Avalon Rising (25 page)

But then I look at the splintered mast, married to the other aeroship by way of iron claws, and realize what the Black Knight meant to do.

Galahad’s aeroship pulls away from
MUERTE
with Lena aboard. The Black Knight’s aim knocked free the talons. I whip back to face the devil himself. He smiles a smile of triumph and aims again. The line tethering the aeroships snaps, and I must clutch
MUERTE
’s splintered mast to hold on for dear life.

“Viv!” Percy shouts, the taste of blood in his words.

I wait for the fall, but it never comes. There’s no wind racing me toward the ground, no burst of ice from the winter skies, no propellers slicing my limbs from my body. No—when I open my eyes, I see the Black Knight’s arm outstretched for me. I see myself hovering above the breaking wing. I feel that familiar taste of honey in the air and hear the whispered words of forbidden magic in my mind.

I’m torn from the space and thrown onto the main deck of the enemy ship. I land with a crunch, a wince sprawling across my face and Merlin’s sword at my side. Around me, some of the Black Knight’s rogues circle as the rest fight the knights of Camelot for reign of the skies.

Galahad’s aeroship has lost the edge to one of its wings because of the Black Knight’s perfect shot. It sets the knights’ aeroship into a tailspin, and they’re too preoccupied with staying alive to fire back, and Lena is screaming so ferociously at losing me to
MUERTE
that she’s just barely pulled over the railing. I hold my breath, my hand over my mouth as I watch the spectacle in horror. A long minute later, when the aeroship is too far off to make out fully, I swear the sails regain balance and stability. I have to believe they saved themselves.

The Black Knight doesn’t watch his enemies struggle to stay alive. Because now we’re too far ahead for them ever to catch up.

“Wind in the sails!” he shouts to his rogues, who scurry around adjusting masts and lines to gain speed.

The Black Knight briefly eyes me like I’m a mirage after weeks of wandering a barren desert. He lifts an eyebrow.

“Lady Vivienne, you’ve caused me a lot of trouble.” Then he gestures to a nearby rogue. “Kindly take her weapon before I use it on her myself—”

He bites on the words like he’s holding his temper together with nothing but a lone thread.

“—or we can do this in a way that allows me the
sincere
pleasure of tearing off the limbs of Lady Vivienne’s champion.”

Before they can so much as touch me, I yank my firelance free and point it at the Black Knight. I let the bearings fly free, damn it all. Slam straight into his forehead. His green eye turns strange and shifts in color so that it is more golden now. I pull back and watch, wondering if I was able to kill the Black Knight, and pray the bastard will fall quickly so that I might claim control of
MUERTE
.

But the Black Knight cocks his head at a strange angle, and his lips form a straight line. “You forget, Lady Vivienne. Death is no match for me. Not by a mere mortal, anyway.”

The bearing pushes itself from his skull and drops to the aeroship’s wooden floor, clanking by his boots. He rolls his head on his neck, and as the blood on his forehead disappears, the skin around it closes up.

I clench my teeth in anguish, swearing under my breath as I fire again and again, until I’ve run out of ammunition, and there’s nothing left for me to do but throw the gun at him as he laughs.

I’ve failed.

The Black Knight steps toward me, the girl he cannot hurt. Firelances may be useless, but maybe the sharpness of a blade is a stronger threat. I retrieve Merlin’s sword from the deck as the Black Knight comes closer. Perhaps I’ll be able to slice the bastard into pieces, but what if it’s not enough?

What if his bones are like steel? What if he’s more machine than I originally thought, like Mordred?

Nevertheless, “Stay where you are,” I say, hoping my voice won’t give way to fear.

The Black Knight’s gaze falls upon Merlin’s sword, and he shifts away from me. “Where did you get that blade?” I hold it higher, and Merlin’s sword shines. “You know whose it is.”

The Black Knight recoils, fingers curling into claws and inching towards his mechanical eye in a way that indicates fright.

Do you know what it means to see a rogue whose eye patch is gold, darling? It means he once battled a worthy opponent; not someone in passing, but a well-respected enemy.
I grind my gaze into his. “It was Merlin who took your eye.”

The Black Knight’s mouth quivers involuntarily. A desire for vengeance crosses his face in a dangerous way.

“Give it to me so I can destroy it.”

