Whom could I trust? Friends? I had none. Sweetheart? Ha. My brothers? Hardly. Nyneve—yes, I had trusted her, but she was dead. Sometimes I felt like she was only away from me, riding through the Forest Perilous on a dapple-gray charger, I forgot that she was dead, and then when I remembered, I felt the pain of her dying all over again. Dead, like my mother whom my brothers had killed. Like my—

No. My father was not dead.

My—father . . .

The King.

King Arthur.

How strange—but yes, yes, I trusted him utterly.

Hark to what the cuckoo’s saying:

Shy in the valley the violets grow,

Bold in the meadow the buttercups glow,

Time to go a-Maying!

It’s a sweet song, and sweetly the lords and ladies sang it as they rode out on their many-colored pleasure horses that May Day. But I did not ride with them. I had no lady for whom to gather violets and buttercups, and my thoughts were dark, and I wore a black velvet tunic, black leggings, and black boots, not springtime finery. I rode out, but on one of King Arthur’s hot-blooded black colts, not on a pleasure pony. And I rode a different path.

King Arthur had ridden out early that morning, as always on May Day, alone and somber. I did not follow him; no one dared to follow him. But now I rode to where a fey instinct, almost a dream, had told me I might find him.

I rode down the same cart trail that had taken me southward more than a year ago, with Gull flitting like a white butterfly at my side, on the first day of my quest. Remembering that bright-eyed young knight, Mordred, was like remembering a friend who had died.

Today I wore no helm, no mail, no shield, and no weapons, not even a dagger at my belt. If someone tried to kill me, good. More power to him.

But no one challenged me as I followed the rude road down to the sea.

It was blessedly as I remembered it. The salt tang in the air. The coarse grass where curlews flew. The half circle of rocks forming a cove. The gravel shore. The quay where a coracle waited, cradled on the waves.

And beyond it all, the vastness of the sea, which had tried to kill me, and which I loved.

And sitting on the rocks, gazing out on the gray water with his gray visionary eyes, my other enemy whom I loved.

He did not turn to look at me, though he must have heard the ringing of my colt’s hooves on the stone. I dismounted, hobbled the horse to let it wander in the salty grass, and went to sit beside him.