Too late. He is gone. Too late. He is gone.
The chorus created a sickening cacophony inside my head.
Cyara choked back a sob. Lyrena dug her heel into the ground, grinding it against the stones. Beyond, the sounds ofterrestrials following orders had begun to drown out the cries of the elementals. There was so much noise in this night.
Arran’s arms tightened around me as he waited for more words of explanation. So tight, the curls of my new black Talisman began to burn. But Gwen did not speak again. I waited for the anger to rise inside of me, expected the words of rage to dance on my tongue, demanding more from her. But there was no room for anger amidst the sadness that had settled into every corner of my body.
What else could she possibly say? Parys was gone.
Gwen could blame herself.
I could and would and did blame myself.
But there was one word that stood out to me from the explanation that she’d given. One name.Igraine.
“Does she live?”
No one asked who I meant.
“She is imprisoned in Baylaur,” Arran answered.
Not even the promise of being able to punish the Dowager myself cut through my grief. What little energy my body had retained deserted me. I sagged against Arran.
I felt the alarm that tremored through him. He stood, sweeping me into his arms in one motion.
Arran’s orders were brisk and direct. “The Lord and Lady of Eilean Gayl will see to the refugees and the wounded. Cyara, go to your mother. Lyrena, rest and replenish yourself. Your fire saved us; we may need it again sooner than we realize. We will reconvene at sundown.”
The steady steps and gentle rustle of wings told me that Lyrena and Cyara had departed. But the faint feline sense of being watched lingered.
“What is your command, Your Majesty?” Gwen asked quietly.
I wanted to tell him to be gentle with her, that I could sense her a second away from shattering. How often had I been in such a state, myself? But even the energy it took to lift my eyes in her direction was too much.
“Do whatever you need to make yourself whole, Guinevere. I need a general, not a broken warrior,” Arran said. So terribly brutal, those words. He’d said nearly the same thing to me when he first came to Baylaur, calling me useless.
But he was right.
Arran did not linger. As he carried me back toward the castle, I could feel their presence. My Knights of the Round Table lingered still, waiting to see me to safety.
I had friends—a family. They were each grieving, reeling from the revelations of the last hour. But they did not turn away. They did not falter. They wanted to take care of me.
Just this once, I let them.
7
GUINEVERE
She climbed the familiar spiral staircases of Eilean Gayl without a downward glance, nor a hand raised to steady herself on the jagged stone wall. There was no regaining the internal balance that had crumbled weeks ago.
Gwen could pinpoint the moment it had happened. It had not been after the devastation of Parys’ death. Nor when the succubus, as she now named the darkness, overwhelmed the guards and she’d made the decision to retreat into the abandoned quarters in the oldest section of the goldstone palace, abandoning anyone beyond the apartment doors to their fate.
It was the Ancestors’-damned book. Even as she stomped up yet another flight of punishing stone stairs, her fingers curled for the tome. She’d left it in Baylaur. But even a continent away, the words ofThe Travelershaunted her.
Gwen could recite the entire damn book. When she’d snapped it closed for the tenth time, that was when everything changed. It was when she truly understood her powerlessness. Terrestrial heir, Goldstone Guard, Knight of the Round Table—it all meant nothing. She still did not know why Parys had carriedthe book right up to the moment of his death. She’d failed her friend, and in doing so her kingdom and Arran and Veyka.
She reached the top floor. No more staircases appeared to extend her retreat. But there was an attic. In her fae form, it was beyond her. So she shifted.
Her lioness disappeared into the darkness with one bound, into the most isolated, forgotten corner of Eilean Gayl that Gwen knew.
