The thought made me feel as thin as water, as if I could not support the slight weight of my chain mail, my plain leather helm, the short sword hanging at my side. I should have waited. King Arthur would look at me and know I was not yet worthy to be a knight, far less his son and a prince. When he was my age he was already King, not a stripling in a leather helm. I should have waited, and perhaps King Lothe would have given me a metal helm, a broadsword, and a shield. But King Lothe had shouted at Morgause and gone somewhere; he had not been there to make me stay.

And I had ridden off to Camelot. To kneel before my father. King Arthur.

If I kept thinking about it I would begin to shake. I pressed my lips together and lifted the reins. “Forward,” I said, my voice not as steady as I would have liked.

I sent my horse jogging up the meadow with my escort at my back. Riding across a wide sweep of rippling grass under an open sky was almost like being back to the sea again. A green sea that rose to a white crest: Camelot.

The nobles in their laughing cavalcade rode nowhere near me, but more toward the south; no one should have seen me watching from the edge of the Forest Perilous. But even before I sent my horse into the open, two riders veered away from the others and cantered straight toward me.

On a golden mare, a slim maiden in a green gown, her long hawk-red hair flying. Riding beside her, a handsome knight with a white falcon gliding above him.

I pulled my horse to a halt again and could not move. Gull ran forward, barking gladly.

“Nyneve,” I whispered.

My voice came out such a croak that she could not possibly have heard me—but it did not matter. She cantered up to me, halted her horse beside mine, leaned toward me and hugged me as if I were still a child. My heart went so hot that I did not dare to embrace her in return. I could only stare at her.

I had not seen her in four years, yet she looked just the same. Except for the wisdom in her smiling eyes, she might have been a girl of nineteen. Her husband, though, Pelleas—there were lines around his eyes and threads of silver in his hair and beard since I had last seen him, since that time I had tried scrying in ladywater.

When I had been a child, Nyneve had seemed like a fair and fearsome lady to me; now she seemed nearer my own age. “You’re getting younger,” I blurted.

She laughed—her laugh always reminded me of the rich ringing of bells. “No, I am staying the same,” she declared. “You are getting older. Well come, Mordred!”

“You knew I was—”