The flames returned to vertical once more, and they were now steady and calm. I remained kneeling and simply allowed what I’d just witnessed to be what it was: not coincidence. I did not believe in coincidence any more than I believed in luck, for the gods did not operate through accident. They operated through pattern, through repetition, through the physical world made briefly legible by divine intent.
No, what had just occurred had not been coincidence. Instead, something had pressed up through the floor of this chapel and moved those flames, and it had done so merely to attract my attention. And that could mean only one thing: it had been a message, an instruction.
And what had been the thought I was formulating at the moment the message reached me?The witch still breathed.
The evidence had been accumulating for days, which was how evidence worked: quietly, persistently, building its case without announcement. I could bring that evidence to mind quite easily: the ice in her cell on the first night, sheeted across the floor in forms that were too deliberate to be random. Then there was the cold that came off her skin during the purification baths, cold that did not respond to temperature but to her own will. And what of the magic that had exploded throughMordred’s binding like a boot through a rotted door, filling the bedchamber and corridor with frost?
Mordred’s binding... as though any working of Mordred’s could hold what I was now certain lived inside her. This was not a woman with unusual magic. I had known women with unusual magic; they could be tested, assessed, treated, or condemned on the evidence. What lived in the witch’s skin was categorically different because it moved with intention and recognized threats. It had chosen her, or she had invited it, one or the other. Either way, the result was the same: she was simply a vessel that appeared to be a young and beautiful woman. Yes, she walked like one and spoke with some reasonable approximation of human concern, but she carried within her something that had no interest in the well-being of anyone within these walls. She carried within her a demon that had complete control over its host, and now that demon was, no doubt, mocking me for my failed attempts.
It was a demon that the king was feeding, housing, and protecting. It was a demon that was so clever it had fooled the king and his First Knight. But it did not and never would fool me.
This was what I could not make Lancelot understand at the moment his own anger overcame him. Truly, I could not make any of them understand the truth because they could not get beyond looking upon the loveliness of her face and body. They could not look beyond the flesh as I did, into the pattern. They just saw a beautiful girl with heavy breasts, a small waist, and lengthy legs. I saw the accumulation of evidence, the ice on the floor, the broken binding, and the magic that had answered my attempt to defeat the demon with a force that shattered walls. I understood that what we were dealing with was not a prisoner who needed management but a problem that needed a permanent solution.
I had reached this conclusion the way I reached all conclusions: slowly, reluctantly, and then with absolute certainty. The question had now become a very pertinent one. And it was not a question of whether. It was now a question of how and when. It had become a question of if I would need to act alone or if the men who had been moving quietly toward me over the past weeks would prove sufficient to the task.
I thought about Brother Rouert, who kept the chapel stores and had come to me twelve days ago with his hands clasped and his eyes lowered, asking if I had seen the frost that formed on the eastern corridor wall when she was led past. I had seen it because, of course, I had seen it. I saw everything that had anything to do with the demon in my keeping. Brother Rouert and I had prayed together for an hour. He had come back the next day and the day after that.
I thought about Guardsman Fennick, who wore Arthur’s gold and red and had served the King’s Guard for six years. Fennick had told me in the corridor outside the Great Hall, his voice barely above a whisper, that he had watched her eyes change color when she was angry and that it was not natural and that something needed to be done about the demon in our midst.
I thought about the serving woman, Edith, who had refused to bring the witch’s evening meal three nights running because Edith had touched the tray the witch had sent back and found it cold, not room-temperature cold, not the cold of untouched food, butice cold, cold that burned Edith’s fingers and left them numb for many seconds.
There were others, of course. Not many, but the ones who had followed my teachings and beliefs were the right kind. They were not hot-blooded men who would act rashly and create complications, but quiet people with deep fears and the particular stubbornness of those who have decided that whatthey believe is more important than what they are permitted to say aloud.
I had been careful, of course, because I had to be careful. I had said nothing direct and had only asked questions. I had shared passages from the Boundless texts about spiritual contamination, about the responsibility of those who could see to act on behalf of those who could not, and I had let them come to their own conclusions, which were the same as my conclusions because the evidence was the same evidence and it pointed in one direction.
