Idle as that threat might have been, it still constricted around my stomach like a snake.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sliding my hands into hers. Her grip was jarringly cold and smooth, like holding on to ice.
“I am going to guide you this time, to give you the feel for it, but you must try to keep your mind empty and focus only on the mirror. Nothing exists outside of it, not you or I, not your new friends, not your mother in Camelot. Do you understand?”
It felt like a steel corset tightened around my ribs at the mention of my mother. Morgana must have told her, though I wished she wouldn’t have. My mother was just that—mine. Not a tool Nimue could use or a story Morgana could twist to suit her own needs.
With her holding my hands, the chill of her touch working up my own arms, it became easier to clear my mind. I kept my eyes on the mirror, letting them glaze over and lose their focus. After a moment of nothing, I was about to pull away when the surface of the mirror began to ripple like water. The image reflecting back at me shifted, slowly at first, then all at once. I knew I should feel surprise or alarm or relief, but I didn’t feel anything at all. It was just as Nimue said—nothing existed outside the mirror any longer, not even my own mind.
* * *
MORGANA WILL BE standing over a rushing river dressed in a dirty black dress with wide, ratty lace sleeves and a low neckline. Though she must be more than a decade older than she is now, I will still recognize her, if only barely. Her dark hair will be overgrown and matted, and her eyes will look more animal than human, bloodshot and hungry. She will look like a story to frighten children; she will even frighten me.
She will hold a sword with a gold hilt etched with a word in a language I can’t name, but I will understand what it means all the same. The sword will look like it could be one of my brothers’, or my father’s, but I know right away that it’s nothing like theirs. There will be an aura of magic surrounding it. The word on the hilt, the sword’s name, whispers through my mind, sending a shiver down my spine.
Excalibur.
A young man will stand beside Morgana, dark-eyed and sullen, his face all hard angles, sharp enough to cut. Though he will look like he would bite someone for looking at him the wrong way, his hands will shake, his eyes anxiously darting around the scene. He won’t reach for the sword, though desire for it will be clearly etched into his expression.
Morgana will whisper to him, her voice low and seductive. “I know your anger, my darling. I can feel it rolling off you in waves. I can taste it in the air. It’s delicious.”
He will shake his head, feebly at first, then stronger. He will whisper a word so quietly that I won’t be able to hear it, though I know what it is. No.
But Morgana won’t be dissuaded. She will lean toward him, touching her hand to his cheek in a caress. He will lean into it, eyes fluttering closed, a fan of dark lashes over alabaster white skin.
“Just this one thing, Accolon,” she will tell him, her voice weaving around him like a spell, though there is no magic in the air. “Then I’ll take you to Avalon, just as I promised, and we can be together always.”
She will paint a dream he will want so desperately to come true, no matter what he will have to do to get there.
“Always,” he will repeat, his voice reverent. He will take the sword from her, holding it aloft so the midday sun glints off the blade. It will look wrong in his hands. Like the traveling fair I saw as a child that brought a bear dressed in a ball gown.
And then the boy will stalk off into the woods, and Morgana will stand alone by the bank of the river, eyes wild and roving, searching for answers that the river won’t be able to provide.
The vision began to fade then, and I felt myself coming back into my own body, back to Avalon and the Cave of Prophecies, a slight tingle in my fingers and toes as if they had fallen asleep. I became aware of Nimue’s hands around mine, cold and bracing. But then, just as suddenly, I was pulled back into the vision by a shifting wind.
The trees will rustle, the churning river will smooth to a standstill, the sky above will turn a violent indigo, streaked with veins of green lightning. Thunder will clap from miles away, but it will ring in my ears like it struck right beside me.
I will no longer be an observer in this vision. Somehow, some way, some version of me will be here too—here but not here. And I will not be the only one who realizes it.
Morgana’s eyes will suddenly lock onto mine, as if she can see me through time and space. Broken as she will be, she should be powerless, but she won’t be. Broken, she will have become a fearful thing to behold, because she will have nothing left in the world to lose.
And somehow, I will match her hate, her venom, though I can’t rationalize it—it is not my anger, after all, not yet. But there will also be pity there, deep down. So much so that I won’t know how to hold it back. Coursing through it all will be a power I never knew I could possess. A power that has brought me here but not here, something this future possibility of me will be surprised by as well.
“Is this a game you really want to play, Elaine?” she will ask. A shiver will run down my spine at the amount of hate in her voice as she says my name. “This is a clever trick, I’ll admit, but you can’t save him. I will win. This time, I will win.”
Our eyes will remain locked, unblinking, unflinching, unyielding as the metallic sounds of a sword fight fill the air. But only one of us will succeed; only one of them will live.
