Avalon Rising (26 page)

The Black Knight throws me into three more rogues who seize my arms, and I’m too weak to fight back.

They take me off the ship and toss me into the sand just as Marcus leaps off his horse, dashing for me and wrapping his arms around me. I sink into his embrace, more at home now than ever, and he brushes the hair from my eyes, but all I can think of is my mother and how Marcus’s father is still alive, and maybe it’s too late for any of this.

Suddenly, about ten rogues swarm Marcus and yank us apart. “Marcus!” I shout.

Their firelances click back and ready, all pointed at his heart.

Marcus watches each with hesitation, but his face is wiped of surprise. He glances at me. “You won’t tell him the coordinates. Please say so. You wouldn’t.”

But this might be what the Lady of the Lake saw— this, right here, right now. God help me, I cannot let that happen if I have the ability to change it. “I’m not going to let you die,” I whisper. “I have to tell him.”

He stares right at me, those beautiful, stormy eyes so happy and hopeful once. “No, you don’t—”

One of the Black Knight’s rogues seizes the marble signet from Marcus’s grasp, and he makes no move to stop that. They back away onto the aeroship, their aims steady on Marcus.

“Lady Vivienne, the coordinates.”

My name is spoken through impatient, clenched teeth. It’s spoken with power held over another, power I hate and wish I could overcome, and yet, I hesitate. Duck my head to the side to peer at the monstrous demigod behind me.

The Black Knight waits. He waits and waits, and my silence is long enough to assert my refusal to speak. He nods suddenly, as though he knows this, even if he might cast death upon those from Camelot through whatever anarchy the Holy Land holds.

“Very well,” he says. “Kill the knight.”

Rogues lift their weapons and aim, and I realize now Marcus’s role has been played out, in the Black Knight’s opinion. Completely dispensable. Now able to die.

“No!” I scream.

The Black Knight leans on the side of the aeroship beside rogues boasting firelances too large to be conventional: iron-barreled and resting on each man’s shoulder, all aimed at Marcus. “Ah. Because there
is
something our heroine wants. Let’s try again, then, shall we? The
coordinates
, love.”

I breathe in sharply.

“Vivienne—” Marcus says behind me, his voice heavy with exhaustion and defeat, and his gaze on the firelances aimed to kill him if I choose not to oblige.

The Black Knight flicks an eyebrow. “I’ll call your bluff, darling. Is this really the fate you’ll choose for him?” But instead of ordering his rogues to fire, he raises his own firelance and clicks the hammer back, aiming with purpose, and I can already see how close the shot is to being freed into the air.

My heart falters. “Stop!” I shout. The Black Knight pulls back his aim and waits, bold enough to tempt my wrath and that of the Lady of the Lake when we’re so close to water.

But she is nowhere to be found, and so I glance skyward and dig into the place in my mind where there are more instructions now, but for me alone. Instructions as to how to peel back sky and time and space and magic and illusion to show the world what sort of power the Grail boasts.

It’ll be because of my own selfishness that I reveal Avalon to the world. And I will it so. My eyes fall shut. I feel the warmth of this land and the sinking feeling of the sand beneath my boots, and suddenly, everything becomes more golden, and I hear the awestruck cries of the Spanish rogues on the Black Knight’s aeroship. I open my eyes to see it for myself.

The entire sky fills with a floating island, whose ground has been pried from the earth and soars toward the Holy Land. The castle shines, gleams, sparkles more brightly than gemstones. There are towers and parapets striking the sky. And despite the grandeur of this elegant kingdom, despite its size and marvel, it’s as far away as perhaps the moon and stars. It’s a journey itself, just to gaze upon it.

Beside me, Marcus’s eyes fill with amazement, and on the Black Knight’s aeroship, the demon himself has to stagger back a few feet in order to see it properly.

“All this time, you’ve been hiding in the sky, you beautiful world,” he says through a mischievous smile. “Start a course for Avalon!” he calls to his bewildered men, who frantically move about to get the aeroship airborne.

“Start a course!” one cries.

“Secure the lateen!” calls another.

I panic. The Black Knight is going to leave before I get what he promised. I run toward
MUERTE
, wind spilling around my hair and dress and behind me Marcus calling my name.

