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"So you've chosen Arthur then," Lancelot says before she's even spoken a word. He's staring into the fireplace, voice quiet and resigned.
"I have," Guinevere confirms.
Lancelot turns to face her, expression giving nothing away. "Do you love him?"
"I do."
"And this isn't because he can give you the power your father never would?"
"No," she says firmly. "He won my heart fairly and now it is to be his alone. We will marry and rule Britannia together, for better or for worse. And you will be our most trusted knight alongside Gawain."
The room goes deadly quiet, the crackle of the fire the only sound.
Lancelot rushes forward suddenly, grabbing her face. Those wonderful blue eyes now filled with sorrow and despair. "Just say it," he pleas. "Just once."
"Say what?" She questions, confused.
"Say that you love me."
Her heart twists painfully. "I cannot."
"You can. Please. Just say it once and I will never bring it up again. I will watch you marry Arthur and I will spend my life serving you both with a smile if you wish it so."
Oh, Lancelot, she thinks, throat constricting painfully. She feels like a villain in this story of theirs - falling for two honorable men and then choosing the one that most benefitted herself.
If she was the heroine in some bards tale she would choose Lancelot, she would choose the love that made her feel like kindling to an eternal flame - all consuming and burning with desire. But she wasn't the heroine in some bards tale, she was a real person, and real people chose the love that was practical, the one that crept under their skin unexpectedly - the love that felt like power and freedom and security. Arthur was all of that and more.
But Arthur wasn't here. Lancelot was and he had only one request.
Guinevere reaches up to touch his face, fingers tracing those weeping trails. "I love you," she whispers like it's her most well kept secret because it is. This love had unthawed her heart that had known only violence and unrest before it. This love was weakness and she needed to cut it out - to bloody her already stained hands once more.
But first, one last moment of weakness.
"I love you, Lancelot, and I do not want you to serve with a smile, but I would rather you not weep either."
His grip on her face goes slack, tears welling in his eyes. "I'm afraid you do not get a say in that second matter, but I will consider the first," he answers back lowly.
She stares up at him, and his hand slides across her cheek to wipe away a tear she hadn't knowingly shed. He steps forward and rests their foreheads together. She closes her eyes and nuzzles into him.
"I love you," he whispers. He grabs the hand she still has on his face and holds it against his chest - right over his heart. "Until my dying day the heart thats beats in this chest belongs to you alone. I will love you as Queen Guinevere just as I loved you as The Red Spear, and as I love you now as my Gwen. However your feelings may change I will always be your Lancelot."
My Lancelot, she thinks, then, My Arthur.
And it feels like her hearts been torn in two: one half burning here with Lancelot, the other downstairs, buried in Arthur's ribcage.
Her quiet, "Goodbye, Lancelot," whispered against his lips is the dagger she uses to carve out the weakness and throw it at his feet before she goes downstairs and accepts Arthur's proposal.