Chapter Text
Lancelot had spent her whole life with iron heavy in her hands, time and water molding her into the spare hero of Camelot. Now she stood outside the royal chambers and flexed her cramped fingers, frowning. All those years, and she could not take one night with a quill!
Then again, she mused ruefully, who knew becoming a knight would mean this much paperwork?
It had been a year since Guinevere had vanquished the Dark Queen and Merlin, ending an age. The kingdom was just now beginning to glimpse what the new one might become; the first months had been a flurry of outrage and celebration, as it always was when the old faced change. Now it had mostly quieted down, and everyone was awaiting the hopeful, tenuous spring.
Lancelot glanced back at Guinevere’s chambers, feeling the ache seep into her fingers again. Perhaps “quieted down” was a simplistic way of putting it. They had all three—Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot—worked to the bone to keep the peace. Guinevere especially. After the things she had done in the war, making choices that had nearly killed her as much as saved her—she would hold onto a healing Camelot with her teeth.
Lancelot sighed. Thinking of Guinevere made her ache in far more than just her fingers. And she did not like to think about what that meant.
“Lancelot?” Guinevere’s voice called out behind her.
Lancelot whirled around, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. “Guinevere!” she said, almost stuttering over the name. Guinevere had insisted on dropping the titles between them, but saying Guinevere’s name still made Lancelot oddly shy. “I am sorry. I am not used to sitting in chairs, or all this writing. I needed to—to move.”
Guinevere smiled wryly. “And I would not understand this, because I am so much more used to sitting in chairs.”
Lancelot snorted. Then she hung her head as she flushed some more. “You have been spending too much time with Brangien,” she accused. She scowled helplessly as Guinevere laughed.
But when Guinevere came to stand alongside her, Lancelot moved aside to let her. After everything (or maybe before anything), opening space for Guinevere was the easiest thing in the world.
For a moment, they both stood staring out at the streets of Camelot. From here, the darkened stones looked quiet and mundane. Nothing like the grand city Lancelot had once gazed up at, awed and angry and swearing vengeance.
Guinevere exhaled deeply, and Lancelot turned to her. She was different, too: steadier, less adrift. The lantern-light flickered over her face and caught in her dark-lashed eyes.
Blue, tonight. They had not stopped changing even after Excalibur took Guinevere’s magic.
Sometimes Lancelot looked at her and was not sure it had ever happened. The sun would flash in Guinevere’s hair, or Guinevere would laugh at something Fina had said, bright and free as wind rippling over fields, and she would be just as magical as the girl Lancelot had met in the forest. The girl who had chosen Lancelot for her knight.
The girl Lancelot had chosen in return, in so many different ways.
Guinevere’s eyes found hers, and Lancelot ducked her head. She felt like a child again, caught stealing.
“What are you thinking about?” Guinevere asked.
You, Lancelot wanted to say. Camelot. Magic. Everything. You.
Guinevere’s mouth quirked slyly, her gaze dark and sparkling, as though she already knew. Lancelot cleared her throat. “We should get back to Arthur.”
[-]
Arthur lay slumped over a pile of tax ledgers, looking so utterly distraught that Lancelot had to stifle a laugh.
Guinevere did not bother, but Arthur’s annoyance quickly melted into relief when he saw her. “Good. Both of you,” he sighed, “I command you as your king, save me.”
Despite his humor, Lancelot could see the exhaustion lining his face. He had committed to reforming Camelot with the same relentless sense of duty he brought to his rule. But he needed sleep, too. Lancelot had lost count of how many times she had caught him before he sagged into the inkpot.
He was certainly sagging now. Arthur ran his fingers through his hair, leaving dark smudges in the gold. “Why is our tax code written like this? I cannot for the life of me figure out who owes what and why, or why there are so many channels the money passes through before it ends up here...”
Lancelot shook her head, mostly fond. When she had been younger, patched-together and purposeless and afraid, she had imagined King Arthur as a shining golden beacon. Steadfast and righteous and all-knowing, because he had Merlin at his side.
The Arthur she knew now was some of those things: steadfast and as righteous as he knew how to be. But in matters like these Arthur was woefully naive. He had not spent his childhood running in stuffed boots and hording bruised apples.
The old anger swelled again, and Lancelot pushed it down. Arthur had spent his childhood with knights who did not care, and then with a sword that was too heavy for a boy to carry. It was a different kind of hardship.
One that Lancelot knew all too well, in her own way.
Guinevere had managed to smother her laughter, possibly sensing Arthur’s real distress. “One step at a time,” she said gently. She crossed the room and laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur deflated as though she had cast a sleeping spell on him.
Lancelot froze.
“Try going backward,” Guinevere was saying. “Who benefits from collecting more money? Maybe Lockwood...” She leaned over Arthur’s shoulder to search through the papers.