“Where are they?” I cry frantically, running as close as I can get to the aeroship’s bird-like wings. “You promised. You made a deal. Where did you send them?” Marcus grabs my arm and holds me, his touch letting me know he’s there, he’s here, he’s not going anywhere.

But the Black Knight looks down upon me with pity. “Darling, really. I never
actually
promised to tell you their fate. If you don’t believe me, you can look into my eye at the memory for yourself.” He pauses and removes his golden eye patch so he can stare at the glory of Avalon through his mechanical eye. “Besides, Lady Vivienne, with your alchemist mentor in a city I’ve taken for myself, you have much bigger problems ahead of you.”

He might have already sent word to have the subjects of Camelot be executed or tortured. An entire kingdom of people. My mother.

The Black Knight’s teeth shine between his smile as he lures my wrath. His firelance lifts high, and I see how the next blast will be reserved for Marcus, but when I step forward, he pauses. A mutual understanding regarding Marcus and the element of water next to me, and perhaps he momentarily regrets the death he so carelessly threatened upon my beloved.

And so he sheathes his firelance. “Enjoy your last days, knight.” He tears away from us to order his aeroship higher.

There’s a spell in my head, a thief of magic that wants to break free. For Marcus. For Merlin. For the chance to be rid of this. For the chance at another life.

Don’t …
comes from a place inside my mind from that of someone who shares my cursed name.
Don’t give into magic. Be strong. This is not your destiny. You can choose. Remember how you’re being tested.

Tested. Tested by her and the Black Knight and Merlin and the Fisher King—all treating me like a plaything, a doll with strings like the ones I saw back in Lena’s portside village. Keeping the truth of the Perilous Lands from me. Merlin crashing my aeroship to the ground, straight in Marcus’s path. Being told Marcus’s future was betrayal or death. The strange words Marcus said as he left the inn room.

Merlin, you monster.

What sort of hell are the demigods sending us through? Why would Merlin put so much magic in place so that I would have to avoid it? He really is a monster.

MUERTE
ascends. The Black Knight will claim the Grail, and perhaps he’ll keep it for himself instead of selling it to the highest bidder, as Gawain speculated, making the demigod unstoppable if he ever desired to take the rest of the world for himself. I watch
MUERTE
soar into the clouds toward a world I promised he would never see.

The Black Knight, now bearer of Merlin’s prized sword, at that, will see Avalon before I will. And this might be the worst part of all.

Marcus seizes his pistolník and fires like a madman. The aeroship breaks over the currents of the wind and sails higher. Bearings ricochet off the masts rendering
MUERTE
unharmed.

“God damn it!” he curses.

We watch the Spanish rogues escape to a faraway cloud of shining towers and jagged parapets and bridges with ivory molding and oh the Holy Grail inside. Just as I saw it in my mind all those years. “Avalon,” I say through a quivering, breakable voice.

But Marcus doesn’t care. He lets his pistolník fall to the sand and grasps my face with both hands.

“God,” he says. “Are you all right? What deal did he mean? Vivienne, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.” All calmness dropped, he’s frantic and terrified.

I wrap my arms around his neck as he embraces me. “I’m so sorry, Marcus. I thought… ” My fingers ache to soothe the bruises forming on his cheekbones from God knows what brawl. I want to admit my hastiness, my pride, is what got us here, but a wild exhaustion twisted up in disappointment pauses me from that thought and turns my focus elsewhere. “Why did you go back to my aeroship? I had to reveal Avalon, and you just gave him the signet! Why didn’t you go with Galahad and Percy to—”

“Because I love you.” He rests his forehead against mine. “Avalon be damned. The Grail be damned.”

I remember our fight on that dead winter evening with silent snowflakes floating around us. I thought Marcus had been with Lena. In this Mediterranean paradise, it seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only two days. I’m about to speak, to apologize for all that happened as a result of my stupid jealousy, to return the words he just told me, but all I can do is collapse onto the sand as he falls with me.

This wouldn’t have happened had I never run off; it never would have happened had I simply told Marcus about the Lady of the Lake’s prophecy or heard him out about Lena before the Black Knight could tell me first.

“I’m sorry, Marcus. All I could think of is what the Lady of the Lake told me about you, and then what Owen said, and Lena was there, and, oh God, this is all my fault.” I repeat my words over and over through my pathetic sobs until they get muffled into the air.

