Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Laura Sebastian

  Readers Guide copyright © 2021 by Laura Sebastian

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Export edition ISBN: 9780593437025

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sebastian, Laura, author.

  Title: Half sick of shadows / Laura Sebastian.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Ace, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020046031 (print) | LCCN 2020046032 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593200513 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593200537 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Elaine of Astolat (Legendary character)—Fiction. |

  Arthurian romances—Adaptations. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.E2594 H35 2021 (print) | LCC PS3619.E2594 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046031

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046032

  Cover art by Adam Auerbach

  Cover design by Katie Anderson

  Book design by Alison Cnockaert, adapted for ebook by Estelle Malmed

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  For teenage me, who started writing this story

  And for adult me, who finally figured out how to finish it

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide for Half Sick of Shadows

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Half Sick of Shadows explores sensitive issues surrounding mental health and suicide. I believe these themes were necessary to tell this story, and so I tried to handle them as delicately and sensitively as possible, combining my own experiences and research with notes and opinions from sensitivity readers. As careful as I have tried to be, some scenes may be triggering to some readers.

  If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or emotional distress, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text the Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741) to connect with a crisis counselor. Both services are free and available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The deaf and hard of hearing can contact the Lifeline via TTY at 1-800-799-4889.

  1

  I WILL DIE DROWNING; it has always been known. This was my first vision, long before I knew it for what it was, and I’ve had it so many times now that I know each instant by heart. Where most visions are ephemeral things, shifting and changing in different lights and at different angles, this one is always so solid that it leaves its bruises on my mind and soul long after it ends.

  The water will be cold against my skin. It will rush around me like a storm, tearing my hair in different directions until it clouds my vision. I won’t be able to see a thing. I will want to kick up to the surface, to breathe the air I know is only a few meters away, but I will stay frozen and sink lower and lower in my whirlpool until my feet finally touch soft sand. My eyes will be closed, and everything around me will be darkness.

  My lungs will burn, burn, burn until I fear they are going to burst. The surface will be so close, I could reach it if I just kick up . . . but I won’t. I won’t want to.

  In a week or a year or a decade, I will die drowning. When I do, it will be a choice.

  2

  THERE IS PEACE at the loom, in the steady rhythm of my fingers dancing over the silk strands like a musician with a lyre, peace in the threads weaving in and out, in the future revealing itself to me stitch by stitch, possibility by possibility. Such small movements, repeated again and again and again, each one small and meaningless on its own—but when the tapestry begins to take shape and tell its story, the infinitesimal becomes infinite.

  As a child in Shalott, I learned how to change the color of the threads to render an image, frozen forever in time, but now I use only white. The magic-imbued strands glisten like opal in the afternoon sunlight that filters into my workroom through the oversized window.

  Outside, the staggering cliff my cottage sits on juts out over rolling, pearl-tipped waves. They crash against Avalon’s shore, the sound loud enough to reach me even in my cottage, but I don’t mind it. The steady sound soothes my mind, turning it soft and malleable and blank, receptive to the magic that buzzes its way through me from my fingertips to my toes.

  I keep my eyes on the threads, watching them weave together tight and solid, the waves pounding in my ears and chasing all thoughts away so that nothing exists at all outside of me in this moment—not Avalon or my friends, not the past or the futures fracturing before me like cracks in glass. Only me, only now.

  The expanse of whiteness begins to shift, like shadows dancing across it, rippling over its shining surface. The threads vibrate softly beneath my fingers, emitting a glow all their own. I feel the change throughout my body as well, something unnamable tugging at my skin and sparking in my mind, threatening to pull me into it, into whatever the Sight wants me to see.

  Though I’ve had hundreds if not thousands of visions over the last ten years, I don’t think I will ever grow used to this feeling: how for just a moment, my body and my mind cease to be my own.

  A rattling knock yanks me out of it, my fingers stilling ag
ainst the white silk strands. I settle into myself once more, and the world around me suddenly feels too sharp, too bright, too real.

  I look up, letting my eyes focus and adjust, and find him standing on the other side of my window, his knuckles still resting against the glass and a mischievous smile playing on his full lips. In the light of the Avalon sun, he is pure gold.

