Morgan, you didn’t do this,” he said. “The child was taken from you without your agreement. It’s not your fault.”
“It is, don’t you see? I did agree, even if unwittingly. I should have known there was something amiss, been ahead of it. I’m supposed to be cleverer than this.” I made myself look at him, his beautiful, haunted face. “Our child, Accolon. How could I have let this happen?”
I expected him to recoil, to realize he was too forgiving, too loving, had soothed where he should have been excoriating me. Instead, he brought a shuddering hand up to my cheek.
“What can I do?” he said desperately. “Tell me what you want. I’ll find the sorcerer and cut him to pieces if you ask me to.”
“No, it won’t help. You wouldn’t get close. They’d kill you.”
“Then I’ll get the child,” he said. “I’ll find our son and bring him back. If you cannot, perhaps I can. Anything, Morgan—just tell me what to do.”
His pleading suggestion that he should find the child hit me with unexpected horror. It was impossible, but the fact that the idea occurred to him brought a dread realization that I couldn’t ignore. I lowered his hand from my face.
“What you should do is go,” I said. “Back to Camelot.”
“Very well, then we will.”
Slowly, I shook my head. “Not me, only you. I’ll stay here until Yvain returns to the city. I can give you three weeks.”
The trio of worry lines reappeared. “Give me? For what?”
“To think about your life and future. Alone—without me. You need time to fully understand what I did and decide what it should mean. For your own sake, you must go.”
I pulled away from him and rose, but he followed at speed.
“Mon coeur, look at me,” he said. “You can’t send me away. Not now, when we are both hurting. We can talk about this, find a way to survive it together.”
“It won’t work, don’t you understand?” I insisted. “The more we talk, the closer we get, the more you love me and want to tear down the world for that feeling. For you to see clearly, we need to be apart.”
“Morgan, don’t do this,” Accolon said. “I can see in your eyes it’s not what you want. I love you, and you love me. Do not choose this for us.”
To behold him in that moment was unbearable. His body began to shake, and I was reminded of the day of our first meeting, when I had risked everything to pull him from Tintagel’s savage blue riptide and soothed his shuddering shock. This time, letting him swim himself to shore would be his salvation.
“I do love you,” I said. “That’s why I told you the truth, so it can set you free. If you love me, you’ll respect my decision and let me do this for you.”
“Morgan, no…”
“If you truly love me, Accolon, you will leave.”
Eras felt like they passed as he stared at me, waiting for some flicker of change, of hope. I could give him none. At length, he ducked his head, swallowing hard.
“Maudit,” he said, and left the room.
When the door closed, I ran to it, one hand poised to pull it open and the other above my head, holding it shut.
Let him go, let him go, let him go, I told myself, until I was sure he was too far away to hear me call for him.
He left at first light, Alys told me the next day, and though I answered that it was good and what I intended, my heart still stung with the surprise that he had gone so easily.