Grail

by Realm Lovejoy

  Published by Realm Lovejoy

  Copyright © Realm Lovejoy, 2016

  Grail (Le Fay Series) / Realm Lovejoy. First U.S. electronic edition 2016 v1.0

  You can find news of upcoming titles by Realm Lovejoy at:

  www.realmlovejoy.com

  Cover Art © Copyright Realm Lovejoy

  eBook formatting: Guido Henkel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Chapter 1

  Camelot used to be a home.

  Outside the window, the golden dawn is spilling over the emerald grass. Spring flowers are beginning to unfurl as birds sing in the trees. The idle scene, however, sears panic and terror into me.

  Will I look at this same lawn through barred windows?

  It seems only yesterday that autumn arrived with cold winds and whirling leaves. During winter I was imprisoned, and though I didn’t know what it was like outside, I felt the ice spread across my heart until it was winter in my own mind and body. The worst part was feeling as if I’d never thaw, that spring would never come.

  I’m here to see another day of spring—for today—at least.

  Now a king, Arthur allowed Guinevere to heal me and rest here, in Camelot Infirmary, in a bed much more comfortable than the one in prison. Yet how long can Arthur allow me to stay here?

  Sooner or later everyone will be angry that I’m still alive. They’ll be begging the Cabinet to have me executed, the way I was supposed to be a couple of days ago by Merlin’s magic. Instead, Merlin’s magic ended up saving me.

  I brush my bandaged hand through my coarse, half-burnt hair. Some of it snaps off in my hand, a tangle resembling a dead spider. If Merlin hadn’t poured water over my head before Uther lit me afire, my wounds would have been far worse.

  I study the exposed skin on my arm. Thanks to Guinevere, I’m mostly healed, but I can still make out the swirls and mottled texture on my skin.

  I dread seeing my reflection for fear that I won’t recognize myself.

  The sun becomes brighter, as if beckoning me outside. A part of me wants to open the window and run away. I may be better off as a criminal on the loose again.

  The door opens, causing me to start.

  Agravain and a slew of Gray Knights enter the room, striding over quickly. I begin yelling before they even reach me. They grab my arms and pull me forward.

  A clattering of footsteps. Guinevere stumbles into the room, her hair coming undone from her loose ponytail. Sweat pools through her blouse as if she had been running.

  “Stop!” she yells. “Morgan needs to rest.”

  The knights don’t look at her as they drag me across the floor.

  “King Arthur wants her here as my patient,” Guinevere says louder, blocking the exit with her body.

  Agravain pushes her aside, causing Guinevere to nearly fall. I grit my teeth, almost managing to untangle my arms from the knights.

  “Listen,” Agravain says to Guinevere. “The Cabinet must agree with King Arthur before his orders are official. Until they reach an agreement, Morgan le Fay is to be contained.”

  They pull me through the door. My breathing becomes labored from all the movement. My legs turn to jelly, and my knees slam the cold floor. The knights carry me with ease as if I didn’t just collapse under them, my body heavy and motionless. Guinevere follows them, matching their quick pace.

  “She should be here until a consensus is reached,” Guinevere exclaims. “You don’t—nor does the Cabinet—understand her condition. She could die if she isn’t under monitored care.”

  “If she dies, it solves everyone’s problems,” Agravain says as he shoves her away.

  I begin to struggle against the knights, my blood boiling.

  “STOP.” A louder voice thunders behind us.

  We turn.

  King Arthur stands in the hallway. He wears the king’s uniform, the same one Uther wore—dark red with golden trim. For a second I’m taken aback by how regal he looks.

  The knights lower to their knees, bowing. With the movement, I fall to the floor.

  “You may release your grip on her,” Arthur orders.

  The knights do as told, backing away slightly. Guinevere comes to my side. She pulls an inhaler out of her pocket and puts it to my mouth. I breathe in, my lungs becoming lighter again.

  “We’ve reached a consensus,” Arthur says. “The Cabinet will allow Morgan le Fay to be on restrained parole under one condition.”