Marcus brushes my hair from my face. “What? What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

I take a deep breath, feeling the sobs subside, but just barely. “I left Camelot when Sir Kay told us you’d gone missing, and it changed things. The Lady of the Lake wasn’t sure if your future would entail death or betrayal. Or if Camelot would even get the Grail, and … ”

I gesture to the gold-filled sky and the Black Knight’s aeroship on its way toward it.

“ … we’ve lost. All because I thought—”

“Hold on.” He wipes the sleeve of his tunic across his tired eyes. “I don’t understand. You thought I betrayed … you? You thought I betrayed you with Lena?”

Shamefully, I nod.

He breathes out long and slow. “Don’t tell me you thought—” He bites his lip at the sheer idea, and his shining eyes glance around at the empty seas and sands before finding me again. “Vivienne. It’s only ever been you.”

His words cast a warmth over me. “But you were so distant.” My voice is pathetic as I say it, but I have to know.

“Because I thought the Grail was impossible, and to return empty-handed would mean no chance to relinquish my knighthood. Or it would mean exile. There was no hope, unless we were to … ”

He pauses, his lips slightly parted, as though he’s about to ask the same thing he’d asked so many months ago, when the people of Camelot took all they owned to escape a kingdom haunted and damned. When his hands captured my tear-stained face in the privacy of the royal stables.
Leave with me.

And we could. We could run away to another world and leave all this behind.

But it’s not about that anymore. Merlin said Azur would need the Grail to defeat the rogues. Jerusalem will fall and people will die if we don’t stop the Black Knight.

I touch Marcus’s face with my fingertips. “Someone once told me there was always hope when it was a question of whether we should love.”

Marcus breathes out long and slow, eyes heavy with tears and exhaustion. Then he smiles, just as he did six months ago. A boyish smile. A smile that tells me my words have loosened a weight on his shoulders.

But I haven’t said everything just yet. I glance at my sandy hands and silently beg Marcus to forgive me for what else I must tell him. “When I saw the Fisher King—”

I pause, uncertain of how to say it. Marcus is here, and he’s listening, and he’ll hate me for this, and I cannot put it off any longer.

“Marcus, your father is alive,” I say quietly.

For a long time, he doesn’t move. He stares like he might not have heard me. His lip quivers, and he frowns, forming his mouth as though to ask
What?
but losing the will as he pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, breathing my apology. “Marcus, I’m so sorry. He helped me free the Fisher King in the Perilous Lands. It would have been impossible without him. He stayed in the infirmary after Morgan’s war and only left to forge the sword Guinevere knighted you with. He watched the ceremony, Marcus.” I think of the tall, dark figure leaving the grand hall after Marcus was made a knight of Camelot and wonder again how I could have missed it.

Marcus’s eyes widen, and he stumbles to his feet, momentarily losing his balance in the sand. He runs to his horse’s saddle, where his sword has been holstered, and pulls it out of the mechanism. He studies the blade, the hilt, finding a small artisan signature engraved into the steel.

“I thought it was a spare they’d had, or … ”

I stand, but I do not move to his side. I watch his hand clamp over his mouth as the fullness of the truth comes over him. I watch his shoulders slouch and shake from the same sadness I saw in him when the farmlands in Camelot burned.

“Marcus, I—”

He faces me. “How could you not tell me this?” he shouts, throwing the blade across the sand and letting it stick out of the ground. “You’ve known this whole time and you didn’t say a
thing
? How could you
keep
something like that from me?”

My face is wet with tears, and my fingers steeple over my mouth as I watch him pull back to curse into the air, his anger echoing wildly against the sky.

I find my breath. “I thought you’d want to return—”

“
Of course
I want to return, Vivienne! Do you think I actually
wanted
to be a knight? I only did this for their sake! So their deaths would mean something! Were you so set on keeping my status raised to that of a knight’s that you felt such a horrible lie necessary?”

I should be devastated that all of this is coming out of him now, but then a surge of anger comes over me. “That’s not why I didn’t tell you! Do you think me that shallow, Marcus, just because I grew up inside the castle instead of in the farmlands? There are people in the world who need the Grail more than ever—”