* * *
WHEN THE VISION released me, I found that my hands were still clasped in Nimue’s. Her grip had tightened painfully, turning my flesh to pins and needles. Her eyes were still closed, her mind still lost in the scrying mirror. I tried to carefully extract my hands from her grip, but before I could, she came to with the gasp of breath of someone who had been drowning, her pale eyes darting frantically around the cave before settling on my face. She looked at me peculiarly, her eyes unfocused before she dropped my hands like they were made of hot coal. She gripped either side of the mirror, knuckles blanching. The muscles of her back heaved violently. I thought she might have been ill, but nothing came up, and after a minute she went still.
“Nimue?” I said tentatively. I started to reach a hand out to touch her, but after the way she’d dropped my hands earlier, I thought twice and let it fall back by my side instead. “Do you need water?”
She took two more deep breaths before looking up at me like she’d forgotten I was there. “No,” she said, her voice steadying. “You are not to speak of what you saw, do you understand? Not to Morgana or anyone. It does not leave this cave.”
“I . . . yes,” I said after a second. I hesitated again, trying to make sense of what I saw. “That was Morgana.”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice was calm again, devoid of surprise or emotion. “It’s an old vision. At least it was an old vision.”
“Was?”
She ignored me for a moment, picking up one of the candles and crossing to the far wall of the cave. She held the candle up to the wall, searching for something amid the scribbles.
“Ah. Here it is—Morgana, Accolon, Excalibur, River, Death,” she said, tracing words with her finger. She set the candle on the ground there and pulled a stick of chalk from the air. I didn’t have time to think on the peculiarity of the chalk appearing from nowhere before she started writing something there. She had a frantic energy about her that was frightening, especially when mixed with the placidness of her expression. I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I knew I didn’t want to interrupt her.
“The end is new,” she said when she was done, turning to face me again. She dropped the chalk, and it disappeared from existence before it could hit the ground. “Before, it ended when the boy—Accolon—left.”
I swallowed, thinking of the sullen young man with shaking hands and hungry eyes. “Who is he?”
&n
bsp; She waved a dismissive hand. “The second son of a duke in Lyonesse—if we were to map out the web of complex family ties, he would be Gwen’s second cousin, though I doubt she’s ever met him. He doesn’t matter,” she said. “Just a quiet boy with a quiet life and a quiet hunger for more—until he meets Morgana, at least.”
Morgana. Whoever that was in the vision wasn’t the Morgana I knew. There was no laughter in her in that vision, no unrestrained vivacity. That girl was someone the world had broken and left for dead. And then there was the way she’d said my name—I had never heard her speak with so much hate, hate toward me. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to unhear it.
“How?” I asked, because it was the only word my mouth would form.
Nimue understood my question well enough. She gave me a sad, strained smile. “Morgana’s descent has been long foretold, I’m afraid. I brought her here in hopes of altering that, but so far I haven’t had much luck.”
I thought of Morgana as I had seen her in my first vision, hard-edged and spectral on an Avalonian cliffside. For a moment, I was tempted to tell Nimue about that, but before I could, she continued.
“There are prophecies dating back centuries that speak of a king with the power to unite Albion and Avalon. King Arthur, born from war, destined for peace,” she clarified. “But only if his wicked sister, Morgana, doesn’t destroy him first.”
I understood her words, but I couldn’t quite make sense of them. I couldn’t imagine shy, quiet Arthur as a great king any more than I could imagine Morgana as a villainess determined to bring him to ruin.
“Morgana loves Arthur,” I said. “He’s her brother and the only family she really has left. She would never hurt him.”
Nimue heaved a deep sigh. “And yet, this vision is proof enough that it is not only a possibility, it is the road we are currently on. There is a version of Morgana that will turn against Arthur—against all of us. Many versions, maybe.”
“But you said it changed,” I said, eager to find something to grip that made any kind of sense. “If it changed—”
“Visions do not change, exactly,” she said, frowning. “However, there are often many visions of any one event, showing many paths of possibility. Nothing in the future is truly settled until it becomes the past. This, however, was one of very few instances where I have seen an old vision extend. I imagine because a great change has come, rearranging things, altering things. I imagine it’s because of you.”
Her words, calm as they were, felt like a punch to my stomach. “Morgana hated me in that vision,” I said. “You’re saying that because I came here, we are destined to be enemies?”
Nimue didn’t answer right away. She considered the question, turning it over in her mind. “Because you came here, your life and Morgana’s have become entwined,” she said carefully. “That much, I believe, is set. But what ties will bind you, how tight they will be, whether they will strangle you both—that remains to be seen.”
She might have been unable to tell a lie, but there were ways for her to find the holes in the lacy truth. Ways for her to soften it at the very least, wrap it in layers of velvet and silk. But she didn’t. She told it to me plainly. For all her flaws, I don’t believe Nimue has ever been anything less than honest with me. Not even when I’d have welcomed it.
“But it may not happen,” I said. “You said yourself you were trying to alter it.”
Nimue looked back to the wall scrawled with prophecies and prophecies and prophecies. So many futures that it was dizzying.