  I wince as Guinevere helps me straighten so that I can look at him.

  Arthur keeps his eyes on Agravain. “Morgan will be a servant to Camelot for the rest of her life, never to leave the royal grounds.”

  Guinevere mutters her disbelief under her breath. The information swims in my head as I try to understand the full meaning of it. Two words fight in my head. Prison. Servant.

  “But Your Highness,” Agravain says with outrage. “She’s dangerous. Why keep her so close to where you reside, out in the open for everyone to see within the walls of Camelot?”

  “You will learn to let me finish speaking, Agravain,” Arthur snaps. His hands tremble at his sides, agitated with the weight of his thoughts. “She may serve us under restrictions. She will be banded, permanently forbidden from using magic. Therefore, she will be nothing but an ordinary girl unable to pose a threat.”

  “No,” I say, loud, the anguish in my voice foreign to me, as if it were someone else who spoke. “No,” I repeat. “I wouldn’t hurt you. I’d never hurt anybody!”

  Nobody pays any attention to me except for Guinevere, who squeezes my shoulders.

  “Your Highness.” Guinevere speaks up. “But what about her condition? She isn’t fit for labor.”

  “Her condition is of no concern to the Cabinet,” Arthur says.

  His words fall heavily over me.

  “But it must concern you,” Guinevere says, barely audible.

  Arthur continues. “Morgan is under strict orders. She is to never come near me nor the King’s Tower. She must remain ten meters away at all times.”

  My heart continues to crumple at a faster rate than my lungs. Does Arthur think I’m dangerous too? He cared for me enough to save me from Uther’s fire, yet did his action lead him to resenting me?

  “The same restraining order applies to protect the Maven,” Arthur says. “Morgan is never to go near nor speak to Merlin.”

  I recall Merlin’s anguish prior to my scheduled execution. There’s so much I want to say to him. That I’m sorry about how things turned out, that he didn’t deserve to go through what he did.

  Arthur glances at each of the knights. “Morgan will be tracked at all times through the bands she will wear. Any breach of her restrictions will result in her being put back in prison with no chance of parole ever again. If that’s understood, you may take her to the servant chamber and the maid manager will take it from there. A knight has her bands ready.”

  As soon as Arthur is finished speaking, he whips around and storms down the hall as if he can’t wait to get away.

  “Arthur,” I whisper as he turns the corner and vanishes.

  I expect the knights to grab me again, but they do not take hold of my arms.
<
br />   “Well?” Agravain spits. “Will you stand and follow us, or do you prefer to be dragged?”

  “I will stand,” I hear myself say.

  Laboriously I push myself up from the floor. Guinevere reaches to help but I put a hand up.

  “Thank you, Gwen,” I say, meeting her eyes briefly before looking straight ahead. “Thank you for all your help. I’ll be on my own now.”

  “Morgan,” Guinevere calls out as I walk away, following the knights. “I’ll visit you.”

  Her words drift far behind me as I continue and stare blankly ahead. Slowly I draw my hands up as I walk, staring at my palms that held my tangled hair only several minutes earlier.

  No more magic. No more fire. They killed me after all.

  Chapter 2

  Standing by a simple door, an old woman greets me with a grim nod. Her face is dull under faded, mousy hair. I vaguely recollect seeing her work around Camelot. A knight by her side brings out the bands. I hoped to never see the thin metal bracelets again. He loops a band around each wrist and locks them in place.

  “Your manager Brysen, the head maid, will take over from here,” the knight explains before walking away.

  Brysen studies me as she wrings her hands nervously.

  “You should have let them take you to the sanitarium while you had the chance to plead guilty by insanity,” Brysen says. “You’d get a much more comfortable room and people to take care of you. So that you can get better.”

  “I don’t need care,” I reply, still studying my bands with bitterness.