A current of air gliding us through the clouds throws the entire aeroship into a spin of wind and sunlight, and my footing stumbles from its ferocious stance. Suddenly, the Black Knight has seized Merlin’s sword from my grasp and holds it to my throat.

He won’t kill me,
I tell myself, though I gasp at the sudden move I was too slow to see.
He won’t kill me. He can’t.
“Although,” he continues with a smile of satisfaction, “this
is
a rather fine weapon.” Then, “Take her below deck,” he barely whispers.

And then rogues swarm me by the dozen. As they do, my patience reaches its limit, crossing the border into desperation.

“You’ll never get to Avalon! I swear it! For as long as I live, I’ll never tell you where it is!” I shout as loudly as I can, and through it all, the Black Knight responds with not a word.

His vile men take me down the stairs, past the monster’s cabin, straight to a cell. Two guard me, looking as though they’d love to slice me into pieces.

The winds lift
MUERTE
into the clouds, denying me the chance to hear the echoes of my protests. I stand at the door, and my hands clutch the iron bars. “You’ll
hang
first, you bastard! Merlin’s sword will take your second eye, but it’ll be in my grasp when it does!”

“Shut it, you.” A guard’s fusionah slams against my fingers until I pull back, the sharp pain throbbing my hands. “Bad luck having a woman on a ship, but this one is a league of her own.” The voice grows quieter as the rogues leave back up the steps.

The room is small and dark, and a strong current pushes me straight into the wall. I fall to the cold floor and curl my legs up to my chest. Tears come quickly, tiring but cleansing. With no one around to comfort me, the sobs in my throat are heavy and deep. I sit for a long time, willing away the anguish. And then I do something I’d been dying to do ever since I left Camelot, since I took
CELESTE
into the skies, leaving Marcus’s father behind, since I ran from Marcus and Owen at the inn.

I fall sleep.

There’s a small window in my cell that lets me see the blue sky and an occasional puffed cloud. Birds are no strangers to aeroships, even the large ones—hawks and falcons and other birds of prey who take to the high skies. They soar past me, free, while I press my cheek against the windowsill and watch. The Black Knight has kept me locked in here for the past day and a half, and it’s been maddening, not knowing where the knights are, or Lena, or whether any of them are even still alive.

I glance at my feet, next to which sits a china plate with delicacies such as pistachio-flavored pastries, cinnamon-dusted crumpets, and bland, sugarless tea. Even the most loathed prisoner, it seems, should have afternoon refreshments, regardless of her crimes.

Loud footsteps startle me, and I sit upright. More rogues—two, from the sound of it. They reach my door and peer through the iron beams. One sets his long face prickled with black whiskers against the bars. “We’re taking you to the main deck.”

They pry the door open and seize my arms, pulling me up the stairs before I can gather the strength to argue.

Above deck is like being transported to another world.

I breathe in the saltiness of the air and look around. But the ear-splitting thumps from the aeroship’s mechanics below are enough to stimulate my imagination into coming up with all sorts of torturous ideas they might soon inflict upon me.

The Black Knight is a vision in a crimson robe lined in black leather, though not weighted with it. He smiles when he sees me.

“Ah, right on time. Lady Vivienne.”

He leads me to the bow. Merlin’s blade finds its place at my neck, cold and sharp, and I can already feel its ruthless bite against my skin. “I present the Great Sea of the Mediterranean and the Grecian shores.”

Tall, skinny trees with branches bright green breach the aeroship’s railings. There’s no sense of death or desolation—it’s as though lifting the Fisher King’s curse has rendered this land fruitful, too. The sea is a sheet of sparkling diamond water both loud and boisterous with power, and tranquil and soothing as night. In the distance is an aeroship port with the telltale rogues’ dead-bones-andcogs emblems marking each ship while bands of them run about, readying sails for the quest to seek Avalon.

Avalon.

I sneak a hopeful glance at the sun-soaked sky, remembering what both the Fisher King and Merlin said: the kingdom whose coordinates I know will only appear once I reveal it. The rogues and the Black Knight himself look about obsessively for the lost kingdom in this plethora of rich sea life, but they haven’t looked high enough. Nor have they seen the strange shape of clouds that have cloaked themselves where the sunlight is a little more golden, the depth of the sky, a little more fitted. I stare harder, and I can see it: Avalon, a floating city in the clouds made of gold and shining even more brightly so. The path of the Fisher King has led us here.

