“I’d had enough.”
He asked what that meant.
I told him exactly what it meant. I’d had enough of ice baths, of being woken in the night to pray to gods I didn’t believe in, of being starved in the name of religious piety, of being searched for a witch’s mark that didn’t exist because I wasn’t a witch, and I’d had enough of the beatings. I kept my voice flat becauseflat was harder to dismiss than upset, and I’d learned that lesson somewhere between the night I’d fled Logres and every room I’d been in since. Emotional responses were evidence. Flat statements were just facts.
He asked what I meant about witch’s marks and ice baths. I told him it didn’t matter what I meant becauseIdidn’t matter. Not to him. Not to any of them.
He swallowed as if that were a hard truth to gulp down, but he didn’t deny it. Then he asked what sort of beatings. With that question, something tightened in my chest, something like fatigue with a sharp edge.
“Why are you even asking me?” I asked, and I meant the question genuinely.
“Because I want to understand.”
I watched his face, watched the careful neutrality in his expression, and I heard his words, deciding they could mean any number of things.
“I think you understand well enough.”
He got something from that, though it wasn’t much, but there was a small recalibration around his eyes. It was barely visible, the kind of thing you only catch if you’re already watching for it, and I was watching for it.
“If you were being harmed, why didn’t you ever call for the guards?”
And that question, that one almost got me. Not because it was cruel; I doubted he even realized it was cruel. That was almost worse. I waited a beat before answering because I needed it.
“Do you really think they would have come to my aid? Against Galahad?”
It was nothing more than an obvious truth. And it was one Arthur couldn’t argue. So he didn’t even try.
The silence between us lasted long enough to be its own answer. We both sat inside it, and I watched his expression. I saw something shift there that I hadn’t expected, something that looked, briefly, like discomfort.
He asked if there was anything else he should know. I shook my head.
He waited, and I realized he was giving me the silence back, like this was some kind of game we were playing. And who knew? Maybe it was. But, regardless, I had nothing to add, and I wasn’t going to fill the space because silence was the one currency in this room I controlled entirely. I could spend words or I could keep them, and right now I was keeping them.
He stood, then he crossed to the door. When he placed his hand on the latch, he stopped. He didn’t turn around fully, but he turned around enough that I could see the narrowing of his eyes. Then he said something that I could barely make out, something about Galahad having overstepped the terms of my custody. Then he said that he would address it, and that was it.
It was almost nothing. In fact, it was so close to nothing that I could have dismissed it entirely, and no one would have argued with me. But it wasn’t quite nothing because it placed me on the side of the wronged. And that was a first for me. Yes, it was the first time, in this castle, in this situation, that anyone had said something that put me on the wronged side rather than the other way around.
I didn’t thank him. I wasn’t going to thank him for the bare minimum of a thing, for a sentence that didn’t come close to touching what had actually happened in Galahad’s bedchamber over the last few weeks. Whatever this was, gratitude wasn’t the right shape for it.
The door closed behind him, and I was alone again. I stayed very still for a moment after, just smelling the scent of the lavender bed linens. All the while, I thought about what he’dsaid, and I thought about whatI’dsaid. Then I thought about everything I hadn’t said, the things I’d kept to myself.
When I couldn’t think about it any longer, I let out a long breath and turned back to the window. The view was the same courtyard and the same sky. Behind me in the corridor, the same guards would be walking their circuits like the world was entirely ordinary. Yet, I was still here, and I was still bound. I was stillhisprisoner in a lavender-scented room that was its own kind of cage, however clean the linens were.
But I’d given him something to sit with.
I stared out at the courtyard and turned the whole thing over once more, examining it. I was still deciding if I’d made a mistake: maybe I should have told him the whole truth? I didn’t know yet. That was the part I couldn’t settle.
I didn’t know, and the not knowing sat in my chest like the binding: dense, unresolved, and pressing on something that was livid and had been.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
-LANCE-
The training yard smelled like it always did in the morning: wet stone, iron, and the sourness of men who’d already been at it for over an hour.
Arthur walked beside me at a pace that meant he hadn’t decided anything yet about what he was planning on doing with Guinevere, as far as her imprisonment was concerned. I knew that pace. I’d been watching it for years.
“For now, she stays where she is,” he said.
