“You deserve to be free,” Mordred said. “You deserve to be wild. You are not a queen. Camelot will never feed your soul. It will drain you as surely as Excalibur. Give in to the magic at the heart of you. Leave them behind.” He put his hand over hers, the spark and the fire stronger than ever.
Something inside her recognized something inside him, rose to meet it, yearned for it. Mordred had not killed Lancelot. He had not killed Arthur. He had fought only to reawaken the magic, to reclaim the things that had been driven into the earth. The things that were part of himself.
The things that she could no longer deny were part of her.
“What will she do, now that she is free?” she asked.
“I do not know. I only know that she is as natural a creature as the birds, the deer, the rabbits.”
“The snakes. The wolves. The spiders.”
He laughed gently. “Yes, she has more of those in her, it is true. But have they not a right to live as any other creature does?”
“She will hurt people.”
“Maleagant hurt people, and Arthur did not stop him.”
“He was trying. It was complicated.”
“My grandmother is not complicated. Look at the dance of men, the treaties and borders and rules. Look at how little good it does anyone. They all still fight and bleed and suffer and die. And their souls die long before their bodies ever do. Tell me you would rather be in Camelot than out here.”
“But to ally with darkness!”
“We do not have to join the Dark Queen. She will not care, and neither do I. We do not have to do anything unless we wish it. There are no laws, no borders, no rules here. Let me untie the knots that Merlin has bound you with. That Arthur has tightened.”
Merlin had lied to her. He had kept her from the truth in ways she feared she would never know. And Arthur had let her believe it. But when she thought of cutting all the lines of memory and experience and love that tied her to Arthur—things Merlin never pushed into her head, things deeper and older than magic—she felt only sadness.
She had not started on this path with the truth. Now she had it all. Now she could choose, fully and completely. Sacrifice herself to Camelot, or walk away.
It was going to hurt. She smiled sadly. At least she knew pain. Pain would not kill her. Pain would not unmake her. It might reshape her, but she could accept now that whatever knots she tied around herself would always fray. In coming undone, they gave her the space to become something new.
“Be with me,” Mordred whispered, “and be free. Be with me and be loved.”
She turned her face to his. His lips brushed hers and the fire flared, stronger and brighter and hungrier than any she could ever conjure on her own. Fire was against her nature, but it was the core of Mordred’s, and he passed it from his lips to hers.
She gathered it, relishing it, knowing she could have a lifetime burning this bright, this hot, this true.
Then she channeled the fire into her hands, igniting them. She grabbed Mordred’s hands. He shouted in shock and pain, jerking away from her touch. She shoved, and his momentum carried him off the horse, sent him tumbling to the ground.
She took the reins, urging the horse back toward the meadow.
“You will never be happy with him!” Mordred shouted, his voice raw with anguish. “He is the end of our kind!”
Tears streamed down he
r face. She knew Mordred was right. That, in choosing Arthur, she was choosing to sacrifice magic, to end wonder, to tame and cultivate the wild heart of the land. To kill that own part of herself.
She was choosing Arthur, again. She did not know how, or when, but she had made this exact choice before. She knew it as suddenly and surely as she knew that Mordred had told the truth when he said Merlin and Arthur had lied about everything.
* * *
Arthur was on his knees in the center of the meadow, defeated. Excalibur was sheathed, lying abandoned on the forest floor beside him.
Guinevere slipped from the horse and ran to him, then knelt.
“I am sorry,” she said.
He looked up, eyes shining. He grasped her, pulling her to him. “I thought I lost you.”