The sound of a soft voice woke me from the fitful sleep I had fallen into after Bedivere and Gawain left.
“Your majesty,” the voice said, sounding very much like the voice of a little boy. “Your majesty, wake up.”
Jerking upright, I whirled around to find the very last person I expected crouched in front of the bars.
“Henry?” I gasped far too loudly and slapped a hand over my mouth.
Glancing around, I found that the guards who had been standing in front of my cell were gone for the moment—probably assuming I wasn’t going anywhere.
“You can talk?” I asked the boy as I scurried forward until I was face-to-face with him. Often he tagged along with Andrivete, his fingers tightly bunched around her skirt. But never had I heard him speak.
“A little,” the boy admitted with a whisper, his big eyes moving from my face to the cell next door.
Lancelot was still passed out on his stomach on the floor of his cell, his face pale. The wounds on his back were definitely going to get infected if we left them for much longer, though I didn’t know how I was going to treat them without my magic.
“How are you not under Morgana’s spell?” I asked, reaching through the bars to pull the little boy’s cold hands into my own. It felt so good to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t under the witch’s thrall.
Henry shrugged his thin shoulders. “Dunno. I move really quietly, I s’pose. It scares Mama Andrivete sometimes. I woke up and everyone was gone and when I found em’ they acted like I never existed.”
The look on his face was so sad it made my chest squeeze. Then he reminded me of my current predicament.
“You smell funny, your majesty,” he said, scrunching his nose.
I had forgotten all about the heat still simmering just underneath my skin. I no longer felt the same burning desire I had been struggling with before, instead I just felt exhausted and weak, as if my body was unable to handle the brunt of a heat without suppressants and alphas to soothe me through it.
I was pretty sure that it didn’t bode well for my overall health, but I had a feeling that a different kind of fire would kill me before this damned heat did.
“What is going on around the castle right now?” I asked, changing the subject and moving away from the topic of my smell.
Henry’s lips pressed together, and for a moment, he looked as if he didn’t want to tell me. But then he sighed and gave my hands a squeeze. “Everyone is acting strange. They keep talking about an… execuption? Exetruting?”
He frowned as if trying to remember the correct word.
“Execution?” I provided softly, my stomach dropping as a wave of nausea suddenly filled me.
Henry’s expression brightened. “Yes! An execution! They say it’s supposed to happen at sunrise tomorrow.”
I swallowed hard, realizing that I had slept for most of the day and it was already night outside again.
Had Bedivere set Merlin free from his prison? Had Gawain made it to my father?
I wasn’t sure help would even arrive on time before I was put to death in one of the most horrific ways imaginable and by the man I loved no less.
It was a fact that I could no longer avoid. I loved Arthur and I knew that, wherever he was trapped inside of his head, he loved me too.
My death would end him in ways that I couldn’t imagine. Never had I considered that my fate would be the one cut so short, not the other way around. How was I supposed to just give up on all of this now that I had found it?
The family that I had so desperately yearned for when I was sitting alone in my flat in London was within my reach and some bitch in a green dress was about to take it from me.
“Can you get some healing supplies for his back, Henry?” I asked hesitantly, not wanting to get the boy into trouble.
But Henry was eager to help. “Of course. It should be easy since most folks are busy preparing for a feast for after the execution.”
Judging by the way he continued to say the word, I was fairly sure that Henry had no idea what the word‘execution’meant, nor did I think he knew who exactly was going to be executed or else his expression would have been far more somber.
“Just be careful not to be noticed,” I told him as he stood up and scurried for the door.
Then I was alone again.
