“Oh, unkind!” Summer took Mordred’s hand and pulled, wrapping her arms around him as she came to her feet. “And yet you say you love me. I thought you said I am beautiful, but I see now.” She grinned up at him. “Perhaps you agree with Edward, I am unfeminine and therefore undesirable?” The words spilled out of her mouth before she thought, a memory pulled to the surface she hadn’t meant to expose quite so rawly.
Mordred pursed his lips, looking down at her, an unamused expression on his face.”Summer,” he says firmly. “You know I didn’t mean it like that,” he tells her. “You’re a beautiful mess.”
“I don’t know why I said that.” Her voice was low. “Just being here … sometimes … I think of things, I remember things I’d be better off forgetting.” She glanced over her shoulder, eyes sweeping over the Dobrian knights emerging onto the field. “They aren’t envious of you, the way they are, a little, of Mihangel. You — should talk to them.” Summer looked back up at him, but she wasn’t really seeing him; she was seeing the past, her childhood. “I’ll just — I should put up my gear.” She straightened her shoulders, glancing back again, and walked toward the castle.