Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

I step fully into the study and close the door behind me. “The fey on Avalon rise with the sun each morning,” I tell him. “It’s a difficult habit to break.”

  “But a good one to keep,” he says. “It is something, to be done with work before anyone else has even gotten out of bed. It leaves the whole day to be enjoyed.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt your work, but I was hoping we might speak before my party leaves,” I say.

  A small furrow appears in my father’s brow, but he nods, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. “You are planning on leaving again, then,” he says, shaking his head. “I had hoped you would stay with us awhile longer, but I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. Prince Arthur does seem very . . . attached to you.”

  It takes a moment for me to understand the inflection in his voice. Yes, Arthur is attached to me, but the way he says it implies something more than just friendship.

  “I’m only his adviser,” I tell him. “Arthur is dear to me, and I to him, but we are friends and I have no desire to be queen.”

  My father laughs. “I thought every girl wanted a crown,” he remarks. “You certainly enjoyed playing princess as a child.”

  “I liked the crown,” I tell him, laughing. “But I didn’t understand what would come with it. That, I don’t think I will ever care for. Besides, our quest in Lyonesse will end in a marriage, I believe. Between Arthur and Princess Guinevere.”

  “A Lyonessian princess?” my father asks, bushy eyebrows raising. “Prince Arthur is indeed a brave man to want such a bride.” He pauses. “Will you return to Camelot when this quest is through?”

  I nod, looking down at my hands. “I would love to stay in Shalott—truly I would—but I’m needed more there. Merlin has a third test for Arthur, and then once he’s crowned king, the challenges will only multiply. He needs me.”

  He takes a moment, searching for the right words. “I must admit, I feel . . . ambivalent about sending you back to Camelot alone. I made that mistake with your mother, and I don’t want to repeat it with you. You’re too much like her already.”

  He knows, I realize. He might not have the words for it, might never have spoken of it aloud, but he knows on some level what I am, what she was.

  “It isn’t the same,” I tell him. “Mother wasn’t well. She didn’t . . . she didn’t understand her own mind. I do.”

  He looks at me, understanding sparking behind his eyes. “Still. An unmarried daughter, alone at court. It isn’t done, Elaine. And the thought of you in that tower, alone.”

  “Actually, Morgana is staying with me there. It keeps it from being too lonely,” I tell him.

  “That may be, but it doesn’t provide me much comfort,” he says with a heavy sigh. “I don’t suppose I can order you to stay here?”

  I smile, but it feels brittle. “I think you know better than to try,” I say.

  He nods. “Then perhaps we can reach a compromise,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Go to Lyonesse, help your prince on this quest of his—hell, take my troops with you. A hundred men at your disposal—you know you’ll need it. Take your brothers too. They’ve grown soft, lounging about the estate unchallenged, but they’re good men and strong fighters, when they’ve had need to be.”

  He isn’t wrong. Even if we are only talking about appearances, Arthur’s arriving in Lyonesse with a scant handful of men is an embarrassment. The show of an extra hundred people at his back could do us a lot of favors. And, a small voice whispers, it will be nice to have my brothers along.

  “At what cost?” I ask.

  He laughs. “Not a cost, Elaine. I’m your father—this isn’t a transaction. Take the troops, they are yours without strings. But this is your home and I would be glad to see more of you.” Before I can protest, he adds, “Not to stay, mind, I know better than to ask that. But to visit. A few times a year. And I will let your brother stay with you when the coronation is over, to keep you company and serve as a knight to Arthur, representing the support Shalott will put behind him.”

  I pause. “Which brother?” I ask.

  He laughs, waving a hand. “Take your pick—they’re both capable enough.”

  “Lavaine,” I say without hesitation.

  My father raises his eyebrows, and I bite my lip. My father knew what my mother was, that was clear in his reaction earlier. He knows what I am.

  “You must know,” I say slowly, “that Mattie is . . . like Mother and me.”

