I watch them dance in the ballroom, stunning. Well, Maxime is restrained, tired, and I swear his mane is now run through with a few threads of silver. Lila is mad, over-the-top, electric, and fuming, throwing long ropes of hair about as she shakes. People around them are in a similar kind of frenzy, as if needing to dance away a spell. The castle’s solid, bare stone walls contain them. Boom, boom, the bass goes, echoing cannons of battles past and present.
When Maxime and I got back earlier, we looked at each other, unsure how long we had spent away, until our ears caught the music of the ball. Our watches displayed 1 a.m. Time had gone faster in the real world for sure, but not by much. My head was spinning, my body was sore, high on power, on the verge of imploding. I turned to him.
“Max—”
I wanted reassurance, but he cut me off. “Camille, I just need a moment alone.” He didn’t say, as I had hoped, “I’ll come and find you,” or “We will talk.” I didn’t dare ask more as I could see how dull his eyes looked, the bags of tiredness under them. He had spent too long there; the magic had seeped out of him, and I felt depleted too. As I turned back to look at him before leaving the dining room, he was cradling his head in his hands. I tried to conjure the memory of his body and how we connected in Avalon. What we had had there was still real, wasn’t it?
I went to my room and did the same—I sat, trying to anchor to this reality, my heart beating too fast for my breath. Why did I feel that I had done wrong when everything had felt so…right there, as right as a luminous, violent bead of light? I tried to tend to the hope that what had happened would mean something in this world too.
When I went back to the ball, in my sober black dress, having combed my hair into submission, Maxime and Lila were the first people I saw. In the middle of the room, dancing like their life depended on it. I’ve been watching them since, clutching a glass of champagne and hoping the bubbles would take the edge off the dread.
Did I just dream what had happened in Avalon? Maxime offering to share his life with me? I’m losing my sanity—I can’t bear this. I shut my eyes tight, knock my head back to gulp the rest of my champagne.
When I open my eyes again, something has happened, like an abrupt freeze-frame change, and Maxime is standing by the bar, talking to Charles the Duke. Lila is nowhere to be seen.
I’m done sitting in the shadows. You only ever watch. You’re a coward. I must learn to be who I am in Avalon, to act, to grab. I walk up to them.
“Ah, Camille.” Maxime’s arm immediately wraps around my waist and everything in me relaxes. “Charles was telling me how impressed he’s been. By your talent.” He pulls me closer, and I remember his body under his clothes, the surprising broadness of his chest, the way I had him exactly as I wanted him, as if I had sculpted him. The music and his proximity still fill me with electric current, the tips of my fingers tingling on the cuff of his shirt.
Charles tries to speak, but I ignore him. “I think we need to talk about what happened,” I tell Maxime.
His grip tightens. “Must we? Can we not just enjoy this?”
Is he drunk? There’s a looseness to him, the way his pupils are dilated, eating up the green of his irises with black, that makes me shiver. Then he seems to compose himself, and his arm falls away from me. “I have things to deal with first. I promise I’ll see you in your room when this madness is over.”
“Where’s Lila?” I ask him, because I’m worried she’s the one he needs to deal with, without quite knowing what it means.
“Stormed off,” he says. “She’s angry with me.”
“Why?”
He smirks. “Apart from the obvious…Lila’s always angry.”
That’s not my experience. Unless her containment is anger. “Perhaps you should just… Why is she still here?”
“Because I can’t afford for her to stay angry with me. You don’t know what she’s capable of. Just enjoy your evening and I’ll see you later. Carriages were supposed to be at midnight, but I don’t think anyone wants the dancing to end. Suddenly, this is the place to be. Thanks to you. My love, what would I do without you?” He smiles, nodding to the room, the medieval tapestries trembling with the music, the crowd of bodies wriggling in satin and mohair. I spot several couples making out in corners, some piled onto priceless medieval chairs that threaten to break. One drunken man in his fifties wolf-howls, “I’m the king of the world!” I cringe, but I guess we weren’t the only ones taken by some kind of lust for life. I shake my head to dispel the thought. Maxime and I are different. What we have was—is—a real, deep connection.
“Another champagne?” Charles asks, but I glare, and he practically runs away from me.
