As for the magic, there’s an old saying: “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.”
I was ready.
Chapter 5
No funeral is a happy event, but a state funeral was so orchestrated and so formal, that it almost overshadowed the reason for the gathering in the first place. I was allowed to sit with Arthur, but I was also squished into the same pew as Igraine—now Queen Mother Igraine—and Morgaine, who sat on the other side of Arthur and held his hand.
As the ceremony unfolded, I studied Morgaine, whose body language was curious. Yes, there was her annoying insistence on “claiming” Arthur, but there was something else going on as well. Her gaze seemed fixed on the two caskets on display and every once in a while, a micro-expression of what looked like satisfaction flitted across her face.
Satisfaction? It was not until she turned to murmur something to Arthur, and I saw her eyes—pale gray eyes that looked silvery—that I suddenly had the suspicion Morgaine had somehow orchestrated the deaths of Uther and Anna.
But why?
And then it hit me. Uther had no siblings and now, neither did Arthur. If something happened to him, the crown would come to Morgaine. And at the moment I thought that, as if she could read my thoughts, Morgaine looked at me and smiled.
Despite how warm my suit was, I shivered. I’d thought she was targeting me simply out of malice. But now I feared for Arthur. I was no threat to Morgaine, but he was an impediment. And if she had the power to crash an airliner thousands of miles away, killing all onboard, there was no telling what she’d be able to do up close.
The rest of the service was a blur, and I went through the motions mechanically. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself gave communion and as Morgaine sipped the wine from the chalice, I saw dark smoke spilling out of the cup. I looked around to see if anyone else saw what I saw, but there was nothing but expressions of practiced piety on the faces of my fellow worshippers.
Did I just imagine that? It was possible. I hadn’t slept well for days and the smell of beeswax and perfume was chokingly cloying.
Afterwards, as we left Camelot’s little chapel and headed for the courtyard so Arthur could meet with dignitaries and citizens chosen by lottery to enter the inner sanctum, we were besieged by the press. Pictures and video began popping up even before we reached the main hall where a post-funeral banquet had been set up. I saw Ragnall, Gareth’s sister-in-law, checking her phone, frowning at it, and looking up at me. Oh hell, I thought., but I had left my own phone in my bedroom.
Lady Kay was not as circumspect, and since her position at court was highly privileged—she was Arthur’s foster sister—she openly flouted rules when she thought they were silly, despite being the mistress of all things protocol.
When she pulled out her phone, Igraine had given her the side-eye. “Are you checking Facebook?” she asked acidly.
Kay wasn’t ruffled. She didn’t take any shit from Igraine. “I want to see what’s being said about the service. Reputation management and so forth.”
She scrolled and clicked and frowned as she read through the articles. And then she got to one that stopped her dead.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, which were strong words from royals, who aren’t even supposed to say the words toilet, pardon, and perfume. Seriously. One of the first lessons in protocol I’d had with Kay was memorizing a list of words royals weren’t allowed to use, at least in public.
I looked at her and she’d handed me her phone, where an article from one of the more anti-royal tabloids was displayed. The headline screamed, “You’re Not Going to a Party.”
Beneath that was a picture of me staring slightly glassy eyed at something out of frame. The gist of the article was that the suit I wore to the service—and was still wearing—wasn’t modest enough, or respectful enough or not “English” enough. The article’s author took particular exception to the subtle embroidery at the cuffs and collar of the jacket.
I wondered just what I had to wear to be dowdy enough to pass muster. There had been fashion icons marrying into the family for decades, but the “real” royals tended to dress like grandmothers even in their thirties, piling their jewelry on in layers and topping it all off with a silly hat.
Morgaine, of course, was exempt from that sort of scrutiny. She could do no wrong. Proclaiming that Anna had been her closest friend—almost a sister—and not simply her cousin, she’d shown up in an elegant black coat dress accessorized by black diamonds. The outfit had been designed by her favorite designer, Louis-Pascal Gans, whose “House of Parliament” brand specialized in high-end clothes for Eurotrash. I’d met Louis-Pascal a few times and liked him and hoped he was charging Morgaine an arm and a leg for the custom couture he created for her.
The article concluded with a snarky comment that perhaps I’d had a hard time finding something more suitable due to my size and the suggestion that I check out Beige, a shop in Marylebone specializing in luxe plus-size clothes.
Eff you, I thought, because even mentally I was making an effort to clean up my language to royal standards, but all I said as I returned Kay’s phone was, “Imagine if it was your job to do nothing but spew bile all day. How unsatisfying that must be.”
Ragnall heard the comment and that led to a spirited discussion of gossip in general. She’d had a lot of experience being in the public eye in a negative way. “People enjoy being cruel,” she said. “And gossiping gives them a thrill, especially if there are no consequences.” I had heard bits and pieces of the story of how Gareth’s brother Gawain had met Ragnall and how falling in love with her had lifted a curse that had plagued her since childhood.