  “Come on, Shalott,” he says, his voice muffled through the glass. He jerks his head backward toward the beach, windblown black hair glinting in the sunlight. Behind him, I can just make out the other three, all beckoning me to join them, to spend the day on the beach, enjoying the sunshine and the sea. “It’s too nice a day to waste cooped up inside.”

  Every day in Avalon is too nice to waste cooped up inside, I want to tell him, but some of us don’t have much of a choice in the matter.

  “Give me an hour,” I say instead.

  His bright green eyes crinkle, as if he knows it’s a lie, but he shrugs his shoulders and turns away from me, his hand going to rest casually on the pommel of the sword sheathed at his hip. When he reaches the others, the four of them wave to me and I wave back.

  You mustn’t strain yourself, Nimue always says when she finds me here in the mornings, bleary-eyed and dazed. Seers go mad that way.

  But sometimes it feels like I’ll go mad if I stay away from the loom too long. Sometimes it feels like scrying is the only thing keeping me sane.

  I watch them walk down the beach with a pang in my chest. Arthur and Guinevere are hand in hand, and though I can’t see his face, I know he’s blushing, like he always does around Gwen. Morgana leans over to say something in her brother’s ear, and Arthur gives her shoulder a shove, making her laugh, her head thrown back, ink-black hair spilling down her back. Lancelot watches the two of them, shaking his head before glancing over his shoulder back at me, his green eyes colliding with mine again.

  “One hour,” I say again, and though he can’t hear me, he must read my lips, because he nods.

  Part of me wants to run after them and leave the loom behind for today, even forever, before it ruins me. But I can’t do that, so I go back to my weaving, picking up the threads once more.

  This time when the vision takes hold of me, there are no interruptions and I tumble into it headfirst.

  * * *

  MORGANA, DON’T DO this, please.”

  The voice isn’t mine, but it will be one day, panicked and desperate and frightened. The small room will be made from shadow and stone, lit only by a few scattered candles, burning down to little more than puddles of wax. In the dim light, the pupils of Morgana’s eyes will be huge, making her look manic as she flits around her room, pulling bottles down from their shelves and uncorking them to sniff or pinch or dump completely into the bubbling cauldron. Her ink-black hair will be unbound and wild, following her around like a storm cloud. Whenever a piece of it drifts into her face, she will blow it away in an annoyed huff, but that will be the only sound she makes. She won’t speak to me. She won’t even look at me.

  Cold air will bite at my skin, the smell of sulfur seeping into the air from the potion brewing. Without a word, I know that whatever potion Morgana is brewing isn’t only dangerous. It’s lethal.

  “Morgana,” I will try again, my voice cracking over her name. Still, she won’t acknowledge me. Not until I touch her shoulder. She will flinch away, but at least she will look at me, violet eyes hard and distant even when they meet mine.

  She will not be the Morgana I know now, the Morgana who was my first friend, who has stood by my side unfalteringly since I was thirteen years old.

  “This cannot stand, Elaine.” Her voice will be calm and resolved, at odds with the chaos in her body, the storm in her expression. “The things Arthur has done—”

  The words conjure nothing in my mind—no memory, no image, no thought at all. I don’t know what Arthur has done to earn Morgana’s rage, but it must have been something truly terrible.

  “He has done what he believes best.” It’s a line that will feel familiar on my tongue, like I have spoken it many times. I will believe the words with every part of me.

  Morgana pulls away from me, making a sound that is half-laugh and half-sob.

  “Then you think Arthur a fool, Elaine? You think he didn’t know exactly what he was doing? What is worse—to have a foolish king or a cruel one?”

  Her eyes on mine will burn until I have to look away, unable to defend Arthur for the first time in my life.

  “Which do you think it was?” she will continue, and I realize the question isn’t rhetorical. She wants an answer. “Is he stupidly noble, or is there a conniving side under all of that quiet erudition?”

  “Arthur loves you,” I say, because I won’t know what other answer to give. It will be one of the only true things I will know, but that doesn’t mean it makes her beliefs untrue. I don’t know how the two things can be unassailable facts, but somehow, they are.

  She will scoff and turn away from me, unstoppering a bottle and letting the shadow of a serpent slither out into the sizzling cauldron. It will die with a shriek that echoes in the silence between us.

