The Once and Future Queen

This time, when I stood to leave, nobody stopped me.

Callum slipped out of the room moments after me. His great arms already lifted to embrace me. I raised leaden arms to fend him off as I stepped back stiffly.

“I need you to help me.”

His eyes were sorrowful. “I am sorry for thy loss, child.”

“I need you to bring him back,” I stated baldly. “He promised he would always come back. I need you to help him. Bring him back.”

Callum’s eyes widened. He was silent as two people passed by.

“I don’t know the castle, I’ve not been here in many years… Is there somewhere we can speak more privately?” His gruff voice was gentle.

I nodded and led him along the corridors until we came to the bedroom I had occupied before my departure, thankfully untouched since the night of the feast. It felt like so long ago.

He sat in the window seat and contemplated me quietly as I sat beside him.

“Well?” I prompted. What was he waiting for? Nobody could hear us here. “Can you do it?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he responded gently. Everyone spoke to me like I was made of glass now, even the usually blunt professor.

“Why not?” I demanded. “You told me that with the right application your magic could do anything, that I could do anything. Well, this is what I want. I want Devyn.”

“Devyn is gone.”

“No.” I frowned. “Everything is energy, right? Then the energy that was Devyn still exists, and you can bring him back to me.”

“No, child. Devyn Glyndŵr is gone. He did what we all thought was impossible: he brought you home. He has left behind the legacy of which he dreamed.”

“What? I don’t care, I don’t care about any of that,” I rejected. “I want him. I need him.”

Callum looked at me, the giant man with all of his knowledge, with all of his wisdom, was helpless. “He’s gone.”

“Stop saying that. There has to be a way,” I pleaded. “Teach me, teach me whatever needs to be done. I’ll do it.”

He just looked at me sadly.

“Please. If I had trained properly, if I’d known what to do, I could have saved him.”

“Magic cannot help you bring him back,” he said. “But it can help you defend those you still have left.”

I had no one. Devyn had been everything. He had been my future, the life I wanted to live.

“He promised me he’d always come for me,” I said brokenly.

“I know, child.” This time, when he reached for me, I let him. Maybe he could prevent the splinter inside me from splitting me wide open.

Everyone I loved had abandoned me. Except one, I thought, my hand creeping across my belly. I would protect her. She was all I had of Devyn, and I could make sure that I was strong enough that nobody could ever hurt her. Whatever it took.

The afternoon passed. I didn’t cry, didn’t weep, I just lay there, suspended, as Callum held me together, in his arms. The weak winter sun faded into night, and servants bustled in and out. Marina and Oban came in to check on me and sat in silence when I failed to respond. The flickering light of candles lit the room, and the fire began to crackle. Food sat uneaten on the table by the fire. I just lay there and let it all pass.

Time was empty and without meaning until our hideaway was eventually interrupted. Marina checked with me before she opened the door but I didn’t care, whoever it was, so the dark-haired girl opened the door wide, admitting the intruders.

“Callum,” Rion acknowledged his former tutor.

“My lord,” Callum said, though he remained where he was.

Bronwyn crossed the room to me and laid her warm hand to my cheek. “Oh Cass.” She sighed, my grief reflected in her tone. I closed my eyes against the emotions in her face. I could barely contain my own pain.

“There are plans we must make. Callum, if you would leave us,” Rion said.

“Cass wants him to stay,” Marina objected on my behalf.

Rion raised an eyebrow at being addressed by the latent urchin I had helped rescue from the stews.

“This is not for debate.” He turned to the Londinium pair. “We will let you know if the lady has further need of you.”

Callum disentangled himself, propping me up in the window seat and, bowing his head, he left, taking the mutinous Marina and deferential Oban with him. Rion and Bronwyn sat at the table while Gideon, who had also entered with them, shut the door after the departing Callum.

“Have you eaten? How do you feel?” Bronwyn’s concern was etched on her face. I watched the bustle in the courtyard below – some of the lords were departing, heading for home. To prepare their defences or prepare for war?

“You must eat,” Rion said, and I could already hear the reminder of the baby that was coming. It was the tactic he used every time to bend me to his will.

“The baby will be fine,” I managed to get out. My voice felt foreign to me, disembodied. The thought of food wasn’t something I could contemplate. My mouth felt dry – the very concept of food seemed alien to me. I couldn’t conceive of eating.

“You’re pregnant?” Bronwyn gasped. The news apparently still hadn’t been shared despite the hours of rehashing yesterday’s events in Llewelyn’s study.

Absently I wondered why he was bothering to conceal what would soon be all too evident. But then I hadn’t shared anything beyond what they had figured out for themselves either. Maybe secrecy was genetic. Or more likely Rion had yet to decide how the information could be used to best advantage. Telling people I had been drugged and unable to use my magic wouldn’t make a difference, worse than that, it felt like an excuse.

A twist of Rion’s lips confirmed the news I had so carelessly let slip.

“What do you want?” Why were they here? In my space. Crowding me. Talking. Breathing.

“We need to be careful,” Rion cautioned. “We haven’t revealed everything that happened yesterday.”

“What do you mean?” Bronwyn asked. “What else happened?”