“The press used to call me the ‘Loathly Lady,’” she said. “Even now if you google my name, you’ll see the pictures. They liked to take pictures.” I could see tears shimmering in her eyes, threatening to fall. I had seen the pictures. She had looked like the “before” shot of a face transplant patient.
Kay clucked her tongue and patted Ragnall’s hand. Ragnall smiled, shaking off her melancholy, then turned to say something to her husband, who had missed the whole interaction because he was talking to Gareth.
People were still milling about after the meal when I suddenly felt something like a rippling in the air. A disturbance in the Force, I thought, turning to see what had caused it. There was a tall, elegantly dressed older man standing in the doorway and he seemed to be the center of whatever it was. The man was a striking presence, his long, lead body erect, his longish silver hair swept back from his forehead. He radiated charisma and power. He was so vital that everything else around him seemed to suddenly lose color and motion. After a minute I realized that everyone had actually stopped moving, that somehow this man had frozen them in place, creating a little temporal bubble that only the two of us seemed to occupy. I knew he could only be one person, Arthur’s mentor Emrys, whose hawk-like face had inspired his nickname, “The Merlin.” I’d heard a lot of crazy stories about Emrys since I’d been at Camelot and judging by his spectacular entrance, all of them were true.
“Hello, Sir Emrys,” I said, not quite sure how I should address him.
“Call me Emrys,” he said, taking my hand and bowing over it.
“Emrys is my true father,” Arthur had told me, “Uther was just the man who sired me.” Arthur had told me Emrys was a mage, but freezing an entire room of people so he could hold a private conversation? That was beyond anything I’d ever seen. I wondered if he could read—
“Yes,” he said simply, answering my unspoken question. “Forgive the violation, I put up wards against it but sometimes thoughts leak through, particularly when I’m first meeting someone.”
“That must make for some interesting first impressions,” I said. He smiled.
“Forgive me for not coming to greet you when you first arrived,” he said. “I had urgent business elsewhere and what with one thing and another, my duty to you went unfulfilled. Until now.”
Duty to me? That was un
expected but welcome news. I already knew I would need allies, not just for myself, but to keep Arthur safe.
“It’s probably just as well,” I said. “I’ve met so many people in the last few days I’m not sure I could remember everyone’s name.”
I was being disingenuous. There was no way I would have forgotten Emrys having met him, even if I hadn’t heard the stories that I’d heard. Some of those stories were very dark. Some of those stories involved Arthur. The one I found particularly troubling was the accusation that Emrys had somehow engineered the murder of half a dozen royal children twenty years before to cover up a youthful indiscretion of Arthur’s. I had never broached the subject with my husband—he had a way of simply changing the subject rather than address topics he did not want to discuss—but there were plenty of people around the castle who were more than willing to drop hints and scraps of scandal at the least provocation.
“I have a gift for you,” Emrys said, “an early wedding present.” He handed me a ring of intricately worked gold set with a large, round, flat piece of black tourmaline. The ring looked much too big for me but when he slid it onto the middle finger of my right hand, it adjusted to my finger, fitting so snugly I knew I wouldn’t be able to take it off.
I looked at him. “Black tourmaline?” I asked.
“To absorb malign energy,” he said. And even as he was explaining his gift, I felt the stone grow warm.
“It’s working,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “There are other protective charms I can fashion for you, but for now, I think this will suffice.”
“thank you,” I said, as he began moving the fingers of his right hand in the air, drawing some sort of design between us.
“That ring is for show,” he said. “This is the charm.” The design became a fiery shadow copy of the ring I wore, and Emrys plucked it out of the air and slid it onto the ring finger of my left hand, where it melted into the skin, absorbed like hand lotion, leaving behind no visible trace, though I felt it burning.
“The other ring is a decoy?”
“Yes. It’ll trap any spell directed at you while the shadow magic continues to protect you.”
Shadow magic sounded serious.
“I’ll teach you shadow magic,” he promised, again reading my mind.
I thought of another question and voiced it before he could. “I’ve heard you can tell the future.”
He blinked, and for the first time I noticed that one of his eyes was clear blue while the other was so dark it looked black. It was strange and made his gaze all the more unsettling. And then he blinked again and the illusion that both his eyes were brown flickered back into place.
“King Arthur will be remembered as the last great king of England,” he said lightly. “And you will be remembered as well.”
I didn’t really put much thought into his answers then—I had assumed my name would go into a few history books, just like all the First Ladies and the first First Spouse had been dutifully recorded in American texts. It was only later that the grim significance of Emrys’ words came home to me.
“The future will take care of itself,” Emrys said. “But for now, the present beckons. We will begin your education tomorrow.” And between one heartbeat and the next, everyone came to life around us.
“Emrys,” Arthur called, moving toward him with opened arms.
“My boy,” Emrys said and engulfed him in a manly hug.
Tomorrow, I thought, and felt a small tingle.
Chapter 6
My training with Emrys began with a three-hour session of tests to determine what kind of abilities I might have inherited and what kind of potential I had. The tests were frustrating because I couldn’t do most of what he was asking me to do. If you’ve never consciously worked magic, how do you even go about turning a rubber ball into a rose? “Do I just look at it until it turns into a flower?” I asked.
