Folk sat at long tables eating their supper. Scanning the room, I did not see Lynette. I looked to the dais, where she might have been waiting upon my lady mother, but Queen Morgause must have been taking her meal elsewhere; no one sat upon the dais but—I blinked; it was the blind harper I remembered from my first day in Camelot, the ancient white-eyed harper in a rough dark robe, with the raven perched on his shoulder. He lifted his harp to play, but the raven swung its heavy head toward me. “Dread!” it cried. “More dread!”

I felt its words strike cold against my chest, but folk only laughed, grinning at me and Gawain and Garet, the newcomers; it was just the bird’s joke. We were knights, after all. We had killed people. But now we would sit down and eat. Would we not?

Gull lifted her nose longingly toward the scent of food, but my brothers passed straight through the great hall, and I followed. Gawain and Garet seemed to know their way somehow. They walked rapidly along a corridor, up a spiral stairway, and along a corridor again to the great oak door at the end. Before the doorway stood a maiden. When I saw her, my heart beat like dove wings, for it was Lynette.

As Gawain and Garet strode toward her, she stepped forward courteously to meet them and stand in their way. “Good knights,” she told them, “pardon, but you may not enter here.”

“Surely our lady mother will be overjoyed to see us,” said Gawain sardonically.

“No, I am sorry. Queen Morgause is—” Lynette interrupted herself with a gasp as she caught sight of me. Her lovely face flushed. Her wide, sky-hued eyes gazed at me, and I gazed at her.

As we stood staring, Gawain and Garet brushed past her, making toward the doorway. Lynette came to herself with a start. “No!” she cried after them.

“Brothers,” I said, “wait!”

Gawain was trying the door, which was barred. Garet turned on me. “Still a coward, Mordred?”

He drew his sword, but he had already killed my hope, in that moment, as the sound of my name echoed between the stone walls of Tintagel. Hearing that name, Lynette paled corpse white and stumbled away from me, shaking. “Mordred?” Her voice was a shivering whisper, as if my face had turned to cancer.

I stretched one hand toward her in appeal. “Lynette, I—”

“Get away! You . . . you’re the one they all talk about. Evil, unnatural—”

There was a clash of metal, then a rending of wood as Gawain and Garet broke down the door. Lynette cried out and darted after them to try to stop them as they dashed into the chamber with raised swords. How brave she was. I lunged forward and caught her around the waist, but I could barely hold her; she flailed wildly against me, terrified of my touch. “Don’t! Please! Monster—”