“Devyn wasn’t dead when he hit the waves,” he began. “We pulled him out, but the wound was fatal. There was nothing we could do.”

Bronwyn waved her hand, quieting him.

“I need to tell you something, about the relationship between… He was the last Griffin.” Bronwyn stumbled over her message, her face tight with concern, her eyes never moving from me. “I…”

“Not anymore,” Rion interjected. “Druid John performed a ceremony and the spirit of the Griffin was transferred to Gideon.”

Bronwyn’s eyes rounded, her head angling to take in the scarred warrior stationed in the furthest corner of the room. Gideon slanted her a wink in reply.

“Oh, thank the Gods.” Bronwyn put her hand to her chest and ran the other hand over her face, exhaling as the room waited for her to collect herself. “That’s what I needed to talk to you about. I didn’t want to say it in front of everyone, but my mother is a Glyndŵr and she often spoke of the legends of her house when we were children. I was afraid for Cass. There is…” She hesitated, lowering her voice before continuing. “In the stories, the lady does not long outlive her Griffin, especially if they are together.”

“What do you mean?” Rion asked.

“It’s just part of the lore passed down by my mother. She has a romantic bent, and loves tales of star-crossed lovers. My mother said there has been a curse that originated in the days of Arthur Pendragon. The first Lady of the Lake to come to our aid, Guinevere, was rumoured to have betrayed her husband with his strongest knight. When he was killed she did not long survive her protector.”

“There was no Griffin then,” Rion interjected.

“No, the first Griffin came many centuries later and yet…” A line appeared between Bronwyn’s brows. “When Jasper Tewdwr was Griffin he was killed in the border wars and the Lady Margaret did not long survive him. There were rumours of an affair between them even though she was married to his brother Edmund. They were not the first either: a previous lady who married her Griffin also faded away after he drowned. This is why there is a rule against the lady and the Griffin being together. That’s why Llewelyn was happy to support Cass marrying Marcus, to keep them apart. The curse is something we have long speculated on in our house.”

Rion looked murderous. “He endangered her like this?”

“I don’t think Devyn knew,” Bronwyn defended. “He was raised outside our house. There would have been no need to teach him the lore as we all thought the line of the lady had ended. I never… I thought they had ended it. Cass seemed to accept she would marry Marcus. But if there is a new Griffin, then all is well.”

Rion exchanged looks with Gideon, shoulders slumped. “We have repeated Devyn’s mistake.”

“What? How?”

Bronwyn’s eyes widened as she tried to conceive how I could already have attached to another Griffin. I had carelessly lost one, only to have become entangled with another so quickly. I almost felt sorry for her, but despite her confusion, I couldn’t summon the energy to respond.

“You know the tethering effect of the handfast cuff?” Rion checked and Bronwyn nodded. Our inability to separate had been an issue on our journey north.

“Once Marcus boarded the Imperial ships and started to leave, Catriona… she was in pain. It looked like it was killing her – some kind of barbaric punishment the handfast inflicts for not complying with its edicts.”

“How did you get it off?” Bronwyn looked to me, pulling short as pieces clicked into place. “Wait, how were you going to get it off if you married Devyn instead of Marcus?”

I didn’t respond.

“There was a loophole. It seems it was some version of the contract charm,” Rion said and the up-until-now silent Gideon grunted. “Any marriage will remove it.”

Bron’s eyes flicked between us. “Then… who?”

Gideon bowed sharply.

“Oh.” Bronwyn’s eyes were wide as she absorbed the latest revelation. “When York hears of this, he will not be pleased.”

“We won’t tell him.” Rion surveyed the room to underline his command.

“What?” Bronwyn gasped.

“Any of it.”

“Why not?” asked Gideon. “Anything that displeases the steward…”

“I don’t know who we can trust,” Rion said. “There has to be a traitor. Someone must have betrayed our mother. What Catriona said earlier, about not being a random match for Marcus. If she’s right, then it was planned. We always thought it was bad luck. There was never any hint that anyone in Londinium knew our mother was dead. We assumed that whatever had brought her so close to the city, the sentinels killing her was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they knew.”

“So?”

“So somebody must have helped them,” Rion said. “We thought the sentinels came upon mother by chance, but what would bring them so deep into the borderlands? And they knew exactly where to find her. Somebody told them.”

“How did Marcus send word to the Empire about where to meet us?” I summoned the energy to ask, suddenly sitting upright. He was right. “We didn’t know where we were going when we left the city. Matthias bid us go to York, but Devyn wanted us to go to Carlisle. We were never meant to be here in Conwy. How did they know to come here? To get the mistletoe? They were near done by the time we got there.”

I had thought only of Marcus, but he must have had help.

Rion nodded grimly at this further evidence of a traitor in our midst. “Until we know who it is, we keep Gideon’s new status as Griffin, and as the lady’s husband, to ourselves. Are we agreed?”

I shrugged as Bronwyn and Gideon concurred with Rion’s plan.

I barely knew who I was anymore. I had already been struggling under the recently bestowed titles that still felt alien to me, and had been further bowed by discovering I was soon to be a mother, and now I was adrift without Devyn. This last I was not ready to face at all.

Wife. It felt incomprehensible.

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