Outside, the sky had gone the color of pewter. I stared up through the slit in the wall and thought about the fact that this was all I had. Just this narrow strip of world; it was all Arthur had left me. I watched as a few ravens flew by. There were three of them first. Then seven. Then more than I could count, all of them wheeling in loose, arcing circles above the tower. Their calls carried down to me, flat and sharp as dropped coins.
I watched them until my neck hurt.
Ravens didn’t circle like that without reason. Back in the hills above Logres, the dairy farmers used to say ravens circled for two things: storms or the dead.
The sky was clear. So that only left the other option.
My chest went cold.
Corvin.
I hadn’t seen him since Arthur had separated us. All I knew was that Lance had taken him to the dungeon. I’d watched it happen, watched Corvin go without a fight because fighting would have made it worse for both of us, and Corvin would never willingly make anything worse for me. I watched his broad shoulders disappear through the gate with Lance’s hand at his back and three armed knights flanking him.
He’d looked back at me once.
Just once.
I pressed my knuckles against my mouth as I willed the tears to stay behind the bulwark I’d been erecting against them since the moment we’d been caught.
Hopefully, Corvin was in the same dungeon I was. As far as I knew, there existed more than one in Camelot. And I could only hope he was sitting in his cell like and not stretched out on the torturer’s slab. But I had a feeling the second option was closer to the truth. Corvin had broken into Camelot, broken out a prisoner, and he’d made Arthur look a fool in front of his men. Those weren’t offenses that ended with a cell and a cold floor.
I knew what they ended with.
I’d spotted the execution yard from the window when the guards had brought me back in here. That was probably exactly why my cell had been changed. So I could watch what happened to those who upset the king. Yes, I’d seen the block as well as the dark staining in the wood that no amount of rain would ever fully wash away.
“I hate you,” I whispered. “Gods, how I hate you.”
One of the ravens broke from the others and landed on the outer ledge of the window slit. It sat there, enormous, black, and absolutely still, its eye catching the dismal light like a bead of oil.
It looked at me, and I looked back at it.
Then my eyes burned, and I stopped being able to look at anything clearly.
I didn’t make much noise. There wasn’t really any noise left in me. Just the wet, stupid, helpless kind of crying that happened when the body gave up before the mind did. My shoulders drew up around my ears, and my back was against the wall, my hands useless in my lap.
Corvin had come for me. That was the part that kept catching, that kept snagging on something in my chest and tearing a little more each time. And he’d come for me by his own choice. Merlin hadn’t asked him to.
And I’d let him. Even knowing what it might cost him. I’d gone with him. I’d lain down next to him in that tavern and let myself feel, briefly, stupidly, like it might all be alright. Likewemight be alright.
And then Arthur had walked through the door. How in the hell he’d found us was anyone’s guess. I’d been so careful about our disguises, and we hadn’t met a soul on the road from Camelot to the tavern. So how had Arthur found us? And how had he done so as quickly as he had? I didn’t have any answers for myself, so I retired the questions.
The raven on the ledge clicked its beak once and lifted away into the gray, folding into the circling mass of black above the tower.
I wiped my face on my sleeve, but it didn’t help much.
If Corvin was dead, it was because of me. He’d ridden into the lion’s mouth because of me, and I’d led Arthur straight to him by being exactly as reckless and obvious as I always was. If I’d been smarter, if I’d pushed Corvin to ride harder, farther, if I’d done anything other than sit in a warm tavern pretending, for one single foolish hour, that the world wasn’t what it was.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my throat to keep the strangled cry from releasing itself.
The ravens kept circling, and I kept watching them.
-ARTHUR-
There was something different about the lower cells of this part of Camelot, the sensation of darkness closing in from everywhere, the feeling that sound didn’t behave correctly below, as if it had been muted and swallowed by the stone. It had a way of making a man understand the shape of his own fear.
That lesson Corvin still hadn’t learned.
He stood when he heard my boots on the stairs. Yet he didn’t flinch, and he didn’t reach for the bars. He just stood in the center of his cell with his arms loose at his sides, watching me cross the torch-lit corridor as if he were the one holding the keys.