“That’s one way to do it,” he said.
“What’s another way?”
“You tell the rose to come out of the ball.”
“You’re just messing with me now.”
“Yes,” he said, making a note on his tablet, which seemed out of place in his tower room full of vintage equipment and strange specimens. He caught some of my thought. “Would you like it better if I was taking notes in a big leather-bound book? Maybe using a quill pen?”
“Stop reading my mind.”
“Why don’t you stop me?”
I blew out a frustrated breath but suddenly, I knew how to do it. I imagined a stone wall springing up between us, a wall so old it was covered with soft green moss and tiny yellow flowers. I had no idea where the image had come from.
Where did this image come from? I thought, expecting an answer, but Emrys stayed silent. “Emrys?” I said.
“Well done, Guinevere.” The wall disappeared and I saw him marking something else on his tablet. He looked up. “The barrier is in place,” he said. “You won’t have to conjure it again to keep me or anyone else out of your head.”
“How did I do that?”
“You needed to,” he said. “that’s the key. Once I know what you can and can’t do without training, I’ll know where to concentrate.” I must have looked discouraged because he added, “I can feel the power in you. Once you feel it too, you’ll find your powers developing every day.”
My sessions with Emrys were so intense that I almost welcomed the hours I spent with my other two tutors. Sir Pellinore, my tutor in English history and culture, was an eccentric character. He claimed to be some kind of kin to Arthur, but no one seemed to know the exact connection. Neither Igraine nor Morgaine paid him much attention, and though the younger lords and ladies in the court were courteous to him due to his rank and age, mostly they mostly pitied him.
He suffered from delusions when he drank, and he was often drunk. Every time he heard a dog bark, he would claim it was the call of something he dubbed, “the Questing Beast.” He was certain this creature was dangerous, and it was his duty—even his destiny—to destroy it. He periodically left Camelot to go on quests to hunt the beast and would return weeks, even months later, with fantastical tales of his adventures. And then the cycle would start all over again.
Pellinore’s main duty was to help me pass the British citizenship test, a multiple-choice quiz that combined no-brainer questions about pop culture with hard questions about law and custom. The legal questions were often so specific and so focused on minute bits of information that I felt like I was doing nothing but memorizing footnotes.
It didn’t help that Pellinore was a terrible tutor, disorganized and often rambling as he tried to explain something I was pretty certain he didn’t understand himself. I told Artie I’d be better off just cramming from previous tests posted on the internet. There were fifteen different tests and when I went through them, I realized that the answers to a lot of the questions were simply common sense. After all, American history intersected with English history for a good couple of hundred years, so it wasn’t as if I was starting from zero.
I was baffled by some of the questions that were probably dead easy for someone who’d grown up in the country, like “What medals did Mary Peters win in the 1972 Olympics?” I hadn’t even been born then and didn’t have the foggiest notion who Mary Peters was or why she as famous. The answer, I learned, was that she’d taken the gold medal in the pentathlon. Yay Mary.
I asked Ragnall, who was only in her early twenties, if she knew who Mary Peters was. “Of course,” she’d said. So, I guessed Ms. Peters was one of those iconic figures you just know about, like Billie Jean King or Mia Hamm or Wilma Rudolph.
“It’s probably a good idea to take those practice tests,” Arthur said, “but do me a favor and keep going to Pellinore’s lessons anyway. Pelly needs a purpose.”
“You’re fond of him,” I said, thinking that “Pelly” was a silly nickname.
“He’s a foolish old man,” Arthur admitted to me, “but yes, I’m fond of
him.”
“Why?” I asked, because Pellinore didn’t seem particularly endearing or lovable to me.
“Because he has a dream,” he said. “Because he follows that dream. Too many people give up on their dreams.”
I almost heard the theme from the Man of La Mancha in my head.
“His dream is to kill an imaginary animal,” I said.
“To protect the kingdom,” Arthur said. “It’s a noble dream.”
It’s all fun and games until somebody’s dog gets killed, I thought, but I tried to look at Pellinore with fresh eyes after that.
My lessons with Lady Kay were somewhat livelier because they at least involved matters I needed to know about, plus frequent breaks for snacks. Her job was to educate me in all the ins and outs of royal protocol, from what shades of nail polish were acceptable to how to sip a cup of tea. Sometimes when she dropped what I considered a particularly silly bit of nonsense on me, I’d try to make a joke out of it.
Lady Kay didn’t joke, but she was a terrible gossip and easy to sidetrack. She was also—and this was a relief—on my side.
“I like Americans,” was almost the first thing she ever said to me.
“I’m glad,” I said, because what else are you going to say to a comment like that? She told me that her father had been given his title by Uther in gratitude for the service he performed fostering Arthur as a child. “That made me a lady by default,” she said, “but it was much too late for me to take on airs and graces like the rest of the muckety-mucks around here.”
I was delighted by her use of the American colloquialism but couldn’t resist tweaking her about her current role. “But aren’t you teaching me how to be a successful muckety-muck?”
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