I withdrew carefully from George’s mind and surfaced through his warm, oblivious sleep without disturbing it. Then I released the connection cleanly.
The night air hit me like a blade. The northern camp was dark, cold, and smelled of mud, wood smoke, and animals.Vaelen’s fire had burned down to coals. Somewhere beyond the treeline, a horse made a low sound and went quiet.
I sat in the dark for a long time as I turned the signature over in my mind the way you turn a stone over to look at what is living under it. I checked my certainty, questioned it, and checked it again.
I was certain.
And the name of the perpetrator sat in my chest like something swallowed wrong. There was no doubt now, and that meant one thing. I could no longer ignore it.
It was time to have a conversation that required a face-to-face interaction. This required me to stand in front of the one person who could give me the final answer I was looking for, an answer that wouldn’t come from her mouth, but from her eyes.
Nimue’seyes, specifically.
I’d known, in a general way, that Guin was being watched, because I’d picked up on this other dreamwalker before. I’d assumed the watcher was on our side, though, or so I’d hoped. I’d figured it was just a case of Merlin arranging something, some secondary layer of intelligence, a failsafe I wasn’t privy to. That would have been like him: arranging things in layers and telling you about the first layer while never mentioning the others, but this hadn’t been Merlin’s signature.
I had one question for Nimue, one question I hoped she’d answer. But how she’d respond to me after all these years and everything that had passed between us the last time we’d stood eye to eye was anyone’s guess.
I’d known Nimue long enough to know that she answered questions indirectly, and in a way that required interpretation. But there were certain questions that Nimue couldn’t deflect, questions that were too precise, too accurate, too obviously formed by someone who already knew the truth, and now only needed validation.
That was the question I needed to ask.
And when I saidthename, Nimue’s face would tell me everything I needed to know.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
-GUIN-
The Great Hall smelled of smoke and overcooked mutton.
I found my usual seat at the far end of the long table at the back of the room where the servants usually sat, the empty stretch of bench on either side of me now becoming as reliable as dawn.
I’d stopped counting the days since anyone had chosen to sit near me, except for, of course, Tristan. He’d become rather reliable, and now I figured he would join me whenever I was invited to dine with the others.
As I sat at the servants’ table now, I noted the gazes around me that were, more or less, the same as they always had been. Galahad had made his feelings toward me known to any and all who would listen, and the rest of Camelot had simply followed the gradient of his contempt. That was how these things worked: one person decided, and the rest fell in behind him like water finding a slope.
But I didn’t care. Instead, I pulled my bread apart and kept my eyes on my plate. That was when the bench shifted as someone’s weight settled to my left.
I didn’t look up immediately, telling myself it was probably Tristan. But the scent that surrounded this person wasn’tTristan’s, and that piqued my curiosity. I looked up just as Percival set his cup down on top of the table with the expression of a man who had made a decision and intended to honor it. He didn’t look at me. Instead, he picked up his spoon and addressed himself to his bowl with complete composure, as though there were nothing remarkable about any of it.
The back of my throat closed as a wave of emotion surged through me, a wave I hadn’t expected, mostly because I hadn’t expected this. In truth, it was all I could do to try to get my breathing to return to normal. I didn’t cry because that would have been silly: crying over a man simply sitting down beside me. But I knew the gesture meant so much more than that. It was Percival’s way of perhaps saying he understood now more than he did before. Or maybe the high table was just full, and he’d beenforcedto sit beside me?
I looked up at the table and noticed the chair beside Gawain was now conspicuously empty, which meant... it meant this had been intentional on Percival’s part.
I looked back at my plate and kept eating, trying to swallow around the lump that was now stuck in my throat.
We sat in silence for long enough that I’d worked through half my food before he finally spoke. And when he did, his voice came low, pitched for no one but me.
“I understand why you couldn’t tell me the truth about who you really were.”
I went still but didn’t say anything. I imagined that even if I’d tried to speak, no sound would have come out.
“I’m still angry that you didn’t tell me, and I’m still angry that you made the choices that you did... but... I imagine you were convinced you were in the right just as Arthur is convinced he is in the right. Just as we all are, I suppose.”
His tone was even, and there was no heat in it. Just the facts themselves, offered plainly and without decoration.
I set my bread down, then felt like I needed something to do with my hands, so I picked it back up again.
“Thank you,” I said.