  “And you?” I will ask her when I find my voice again. “He’s your brother, and I know you love him. How can you even consider doing this to him?”

  She will begin to turn away, but I will grab her hands in mine, holding tight and forcing her to look at me.

  “The boy you teased mercilessly when his voice began to change? The one who still turns red in the cheeks every time Gwen smiles at him? The one who has taken your side against every courtier in this palace who wanted you banished or worse? If you do this, Morgana, there is no coming back. I have Seen this path, I have Seen this moment, and I am begging you not to do it, not to break us into pieces that we will never be able to mend.”

  Her hands will go slack in mine, and she will falter. For an instant, she will look once more like the Morgana I have always known, her vulnerabilities like sunlight slatting through a boarded-up window.

  She will open her mouth to speak and—

  * * *

  WHEN I COME out of the vision, my eyes take a moment to readjust, to take in the tapestry stretched over the loom, showing a jet-haired women bent over a cauldron, staring intently into its depths, while another woman with fair hair watches on, hands clasped in front of her.

  It’s easier to see it this way than to be in the vision itself. Like this, there is some stretch of distance, some ability to pretend that they are just two strangers, not Morgana and me. It’s easy to pretend that they are brewing a love potion or a healing draught, that they are discussing the effect the recent storm will have on their crops.

  The first time I had this vision was in a dream, before I mastered the art of channeling them onto the loom. It was disjointed and unfocused, difficult to remember when I woke up. Through the loom, I’m able to focus better, and when it is done, I’m left with this: an image, solid and real.

  “The poison scene again,” a voice says from behind me, and I turn to see Nimue standing in the open doorframe, leaning against it. Her silver gown spills over her umber skin like water, skimming closely over her curves and leaving her shoulders bare.

  I’ve been in Avalon for ten years now, and I still can’t help but think that if she were to wear something like that in Camelot, she would end up stoned to death. But we are not in Camelot, we are in Avalon, and Nimue is the Lady of the Lake. She can wear whatever she likes.

  I step away from the loom to give her a better look, though she hardly needs one. She’s right—I’ve had this same vision before, too many times to rightly remember. It’s always a little different, a little broader or narrower, a little longer or shorter—a reflection in a rippling pond, Nimue told me during one of my first lessons—but the same shape, more or less.

  “The potion smelled of sulfur this time,” I tell her, closing my ey
es to better remember the smaller details, the ones that matter the most. “And there was something she put into it—the shadow of a serpent, it looked like.”

  Nimue says nothing for a moment. In the bright room of my studio, the burnished silver circlet around her bald head glows. Her mouth turns down at the corners as she considers my words, considers the tapestry before her. She reaches out to touch it, and as she does, it begins to turn white once more, the image erasing as if it never existed at all. It is a dangerous thing, to leave such blatant evidence of visions lying about. If Morgana were to see it, she would have questions I would never be able to answer. Besides, the only people who need to know about the vision are Nimue and me, and the scene is likely burned into our memories by now.

  But I told Morgana about what I’d Seen in the vision, or at least insinuated it. I always do, in every iteration.

  “Davaralocke,” Nimue says finally, interrupting my thoughts. “A poison—you were right. And among the deadliest when brewed correctly.”

  I shake my head. “That’s just it . . . the way she was brewing it . . . I’ve seen Morgana brew potions before. You know, you taught her—she’s meticulous to a fault. But this time, she was careless. Throwing ingredients in by the handful or jar even, not measuring, not following a recipe at all, really.”

  Nimue makes a thoughtful noise in her throat before turning to look at me.

  “And the end of it?” she asks me. “Did it change at all?”

  I shake my head. “It ended just as it always does: It felt like maybe I got through to her, like I’d changed her mind, but it ended before I could say for sure.”

  For a moment, Nimue doesn’t speak. “Do you know why you keep seeing this vision, more than any other?”

  “Because it’s important,” I say automatically. It was one of the first things Nimue taught me when I came to Avalon, but now she simply shrugs her shoulders.

  “Yes, but that’s not the entire truth,” she says. “It’s because everything comes down to a choice that hasn’t been made yet, a choice the future of our world hangs on. One choice, from one girl.”