Page 55 of The Faerie Morgana

Morgana didn’t answer at first, and when she did, her voice was deep and soft and sad.

“I saw the king, and the banner-bearer just behind him.” That was the sign of victory, Braithe knew.

“Lancelin was there, and most of the knights.” She sighed.

“There was a cart bearing the wounded, perhaps a dozen. And another laden with bodies.”

“Ours?”

“If they were Saxons, they would have left them where they fell.”

Braithe ventured to ask something she never had. “Are you sometimes sorry for having used your deep sight?”

“Sometimes. Not today.” Morgana shifted, folding her arms around her lean middle. “We will be ready. Graves already dug. Beds for the wounded.” She turned her head to Braithe. “I should speak to the queen, I suppose. Tell her there is good news, tell her what we need to do to prepare.”

“I can do that for you.”

Morgana nodded. “That would be best.”

“I’m not sure she cares, in truth,” Braithe said.

“Everyone cares about something,” Morgana answered.

Braithe pushed herself to her feet. “Some of us care too much,” she said, and flushed a little at the bitterness in her own voice.

“I know, brat. I am sorry.”

“I will go and tell her the news, Priestess.”

Morgana stood, too. “And I will start the preparations.”

Braithe took a few steps toward the door that led to the staircase, but she stopped and turned, her hurt and resentment too intense to resist. “I don’t understand her!

” she cried. “Why should she be so unhappy? She has everything! She is beautiful, she is the queen, and she has—” She broke off, stopping herself before she could say it.

“She has Arthur,” Morgana finished for her.

Braithe’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “She has Arthur. Beautiful, kind, good King Arthur, who adores her. But none of it is enough.” Braithe gazed out at the mountains beginning to disappear in the dusk, and a sigh rose from deep in her chest. “If I had even one part of such good fortune… You can’t understand what it’s like, Priestess, to—to love someone you can never have. ”

“Oh, brat,” Morgana said. “Perhaps I understand better than you think.”

When Braithe left to go to the queen with the news, Morgana sat on, watching the beauty of the white stars awakening in the black sky.

She had almost told Braithe of her most shameful private thoughts.

She caught herself just in time, but it was tempting to speak everything, as if Braithe were her equal.

The truth was that there was no one who was her equal.

Well, except the Blackbird, but it seemed he was lost to her.

Occasionally she thought of climbing the stairs to his room to see if he would speak with her, but then she remembered what he had said, how angry he had been, how bleak and cold his eyes had looked.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bear the thought that he might close his door in her face.

There was no one she could confide in. No one she could tell how her heart had leaped in her breast at the sight of the tallest knight, who could only be Lancelin, riding behind the king, well and whole.

Morgana had always been a creature of discipline.

She disciplined her skills. She disciplined her behavior.

She had always disciplined her thoughts, too, but that hadn’t been difficult.

Somehow she had reached adulthood without having inappropriate or rebellious thoughts, except for minor moments of resistance against her staid teachers, or her slower-witted sister priestesses.

The thoughts intruding on her mind now caught her by surprise.

They shook her trust in her own character.

She wished she had someone to advise her what it all meant. And what she should do about it.

She paced along the courtine, seeking respite in movement.

She did not enjoy self-examination. She had never suffered any doubt about her role in life, or the strength of her devotion to it.

She had always been proud—arrogant even, as the Blackbird had said—but she had never failed in her duty to the king, to the Temple, to the petitioners who sought her help. And yet now—

She spun about and began to pace back the way she had come, her breath whistling in her throat.

The night had grown cold, and the fragrance of the first autumn fires burning in grates sifted up to where she walked.

It was good that she had things to do, preparations to make, instructions to give in advance of the return of the war band.

If she went to her chamber, lay in her bed, the thoughts she didn’t want to have would surge up.

She would see his lean face, remember his dark eyes, sense the heat of his body near her own.

She would dream of him, dream of what could never be, and she didn’t think she could bear it.

This, she understood now, was what Braithe felt. She had considered it to be her handmaid’s weakness, to feel so about a man.

Now it was her weakness, too, and Morgana found herself humbled in the face of it.