But Bedivere shook his head, unaware of the distracted trainwreck of my thoughts. “I am not a knight any longer, your highness,” he told me, his voice soft.
“Why not?” I asked, surprised. I’d figured that most of Arthur’s closest advisors were his knights. Hence the name Knights of the Round Table and all that jazz, it sort-of felt like a prerequisite.
Bedivere’s neutral expression pinched slightly, his dark brows drawing together. “It is because knights must have two hands, your highness.”
I froze as Bedivere held up his other arm, showing the empty sleeve. How had I not noticed that before?
“Oh my!” The words came out in an exhalation. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see...”
Bedivere shrugged, his expression melting back into the neutral mask he’d been wearing when he came into my bedchamber earlier. “Do not worry yourself over much. It has been five years since I lost it, and it is an old wound.”
Losing a hand didn’t seem like something that could ever be considered an old wound, but I’d already put my foot in my mouth enough during our very short interaction that I didn’t want to say anything else.
And luckily I was saved before I had to.
King Leodegrance was standing in the doorway that led out onto the grounds dressed in the most opulent clothing that I’d ever seen him in. It was a pale brown doublet with freshwater pearls sewn into the breast and it wasn’t lost on me that we were matching.
“My dear Guinevere!” the man gushed, his eyes bright with unshed tears as he held out a hand to me.
I glanced over at Bedivere one last time before reaching out and sliding my fingers into his.
“You are as beautiful as the spring itself!” Leodegrance said, turning and ignoring Bedivere’s presence entirely as he led me outside onto the grounds. I still didn’t know how to feel about the man who seemed to dote on me like I was his own daughter.
He was kind, funny, and incredibly patient with me even though the daughter he seemed to remember felt very different from who I was. He was the sort of man my mother had always talked about finding. She’d called it her‘unicorn,’ the sort of man that didn’t exist in the world, so she vowed to remain single until she had found him.
I wasn’t sure what the painting in the corridor meant, whether it was something false conjured up by the gods to create a backstory for me or if someone who looked just like my mom and was named just like my mom had been married to this man—and happily so according to everyone.
Magic was confusing and I wished I’d had a chance to talk to Merlin about it and I vowed to hunt the wizard down at the first chance I could get.
As we neared the area that had been chosen for the wedding, the lake sparkled in the distance like the prettiest backdrop of a painting. In front of the lake stood a crowd of people around an archway decorated with the same flowers that had been woven into my hair.
I didn’t say anything as Leodegrance continued to chatter, my eyes locked on what we were walking towards.
My stomach started to flip with each step that we took closer to the fate which, only a few short days ago, I thought was just some myth in the books my mother loved so much.
As if he was reading my mind, Leodegrance slanted an affectionate look in my direction. “Your mother would have been so pleased to see this day finally come.”
At his words, my feet caught on the skirts of my dress, nearly causing me to trip as Leodegrance’s grip on my arm tightened in order to keep me standing.
“Tell me about her?” I asked as the crowd turned to look at us. “Something? Anything?”
The maids had mentioned offhandedly that the queen had died when I—or at least the other version of me—was small and that I wouldn’t remember her even though the woman with the same face as the one in the painting had lived with me in the future until her death.
The corners of Leodegrance’s eyes crinkled in pain as he smiled. “If you asked your grandmother, she would tell you I had invited a hellion into my bed when I picked Adelaide out of all of the other omegas she presented to me. She was so…vivacious. Life seemed to swell from her in a way that I had never witnessed before and I was drawn in immediately.”
He said the words almost reverently as his eyes held a faraway look, like he was there in his memories. “She used to be able to ride with the best of my men—hells better than me even and you know how much I enjoy a ride.”
I nodded even though I didn’t know. I didn’t really know anything about the man who called himself my father other than that we looked similar and both seemed to love the same woman… though I still wasn’t sure how it all worked yet.
“She would also get thislookin her eye at times,” Leodegrance continued. “I swear it would send my mother into a conniption trying to prevent whatever trouble Adelaide was going to get herself into.”
His laughter was rough as he shook off the ghostly threads of a memory that felt far too similar to the memory of my own mother. My own Adelaide.
“You were so small when she left us, my daughter, and she smiled up at me as the sickness finally took her and told mewhat an odd thing life was. To be so happy and to have it cut so violently short.”
My steps slowed before I halted, forcing him to stop with me. “She said that? That life was an odd thing?”
Leodegrance nodded, a half-smile on his lips. “I was so very angry at the gods for taking her away from us when our life felt as if it had barely yet to begin. But Adelaide was having none of my tears. She took me by hand and pulled me in close and whispered that life was an odd thing and that sometimes—”
