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“You really think this is it?”
Nimue looked up from her papers when Arthur’s question reached her ears, his voice bouncing off the walls of the old temple even after the last word had left his lips. Her gaze slid from him to the sword he was staring at; embedded deep in the altar rock, it was shockingly well-preserved for a sword that was potentially thousands of years old. The Triskelion medallion etched into the pommel showed signs of tarnish but remained clearly defined. Such a sight should’ve caused her heart to sink.
Nimue had spent years searching for this sword. The Sword of Power, the Sword of the First Kings, the Devil’s Tooth, Excalibur. It carried many names in Arthurian mythology; she’d grown up knowing all of them, but her obsession hadn’t formed until she was in University studying said mythology. All of academia agreed – it wasn’t real. Somewhere deep inside her gut, she knew they were wrong. No amount of sneering or ostracization from her peers could convince her otherwise.
But this – this should have.
Because all of her research, all of her sleepless nights and coffee-fueled information binges, all of her effort – it shouldn’t have led her to a sword that was perfectly intact. It should’ve been rusted, chipped, broken. And yet, her insides ran warm. The early English morning should’ve chilled her when they arrived at this spot, as they made their way deep into the woods, as they discovered the mossy entrance to the ancient temple, as they took the winding staircase to the bottom, but it didn’t.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, a tremble in her voice. No, the answer was no, but her heart said otherwise.
“It seems too…” Arthur took a step towards the sword. “Clean?”
“It is.”
He took another step forward, bracing his hand against the altar rock. Before she could ask what he was doing, he hoisted himself atop it. She blinked as he loomed over the sword. His fingers stretched for the hilt.
“Stop!”
He met her furrowed face. “It’s not it, Nimue,” he said, shaking his head. “Look at it. It’s a replica the locals have stuck down here for a bit of fame.”
“No. No,” she insisted. “Our research.”
“Our research was wrong. We’ll try again.”
Before she could retort, he wrapped his hand around the hilt and tugged.
The sword didn’t budge.
If it was possible for her eyes to narrow further, they did. Arthur tried the sword again, but it didn’t budge.
“Guess a name alone won’t make me king,” he said with a laugh, letting his hand drop to his side. Nimue remained statuesque as he hopped down from the table, approaching her side. “Good thing anyways. I can just imagine what Cardin would say about our improper archaeological techniques. How nothing we found could be trusted.” She heard the eye roll in his voice, but her attention didn’t snap from the sword until he waved his hand in front of her eyes.
“Oh, yeah.” She cleared her vision, replacing the sword with his warm smile. “Well, if they want us to do this right, they could’ve given us the grant.”
He shrugged. “We’ll find another lead, submit another proposal.” He craned his eyes, stretching his neck as he took in the temple around them. “Might not be a bad idea to write about this place in the meantime – sword is fake, but this is a lot more convincing. Could be pre-Roman.”
She glanced back at the sword. Something crawled up her neck and across her jawline but when she smacked her cheek, nothing was on her palm.
“Nimue?” Arthur asked. Her foot slid forward, towards the altar rock. He grabbed her wrist. “Nimue!”
She spun around, brown strands of hair flying through the air. “Arthur, I just—I need to feel it, okay? I need to make sure.”
His expression made his feelings explicitly clear, yet he let her wrist go. She pulled her hand towards her chest, giving him a slight nod before turning back to the altar rock. Debris crunched beneath her boots. A niggling feeling in her gut turned into a force – like someone had grabbed her intestines and was pulling her towards the sword. She clambered up, staggering to her feet once she was on the altar. A shaft of life hit the pommel as she stood over it. The hilt was wrapped in worn leather. Another sign this had to be fake. Leather would’ve decayed if the sword had been buried here for centuries.
Nimue tugged.
The sword gave, lifting easily in her hand. Ruins carved into the blade began to glow. Her eyes turned white.
She saw—A lake. A fire. A glimmering gold crown. A bolt of blue lightning. Charred corpses strung up on crosses. Tear tracks. A green stag. A gold death mask. A—
The sword clattered against the rock as she fell to her knees, sucking air into her burning lungs. The images played on repeat inside her head, threatening to consume her until she felt a hand on her back. Arthur’s concerned face was staring back at her.
“It’s real.”
“It’s something,” he breathed. “I don’t—Are you okay?”
She stopped herself just as she was about to shake her head. “It showed me something.”
“Nimue—”
“It did!” she insisted. “I don’t know what it meant but—It showed me something.”
He sighed, closing his eyes. “More research then?” he asked, opening them again.
She nodded. “And we’ll have to take the sword with us.”
He opened his mouth, clearly to argue before deciding differently. “Fine. But I’m carrying it until we know what it does.”
She glanced at the sword. “It’s the sword of the one true king,” she said, “and that’s what it does.”
“Alright then, Your Highness”—Arthur’s pulled her up by her arms; although it was exasperated, his smile was warm—“then it seems it picked you as Queen. But we should probably verify that before we bring it to Parliament.”
She grinned. “If I’m Queen, then does that make you my royal consort?”
He shook his head, a look of promise glinting in his eyes.