  My father blinks once before nodding. “I feared as much, but I wasn’t sure yet.”

  “If she’s in Camelot, I can help her, keep her from . . .” I trail off, unable to form the words. Keep her from ending up like Mother.

  My father hears them all the same, though. “I fear the ghost of your mother will haunt me for all of my days, Elaine,” he says after a moment, his voice quiet. “I will always wonder if there was something I could have done—if I should have kept you at Shalott, if I should have sought a different doctor, if I should have . . .” He shakes his head. “It just seems like I should have been able to do something.”

  I lean across the desk and take his hands in mine. They are cold and wrinkled, his fingers bony.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” I say, as gently as I can. “There was nothing either of us could have done. I’ve thought about it too often, felt that guilt so heavily I feared it would drown me. But she was long gone before I was born, I think. Maybe even before you married. There was never any saving her, not for either of us. All I could do was leave before she dragged me down with her. I will always feel guilty for that, but I can never regret it.”

  His smile is brittle as he brings my hands to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I am proud of the woman you’ve become, Elaine,” he says to me before pausing. “No, not proud. I can’t be proud—what did I have to do with any of it? But still, it has given me great joy to see you again, for however long it might be. I think she would have been glad to see it too.”

  * * *

  AFTER BREAKFAST, OUR horses are saddled once more, and my father’s troops are assembled to accompany us. There are so many, brought together so quickly—he must have arranged it in advance, before we had even arrived. Looking at our party now, even I have to admit we are an impressive sight.

  Morgana is already flirting shamelessly with one of my father’s squires, a handsome young man with bright eyes and a roguish smile. Nearby, Arthur watches them like he wants to be sick, and it is all I can do not to laugh at the lot of them.

  I say my goodbyes to the family I’ve only just regained. Torre and Lavaine are saying goodbye to their wives, and I linger nearby, dropping down to crouch before Mattie, who wraps her small arms around my neck and squeezes so tightly I can’t breathe, but I can’t bring myself to pull away. I hug her back, lifting her up into my arms.

  “Remember your letters,” I tell her, and she nods.

  When I come to my father, he pulls me into an embrace before holding me at arm’s length. “Have a safe journey, daughter,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “I hope I see you again soon.”

  “You will,” I tell him with a smile. “We’ll stop again on our way back.”

  His smile broadens, and he pulls me into another hug. “Then I will arrange an array of festivities to celebrate,” he says before looking past me, at Arthur, his expression shifting into one far more serious.

  “The only way from Lyonesse to Camelot passes through my domain, Your Highness. If you return without my daughter, you would be better off not returning at all. Am I understood?”

  Arthur turns a bit green but nods. “Of course, sir.”

  * * *

  THOUGH THERE IS no sign of any border markers, I feel it the moment we enter Lyonesse. The air is sharper, more acrid, and the wind picks up speed, blowing my hair in all directions and obstructing my vision. I could even swear the lig
ht is dimmer here, as if a bit of gray gossamer silk hangs over the sun.

  Beside me, Morgana shudders, pulling her horse to a stop. I do the same, and together we survey the landscape around us. The ground is mostly barren, more dirt and rock than grass, with none of the lush forests of Shalott. Instead, only a few skeletal trees reach up from the earth like hands clawing toward the overcast sky.

  “It’s hard to picture Gwen here,” I say, thinking of my friend with her bright red hair and wide smile and endless abundance of energy.

  Morgana laughs. “And here I was thinking the exact opposite,” she says, glancing at me. “It’s a feral land, and it is difficult to think of a place that would suit her more.”

  I let Arthur and his troops ride past us, waiting until they are out of earshot before I give voice to the worry that I haven’t been able to say in front of Arthur.

  “What if she doesn’t want to come with us?”

  For a moment, Morgana doesn’t answer, and the only sound is the hoofbeats of Arthur’s troops beating against the dry earth.