  Brysen sighs and opens the wooden door for me. Inside is a room as small as a closet. The window is boarded up with a few light rays escaping between the planks. The walls have a gray tint, and the room smells of ash. There’s a cloth rack crammed against the wall, lined with garishly ruddy jumpsuits with reflective strips on the sleeves. I’ve seen the Camelot construction workers and janitors wear them before.

  “Am I supposed to wear this?” I ask, flipping through the cloned jumpsuits.

  “It’s what the permanent servants wear,” Brysen replies. “You have to wear it every day. You will be fed in this room breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ll give you a schedule each morning with your tasks.” She eyes the light streaming through the boards, dust glimmering in its rays. “It’s spring now, and we’ve a lot of yard work that needs to get done. We will have you helping with that. Also, you will be serving food in the cafeteria from time to time.”

  I sit on the creaky bed wearily, puffing out a breath. The dust billows.

  “Don’t have much of a choice, I guess,” I say with dread.

  In the corner of the room, I spot a dirty mirror. I get up from the bed and walk toward it, peering at the blurry reflection. I expect to see a troll. My eyes startle me for a second—a searing blue, like ice blades. My skin is pale. The wounds aren’t terrible, thanks to Guinevere, but I can still make out the rough skin texture toward my hairline. My hair is still long, but most of it is frizzled.

  “May I use scissors?” I ask over my shoulder.

  Brysen studies me as if I were some kind of stray cat to take pity on. She shakes her head. “You’re not permitted to use anything sharp. I suggest you tie your hair back with a bit of string.”

  “So… do all parole servants sport long dreads around here in this fancy castle? I find that hard to believe.”

  Brysen points to a pad of paper on the nightstand. “Those are your request forms. You can use them to ask for appointments and things you may need—things like medicine, toothpaste, a hairbrush, and so forth.” She wipes invisible grime off her hands onto her apron. “I’ll let you get settled. Lunch will be served in about half an hour.”

  She leaves the room, closing the creaky door behind her. The room darkens. Then I hear the click of a lock. So it is like prison after all.

  I look around the room as if I were in a haunted house and a ghost might snatch me up any moment. I suppose I should be thankful to live. But this is not much better than prison. Maybe a little bit better than being dead… by a small margin.

  I lie back on the bed, which smells of mildew. There are holes in the blankets big enough for me to put my arm through. I place my hands over my chest for a while, feeling my rattled breath.

  Minutes later, Brysen opens the door again, coming in with a tray. There’s a beat-up tin bowl filled with broth and a bun next to it. The spoon is dirty, and I have to wipe it on my hospital gown before eating.

  “Enjoy,” she says. “You can rest today. Tomorrow we begin the yard work.”

  “I can’t wait,” I say, lifting a spoonful of the grayish broth and letting it spill back into the bowl.

  “You should be grateful,” Brysen says boldly, but her hand shakes on the doorknob. “You—you should be dead.”

  I let the spoon fall back onto the tray with a clunk, staring into space. “Then give me scissors.”

  Brysen slams the door shut, and I hear her sobbing on the other side. Why she’d be crying, I don’t know.

  The jumpsuit is baggy, two sizes too big. And the bright red color is clownish. I pull my hair up in a crude ponytail.

  My first assignment is shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows for other prisoners to wheel away. We work by the Study Tower.

  Camelot members dressed in suits pass by, never looking at us. We blend into the background, even with bright red jumpsuits on. Some passersby occasionally catch sight of me, do a double take, and whisper briskly to another.

  Vivian walks by, a cup of coffee in hand, a cell phone in the other. Her hair trails behind her, light and airy. She passes right by me as if I don’t exist. I feel like I died and am a ghost, haunting the grounds of Camelot.

  Every time I see a silhouette of a man meandering by, my heart skips a beat. Would Merlin notice me here in the corner, shoveling dirt?

  “Mind your work,” a worker says to me as he hefts up the barrow in his hands. “You don’t need to stare at every person who walks by.”

  My face grows hot as I look back down at the dirt. Earthworms wiggle in the freshly dug soil.

