Page 137 of The Black Table
“That night at the lake,” Kai goes on. “Once you told me what you saw, what you felt when you…” Kai swallows, sweeps his hair out of his eyes. “I knew. I knew I couldn’t keep the truth from you anymore.” He pivots to Kingston, and his voice goes from a rasp to a roar. “But what Ididn’tknow, didn’t even fuckingsuspect,is that you, of all people,mightyKingstonArcturusPendragon, were fucking around on your vows. Oh, I knew this idiot”—he points at Lanz with the sword—“had had his dumb little spin-the-bottle moment with her after the Sainte-Odile match, whatever. Butyou.In our father’s fucking office.”
He shakes his head slowly. Looks at the distant, distant ceiling. Breathes out.
“It just kills me,” he says. “absolutely kills me, thatI,of all people, am the best at keeping my fuckingword.”
Kingston’s warm eyes are hard, flat, and a sob wrenches out of my throat, shameful.
So Kai did know.
And he still wouldn’t speak up for me.
It’s all too much.
I run for the door. Lanz moves,Kaimoves, as if they’re going to stop me, but they don’t. Can’t. I’m gone too fast, even for them,pounding up the stairs through the unseeing darkness until I burst out on the landing of the house,thishouse, this terrible, beautiful house I never want to see again.
I run through the hall, through the door, down the steps, run, run, run until my eyes are too blurry with tears and my breath is too tight in my chest.
And then I get out my phone.
My fingers shake as I swipe it unlocked, my teeth chattering in the cold again. It’s getting late now, an emergency hour time to call. She’ll pick up?—
“Gwenna?”
And she does.
“Mom?” My voice is thin and scared as a little girl’s, and I can’t make any more words come out. Only a sob.
“Gwenna?” Her voice turns urgent. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
I clutch my phone, stare up at the sky, clench my eyes shut and wish, desperately, desperately, to disappear.
“I need to leave here,” I say at last. “You’re right. You were right. I need…help.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
KINGSTON
“Well.”
When Emrys does speak, his voice is hoarse.
“Well, well, well.”
We’ve been sitting in his office a long while.
Just him and me.
No other knights. They’re at the house.
No Gwenna. She’s…
She’s…
I don’t know.
Emrys takes a deep inhale. Steeples his fingers in front of his face.
“Well?”
