“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t imagine you were.”
He would carry that back. Arthur would hear it and think he understood something about me. He’d think:she’s homesick. She’s wearing down. I’m winning.
And while he was thinking that, I would be thinking about Corvin somewhere beneath my feet in the dark, and about what Istill needed to do, and about how much further I had to go before any of this was finished.
I raised my sword again.
“Once more,” I said.
Tristan was good. Better than I’d expected, though I wasn’t sure why I’d expected anything less. His form was technically sound, but there was also patience in it, a willingness to wait for the opening rather than force one. He didn’t overextend, but he read me quickly.
I had to work for it, and that was something. We broke apart after a particularly rough sequence, me having blocked a strike that numbed my forearm to the elbow, and he lowered his sword and let out a slow breath.
“Your footwork is very good,” he said.
“Don’t compliment me when I’m catching my breath. It’s condescending.”
He laughed, and it was a real laugh, and for some reason, that surprised me.
We circled again, slower this time.
“Your magic,” he said, conversationally, like he was asking about the weather. “What does it feel like?”
I nearly lowered my guard, but I caught myself. “What do you mean?”
No one had ever asked that about my magic before. Merlin had taught me to control it, to weaponize it, and to fear the parts I couldn’t contain. Arthur looked at it like a problem that needed to be solved. Galahad considered it evidence of corruption. Yet not one of them had ever asked what my magicfeltlike.
“I mean... what does it feel like?”
I deflected his next strike and bought myself a moment to think. “Like knowing,” I said finally. “Not thinking. Knowing.” I adjusted my grip. “There’s water in the stone beneath this yard. I can’t see it. But I know it’s there the same way I know myown heartbeat.” I stepped right; he followed. “It’s like the water inside me knows things I don’t.”
We broke apart again. Tristan was quiet for a moment, turning his practice sword over slowly in his hands as I watched him watch me.
“What does yours feel like?”
He considered the question, though it didn’t seem to surprise him that I’d asked. What was more, I was pretty sure he’d thought about it before, more than once.
“Stillness,” he said finally, with a shrug. “Like the moment that exists between heartbeats. You know the pause, just before?” I nodded as he looked at me steadily. “The instant between something being alive and something having been alive. I exist in that space. I can feel when death is coming.” A small pause. “Not death itself, but the transition into it.”
“That must be lonely,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
We worked through two more sequences before he called a rest. I was breathing hard, and my arm still ached from the earlier block. I found a low wall at the yard’s edge and sat on it, and after a moment, Tristan sat a foot away, forearms resting on his knees.
I looked at him sideways as I decided to ask the question that had been sitting in my chest since he’d first crossed the yard toward me.
“Why do you keep doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Sitting next to me at dinner. Training with me... I mean, I’m sure Arthur put you up to it.”
“Arthur didn’t put me up to it,” he answered with a shrug. “But he noticed it.”
“Of course.” I paused and wondered if asking more was worth a shot... “And?” I decided to go for it.
“And he told me to report back to him about whatever you told me.”
