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Mordred stopped, placing his vambrace down on the bench, his heart sinking. For a moment he concentrates completely on his armour, how could he answer such a question? Telling her would mean her life and the lives of those whom called Camelot home. An impossible predicament.
The young knight turns to face her, his fingers brushing lightly against the metal of his armour. “I’m not hiding anything” he tells her simply.
Summer had never found out the names of, or even any more information about, the druids who had rescued her. They had guided her to Camelot’s outskirts and left her there, melting back into the forest.
She’d not intended to seek out Sir Leon, or Merlin, but that choice was taken away from her too — Merlin came to her door the next day, taking her up to the castle. Heartbroken, she simply went along, and it only took Gaius and Merlin a few questions to have most of the story out of her. The shock of finding out that Mordred had been right, that other folk in Camelot knew of them, were glad of them even, almost penetrated the numbness.
So she found herself on a horse at Guinevere’s side, following the army to a place called Camlann. What she was supposed to do there, she didn’t know — only that something was being kept from her. She couldn’t make herself care.
“Get moving!” Mordred hissed as they scouted out slowly. “We don’t have much time before they get here.” He crept along, lightly placing his feet against the foliage below, light enough so it didn’t make a noise and just enough so that he didn’t fall. He didn’t know how long they had, a day or two at best before they were to meet the army of Camelot.
Mordred’s hand curled around his blade as he moved through the trees back towards where their own army had made camp, with news for Morgana.
They’ve given Summer armour, suited for a woman, because she begged, and a blade, short and light. She wields it with two hands anyway, disdaining a shield. The camp is quiet, Arthur and Guinevere gathered with the knights around one fire. She doesn’t know where Merlin is, or Gaius; she’s truly alone for the first time in a week.
And there’s a brush at the edge of her mind, at the edge of her magic, that is painfully familiar, a tugging at a bond she hadn’t known was there.
Mordred.
He’s out there, in the dark, somewhere close by. Is that what Guinevere had been concealing? Is that why she’s here? To be used against him? Morgana leads this army they’re to face, she knows; Morgana wishes to bring magic back to Camelot, to restore the old religion. Is Mordred with her?
Everything he’d said, in that last, fateful meeting, spills back into her mind. ‘It was either you or Camelot,’ he shouts, in memory.
And now Arthur is here, at Camlann, to protect Camelot. Everything Mordred had said suddenly makes terrible sense. And hideously, she realises, fate had used her as a pawn to push him along, to drive him away from Camelot.