“Lower the sails! And keep your eyes on the skies for the knights hot on our trail!” the Black Knight calls to the response of much laughter. He tilts his head toward mine and whispers, “They’re not here yet, but have faith, darling. I don’t think Sir Marcus is about to let you pay the price for the Holy Grail.”

With the curve of Merlin’s blade in the corner of my eye, I glance down the long spread of the Grecian shores at sands so infinite and so white, like the sun spilled its whole self to live by the waters forever. It doesn’t seem like any place could be more beautiful. I search for riders or horses or even aeroships Marcus and Owen might have employed, but there is no one, and I’m terrified of what’ll come to pass once they arrive.

“And then there’s a question of the Lady of the Lake’s prophecy,” the Black Knight continues. My pulse quickens against the blade at my throat.

I force myself to remain stoic, but I truly don’t know what he means, or if he really is just referring to the coordinates locked away in my mind. But it must be about Marcus.

“You won’t kill him,” I whisper, deciding we speak of the same thing. “You won’t kill him because then you would never get the Grail.” I’m not afraid to look him straight in the eye as clouds weave through us.

The Black Knight smiles in reassurance. “Who, Sir Marcus? Oh, Lady Vivienne, I wouldn’t dare of it. He has a much more interesting fate awaiting him.”

“What does that mean?” I say through viciously gritted teeth.

The Black Knight jets an eyebrow high, setting his gaze on a spot in the distance. “Your knight approaches.”

I whip toward the shore, and the brightness of the sun reflecting upon the sands nearly blinds me, but as my eyes adjust, I make out a lone rider. Above, the sensation of the Grail’s allure is so strong, like nothing else could possibly exist unless I were first to deny myself air. The soft gallops in the sand grow louder, only drowned out by the jeers and shouts coming from the rogues behind me.

The rider comes into focus—Marcus, with no sign of my brother anywhere. Marcus, whose hair is wild and scattered across his face. Marcus, whose eyes are bruised and blackened, and even without a dusting of kohl, they’re as dark as night. Marcus, whose lip is bloodied. Whose face is exhausted, deluded, and mixed with the kind of wrath I’ve only ever known Owen to have.

“Marcus, no,” I whisper too low for even the Black Knight to hear.

“Welcome back to Greece, Sir Marcus!” the Black Knight calls, Merlin’s blade now holstered and a firelance steady in his grasp, aimed at its target as the aeroship floats above the sands.

When Marcus’s heavy eyes fall upon mine, his expression softens. But when he sees the Black Knight, his brows draw together in fury. He clutches the reins of his horse tightly lest he would lose his temper.

He reaches inside his thick cloak and furs—he never took the time to remove them in this heat—and withdraws a heavy, marble signet. Two fingers stained red from the makeshift cotton bandage soaked around his wounded hand hold it high. “Shall I cast it into the sea? Let Lady Vivienne go.”

The Black Knight lowers his lips to my ear. “Remember your mother, darling,” he whispers. He leads me toward the stairs, pushing me down the first two. Rogues behind him cackle. “Does he have what I need?”

I have to focus. I squint into the bright sunlight at the signet in Marcus’s hand. “Yes,” I whisper. God knows how he managed to retrieve it from the icy lake.

Suddenly, I’m pushed in full view of Marcus, and the deadly click of the Black Knight’s firelance sounds loudly beside my ear. “The signet, Sir Marcus, and you can have your
wench
.”

Rogues laugh and taunt at a near deafening volume. I almost expect Marcus to leap off his horse, run at the aeroship himself, and slam the Black Knight straight into the splintered mast behind him. To act in haste, as he did when he discovered Owen had told all of Camelot about Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair.

But Marcus is deadly calm, as though the months away from Camelot forced unnatural patience upon him. Or maybe not.

“You heard me. Vivienne walks free right now, or I’ll rip your fucking eye out.”

The Black Knight’s eyebrows lift. He glances at his rogues, who offer mocking chuckles. “The boy speaks like a man!” he shouts. Then softer, to me, “He asks for his own death with words like that.”

I cannot think of how this might be the moment when the Lady of the Lake’s prophecy becomes truth. For Marcus to die—

No. Good is supposed to
triumph
—it has to. It always did in the fairy stories Owen told me through gaslit shadows and silent nights.