“—I’m not finished.”
Her eyes held mine. The violet of them was darker in the low light. Almost black.
“There was a fourth man,” I continued. “Edwyn Cole. But, unlike the others, he didn’t die at Eldenvale. He hid in the tree line while the water took his brothers. And he watched the whole thing from thirty yards away. Later he told me he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe because he was so frightened. All he could do was watch, so that’s exactly what he did.”
I turned away from her then and took a deep breath. I needed a moment, but I wasn’t willing to give her the satisfaction of seeing me in need.
“He came back to Camelot on foot,” I continued when I’d regained control of myself. “It took him a week to return. When he arrived, he couldn’t speak. He just stood at the gates shaking.” The torchlight on the stone wall blurred slightly. I steadied myself. “After that, he woke screaming every night for six months. The healers tried everything they knew. Mordred gave him tincture after tincture. Nothing worked.” I wrapped my fingers around two of the bars that separated us. “Arthur discharged him with full pension, which was the kindest thing, given what was left of him.”
She’d drawn her knees tighter to her chest.
“The night before Edwyn left Camelot,” I continued, “I sat beside his bed. He was asleep. Or something like sleep: whatever it is when a man’s body shuts down because it can’t hold what his mind keeps showing him.” The words came out flat, stripped. “I made an oath then, over his sleeping body, in that quiet room. I made him a promise. Not only to Edwyn, but it was a promise to Thomas, to Brynn, and to Aldric. A promise that I’d find whoever had done this to them and I’d make that person pay.”
The silence between us was suddenly enormous.
“And I found her,” I continued.
Her chin came up just slightly, settling into that stubborn angle I’d kissed a dozen times.
“She was the same woman I gave my fucking heart to.” The words tasted like copper, and it was all I could do not to spit the taste out. “The woman who looked me in the eye every fucking day and lied to me. Who let me believe—” I stopped. Started again. “Who let me believe she was someone worth believing in.”
“Lance—”
“—don’t.”
She closed her mouth.
My knuckles were white against the iron of the bars.
“Thomas’s daughters no longer have a father. Brynn’s voice is gone, and Aldric never grew that beard.” I looked at her. Really looked at her. “And Edwyn Cole is somewhere in Logres, jumping at shadows. He will be until the day he dies.”
She met my gaze and didn’t look away. That was the worst of it. She never looked away.
“Whatever those men were to you, they killed my parents.”
The words hit the air between us and stayed there. She stared at me, and there was a mix of emotions playing through those incredible eyes. Understanding, yes, but also sorrow and rebellion.
“They murdered my mother and my father right in front of me.”
“Your father is Merlin, and your fucking mother is the Lady of the Lake.”
She stood up and approached the bars, and I almost wanted to push away from them. I just... it was so fucking difficult to be so close to her.
“I found out the truth of my parentage, no doubt near to the same time you did.” Her voice was level. “When everything happened at Eldenvale, I was simply a dairy maid whose magic was responsible for getting my parents, the only parents I’d ever known and loved,killed.” A beat. “The captain of your guard ran my father through with his sword simply because my father couldn’t tell him where I was. Because he didn’t know. And when my mother came out to defend him, your men killed her just as quickly.” She paused as if the words were hard for her to swallow. “Yourmen killed my parents in cold blood. What would you have done?”
My hands loosened on the bars.
The question landed somewhere I hadn’t braced for. Because I knew the answer. Every soldier knows the answer. Every person who has ever stood between a blade and someone they loved knows the answer.
“I’d have done the same thing.” It was the truth, and I couldn’t hide it. Wouldn’t hide it.
The admission moved through me like cold water, and I hated it. Hated the way it complicated the clean lines of my rage, the way it reached into the story I’d been telling myself for days and pulled at the threads. But even if I could understand her own narrative, even if I didn’t fully blame her for what had happened that day at Eldenvale, it didn’t change the events. It didn’t change the fact that we were still on opposite sides. My men had trusted me, and she’d murdered them.
I stood there for a long moment, just breathing.
She waited with her white hair falling loose around her shoulders and those fucking eyes steady on mine. And that steadiness, that quiet refusal to beg for my forgiveness, made it worse somehow.
“Yes,” I finally said. The word scraped out of me. “I understand what it is to defend yourself. And to defend the people you love.” I released the bars and stepped back one pace. I had to. “I’ve done so before, and I would do it again.”