I could follow Maxime, spy on him, but I want to trust him. On the other hand…he is Merlin, conflicted, and I feel he’s still hiding things from me. Will I find out something I’d rather ignore? Damn it, Camille. The truth matters. You need to know. I slip out of the room, aiming for the corridor he has disappeared into. My head is spinning with drum and bass and thoughts coming so fast I haven’t got the capacity to organize and digest them. I turn the corner, and bump right into Lowen.
“Cam, thank fuck you’re here.”
I laugh. “Hardly the language of a gentleman suited to this grand occasion.” But he’s looking at me, his face falling. “What?”
“You said you would find me.”
Irritation flares up in me. “I just did.”
“Were you going to explain to me what the heck happened back there? That insane Technicolor theme park, fun family adventure, with added jeopardy and nefariousness? I mean, was it real, or did he slip something in all our drinks?”
I’m tired. So tired. “You’ve always known I could get into her sculptures,” I say. “You were the only one who knew, for the longest time.”
“But you never took me with you. That was wild.”
“I didn’t think you cared. Plus I didn’t know I could. Until recently.”
“Until him.” He doesn’t even try to hide his contempt.
I’m done with this, I realize. I’m done with Lowen trying to pull me away from where I belong, stamping on my ambitions. “He pushes me, Lowen. He believes in what I can do.”
“But you know it’s messed up, right? Nothing good can come out of it. That place, Cam, it was…” He stops. “Am I the only one who noticed the… deception? Coercion?”
“Are you quite done?”
“No, I’m not done. Lila told me the money”—he lowers his voice, a bar of worry appearing on his brow—“that he—that you made him tonight, isn’t going to go to a charity. He has a scheme to invest it back into the castle. The bloody horses—it’s all a sham. Don’t you see it? Those guys are ruthless. He thinks he owns all of us, including you. I don’t know how he’s planning on using this, on using you, but it can’t be good.”
He stops to take a breath, and in this moment, I remember us when he taught me to swim. The waves crashing up onto us, the salty water getting up my nose, and him, standing strong, immovable, never letting me go, not even to push his hair out of his eyes. He felt and saw and handled the world with his hands, his feet planted in the sand, his body strong in the rockiness of the sea. He was my compass.
“Yes, Lowen. We’re going to build a museum. For Constance. Here. That’s where the money is going to go.” But I hesitated, and he saw.
“Are you sure?”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to come back to England with me. I’m begging you to leave this place and find a normal, good life to live. Something that makes you happy. Please come back to me, Cam.”
“A normal, nice life, like the one you have?”
“You know I love you,” he says. It sounds like a warning, not like a declaration. Nothing like what he said that night in my flat a million years ago, when my life was walled up in all directions. This is something you tell a sibling who is about to overstep the mark.
“You don’t think I’m up to this? You worry that I’m something special, that I might—I might be extraordinary,” I say. “Would you know how to handle it? To handle me?”
“I know you are extraordinary. I’ve always known it. But extraordinary doesn’t have to be mean. It doesn’t have to be exploitative. I don’t like his influence on you.”
“If you think I can be led that easily, it’s me you don’t trust. The truth is you think very little of me. You always have. All my life you’ve told me I was working too hard; you’ve always watched me and judged me like the bloody guardian of What Is Good for Camille. But all you wanted was to make me into some kind of perfect companion for you. News flash—that’s not enough for me. I can, and want, to be more.” Tears are running down my face now. I hastily swipe them off my cheeks.
When I look up, I see his dejection. And I see Lila too, standing next to him.
“I need to get out of here,” she says, to Lowen. Her cheeks match mine in wetness, and she, like me, is working hard to contain herself, bottle up whatever has passed. We stare at each other like two sides of the mirror, sirens in dark dresses, storms in our eyes and hearts. I wonder if he told her about us. If he kicked her out. I wonder if this is the time, this precise point, when our lives tip over. When we all make our choices. In the real world this time.
Lowen nods, and I notice how small Lila’s luggage is. Some kind of sagging gym bag that she’s dropped at her feet. Are these really all her possessions?
Lowen turns to me. “Last chance, Cam. Are you coming with us?”
I see Maxime in the clearing. I hear his heart synchronizing with mine. There are no limits to what we can do. It’s together that we’re the most powerful.
I shake my head, feet firmly planted here, in D’Arvor, and with a last glance over their shoulders, they go.