  “We are meant to be allies,” she says finally. “It’s why Nimue and the fey gave her impotent father an heir, why Gwen came to Avalon in the first place. She is meant to be our ally—Arthur’s ally. If she refuses to be that now, when we need her, she’s no longer an ally at all. She’s an enemy, and she will be treated as such.”

  Morgana’s voice is so cold that it takes me aback, but it isn’t unfamiliar to me. It’s the same way she sounded in visions of her I’ve seen. The same way she sounded when she stood beside the river and looked at me with nothing but hate.

  “She’s not just our ally, Morgana,” I say carefully. “She’s our friend. That means something.” Though I don’t mean for there to be, I hear the question in my own voice. I hear what I’m really asking—not just about Guinevere but about Morgana herself. If she’ll turn on Gwen this quickly, how difficult would it be, really, for her to turn on any one of us?

  Morgana shifts to look at me, her mouth straining into a tight-lipped smile. “I know,” she says, shaking her head. “I love Gwen. I know she isn’t our enemy. But I am angry, angry at her for that letter, for hurting him with so little care. I’m angry that the rest of us didn’t even get that much from her—no goodbye, no explanation. Nothing. What kind of friend does that, Elaine?”

  I don’t have an answer to that, but the words lodge beneath my skin.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s Gwen. I don’t like thinking about it, but I haven’t been able to stop—but you are right. If it comes down to her or Arthur . . . it has to be Arthur.”

  Morgana swallows, her gaze focused on the horizon ahead. “Why are you telling me this? We don’t know it’ll come to that.”

  “But if it does,” I say. “Lancelot will do what needs to be done—he’d take Arthur’s side against anyone in this world or any other. But you . . . me, even.”

  “We have to keep one another on the path,” she says. “That’s what you’re saying. Even if Gwen has fallen off it—”

  “We can’t fall off ourselves,” I finish. “Not even to save her.” I dig my heels into the sides of my horse to get moving again, Morgana following a second later. “No matter what happens, we aren’t leaving without Lyonesse under Arthur’s domain.”

  * * *

  NO ONE WANTS to stop for the night in the wild moors of Lyonesse, but when the moon is high in the sky and there is still no sign of the castle ahead, Arthur makes the call to set up camp and resume the journey in the morning. There are whispers of monsters among the men, wolves that walk upright on two legs, beasts with fur and talons and teeth sharp as needle points, but not one person actually protests—after a day of riding under the hot sun, I think exhaustion manages to outweigh fear.

  The cook gets started building a fire with help from a few of my father’s men, including Torre, now that there are too many mouths to feed for him to cook on his own. More men set up tents, but when Morgana goes to help them with magic, I stop her with a hand on her arm.

  “There are too many of them,” I say quietly. “Chances are more than a few will fear you for it, and we don’t need that kind of division right now.”

  Morgana looks at me, taken aback. “You want me to hide myself?” she asks, a dangerous edge to her voice that I tell myself is only because she, too, is tired.

  “I want you not to flaunt your power in front of men who will resent you for it. I want you to not make enemies of those we need to be allies.”

  She looks away, wounded, and I squeeze her arm, drawing her gaze back to me.

  “Not yet,” I add, offering her a smile I hope is reassuring. “The time will come to show them who you are, what you can do. The time will come when they’ll admire you for it. But old prejudices die slowly, and we need to proceed with caution.”

  Morgana’s mouth is a tight, firm line, but she nods once. “Fine,” she says, pulling away from me and walking off to the far edge of the camp with her arms crossed over her chest.

  I watch her go with a pinch of dread festering in my stomach, though I know it was the right call and that she knows that too. Morgana’s anger is always quick and fleeting—she’ll be past it by the time dinner is ready—but every time I see a flash of her temper, I see the possibilities once more, of what will happen when her anger lingers, when it spreads and grows and consumes every inch of her.