The jealousy that pierced hot and sharp in Lancelot’s heart was, she knew, completely irrational. Guinevere did not love Arthur that way. She had talked about it many times with Lancelot: how she had come to him out of duty, how she had idealized him, how she had grown to feel something more. How whatever she felt had broken before it could begin, smothered by their duties to Camelot and Arthur’s iron decisions in the war.
I love him still, Guinevere had said. And I forgave him. But I am not in love with him.
Even if it was not love, Guinevere and Arthur shared something deep. A friendship and partnership, the understanding of a great, shared burden. Lancelot might guard the queen and drag the king from his inkpots, but really, the quiet work of Camelot’s rule rested on Arthur and Guinevere alone. Was an intimacy Lancelot would never belong to.
An intimacy that could be love again, in time.
Lancelot swallowed and averted her gaze. She would not factor into that choice. What, truly, would her jealousy change?
Guinevere frowned. She was still squinting over Arthur’s shoulder. “We need more light,” she said, snapping her fingers absentmindedly. Lancelot winced, knowing how much it embarrassed and saddened Guinevere when she reached for a part of her no longer there.
Except—
With a whoosh as quiet as a loosed arrow, the candle flamed to life.
Arthur went still. Lancelot dared not move.
Guinevere had not noticed the candle, but the shift in the room’s energy made her pause, alarmed. “What is—” she began to say. Then she saw the light come over Arthur’s face, illuminating his wary gaze and his stiff shoulders, and the rest hitched in her throat. Her hand, halfway to the dagger on her belt, jerked to a stop.
And Guinevere screamed.
It sounded like resurrection; it sounded like dying. Lancelot leapt across the room to reach her, cursing herself for not staying at her queen’s side. She was always so far behind when Guinevere needed her most!
Arthur, who was closer, swiped at the dagger in Guinevere’s belt. Anger flamed inside Lancelot that he had not tried to calm her, to comfort her, but it was quickly doused in understanding. With the knife hidden in Arthur’s desk, Guinevere would not try to use it on herself. The wave of relief nearly knocked Lancelot off her feet.
No. Not till she got to Guinevere.
“Guinevere, you need to calm down,” Arthur was saying now. His stern confidence was betrayed by the trembling in his hands, but at least Guinevere had stopped the awful, tearing screams. She was gulping air down but not feeling it, her eyes staring out at nothing. “You need to slow down, please.”
Lancelot stopped in front of Guinevere and pushed down the guilt that rose like seawater in her chest. You, always too late, unworthy to be chosen, what if Arthur had not been there, what if—? “Guinevere,” she pleaded. “Guinevere, can you hear me?”
Still gasping for air as though the Lady of the Lake had pulled her under, Guinevere turned to her. “I—not—not my, this is her body, I am taking her body again—”
Lancelot saw Arthur clench his jaw, hearing the words that had almost led Guinevere to unmake herself. They had all been subsumed in memories once or twice—Lancelot found herself back in the dungeons, chained and unable to reach Guinevere, Arthur in fields of dead Saxons, strewn like used straw over the earth. But neither of them had experienced what Guinevere had. And always the fear crept in the back of her mind: that this time as Guinevere drowned in herself, they would not be able to pull her out.
“Guinevere,” said Lancelot, trying to keep her voice steady. “Listen to my breathing. In and out. Just focus on that.”
“I stole her body.”
“Just breathe, Guinevere.”
“You did not steal her body,” Arthur added softly, and Lancelot glared at him. They wanted to calm her down, not start an argument.
But gradually Guinevere did calm down. Her heaving gasps slowed, then settled until she was breathing in time with Lancelot. Tentatively, Lancelot moved her hand closer, not touching, but offering. Guinevere grabbed it without pause. She clung fiercely, as if Lancelot might disappear—as if Guinevere herself might disappear, if she did not hold tightly enough.
Beside them, Arthur began to hum an old lullaby that Lancelot did not know.
Guinevere reached for Arthur’s hand, too, and he gave it, and they sat clasped together in the dark as the candle that should not have been lit burned away.
[-]
Guinevere fell asleep in Arthur’s arms, exhausted from screaming. Arthur and Lancelot both studied her silently. Lancelot could see the mournful set of Arthur’s face as he did so, and she wondered if he was mourning for Guinevere or for Camelot’s fragile peace. This might break them both.
Lancelot squeezed Guinevere’s hand tighter.
Finally, Arthur looked up, his blue eyes as tired as Lancelot felt. “She should not sleep alone,” he murmured.
“Because she needs someone, or because you think she is a threat?” Lancelot asked. A thread of protectiveness pulled taut inside her, and she felt as though she were teetering on it. She bore Arthur’s crest and believed in his cause. But if he threatened Guinevere...
“You know as well as I do that if this is dark magic—the return of Merlin, or the Dark Queen—Guinevere would want to be watched. The last thing she would want is to spread their violence to Camelot.” Arthur sighed. It was as heavy and dying as the last wisps of the candle smoke.
