“Most recently? Three villages in the western reaches had identical events within the same week: candles extinguishing for no reason, temperature drops with no weather cause, visions of ghosts and spirits, the howling of wolves where previously no wolves existed. The list goes on,” I answered.
Hailey’s eyes came up from the map. “The village of Carrow reported something similar three weeks ago,” she said, looking at Vaelen. “I noted it in the field report you still haven’t fucking read.”
“What was in the report?” I asked.
“What you said,” she answered with a shrug. “Temperature changes that made no fucking sense. I thought it was just a cold snap.”
“It wasn’t,” I answered.
She looked at me. “No,” she said, slowly. “I’m starting to see that.”
Carlisle’s expression was the careful blankness of a man recalibrating. “What are you trying to tell us?”
“I’m telling you the wall that separates the dead from the living is cracking. And what comes through when it breaks isn’t limited to the dead.” I looked at my hands for a moment, then back up again.
“Natural deterioration?” Merlin asked, finally speaking up. Everyone turned to look at him as if they’d just been reminded he was still in the room.
“No.”
“Then caused?” Carlisle asked.
“Yes.”
Merlin leaned back into his chair. The fire popped and threw a brief orange light across the room. “By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does this mean for our campaign?” Carlisle asked.
“It means,” I said, “that we may be fightingtwowars.”
“The rebellion cannot split its resources—”
“—I know that.”
“Then we prioritize Arthur. He’s the immediate—”
“If the veil breaks entirely, there will be no Camelot left to overthrow and no Logres left to liberate.” I let that sit. “The veil is the existential threat. Arthur is the political one.”
Hailey said nothing during this exchange, but I watched her turn back to the map with a different quality of attention than she’d had before. She was looking at it like it had just become a different map than the one she’d been reading for the last hour. Her finger moved, almost unconsciously, to the western reaches, to the area where Carrow sat.
What came after that was an argument of the sort that wouldn’t be settled but would just run its course. Carlisle needed a clear direction; Vaelen needed to know more before making any decision. Merlin said only that the veil had fluctuated before and he would look into it.
The conference broke up in the manner that conferences tended to do, without resolution but rather with the common understanding that the discussion was over until the next day. Carlisle was the first to go, striding away with the self-assurance of a man who knew what his plans were and was unaffected by others’ opinions. Vaelen remained behind to fold the maps.
Hailey helped him fold them, working from her end of the table in the way of someone who’d done it many times before. She and Vaelen didn’t speak while they worked. They didn’t need to. There was a fluency between them that had nothing to do with what they said to each other and everything to do with how long they’d operated in the same orbit. I watched it for a moment longer than I needed to.
He didn’t raise his head as I donned my cloak.
I walked out through the side door and onto the parapet, and the mountain air hit me like cold water. Below, the treeline was a black irregular edge against the dark sky. Above, the stars were the particular hard brightness you only got at altitude: there was no haze, no warmth, just light that had traveled too far.
I stood there and let myself feel it. I didn’t know what to make of the fact that Arthur was possessed by the spirit of a dragon. Dragons didn’t exist and hadn’t for as long as time itself had existed. The last dragons… were dead. Gone. So, what did it mean that the spirit of one now resided within the king of Logres? I didn’t know.
The veil pulsed once beneath my awareness, slow and wrong, like a heartbeat with an arrhythmia. Distant but unmistakable.
I thought about Nimue and about the fact that I’d already made the decision to seek her out. It was a decision that might have been made but it hadn’t been acted upon. Why? Because I was a coward.
The truth was that for as much as I wanted to see her, I didn’t want to face her. I didn’t want to see the look in her eyes when she saw me. I was afraid.