  “So,” a voice says from behind me, drawing me out of my thoughts. I turn to find Lancelot watching me with guarded eyes and a pursed mouth. “You didn’t want to stay in Shalott?”

  We haven’t spoken for two days now, not since the last time we made camp in the woods, and the realization sits strangely. There’s been little time to miss him, but now that he’s standing so close again, I realize I did just that.

  I swallow, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. “You thought I might?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “But I feared it all the same. You were offered a home, with people who love you and far less of a chance of dying horribly. You have to admit you were tempted.”

  “I’ll be going back,” I say with a shrug. “A few times a year, at least. I worried my father would be a stranger to me, but he wasn’t. Not really. I didn’t realize how much I missed him.”

  “It was good to see you happy, Shalott,” he says after a second. “With your father and your brothers, with your niece. It was good to see you with family. It was good to see where you came from.”

  I bite my lip. “It was nicer than I expected, to be around people who didn’t need me.” As soon as I say it, I wince. “That didn’t come out the way I meant. I love advising Arthur, I do. And I love helping you and Morgana and everyone navigate this future we’ve been thrust into. I wouldn’t change us for anything.”

  “But it was still nice,” he says. “To just be loved, without obligation.”

  He says it like he understands, and in that moment, I feel seen. I nod. “You must miss your mother,” I say to him. “Have you spoken with her since we left?”

  He shrugs, glancing away. “A few shells here and there,” he says. “But it isn’t the same. I do miss her.”

  Guilt nags at me. After all, I asked him to leave Avalon, to leave her. If not for me, he wouldn’t have to miss her, and she wouldn’t have to miss him. He must see my expression, because he shakes his head.

  “She’s proud of me,” he says. “And, to be honest, I’m proud of me. Leaving home wasn’t easy, but you were right—I needed to do it. I’m someone different out here, away from Avalon. I’m enjoying discovering who that person is.”

  There’s something else he wants to say, but it doesn’t come out. He glances away from me, a confession hovering in the air between us.

  “I . . .” he starts before trailing off. He takes a deep breath. “I’ve been looking for my father.”

  For a moment, I can only stare at hi
m, unable to form words. He shifts from one foot to the other under my gaze, uncomfortable.

  “Your father,” I say slowly. “Are you referring to the father who abandoned your mother when she was pregnant with you? That father?”

  He pauses before nodding his head. “That’s the one. Unfortunately, the only father I have, so I can’t be too picky about him—”

  “You can, though,” I point out. “You can leave it be, refuse to unmask him. What good will it do anyone?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says with a sigh. “But . . . after Arthur returned home to find both his parents dead, after leaving the only family I’ve known behind . . . and especially after seeing you and your family . . . I’ve been feeling the need to find him.”

  “But Arthur’s parents didn’t abandon him,” I say. “Neither did mine. It isn’t only shared blood, it’s a shared life, it’s memories of love and family. You have that with your mother already.”

  “I’m not saying I know what will come of it, Elaine,” he says, and I know he’s earnest because he doesn’t call me Shalott. “Maybe I’ll find his name and that will be enough. Maybe I’ll want to . . . I don’t know. Challenge him to a duel for my mother’s honor—that’s how it’s done here, isn’t it?”

  He tries to make it a joke, but it doesn’t quite land.

  “Or maybe,” I say, looking at him carefully, “you’ll find him and he’ll tell you it was all a mistake, that he never meant to abandon your mother, or you. That he’s never stopped thinking about you or trying to find you.”

  Lancelot glances away, but he doesn’t deny it.

  “Well, it isn’t impossible, is it? And it’s what my mother believes,” he says, his voice quiet. “And I’ve always wondered, I suppose. I’d like to know for sure.”

  I glance around the camp, but no one is paying us any mind, so I reach out and touch his arm, his skin warm beneath my fingers.

  “I don’t want you to end up hurt, Lance,” I say, my voice barely louder than a whisper. “And I fear the chances of this ending well are slim.”