It made me realize how truly blind I was relying on just what the gods deigned to show me.
A man dressed in green raised his sword to me.
“I fear that is the worst idea you have had all day,” I told the man and with a flick of my wrist he went flying.
My magic wouldn’t hold up in the long term, not with the damage to my magical core, but my kiss with Guinevere had filled my stores more than anything I had ever experienced.
Men flew out of my way as I tried to get to Arthur who was razing through groups of attackers with ease,Excaliburglowing in the late-afternoon light.
I just needed to get to him—to right whatever future it was that he had dreamt about because it was not the one that I had been shown by the gods.
Then I saw her, dressed in green and coming up behind Arthur as he was distracted by a trio of enemies. Morgana had slipped into the crowded battle with an ease that was borne from the treachery she so regularly dabbled in.
No one else could see her magic the way I could, the way I always had ever since we were introduced to her when she was a young princess about to be married off to a much older king.
There had always been something so verywrongabout the deep, almost rotten color of her core and I had told Arthur so. But the man had been torn between the desire to know his blood family and my counsel and had let her be.
Today, as she reached for Arthur, that magic seemed to ebb out of her in powerful waves. This was not just her own magic at work, but something far more dastardly. Almost god-like.
Arthur’s blue-eyed gaze found mine as fingers wrapped around his temples. He had seen this. He had known it was coming and he still walked headlong into it anyway.
Protect her,he mouthed, his confidence in me evident on his face as Morgana’s magic began to seep into his skull.
I moved to cast a spell to stop her—to impede her magic so it would have no hold over my king. The magic crackled along my fingertips, ready to shoot out and smite her down.
Then Arthur’s eyes widened with shock and his hand lifted as if to reach for me, but it was of no use. In a blink the sounds of rocks crackling around me filled my ears and darkness enveloped me.
Stones pressed into my back and chest, making it hard for me to breathe as I tried to orient myself and what had just happened.
It must have been a trap set by Morgana—and a powerful one at that—because as I tried to cast a spell to break the rocks I found that my magic fizzled away into nothing.
Fear filled me as I realized exactly what I had been placed within. Morgana had created a mage’s prison, a trap that I would never have been caught dead in… except I had allowed myself to get distracted by the unknown.
It must have been triggered when I attempted to use magic to stop Morgana’s mind control over Arthur.
Taking a fist, I pounded it on the rock wall in front of me. “Hello?”
But I couldn’t hear anything aside from the occasional sound of metal-hitting-metal outside and even that ended soon.
With the level of magic she was carrying, it would have been an easy task for her to take over the minds of the rest of our company. Hells, she could probably take over the entirety of Camelot if she wished. All she needed to do was touch someone and they would be hers.
Which put Guinevere’s safety in dire straits. I needed to get out. To get to her and the rest of the pack and break Morgana’s mind control over Arthur before he did something he regretted.
“Let me out!” I shouted, my voice dampened by the stone around us.
My chest began to buzz again, but this time I could not reach down to rub it as the stone dug too deeply into my torso, making it hard for me to breathe.
Was this the gods’ way of punishing me for going outside of the bounds of the fate they had set before me? For liking a woman and reciprocating her feelings?
Images began to flash painfully through my mind as if someone was taking an ice pick and digging just behind my eyes.
I saw her, Guinevere standing alone on a hilltop, tears running down her face as she faced the carnage in the valley down below.
“Don’t leave me!” she cried out, her sobs making the sky weep right alongside her as she clutched her fists to her chest, her legs giving out as the torrent of rain began to fill the valley, the shores of the lake spilling over and washing around the boots of the combatting warriors.
“Please,” I said out loud to whoever was listening. “Please do not do this to her.”
But the gods were not willing to listen to me and instead showed me more of that fate. Understanding began to dawn on me as I realized that this was my own fate.
