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It would be easier if I could say I never loved you.
But it would be a lie. It wouldn't be enough to mend what we've broken, and it would not save what remains of my torn heart.
I loved your light before I loved you. You were the victor of Bredigan, the hero of Badon – and the man my father had chosen to recognize as king. When you were still but a whisper on the lips of warriors, I longed to be by your side. I longed to be part of the future you promised to bring.
But it wasn't the stories that were already blooming about you that made me smile when I learned of your proposal, that made me tremble with joy on the morning of our wedding, that pushed me to kiss you during our nights. It was not the knowledge of the services you had rendered my father, nor the number and valour of the men who had chosen to follow you, nor the enemy's blood on the blade of your sword.
It was your eyes.
You looked at me hungry for something more than just an alliance. Like you really wanted me. As if, in the future you were building, there was no room for anyone else.
And I really believed it. Surrounded by the light of a new spring, I had no reason to think that its sweet flame would go out, that our dreams would be shattered. Fortune had elevated me higher than I had ever hoped. I dreamed of growing old alongside you, of holding your hand as your years came to an end, of seeing our children – with your own eyes and your own valour – inherit the world I swore to preserve .
I did not mean to hurt you. I had been dreaming too long not to wake up, but I hoped it would not be the same for you. I hoped I could protect the illusion.
I loved him as much as I loved you. It should not have happened. If I had never looked him in the eyes, perhaps my heart would have remained loyal to you, despite the passing of the years and the darkness that gathered over us, flowing from the heart of a son that I had not birthed.
But I drowned in the depths of his gaze, in a light different from yours – not the glow of the victorious flame, but the dance of the sun on the waters. In his valour I saw what had pushed me into your arms once, even if his smile hid a sadder sweetness, the awareness that the dream you had passed on to us could not have lasted. And he started looking at me too soon as if he could love me even when my soul would have moved too far from the splendour that you insisted on believing was immortal. As if he already knew then that he would choose me even if it meant letting the world burn around us.
I did not want him to make that choice. I also knew that, in his place, you would never have been able to do it.
I would have chosen you both if I could. It would have been enough for you not to realize the truth until the end. It was not in your nature to listen to suspicions. You have always been good at not seeing what you did not want to see – too in love with your creation to see its stains. We were both too bound to what we had once been for me not to keep lying to myself, telling myself that nothing would really change, and for you to even dare to think that I was lying.
And when for the first time I kissed him as I had done with you, we both shed tears for our betrayal, knowing that it was too late to stop, that already our heart's desire would be enough to scar Camelot and the promise of light upon which it was founded.
When darkness fell, sudden and cruel even if it had been foreseen in my soul for too long, I could only choose him. I hoped that at least he would have stayed with me.
But I did not imagine how far the shadow would separate us. To what extent blood would destroy us, drowning everything I had believed in.
And now that there's nothing left, all I can do is remember and pretend that winter never came to overwhelm us. Perhaps, when the end has come for me too, only the memory of the time when we were truly happy will return to my mind.
I loved you.