It was just three women in a slow, grinding, agonizing negotiation. A negotiation that wasn’t really a negotiation at all, considering the third now wanted to unmake the world.
Left with no alternative, Morganna and Nimue forgedthe blade.They did so in The Lake of Aeloria, the two of them working in tandem for the first and only time. And though they didn’t comment on it because they both realized it was pointless to do so, they felt the loss of Nymera.
Regardless, Nimue poured preservation into the steel of the blade: the memory of every true thing, the incorruptibility of truth. Morganna breathed dream-fire across the edges of the blade, imbuing it with perception, with the ability to see through every glamour, every lie, and every mask. Together, they crafted a blade that could not be deceived.
Excalibur.
The word meant nothing, yet the thing itself meant everything.
Nymera didn’t fight when Nimue and Morganna came to her. Perhaps she was already too far into the place below to know true fear. Or perhaps somewhere beneath the obsession, she already knew what would happen.
It was Morganna who held the blade. But it was Nimue who pushed it forward. And it was both of them who parted Nymera’s flesh like a knife through butter. Not killing, butcontaining,severing the anchor that tied Nymera’s corrupted will to the living world.
And in response, the veil slammed shut like a door in a windstorm. Then there was nothing but silence, of absence, of the loss of what once was.
What Nimue didn’t know, standing at the lake’s edge with Morganna by her side, was that Morganna had already arranged everything that would follow. The youngest sorceress had dreamed of many paths through the conflict, many choices she and Nimue could make. In all but one of them, she and Nimue bore equal cost.
So Morganna chose theotherpath.
And in so choosing, Morganna watched the sword bind itself to Nimue. She watched the lake close over Nimue’s wrists like water shackles, and she watched the sword claim Nimue as mother, guardian, anchor, and keeper. She knew Nimue would be forever tethered to this lake, to this moment in time, fixed here for all eternity. Morganna knew Nimue would become a woman transformed into a monument, a woman who would never again know freedom.
And though there would never be another clear moment in Morganna’s mind, though she would be forever reminded of this choice she made, she walked away.
Free and unfettered by the chains of responsibility and destiny.
Morganna walked away, and she didn’t look back.
In the realm of the dead, in the dark below the veil, in the everlasting shadow, what remained of the eldest sorceress pressed her palms against the sealed wall.
She knew it was a cage she had built for herself. Perhaps that was the worst part. Regardless, she could still feel the living world on the other side of the wall. She could still feel its warmth, its noise, and the messy, abundant heat of life.
It was a stark reminder of the emptiness within her: the dull ache of the nothingness she had become.
Soon, her fingers found a small seam, a hole, a stitch undone in the fabric woven between here and there.
And she began clawing.
CHAPTER ONE
-GUIN-
The chains came off first, and I was glad to see them go.
One guard worked the manacles while the other stood back with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, watching me like he thought I might dissolve through the stone wall to certain freedom.
“Don’t try nothin’ funny.”
I just looked at him.
The iron had left raw bands around my wrists, the skin beneath bruised to a deep plum color. But I didn’t rub them; I didn’t want to give either bastard the satisfaction.
“Move.”
The corridor stretched long and torchlit in front of me, but it felt good to stand and even better to walk. I’d been holed up in this shithole of a dungeon for a few days now, and anything was better than the cold, the darkness, and the rats that came with it.
As I walked, the flames from the torches threw orange halos against the stone walls, and my bare feet made a pitter-patter sound. We walked in a tight line, one guard ahead of me, one guard behind me, through passageways that smelled of tallow and damp mortar. Neither of them said anything, and that wasjust as well because I wasn’t exactly in a talkative mood.
As we walked deeper into the castle’s belly and then gradually up a winding staircase, the air began to warm, the rough-hewn stone giving way to carved archways and tapestried walls. I could hear the sounds from the kitchen, of scullery maids dashing this way and that, preparing Camelot for the revelry of yet another evening.