The king was compromised; this much I now understood. I did not enjoy this conclusion, for I had served Arthur with complete faith for many years. I had believed in the Round Table, in the ideal it represented, in the possibility of a court that held itself to a standard higher than mere political survival. I had believed that Arthur, for all his severity, was oriented toward justice. But now I realized I was wrong in my beliefs because a just man did not protect a demon even if she had a pleasing face and body. What was more, a just man did not humiliate his most faithful servant because another man’s desire had been inconvenienced. A just man did not stand with his arms crossed while the evidence accumulated and chose, deliberately, not to see it.
Arthur was not protecting Camelot, though he did not realize as much. The truth was more along the lines that Arthur was protecting something that threatened it. And that meant the protection of Camelot, and the protection of the realm as a whole, had fallen to others.
I was at peace with this realization. That surprised me slightly when I allowed myself to examine it: the depth of the peace I was in. I had expected, when I first understood what I was being asked to carry, some measure of fear or resistance within me. After all, there is a natural human reluctance toact outside sanctioned channels, to become the instrument of justice when the justice system itself has failed.
But there was no fear or resistance within me. I was at peace with this understanding. I had accepted it, and now there existed within me only clarity. And it was a particular type of clarity that visited me now, one that came after long prayer, after the stripping away of everything that was not essential. My seat at the Round Table was not essential, my standing in the court was not essential, and my physical safety was not essential.
What was essential was that the kingdom did not fall to what was inside her.
The candles burned straight now. Sixteen of them with small, steady flames in the dark chapel. I knelt between them and felt the cold of the granite floor on my knees and understood that I was being prepared for something. Something large and something from which there would be no returning. This was a mission that would change me as much as it would change the kingdom.
She needed to die.
Not as punishment, because punishment implied wrongdoing, and she was beyond wrongdoing. Yes, I was willing to allow that she might have been a victim of what had found her, that some part of what called itself ‘Guinevere’ might not have chosen this fate, but that understanding changed nothing, for the vessel was still the vessel and the fire did not spare the building because the wood hadn’t asked to burn.
She needed to die, and the manner of her death needed to be precise, because what lived in her would not die easily, of that I was certain. I knew this because I had been reading and researching from the old books. And the old books had described a demon such as that which lived within the prisoner.
There were texts the Brotherhood considered sensitive. They were not forbidden, as such, but they required preparationbefore study, required a certain state of mind and spiritual fortification. I had never opened them because I had never had need to open them for I had never come across a demon of this fortitude and strength. But that need was now upon me and so I had turned to the sensitive texts and I had studied them over the past two days, remaining awake all day and night in order to read them twice each.
When will you act?The thought occurred to me.
The answer was a simple one: I would act when the moment was correct. I would not rush, nor would I act from anger or reactivity. It did make things slightly more difficult that the witch had been moved out of my custody and into a room nearest the king’s. But difficulties were merely that: difficult; they were not impossible.
Yes, I would await the correct moment, and when that moment came, I would recognize it. In the meantime, I would spend my days in preparation, including, of course, prayer, fasting, and the prescribed readings. I would speak to those who would listen, and I would say nothing that was not necessary and plan everything that was.
Even if it meant giving up my life, if it were impossible to make Arthur see the reason for what I did, that was acceptable to me. Becoming a martyr was something I did not want, but I certainly was not afraid of it either. The people who had shaped history were not the same ones who survived it. They were the ones who understood the work mattered more than the worker.
I had been refined for this. The years of purging, of painful, deliberate self-emptying, of learning to want nothing that could be taken from me, all of it had been in preparation. I understood that now. I had thought the path I walked was about my own purity, my own advancement toward something higher, but it had never been about me.
It had been about being ready when readiness was required. And I was now ready.
The chapel was very quiet. Outside, somewhere in the castle, a door closed. The ordinary sounds of Camelot at night continued: footsteps on stone, distant voices, the muted clang of something metallic in the lower kitchens. It was simply a world proceeding in its habitual ignorance of what was being decided in the small, dark room that the castle had forgotten about.
