Maybe she wasn’t so far gone. Maybe. Maybe Merlin could fix it.
He could not.
This time, like the last with Lancelot, she was not far gone, she was dead. But there’d been three lumps of goo that first day. And there was one more Guinevere to be retrieved. Merlin laid his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “The next one will work,” he’d said.
“No.” Arthur’s voice came out in a broken croak. “Leave her be.” This was doomed.
Merlin had argued, but Arthur wouldn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear it. He just kept saying, “No” over and over again.
Merlin finally ended it with a defeated, “We’ll talk later.”
Arthur left the study. Shivering, which was strange. It wasn’t cold. He started up the stairs to their chamber—his chamber—his body quaking so much he found he couldn’t move another step forward.
He let his knees fall to the stone beneath him and dropped his hands and head on the stair in front of him. The sound careening from his throat was the keening wail of absolute self-loathing.
They’d all followed him—everyone, all the tribes—into war, into peace, into this kingdom. Being their king had never felt normal even though it had, bafflingly, felt right. He’d led them to becoming a nation. He’d protected people he would never meet.
But he could not protect her, and in his desperation, he’d fled to Merlin once more.
He would regret that decision forever. He should have let those onlookers by the tower see that she was dead. He should have let them know that Guinevere was gone.
If he had, this final version of her could have stayed right where she was and lived a life free from all of this, free from him. Instead, Merlin left this morning and by the time Arthur knew the mage had gone, it was all in motion and entirely unstoppable. He’d had his first cup of wine in his chamber then.
Merlin was retrieving this girl from her life in the future at the last moment before time travel would become impossible again for nearly six months. There’d be no stopping her arrival, and Arthur was to meet them—Merlin and her—in Glastonbury.
Hands trembling, he’d made his way to the Great Hall. Lancelot was there waiting for him (bless him) in his riding clothes.
“Ready?” Lancelot said.
But Arthur couldn’t do it. Lancelot went instead, and Arthur stayed in the hall, not in his throne on the dais but on one of the long benches by the lower tables, where he’d drunk more wine than he meant to and kept drinking it out of shame and nerves and defeat. With each cup, the edges dulled, more like being crushed by a smooth boulder than a jagged one. He very rarely drank to excess but found it was birthing a physical ache, a dull sick in his gut—physical pain felt like one tiny morsel of punishment for all he’d set in motion. And physical pain was better than the terror. Horror. Fury. Sorrow of what he knew was coming: he would take her life, too.
She’d be the same as the others.
He should have expressly forbid Merlin from retrieving her rather than what he’d done: perpetually saying, “not yet,” leaving a window for exactly what happened today. Having not done that, he should have gone with Lancelot to retrieve her. Arthur was surprised that magic’s call on him as king had not fled his blood this past year. None of this was noble kingly behavior.
He reached for the pitcher of wine and filled his goblet again.
Now, it was nearly midnight. Merlin had come back to chide Arthur for staying behind, which devolved to an all-out shouting match, and (once cooler heads prevailed) the mage explained that Guinevere and Lancelot would be along shortly after.
That had been three hours ago. There was no good reason for them to be delayed this much. Arthur’s mind shot to worst-case scenarios. Was she already dead? Had she lost her mind straightaway? Had Lancelot been forced to kill her again?
He took another swig from his cup as the door on the far end of the hall opened.
Merlin came in the room, and even with the whole hall’s length between them, Arthur instantly saw the relief splayed across the mage’s features.
“Fuck,” Arthur murmured into his cup, certain this meant she’d arrived. “Is that it, then?” he asked when Merlin was close enough to not require shouting. “Is she here?”
“She is,” Merlin said. “Let’s go.”
He didn’t give Arthur an option to discuss it, just turned on his heel and strode away.
Arthur took a long, slow breath before he stood and followed Merlin, his heart raging against the inside of his chest.
He deliberately stared at the floor as he rounded the corner into the entry hall, but he could see the two of them standing there in his periphery. Lancelot.
And her.
When he could avoid looking at her no longer and tipped his eyes up to meet her gaze, Arthur saw that she was afraid, saw the way his harshness landed. It was easy to keep his face contorted in a scowl because all of this was wrong.
It was made worse because … because there was some … brightness there in her. Some spark shining from her that wasn’t there before—or that hadn’t been allowed to be there before. What would her life be if she could just have it elsewhere?
Merlin’s voice pierced through Arthur’s thoughts. “It’s not unreasonable that remembering His Majesty will take time.”
Arthur turned his sights on the mage, heat racing up his spine. Yes, it would take time, time enough for her to lose all the life in her.
“That’s not her,” he said.
Not her burden. Not her fate to suffer and … the last, a plea: that’s not the ailing woman whose fate is doomed.
Please. Please, God, please.
Arthur turned and left.
Lancelot found him in the great hall—with the wine again. The knight ignored the available bench and dragged a chair over, poured himself a goblet of wine, and sat down. Then, elbows on his knees, holding the cup between them, he stared at Arthur.
Arthur hoped Lancelot would tell him about her. Despite all his misgivings, he was curious. He didn’t want to own that. He didn’t want to have any interest in her, and Lancelot knew that.
“I’m not going to do this again,” Arthur said after a long stretch of silence.
Lancelot watched him and let the quiet have another moment before he broke it with a heavy sigh as he leaned back in his chair. “She’s very different. Good different.”
Arthur bristled. He resented the notion there’d been something deficient in her before. She’d been hurting. But she’d also taken on more than anyone should. And she’d endured more. He’d seen awful deaths in battle, yes, but she’d seen her share of trauma, too. She’d watched her own mother die.
“Well, father says I was there, but I don’t remember it. You can’t be hurt by something you don’t remember,” she’d told him. And she’d smiled when she said it, which was the final tell that it was something that made her very sad to say. And he was quite certain she was wrong too. He was quite certain her wounds were so deep she’d convinced herself they didn’t exist.
But.
Different. Good different. This time, he couldn’t resist the temptation. “How so?”
Lancelot’s lips tilted nearly imperceptibly up, and Arthur knew he was pleased that he’d gotten what he hoped for: enough interest from Arthur to continue the conversation. “She likes me, for one.” Lancelot’s smile broadened.
“Really?” Arthur colored his tone with disbelief and quirked an eyebrow, surprising himself by indulging the levity, but more so that Lancelot’s instinct to show up for Guinevere had been a good one. Maybe, in a turn none of them could have guessed, Lancelot had been what she needed all along.