I withdrew carefully. I always withdrew carefully from minds like his: the open ones, the empathic ones. You could do real damage if you weren’t gentle. You could leave a healer broken in places he’d never find.
That wasn’t the point. The point was for him to wake. To wake and toknow.Not suspect. Not worry in the quiet hours and then talk himself back from the ledge with reasonable explanations like what Lance was doing. No, the point was to know the truth the way you know a broken rib: because your body tells you and there’s no arguing with your body.
I rose out of Percival’s dream mind the way smoke rises. When I came to, my own room was dark and cold. The candle had burned to a nub. My hands were trembling slightly, but they always did after dream work. I pressed my palms flat against the stone floor and breathed.
Percival would wake within the hour. And unlike Lance, he wouldn’t lie back down and stare at the ceiling and convince himself it was nothing.
Lance was a man who moved only when the cost of stillness exceeded the cost of action. I’d calculated that threshold wrong with him, apparently. He’d absorbed what I’d shown him and then retreated into that infuriating male discipline of his: all that trained restraint, all that loyalty folded over guilt like armor. He was still lying there, still deciding, stillweighing.
Percival didn’t weigh things. Percival felt them and moved.
That was the difference. That was why I’d gone to him second instead of first: because a man who moved on feelingcould be unpredictable. He’d dosomething. I just couldn’t entirely control what. Lance would have been a scalpel, precise and targeted, if only he would have acted. But what I’d failed to remember about Lance was that he never rushed in without making the decision to rush in first. And usually, that was a good quality to have. Where Guinevere was concerned, though, I didn’t need a scalpel. I needed a hammer, and Percival was going to be that hammer.
I pulled my knees to my chest and waited in the dark. Somewhere in the east corridor of Camelot, a young man with straw-colored hair and blue eyes full of too much old wisdom was waking up.
His hands would be shaking, and his gift would be screaming. And he’d become the friend that Guin so desperately needed.
-GUIN-
The book was heavier than it looked.
Galahad set it on the table between us without ceremony, the way you’d set down a tool. The cover was dark leather, cracked along the spine, stamped with Kaelthar’s open eye in faded gilt. I knew what it was before he said anything about it.
“The Book of Abominations.” He smoothed the cover with two fingers as if it were a revered family member. “You will read the first three sections before midday. When Sir Tristan comes to relieve—”
“—Tristan?”
The word came out before I could stop it.
Galahad’s jaw tightened as he gave me a look to further emphasize his irritation at being interrupted. “Yes. As I have asermon to deliver to the chapel, you will be under the watch of Sir Tristan.”
I frowned. “A chapel sermon?” I hadn’t been aware that Galahad gave sermons. In fact, I hadn’t been aware that there was anyone other than him who even went to his chapel.
“Yes.”
“You have followers?”
He looked at me the way one looks at a spider in the corner. “Of course.” Then he cleared his throat. “I expect you to be on your best behavior. I have decided that you will explain to Sir Tristan the core doctrines of the Cracked Vessel chapter in the Book of Abominations and the prescriptions that follow.”
I looked at the book and then at him. “You want me to recruit him.”
“I want you to be useful for something other than testing my patience.” He paused. “One of the foremost tenets of the Vow of the Boundless is introducing others to the teachings so they may save themselves.”
He moved to the door and held it open as I picked up the book and followed him into the corridor. He walked at least four paces in front of me, but I didn’t argue. The further I could be from Galahad, the better. Soon, I followed him from the castle and into the courtyard, which was quiet at this hour. The training grounds to the north were just beginning to fill, the distant clang of practice blades carrying faintly on the wind. The rose gardens to the east were still half-shadowed, the blooms shut tight against the cold. A fountain murmured somewhere nearby, but I didn’t let myself think about water.
Tristan was already there.
He leaned against a stone pillar with the unhurried posture of someone who had arrived early and didn’t mind that no one had noticed. With his considerable height, the dark curls that framed his face, and his olive skin, he definitely stood out amongthe other knights. He wore no armor, just a dark linen tunic with the sleeves rolled to the elbow despite the chill. A sword belt hung loose at his hip as if it were nothing more than an afterthought.
When he saw us, he smiled. At me. And that was something I found strange. In general, the other knights seemed to barely tolerate me. I understood why, given the fact that I’d lied to each and every one of them as Lioran. But the expression on Tristan’s face I found odd. There was no suspicion, none of Agravaine’s cold inventory, nor Gawain’s careful honor, the way he always looked slightly pained to see me. Tristan appeared to be more curious than anything else. That and he was entirely unafraid.
It was almost unsettling.
“Sir Tristan.” Galahad’s voice carried its usual weight. “I leave my ward in your care for the time being.”
Tristan pushed off the pillar. “I’ll take excellent care of her.” He said the words warmly, which seemed to bother Galahad more than indifference would have.
Galahad said something low and disapproving that I didn’t catch, but then he turned and walked away with his perfect posture and his perfect certainty, his white cloak catching the morning light.
