No one came in to light the candles, so I remained where I had landed, perched on the edge of the bed, as the slanting summer light deepened from gold to a faded bloody hue, before being swallowed by darkness.
My mind played a single refrain:
He is dead, he is dead, he is dead.
Only when night had settled in, and the sounds of the castle had narrowed to the murmuring of guards outside my door, did the voices take up in my head, speaking of danger, safety, betrayal and possibility. My choices were few and some were unclear, but my fight now was to stay alive.
“The guard changes two bells after midnight,” Kay had told me before he left. It was all he could do, but it was enough.
By the time the first bell rang, my decision was made, but it took another hour before I got to my feet. The only light in the chamber came from the embers of the small fire and a soft blue glow from the horizon, in the way summer skies never quite surrendered to full dark.
Too much light, and not enough; I wanted to act but not to be seen. When the riddle’s answer came, the irony made me laugh aloud.
Merlin’s infernal mist.
Conjuring the mist was the easiest it had ever been. I closed my eyes and thought of a winter fog, rising in frozen white clouds, and of my own need for concealment. I had not even opened my eyes before I felt the cool surety in my blood, the drifting coldness billowing around my hems.
By the time the next bell came, the mist shrouded my body like a cape of chill gauze. At the sound of the retreating footsteps of the changing watch, I slipped out of the door and down the corridor, passing the new guards sent to stand over my imprisonment.
One shivered as I glided between them. “Cold night for the time of year,” he said.
“Either that or a spirit walks these halls,” said the other. I wondered if that was what I had become now: a shade, a phantom haunting my own life.
Urien had eschewed putting guards at the doors to my old chambers, presumably so I would have easy passage to his bed—caution overruled by hopeful lust. My former bedchamber was lit by a row of small candles, though I could feel in the air that not a soul was awake. Like the reception room, it contained the same furniture, though the alcove where I had hidden Excalibur remained torn open, leaving a gaping maw.
The one other difference was a curtain drawn across the dressing room archway, and the fact that an intruder lay in what was once my bed. Mine and Accolon’s bed, as I had thought of it during our blissful month alone at Camelot, a reunion beginning a life together that had somehow ended here, like this.
The hangings pulled back with a faint hiss, and my mist fell away. Candlelight spilled over the bed, revealing the large, slumbering form of my once husband. Urien lay on his back, emitting a series of snores, trapped air giving off the sour reek of wine. In the low, flickering light, the marks where I had burned him seemed to twitch and leap.
He had fallen into bed drunk, no doubt after celebrating his way through the evening. Beneath my hand, the fabric began to smoulder, the heat of my rage immediate, licking through my body as flame.
This time, he would die for what he had done to me.
However, setting his bed alight wasn’t the way. My son was likely sleeping nearby, and starting a fire risked him, myself and the castle. Camelot perhaps deserved to burn, but not all of its inhabitants, and fire would draw attention, when I had more to do that night. Most of all, it was too quick, too easy—Urien might escape, or not feel a thing.
I let go of the hangings, leaving scorch marks behind. Instead, I grasped my father’s falcon-handled knife at my belt and drew it free with care. Earlier, I had sharpened the blade on Tressa’s whetstone until the edge sang like a skylark.
I knew exactly what to do: the sharp tip in his inner jugular, and Urien would bleed like a stuck pig, waking as the steel slid beneath his skin. But for once, the knife felt insufficient in my hand, not enough to satisfy the enormity of all I felt. I wanted worse for him, a bigger gesture of my hatred. A bigger blade.
My eyes cast about for the answer, and within moments, I found it, propped by the side of the bed: Urien’s sword, gold hilt shining like an answer from God.
To kill a knight, a king, unarmed, with his own sword was no small thing—a death of shame and prostration, an act so grievous it made men shudder; the inglorious end they feared most. It was perfect: Urien should die like a coward in his bed, at the mercy of the woman he had wronged.
I picked up the weapon and held it before me. It was lighter than I expected, with none of the sleek silver heft of Accolon’s rearing-horse longsword or the ominous regal weight of Excalibur. A hollow sword for a hollow man. Still, it would serve.
I lay the blade flat across Urien’s throat, then placed my other hand on his forehead, preparing to awaken him. If he tried to fight, he would bring about his own death even quicker, and I savoured the exhilaration of physical supremacy that had never before been mine to feel. That men chose steel and force and destruction over subtler, cleverer means made a sudden violent sense.
I turned the sword to its edge.
“Cursed woman, stop!”
Two small hands hooked through my elbow, staying my sword arm. I looked down to see Yvain’s beautiful face, his deep-blue eyes glaring at me in horror, mouth twisted with what was left of his cry.
The sword slipped from my hands, landing soundlessly on the rug. I sent a quick charm of unwaking into Urien’s forehead and swooped over my terrified son.
“Yvain, my love…”
I tried to put my arms around him, protect him from what he had already seen, but he shoved me away, face dawning with disdain.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” he said acidly. “You’re my mother.”
