She tried to have compassion for him. It was like he lived every moment of his life all at once, his mind slipping through time. Which meant that he knew things were coming before they happened, but it also meant that he had a hard time landing on what needed to be said or done at any given time.

She closed her eyes. The heat of his cheek against hers, the slight roughness of his skin. It made her feel real. She had only just learned how to be Guinevere. She worried that alone in the forest, hunting, she would become something new. Darker. Maybe that was how Merlin could justify hurting others; when you lived your life apart, it was easy to

“But surely you hate Camelot and everyone who lives there.” “It seems to me,” Rhoslyn said, sitting with a weary grunt, “that it is man’s work to hate and want to destroy what he cannot possess. I was sad to leave Camelot, yes. But it has its rules, and I did not follow them. In the end, we did not fit with each other anymore. Would I like the prot

Arthur squeezed her arm, then turned back to his men. A few more, wearing the dust of many miles, had joined them. Their faces did not hold the happy ease of a market day. They held the weight and strain of news.

Guinevere closed her eyes, but now that she knew what the fear was—that it was real, not simply foolishness—she found it easier. The shame of her terror of water had been almost as great as the fear, and without shame, the fear could be faced.

I did not expect him to find hold in a kingdom so quickly. But fear and violence are powerful weapons; people are so accustomed to them that they respond instantly. Camelot is a work in progress. It will be years—decades—before I can shape it to what I hope it will be. Burning down villages, slaughtering their lord, and declaring yourself the new k

Guinevere was drawn to the sorrow in Arthur’s voice. She had been worried he would still be angry with her. But she saw how sad it made him to have to weigh the lives of those he loved against the burden of an entire kingdom. She had made it harder for him, forced him to protect her at the cost of Sir Tristan. How could he live with such decisions?

Guinevere understood Mordred’s anger. She felt it herself. Everything wondrous was being unmade, and it was terrible beyond comprehension. But wonder, too, was terrible. The meadow around her was proof enough of that. Was not Maleagant’s death terrible and wonderful in equal measure? The tree’s sentience beautiful and abominable? Trees, magic, wild

Me, she thought. Guinevere. She imagined stepping into the name as she had stepped into the clothing. Putting it on sound by sound, piece by piece. Draping it over herself, and then cinching it up tight so it would not slip away. It was a complicated name. So many pieces. She would have to be very complicated to fit it.