Lancelot’s lips felt numb. “We cannot hurt her—”
“Of course not.” Now Arthur’s gaze was sharp. “I will not hurt her, and I will not let her hurt herself. So we must watch her.” He stood up, adjusting Guinevere gently in his arms. Lancelot stood with him so as to keep the grip on Guinevere’s hand. Together, reverently, they carried her to Arthur’s bed.
She looked odd here, small and still against the crisp, straight lines of Arthur’s sheets. Maybe it was because Arthur was not beside her. Lancelot knew that they had slept in the same bed before; Guinevere had told her how steady he had felt, how comforting his heartbeat in the dark.
Guinevere always told her these things at night, when she could not sleep and came out to find Lancelot keeping watch, and Lancelot always wondered whether it was because Arthur was not there—Arthur, with his steady heartbeat to lull her to sleep.
“You should go back to Guinevere’s room,” Arthur said, drawing Lancelot out of her thoughts. “Search for anything out of place, anything she might have touched, and tell no one—we must figure this out quickly.”
Lancelot grimaced. “If anyone could figure it out,” she said reluctantly, “you know who it would be. Assuming he does not already know.”
In the dark, Arthur’s jaw twitched. “I do not trust him.”
“Neither do I,” agreed Lancelot, and the next words stung deep, touching a wound she thought she had closed. “Except with Guinevere.”
Carefully, not looking at Arthur’s expression, she removed her hand from Guinevere’s. Guinevere cried out softly at the loss, the sound burrowing into Lancelot’s chest and making her flinch. Arthur will stay with you, she thought. Arthur, because he is better at protecting Camelot, and you would want to protect Camelot.
Arthur laid a hand on her shoulder. “Lancelot...” he said uncertainly. “I am sorry. I know—” His voice wavered, then became strong again. “I know you and Guinevere feel something for each other, and I am sorry this has happened now.”
Lancelot’s laugh felt rough in her throat. “Something was always going to happen. And whatever I feel, I was going to be her knight when it did.”
She forced herself to take one more glance at Guinevere, and the curve of her scarless, tear-tracked face, and then turned to obey the orders of the king.
[-]
There was nothing in Guinevere’s room.
Lancelot searched it from top to bottom, once and then again. Nothing. Bags of yarn—for knitting, though they might serve a different purpose now—notes on the newly-formed council, flowers from Cameliard. Jewelry from Dindrane, all spiked; a less subtle mace from Fina propped up in the corner. Lancelot rolled her eyes at that.
Nothing magic. Nothing dark. Nothing out of place.
Lancelot put everything back as neatly as she could, hoping Brangien would not notice in the morning, and returned to Arthur’s chambers.
She paced outside for a few moments, debating whether to go in. She wanted to inform Arthur of their progress. But she did not want to disturb Guinevere.
And she did not particularly want to see her with Arthur.
Lancelot set up watch outside the chambers instead, leaning her head back against cool iron and letting it ground her. Guinevere had told her she was not in love with Arthur. It was shamefully unfair of Lancelot not to take her at her word. Guinevere had had so many choices taken from her already, knew the pain of being ignored and left behind as keenly as Lancelot did. That was why Guinevere trusted Lancelot never to do that to her.
And Lancelot did not want to—had never wanted to, not even when Guinevere had cut her hand and her heart open and locked Lancelot behind a magical barrier.
But.
Lancelot also knew Guinevere. Guinevere might not be in love with Arthur now, but the foundation was there—the safety, the steadiness. A kingdom ready to grow. Lancelot had seen, too, how Guinevere yearned for Mordred, drawn inexorably to his wildness and freedom, his selfish, honest love.
If it was not going to be Arthur, it was going to be Mordred.
What would Mordred have done in this situation? Swept Guinevere out of Arthur’s arms and spirited her away into the forest? He would not have let anything come between Guinevere and safety, not Arthur, not dark magic, not Guinevere herself. And Guinevere would hate him and love him for it, just as she hated and loved Arthur for protecting Camelot first, always.
Lancelot looked down at her hands, anger and admiration for both men burning in her gut like hot stones.
Lancelot could give her neither. She was not as sure as Arthur, nor as free as Mordred. She could not prioritize Guinevere’s Camelot any more than she could sweep her away from it. Instead Lancelot stood somewhere awkwardly in between—a patchwork knight—and that could not be a real choice.
At best, Lancelot could be what she always had been: a spare. Someone to stay by Guinevere’s side until she did choose.
And that is enough, Lancelot told herself firmly. She settled into practiced stillness, pretending the dark hall was the cave and she was waiting for the Lady to return, carrying gifts of cracked helmets and rusted swords, pieces of armor black with silt. The Lady had taught her long ago to take whatever she was given.
It has to be enough.