  This can’t be my fate, can it? A prisoner of Camelot, forbidden to use magic. Just a year ago I was an Arthur’s Round member with a “bright future” as Lancelot said. I shake my head, unable to tolerate the thought of him. Flashes of our intimacy in the dark cell go through my mind, as if it was a dream I had in the past, though it was only days ago. I shove the spade deep into the soil, quickening my work pace. Maybe I’m better off being invisible.

  Vivian comes back from the opposite direction, no longer with her phone and coffee. Across from her, a man emerges.

  Merlin. My heart jolts.

  He looks a bit thinner and older, his eyes weighed with tiredness, but he still has his spellbinding, gentle smile. The two meet in front of the fountain, speaking to each other as if it’s an ordinary day and terror hadn’t struck only days prior. Vivian takes another step toward Merlin, and her heel gets stuck in the pavement crack. She glances back at her shoe that got left behind as she stands on one leg. Even in the clumsy moment, she is still graceful, like a crane frozen. Merlin says something and crouches down by her to grab her shoe off the pavement. He slides it onto her foot as if it were a glass slipper. Vivian grabs his shoulder to balance herself and laughs. When Merlin stands back up, she falls into his arms and they kiss.

  I look back down at the dirt, crouching lower behind the bushes, unable to bear the fairytale sight any longer. My lungs feel strained again, tight, like winding rubber bands in my chest. I carve away at the dirt with my shovel, panting.

  Vivian and Merlin whirling in the sun.

  That was a part of my new dream—except without Vivian in the picture. A dream I didn’t know I had.

  “Not that much,” the gruff worker says behind me. He laughs. “Now you’re overzealous. We aren’t diggin’ a grave here.”

  I hit a concrete slab beneath the earth. I strike it again and again as
if willing for it to crumble.

  Chapter 3

  The following day I’m assigned to work behind the food bars at the cafeteria. Delicious scents of freshly baked bread and rich sauces surround me. Food that I wish they’d serve me in my little closet room instead of day-old scraps. I keep my head down so that people won’t stare at me. Agonizing scenes flood through my mind. Serving food to Merlin. Vivian. I anxiously study the clock as I scoop up coq au vin for various workers who pay little attention to me. Lunch is almost over. So far I haven’t had to serve anyone I know well.

  The news plays overhead on TV, displaying my grim-faced mug shot where I look like a serial killer with my pales eyes and the shadows beneath them. “Thankfully, Morgan le Fay is permanently imprisoned within Camelot,” the newscaster says. “With the new king, the death penalty law is being reevaluated, which is causing political strife in the UK. Everyone still wants Morgan le Fay dead.”

  I grit my teeth. The Cabinet wanted to be sure they could advertise that I was “imprisoned” to make them look good while still appeasing Arthur.

  The next person smells of cigarettes.

  “Pile on the meat,” he says with a wink in his voice. “I need my strength.”

  I tense my jaws and glance up at Lancelot, who is now talking to another knight next to him. He didn’t even look at me. Just on autopilot flirt mode, I guess. He’s a real jerk. As I scoop the food onto his tray, he glances at me. “Thanks…” He trails off as he stares with disbelief. I fear that he might say something like “Hi, how are you doing?” or something stupid like that. He looks down at his tray as if his eyes weighed as heavily as rocks.

  “Thanks,” he repeats, clearing his throat and taking his tray away.

  I take a long exhale, relieved to be rid of the moment, though shaken up by the sight of him. I know that if he were a few steps closer, I’d smell the leathery aftershave, and what happened between us would feel too real.

  Following my own lunch in my closet room, I have janitorial duty to mop up the library floors. Thankfully I’m assigned to clean the upstairs rather than the basement. I instinctively half run past the basement stairwell, which was closed off with rope ever since the day I was nearly drowned below. The air by the basement is chilly as a gravesite in November. I shiver, trying not look into the dark depths of the stairwell where icy waters nearly took my life.