“Of course I am, but…”
Pushing past me, he grabbed Urien’s sword and heaved the blade up, point shaking in the air between us.
“It’s a good thing you are my mother,” he quavered. “Because if you were not, you would die by this sword. False, wicked creature!”
“Yvain, please. Let me explain.” I took a step towards him, arms outstretched, and the fright on his face was more painful than if he had run me through. He dropped the sword and began to shudder uncontrollably, putting his hands over his ears.
“I won’t listen. I know you talk to demons and want to twist my mind.”
“No, never,” I said. “I couldn’t harm you. I’m your mother and I love you.”
“Liar!” he screamed. “You came here to kill my father in his sleep.”
Tears ran down his face, and I watched him hold his breath exactly as he used to at two years old, his happy mind always unable to accept the onset of sadness. “My father is a great man…true and valiant. All my life he has loved me…unlike you. The Devil…has possessed you, like they say. You deserve a shameful death, not…”
He crumpled to the floor, weeping like the child he was, every sob an arrow to my heart. Instinctively, I bundled him into my arms and carried him away, to the former dressing room whence he had come, now a richly appointed child’s bedchamber.
The bright joust-themed tapestry that Alys had woven for Yvain at birth hung at the bedhead, a set of pewter knights in combat on a side table. A boar-head banner in green and gold dangled from the wall, and I realized with a jolt that Urien had sought to make his surroundings feel safe, familiar—that to Yvain, his home was in Gore and always had been.
I set him down on the bed, unresisting of my arms and hiccupping now and then. I trailed my fingers through his dark-gold hair, along his perfect face, and he let me, gazing mournfully into my eyes, too tired to do battle anymore.
“Forgive me,” I said.
My plea reignited his anger, and he pushed my hand from his face with a teeth-baring scowl. A bottom front tooth had been recently lost, leaving a small, whistling gap.
“If I were a righteous knight, I would punish you,” he said. “But because you are my mother, my soul would be lost like yours. I am the son of a devil, and for that I am eternally shamed.”
I hung my head, feeling the wellspring of my own tears, wanting only to hold him fast and say how I had tried to do my best for him, had loved and cherished him as much as I could; how he was torn away from me by his greedy father and self-righteous uncle.
But as I ran through my past, the impulses I had followed, the freedoms I had yearned for, the effect my mistakes had wrought on my son’s life, there wasn’t any justification I could make. Whether I meant to or not, I had abandoned him, whereas he had lived a happy, gilded life with a loving father and an all-powerful uncle who would pave his path to greatness. Yvain would thrive because he had always belonged to this world, and I never had, never could. I deserved his hatred, and his hatred of me would save him.
I raised my head and met my son’s stubborn, furious stare. He looked more like me than he ever had, and even in my deep despair it pleased me. I hoped that Urien saw it too, and was reminded that our glorious child was not sprung from his arrogant rib, but formed and brought forth to life by a woman who could never be erased from him.
“Yvain, my love, listen,” I said. “I’m sorry, truly I am. You were right—I was angry at your father, and the Devil overcame me. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Tentatively, I put my hand to his face again, and he didn’t shy away, emitting a soft, childlike sigh. “But you stopped me, and no more will I act in such a way. Think what you wish of me, but you must never, ever feel shame for who you are, or hate yourself for my sake. You are not the son of a devil—you are yourself, and a miracle.”
I drew back the bedcovers and eased him onto the mattress. His long legs folded beneath the sheets, and I pulled the coverlet to his chest, holding his deep-blue gaze.
“God brought you into that room to save both your father and me. And you did, with all the grace bestowed upon you. You are noble and decent and brave, and will never do wrong to anyone. Your honour is enough for us both, and for that you should be proud.”
I brushed my hand over his eyes, feeling his mind tilt towards sleep.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said drowsily. “It would be worse for me if I did. They would think me ignoble. So I won’t say about it…all right?”
“I know you won’t,” I said. “Because I will spare you this, for the rest of your life. When you awake, you will not remember what you have seen, or the fear and awfulness you felt. You will only know you are good and true, and that you will succeed despite your mother.”
As I spoke, my thumb traced chevrons on his temples, cleansing the memory, the horror, his worry out of his mind, until he fell into a profound rest.
“I love you, and I’m sorry,” I said, kissing his untroubled forehead. “Goodbye, my precious eyas.”
For a few more breaths, I watched his tranquil, beautiful face as one watches a small god, in awe and despair. When I could no longer bear it, I returned to Urien’s bedchamber and plucked my sleep spell from his wine-sweating brow. The King of Gore grunted and stirred onto his back, returned to his usual guiltless rest.
A flare of hatred burned in my gut, Urien’s sword catching my eye where Yvain had dropped it. I retrieved the blade from the rug and laid it carefully across my former husband’s huge chest. Pressing down with my fingertips, I fixed its weight with my magical will so it would hold him until morning, when Urien would wake to find his throat fortuitously uncut, a sword laid like a threat across his body and his imprisoned wife gone, and wonder for eternity how it all came to pass.