“Trying,” she echoed, shaking her head. “Arthur is Avalon and Albion’s only hope for peace, and if Morgana is on his side instead of against him, he will truly be unstoppable—that future has been seen as well, though it is rarer, more . . . delicate. It is not only the future I want, or you want—but the future we all need, Elaine. Albion and Avalon need to coexist. If we stay separate, it won’t be long before we are destroyed.”
I considered this, searching for an answer, though the only one I could find was so painfully obvious I hesitated to even suggest it. “If you were to tell Arthur and Morgana about this, it could be prevented. Morgana loves Arthur,” I said again.
Nimue made a noncommittal noise in her throat. “Or,” she said, “it will sow seeds of doubt in Arthur and Morgana’s relationship that will lead to fractures and breaks until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would not be the first time an oracle tried to prevent a future only to single-handedly cause it. Visions are a tricky business, Elaine. There is a reason so many of us go mad.”
I thought of my mother again, trapped in her tower by her own mind, frozen in a state of permanent fear of a hundred futures that might never come to be—so afraid that she’d stopped living altogether to keep herself safe, to keep me safe.
The echo of the night she forced the medicine down my throat came back to me, her voice faraway and unfamiliar as she whispered a prophecy in my ear. It did not sound like a pleasant vision, and it had been one about me. Could it have been enough to drive her to madness?
“I need your help, Elaine,” Nimue said, drawing me out of my thoughts. She leaned against the wall covered in prophecies, watching me with imploring eyes.
“Me?” I asked, so surprised I laughed. “But I don’t know anything about this—I can only remember three visions in my life, that one included. I couldn’t be of any help.”
Nimue smiled fleetingly, shaking her head. “Maybe I would have believed that before your arrival altered a vision that hasn’t changed for decades. And the vision itself, someone who can reach through time and space like you did—like you will do—that takes great power. You might not possess it yet, but the potential for it must be in you. I can show you how to reach it. And you want to help, don’t you? You want to save Avalon and Albion. You want to save your friends.”
My heart leapt. I did want to save both worlds. I barely knew Morgana and the others then, but they were already my friends, closer friends than I’d had in thirteen years in Albion. I also wanted Nimue to continue looking at me like that, like no one ever had before, like I was important enough to make a difference. And though I was frightened to admit it out loud, I wanted the power she spoke of; I wanted to be powerful. I thought of Morgana, how she walked through Camelot with her head held high and that aura of strength around her, so dense it made everyone look on her with fear and a kind of respect. I didn’t think I was capable of that, but if Nimue could show me how to find my own power . . . how could I possibly turn that down?
“What can I do?” I asked her, my voice hoarse.
“Practice,” she said. “Every day. Here, whether I can join you or not. Whatever you see, write it on the wall, no matter how trivial you think it may be.”
She turned to go, but before she made it to the entrance of the cave, I spoke again.
“Do you really believe it will be enough?” I asked her.
She froze but didn’t turn around, the lean muscles of her bare back going tense. “It has to be,” she said, before disappearing into the daylight outside.
Curiosity got the better of me in her absence. I crossed to the wall Nimue scribbled on earlier, picking up the candle she had left on the ground to examine what she wrote, what she deciphered from the new ending of the vision. It was easy to find, even among all the chaos, the chalk still pure white against the mottled stone and old writings that had turned gray with age.
Hate. Death. Elaine.
28
I SLEEP RESTLESSLY IN my childhood bedroom. Though the room is large and the bed plush, there is something suffocating about it, something in the cheery floral tapestries that drape the walls, the carved wooden furniture painted white, the rosy-cheeked dolls lined up on the windowsill, that makes me feel like I am being crammed back into a youth I left behind long ago. It feels like I only find sleep for a few blissful moments before the rising sun is streaming in through t
he lace curtains.
We will leave after breakfast, but before that there is one more thing I have to do. So even though my body protests each movement, I force myself out of bed. I find a dressing gown in my wardrobe—adult-sized, thankfully—and pull it over my nightgown before leaving my room and padding down the hallways, the stone floors like ice beneath my bare feet.
After so many years away from the castle, I thought I might have forgotten my way around, but somehow, I know exactly where I’m going, even though the layout of the castle is labyrinthine and bewildering to strangers. It’s only a few minutes later that I find myself standing before the door to my father’s study.
He always used to be here first thing in the morning, reading and responding to letters, going over tax ledgers, calculating castle expenses. Boring things, he’d told me when I was a child, but I’d still sat with him some mornings, playing with my dolls on the floor in front of his great mahogany desk, happy just to be in the comfort of his presence.
I knock now, tentatively. Perhaps this is an old habit, one he no longer indulges. My brothers are older now—maybe they handle the business matters of the estate. Maybe my father sleeps in.
“Come in,” a voice says, unmistakably my father’s.
I smile slightly and push the door open. My father is at his desk, just as I remember him, bent over a piece of parchment with a quill in hand, scribbling wildly. He looks up when I enter and sets the quill down.
“Elaine,” he says, surprised. “I assumed you would sleep far later—I can rarely manage to wrangle your brothers out of bed before the clock strikes eight.”
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