Brangien, the only solid thing in a world of turmoil and movement, held her. If she fell in, she knew—she knew—she would be unmade. The water would claim her. She would cease to exist. Sealed in her fear, the passage could have lasted minutes or hours. It was infinite.

“Help me,” Brangien said. “I cannot move, she clings so. I think she is insensible.”

“It is not right for us to touch her,” Sir Bors grumbled.

“God above,” Mordred said, “I will do it. If he wants to kill me for touching his bride, he is welcome to, so long as I get to sleep in my own bed one last time.” Arms lifted her, reaching beneath her knees and cradling her like a child. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in the scents of leather and cloth. Never had she been more grateful for something solid. For something real.

“My lady.” Mordred’s voice was as soft as his hair, which her fingers were tangled in like claws. “I deliver you safely to dry land. So brave in the forest—what is a stream to you?”

He set her down, hands lingering at her waist. She stumbled. Now that the threat was past, shame claimed her. How could she be strong, how could she complete her mission, if she could not so much as cross a river?

An apology bloomed on her lips. She plucked it and discarded it. Be what they expect.

She straightened carefully. Regally. “I do not like water.” She delivered it as a fact, not an apology. Then she accepted Brangien’s hand and remounted her horse. “Shall we move along?”

On her way to the convent she had seen castles of wood that grew from the ground like a perversion of a forest. Even one castle of stone. It was a squat, cross-looking building.

Nothing had prepared her for Camelot.

The land was tamed for miles around it. Fields divided the wild into orderly, neat rows, promising harvests and prosperity. In spite of the presence of more villages and small towns, they had seen no one. This did not inspire the same fear and wariness as the forest. Instead, the men around her grew both more relaxed and more agitated—but with excitement. And then she saw why. She removed her veil. They had arrived.

Camelot was a mountain. An actual mountain. A river had carved it free from the land. Over too many years for her mind to hold, the water had split itself, pushed past on either side, and worn away the land until only the center remained. It still cascaded violently on either side. Beneath Camelot, a great lake lurked, cold and unknowable, fed by the twin rivers and giving birth to a single great river on its far end.