Page 17 of To Love a Dark Lord

Bert slapped his hand on his thigh. “Deal!”

Somehow, she suspected he was lying.

SIX

Mordred was still not certain whether or not his speaking dreams were ghosts or figments of his own shattered psyche.

He did not know which was worse. Nor did he particularly care, to be honest. The effect was the same. This memory was harsher than the others. He knew the field immediately. While he had fought in many battles with his fellow knights in the service of his uncle, this one in particular stuck in his memory. This one was the worst.

The Battle of Camlann. What the mythos would remember of this day, he did not know. While he listened to other legends and stories with a sort of half-hearted amusement later in his years, he tried to avoid all the tales of Camlann. Sometimes, however, it was inevitable. It seemed that most agreed that this was where he and Arthur fought to the death. That was painfully untrue. He had never once raised his blade to his uncle. But it seemed even the history of Earth wished to paint him the villain, and there was no point in fighting it. The better story would always win, regardless of the facts.

And the facts were crisp in his mind, even a thousand years later.

The mud was thick, as it often was when two armies fought to the bitter end. The dirt and rain mixed with the blood of the fallen. Mordred was bleeding, too, from a deep wound. A lancer had landed a lucky strike between two sections of his plate armor.

But in the end, the other army lay slain. Arthur was victorious…but at a terrible cost. Mordred remembered him standing there, ankle-deep in the mud, chest rising and falling with exertion as the King of the Britons gazed out over the carnage. It was not until Mordred drew closer that he saw that he was not the only one who had suffered a wound.

Blood oozed from under Arthur’s own armor, dripping down his thigh and to the ground below, mixing with that of the others. Panic welled in Mordred—a sudden fear that tore at him in a way he had not known since he was a child.

He ripped his helm from his head, tossing it away without a thought as he ran toward his uncle. “My king!”

Arthur turned his head to him and smiled faintly. “I have not been your king for some time. When will you let me go?”

Mordred’s steps hitched to a halt. That was not what Arthur had said to him on that fateful day. Arthur had instead told him that he believed he might have made a bit of an error, downplaying the fatal wound he had received. “I—” He did not know what to say.

Arthur fell to one knee, gripping his side. He leaned heavily upon Caliburn. “You know what comes next. We both do.”

It was only then that Mordred realized he was not the man he had been so long ago. He was himself from now. With the terrible, morbid iron armor and the rusted, jagged claws. This was not another simple memory, playing out before him like a stage production. This was something else. “Am I speaking to myself?”

“Does it matter?” Arthur undid the fastenings of his gauntlet with his teeth, shaking the piece of armor loose. He wiped his brow, trying to clear some of the dirt, sweat, and blood that was obviously obscuring his vision.

“I suppose it does not.” Mordred stepped forward and offered his king a hand to his feet.

Arthur took it, accepting the help without pause. He had never been an egotistical man. He had never been overly proud or righteous. Sometimes—no, most of the time—Mordred found it positively infuriating how effortlessly noble his uncle had been. Arthur let out a sigh, looking out at the devastation of the battle. “I knew that this battle would be where I fell. Merlin came to me the night before and told me what would come to pass.”

“Then why did you fight?”

“Because I had to be the man I was meant to be. And do what I was meant to do. Fate comes for us all, and we can only resist it for so long. Even you, though you have put it off better than most.” Arthur huffed a laugh. “You always were a stubborn bastard.”

Mordred could not help but smile, just a little, at the insult. It was true. “What do you mean, about my fate?”

Arthur took one step forward, and the scene around them changed and shifted. No longer on the battlefield, they were back in their camp. Arthur was lying on his cot, his chest bandaged. But a fever had set in quickly, and the pallor of his cheeks and the darkness of his eyes told of what was coming.

Their king was going to die.

The other knights were gone. Even Merlin was nowhere to be seen. Only Mordred and Arthur remained.

“This was the worst of it, you know.” Arthur shut his eyes tiredly. “Being nursed by a pack of grown men who were about as delicate as a wild boar. Do you know how terrible Lancelot was at tending to a wound? By God, it was like being stabbed all over again.”

Mordred chuckled. “I cannot imagine.” Although, apparently, he could. This was still a memory, after all—even if it was warped by this strange interaction. He sat on a stool next to Arthur’s cot. He did not bother to give his dying uncle any aid, though the impulse was still there.

This was not real.

“A bunch of bucks in heat, you lot were. I often felt like a nanny, not a king, trying to keep you all from beating each other senseless over some game of cards or some lass from the nearest village. You were all damnably exhausting.” Arthur smiled, belying his fondness for them, despite his teasing.

“And you deserved it. Saint that you were—living in your shadow was impossible.” Mordred rolled his eyes. “Always willing to die for whatever cause crossed your path, without a care for what it would do to the rest of us.”

“You were never meant to live in my shadow, Mordred.” Arthur turned his gaze to him. As always, he seemed to look straight through Mordred—seeing to his soul. “You were meant to be my shadow.”

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