One hot, bright morning, a week after his cousin left us, I woke to find Accolon sitting on the edge of the bed, his head bowed into a shaft of early sunlight. I shifted closer, resting my chin in the valley between his shoulder and neck. He smelled like sleep and sun, but his back was cool, as if he had been up for a long time.
He sighed and said, “I must cut my hair,” and I knew he was leaving that day.
I pressed my lips to his skin, shutting my eyes tight against the moment, its inevitability, everything that would come next. No matter his claims of indecision, the long hours we spent up at our lake, torn between desire and argument; no matter how endless we made the nights or how hard we loved, they had only ever been the intervening days between Midsummer’s Eve and when Accolon would return to Camelot.
At length, I lifted my head and said, “I’ll do it for you.”
I fetched a brushing stool and shears, and he sat facing away, sun casting white streaks over his shining hair. I ran my hands through it, luxuriating in its sleek, careless length, spreading it loose above the wing points of his shoulder blades. The first cut made a definitive thunk, too loud in the stillness of the room. A cascade of darkness fell softly between my feet, then again, as I cut, cut, cut it all away.
“It’s only forty days,” Accolon said into my silence. “There will hardly be time for you to miss me.”
I was glad he couldn’t see how much the thought hurt. “I miss you when you’re gone for a day. Then there’s forty days next year, and the year after that, and so on forever. You will always owe service.”
It quietened him into thoughtfulness, and I moved to his front. He studied my face as I trimmed what was left, the court-appropriate, much-admired knight emerging at my hands, almost as I had seen him again all those years ago when we were at odds, then reunited, but kept apart by everything that he would soon go cantering back to.
“I swore to it, and must do right by my cousin,” he said, though he sounded unconvinced. “I will bring you news of court.”
“I don’t care about the cursed court,” I said. “I’m happy with everything we have. With you. My one wish is to never have to think of Camelot ever again.”
He took the shears away and pulled me between his knees, threading his fingers through mine, the way he had since we were first together at Tintagel. His touch wove into my blood as yearning. Forty days was far too long.
He tilted his head up, eyes dark and serious. “Know that I would give it up if I could. If there were any way to break free of my oath without repercussions, and ensure Manassen’s future, I would renounce my links to the court and not look back.”
“Would you?” I said.
“In a heartbeat,” he replied. “But we cannot waste our lives on impossibilities.”
Wordlessly, I wrapped my arms around him, holding his head to my shuddering body, his strength, his embrace about my waist bearing me up until there was no more time and he had to prise himself away.
“I have to get dressed,” he said. “And gather my things, since I know you disdain packing too much to help.”
Calmed by his jesting tone, I let him go. He kissed me once, deeply, and rose. I watched him vanish into the dressing room, fear and love fluttering in my chest like birds chased from a tree, and not a thing I could do to prevent the day’s razor-sharp moment from arriving.
No horse awaited him at the main door, but Alys and Tressa did. We were the only ones in the household who knew that this wasn’t the same as riding out anonymously to a tournament and returning with prizes and tall tales.
“Where’s Robin with your horses?” I asked.
“At the stables,” Accolon said. “I thought I’d walk along the riverbank to take the morning air, then ride from there.”
I smiled in gratitude; he knew I had never been able to bear watching him ride away with his armour strapped across the saddle, and the thought of where he was going this time made it impossible.
He turned to Tressa. “Be sure to have that apple press fixed for when I return. We’ll spend the autumn making cider like they do in Normandie.”
Tressa nodded with her usual fond stoicism, and he barely had time to kiss both of her cheeks before Alys was there, throwing her arms around his neck like he was her long-lost brother.
“Take this,” she said, pressing a small leather satchel into his hands. “There’s ointment for cuts or bruises, bath herbs for sore muscles, a few vials of my best tincture for if you take too much wine. But don’t take too much wine and then ride. And some of that tisane mixture you like. I’ve labelled them all so…”
Tears stole the rest of her words and she swiped at them, flushing ferociously, as if caught in the act of finally liking him.
He regarded her with unconcealed affection. “Lady Alys, who takes better care of me than you? Thank you. I will come back twice as fit because of your great skill.”
Alys and Tressa embraced him again, then melted back into the house, leaving Accolon and me standing on the front green, morning sky rising blue and endless behind him.
“It’s time, then,” I said. “I would walk part of the way with you, but…”
“Non, mon coeur.” He put his arms around my waist and pulled me close, our bodies merging in perfect unity as always, two halves of one whole. “Stay here. Think of it as me going to the stables like any other morning. Then, when I return, I will walk back up the riverbank and into your arms, and it will feel as if I were never gone at all.”
“It won’t feel like that, not for a moment,” I said. “Please, be safe.”
“Don’t worry. You know my reputation.” He smiled in his slow, charming way and patted his sword. “With this, and Lady Alys’s remedies, I am invincible.”
Invincible: the word echoed in my mind. Before I knew why, I was exhorting him to wait and flying up the steps to my study, then back down again to greet his puzzled look.
“Take this,” I said breathlessly, pushing Excalibur’s scabbard into his hands. “Put your sword in it, hang it on your belt, and go nowhere without it. Promise me, Accolon—swear you will keep the scabbard close.”
“I promise,” he said, gathering my hard-breathing body against his chest. “Anything for you.”
“Good.” I reached up to kiss him again, tasting the smile on his lips. “I love you. So much—too much. Now go, quickly, before I stop you.”
“I love you,” he said. “Though it can never be too much. Au revoir, Morgan. Until we meet again.”
His warmth left me, a fine hand trailing through my loose hair as he went, his smile loving and beautiful and all it could be. I watched him walk along the riverbank with long, graceful strides, his face tilted up to the sun, pure light anointing his striking bones.
When I could see him no longer, I returned to our empty bedchamber and swept up his shorn hair, clasping a long, ash-dark lock to my heart and sending up a prayer in the name of Sir Accolon of Gaul.