The mist cleared, and he was surprised to find he knew this place: his mother’s bedchamber. She was alive, but barely. Weak with fever, her dark hair stuck damply to her forehead. She looked up at him with glassy eyes. His heart twisted at the sight of her after all this time.

“Arthur,” she whispered through cracked lips. “My medicine. Please.”

“Of course, Mother,” he said, spotting two elixirs upon a silver tray. One was stoppered with iron, and one with gold.

“Which one is it?” he asked helplessly.

“Hurry,” his mother whispered, closing her eyes.

So—he’d have to choose. They didn’t look like medicine. This was a test, he realized. An ordeal.

He opened the iron-stoppered bottle and sniffed. Clear. Odorless. It could be medicine, or water, or the worst kind of poison.

And then he opened the gold. It was exactly the same.

He didn’t know which to give her.

“Hurry, my child,” his mother said with a weak cough.

He couldn’t chance it. Couldn’t give her something that would make her suffer. But he had to do something. And then he noticed a humble carafe of water and a wooden cup.

With a heavy heart, he brought the cup of water to his mother.

“Your medicine,” he told her.

“Thank you, my son,” she said as he held the cup to her lips. “I’ll be better soon.”

“I know you will,” he lied as her eyes fluttered closed. He couldn’t save her. Not even here, in this moment that felt like a memory crossed with a dream.

The room melted away, changing into the castle’s weapons room. He was on the floor, gasping as he clasped at a sharp pain in his side. His cousin Gawain stood over him, the tip of a wooden practice sword pressed against his throat. Gawain’s cheeks were round with baby fat, and he looked perhaps eight years old.

Arthur remembered this fencing match. He had slipped in a puddle of melted candle wax and broken two ribs from his fall. He could feel the wax now, warm and sticky against his leg. They had been tied for blows until then, but Gawain had shamefully taken a false victory, and had bragged to the entire court that he was the superior swordsman while Arthur was stuck in the infirmary. Arthur had lost his taste for weapons after that match. In the weeks that followed, he’d recovered in bed, reading stack after stack of books to escape the humiliation and the pain.

“Do you yield?” Gawain asked haughtily, glaring down at Arthur.

Yes, he thought. I’m done.

“No,” he choked out, rolling onto his side. He climbed painfully to his feet, splinting his ribs with his left hand. “En garde.”

“You can’t win like that,” said Gawain.

“Doesn’t matter,” Arthur said through gritted teeth. “The question is whether you’ll fight me like this.”