09/02/2026 00:49

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You are weary, lady Morgaine. Once, she thought, it had been so little and tender that she could enfold it within her own, like a curled rosebud, and now her own hand was quite lost within his. She does her work in the world as you do yours here-and I where the Gods lead me. Well, she would fight to the last to save Arthur's soul! She loved him well, he was the best husband a woman could ever have had, even had he been no High King but a simple knight.

And she looked fearfully at the dismal dripping shore, the solitary reeds murmuring to the rain. But Lancelet, below them, had risen and strode to Gwydion; he brought back his gloved hand and struck the younger man smartly across the mouth. Not in Avalon, I grant you, but all the length and breadth of these islands, where Arthur is the hand that has created the peace they value. always, always it had been like this, that what smote his heart was like a lash laid to her own.