The morning after the Royal Decree, I was still awake after sending a reluctant Alys and Tressa to bed, knowing I would never sleep myself. Overnight, the rain had cleared to a still, bright dawn, and I had observed every moment alone, pacing the reception room, thinking on all I had done and what I must do now. As early as possible, I called for Sir Ceredig and entrusted him with a message, then began the long walk to my chosen meeting place.
I had discovered it while weaving my protective charms, far beyond the house, up a curving path through the dense woodland that sheltered Fair Guard. At the path’s end, a crescent of weeping willows sprung from a grassy shore, overlooking a vast lake cut from the valley’s steep sides, its surface sheened silver, sapphire blue at its depths.
Accolon found me under the largest willow tree at the lake’s edge, its weeping summer branches thick enough to shield us from the world. A parting at the front revealed the water’s gleaming expanse, green tendrils trailing atop the water.
“It’s good to see you at last.” His voice was tender, undemanding.
“I needed time to think,” I replied. “Did you sleep well?”
“Not without you.”
When I didn’t respond, he gazed out across the lake and exhaled. “Sacredieu. This is incredible.”
“Llyn Glas, they call it,” I said. “Blue Lake, for the colour of its depths.”
“It’s beautiful.” In his faraway eyes, I read his memories: of his own lake in Gaul, where he had swum and played as a child, and unearthed the bright treasure of the Gaulish coin I wore around my neck. “Is it yours?” he asked.
“It belongs to Fair Guard.”
Ours, I wanted to say, but the thought was riven with flaws.
“You came back,” I said.
He smiled, water-light rippling over his face. “One might say I never truly left. Wherever I go, my heart stays with you.”
The moment hung there, and I let it dissipate. “Thank you for bringing Tressa back. You’ve earned Alys’s forgiveness, which is no small feat.”
“It’s a relief to be restored in Lady Alys’s favour. Reuniting her and Tressa was one of my greatest honours. Though I’m sorry their joy had to come under such circumstances.” He cast his eyes from the lake to me. “What will you do now?”
I wanted to say I was fixing things, that my life was in hand, but I had never known how to hide myself from him.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Last night, I wanted to ride back to Camelot, but Alys and Tressa insisted I’d be walking into a trap of Merlin’s making. Yet how can I not go? This is my life, my reputation, my…”
My son, I was about to say. Accolon regarded me gently, as if he had heard the words I couldn’t speak.
“If you want to go back to Camelot, know that I will take you,” he said. “If they force you on trial, I’ll stand as your champion and fell any knight they put in front of me. Say the word, and we will ride.”
“No,” I said. “You’re safe, unsuspected. I won’t drag you into this. Regardless, how can I trust Arthur’s justice? Look where my faith in him got me. Look what it cost us.”
My voice hitched, and Accolon drew me swiftly into his arms. Aside from our one embrace a few weeks ago, ruined by my guilt, I hadn’t been held by him in such a long time, and I had forgotten how good it could feel, his grace bearing me up until I believed I wasn’t sinking.
The thought made me pull away. I went to the water’s edge, taking in the lake’s glassy lustre. “Alys and Tressa are right,” I said. “I can’t go back yet. But you can. We’re all safe here.”
Accolon followed me, shading his brow against the reflected sun. “This time, you won’t get rid of me so easily. I’m staying here with you.”
I sighed. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I only left because you said I must,” he replied. “I want to be here, and you want me here. I know it without doubt, for one good reason.”
“Which is?”
“Because you told me the truth.”
Momentarily, it arrested me. “I gave you the truth to set you free,” I said. “So you could live your own life.”
Accolon shook his head. “I know you, Morgan. If this was over, you would have sent me away without telling me of our child and carried the pain alone. I realized it not an hour after I left. You told me because you want our life together and couldn’t bear for it to be based on a lie.”
As soon as he said the words, I knew he was right. How was it that he knew every part of me?
I yearned to face him, but kept my eyes on the water. “I want you here, of course I do,” I said. “But you are sworn to a King to whom you owe service. We can never be seen in public. To live like this is to cut yourself off from every success, the life you once had.”
“Details, all,” he said. “I have the spoils of success to last us a lifetime, plenty of service accumulated from my year’s quest. And who else needs to know of our love? If secrecy doesn’t matter to you, nor does it to me.”
“There are other, worse things,” I said. “I lost your son, Accolon. How will you look at me and not be reminded?”
He turned to me then, his face calm, and more serious than I had ever seen it.
“Morgan,” he said, “hear me now, if you never do again. It wasn’t your fault. I grieve what happened, of course, and maybe it will be hard to live without something I almost but never had. That I do not know. But I do know it’s impossible for me to live without you.”
His absolution weighed heavy on my head. “It will haunt us, Accolon. What if we can speak of nothing else, think of nothing else? Worse still, what if we forget?”
“If it haunts us, we face the phantoms together,” he said. “If we wish to speak on it, we can—or not, and decide every day anew. We will never forget, but what matters is this pain is both of ours. We can share its weight, and on days when you cannot, I will carry it for you. You were right that this truth can free us—we can let it exist, feel its sadness, and choose to live beyond. Together.”
He lifted my chin and made me look at him. “But unless you chase me off this land, I’m still not leaving.”
His confidence brought a warmth to my abdomen, but I resisted succumbing to the feeling.
“Accolon, think on this,” I said. “You’ve always wished for a family, a legacy, a loving, happy place in the world. We cannot marry, and the thought of motherhood while my two sons exist without me…it’s impossible. I cannot be your wife, bear you children or give you the home you want.”
He regarded me intently for an endless, aching moment, and fear sprung up at the thought I had convinced him.
“L’enfer,” he said at last. “Will you never listen to me?”
He smiled in mock exasperation, and the charm of it caught in my chest, relief and surprise giving way to a teary, unexpected laugh.
Accolon’s face softened. “None of it matters, don’t you see? I love you. I don’t want for anything else.” His eyes held mine, stormy, emphatic. “Morgan—you are my home.”
The thought of not holding him felt like sheer death, so I reached up and drew him in. Our mouths met with such hunger it shot through my body like a comet.
“If I keep you here, it is ruin,” I told him, but he only rolled his eyes.
“Alors, ruin it is,” he said. “Just tell me to stay.”
So I did, and he agreed, holding me close as water on skin beside the still, sapphire depths of our lake.
Stay, I told him, again and again. Stay with me.