“Please,” he said, laying the viola down in a flat, dry patch of grass. He leaned back against the bark of the tree, wondering how long the Mebd would leave Robin stranded so before she deemed her lesson taught. “Call me Kit. ’
“Kit.” Her snakes moved like a lovely woman’s hair, tossed by the sea breeze. For a moment, he could almost imagine curls caught on her collar, limned like sculpture in the low angled light. “How likest thou the answers to thy questions?”
“The answers you’re guiding me to? ” He laughed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Mehiel. The oaks. Puck. Other things …”
She inclined her head, smile broadening, the picture of womanly waiting except for the flicker of her tail tip.
He pushed a hand into his hair, as much to hide his shaking as to hold the wind‑tossed strands out of his face. “How do you know what you know, Amaranth?” He’d meant to ask the question more subtly, to dance up to it.
She coiled aside and smiled, rising up to pluck a palm‑broad blossom from the branches overhead. She buried her face in the flower, inhaling deeply, and then tucked the twig behind her ear. Threadlike serpents coiled over the petals as Kit watched in fascination. She leaned back, as if considering.
Kit straightened against the tree and folded his arms across his breast. “You are more patient than I, my friend. Older and more knowing.”
“But thou’rt more stubborn, and I should take it into account?” She showed him a bit of fang when she smiled this time, and fussed the lace on the cuff of her flowing white shirt. “I know because I know, Kit. Because serpents are for knowing things.”
“And sharing them with mortals to their detriment?”
Oh, that was fang indeed, and the flicker of a long forked tongue in silent laughter. It brushed his cheek as she swayed forward, and all her hair hissed in sympathy. “If thou knowest thy scripture. Or all the myths of all the world.”
“Is there a difference?”
She settled back on her tail, watching him with an arch assessment that left him quite unsettled. “No. Now that thou dost mention it, there’s not.”
Something–the stubbornness she’d named, or just long‑smoldering rebellion, flared in his breast. “And hast come to send me on the next errand of discovery, then, my lady?”
“I haven’t. I came to hear thy music, Kit.”
He stepped away from the tree, brushed past her–not roughly, and not within reach of her hair–on his way out of the bower. “There’s my instrument. Be so good as to lay it by my bed when thou hast done with it.”
“And where goest thou, Sir Poet?”
Kit laughed and turned back over his shoulder. “I’m going to see a witch about a boy.”
Geoffrey, who was currently too much a stag to be much use for conversation, had said of Morgan’s cottage that one could only find it if one knew already where it was. Kit found it true: he found his way to the stream and across the bridge–after no troll appeared to greet his hail–and down among the roses without difficulty. If it were spring on the bluff above the ocean, it was high summer at the witch’s cottage, and the roses hung damasked red and white beside the door like a lady’s mantle thrown over her shoulder to display the embroidery. The red wooden door was propped open, and Kit heard a familiar voice raised in song over the splash and clatter of washing.
As homely a sight and sound as he’d ever imagined. He let his feet crunch on the gravel path as he came along it, and on a whim raised his voice in harmony. The clinking of pottery stopped, but the singing continued, and a moment later Morgan le Fey poked her head around the corner and smiled. And Kit blinked, because her hair was as red as the red roses that grew by the door, and her skin gone as pale as the white.
“Morgan?” He stopped and blinked, midverse, his hands hanging limp by his sides. “You’ve changed,” he said, and walked closer when she summoned him.
“It happens,” she said, tugging a long red lock out to inspect it. “I blame Spenser. All Queens are Elizabeth, now.”
“Really?”
“No. Only in stories. I imagine Arthur’s still blond in his bower, though. Isn’t he?”
Rather than answer, Kit reached with numb fingers to lift the curl out of her hand. The hair felt coarse and real, not harsh with dye. He fought the sudden ridiculous impulse to lift it to his lips and taste it; instead he said, “You knew about Mehiel.”
She smiled and flicked her curl out of his hands, as Lucifer had flicked his wing. “Yes, Sir Poet. I knew about Mehiel. And I’ve underestimated thee, I see now.” She stood away from the door, gesturing him into her house.
He followed. “I scream within,” he assured her. “How knewest thou?” It was strange to speak to her so again, after such a long time, but he bit back a smile and thought, If thou canstthee Lucifer, Prince of God’s Angels, then thou canstthee Morgan le Fey.
“I have my sources.” She smiled mysteriously and went to stir something in the kettle over the fire, while he tried to decide if he liked her hair that brilliant shade.
Morgan–” He had layers and layers of questions. Careful, teasing questions that he’d written out and memorized before committing the sheets to the fire. He had a thousand interrogations troubling his soul, and moreover, he thought he had the right to know the answers. And what he said was, “My Queen, what is it thou dost desire?”
It was the right thing to ask. God help him. He knew it by the way she straightened, and wouldn’t look at him, but dipped a wooden mug in the spice‑scented decoction seething over the fire and stood and stared at the mud‑chinked wall while she drank it. “The impossible, Kit.”
“How impossible?” He came to her, his slowly lengthening cloak brushing aside the rushes on the fresh‑swept floor.
“Time to add another layer,” she said. “Or thou’lt find thyself tripping whenever thou dost step back.”
“Then I’ll have to learn not to step back,” he said, and touched her wrist with three fingers. “Answer me, Morgan.”
She turned her head away. Her throat had a fine, strong line, flowing into a stubborn chin. He lifted the hand from her wrist, caught that chin, and turned her face back to him, amazed at his own audacity. More amazed when he felt her shiver, before she brushed his hand aside and stepped back. “Peace. I want peace, Christopher Marlowe.”
“I’ll offer thee no war if thou wilt offer me none.” She smiled, but he knew from the way her breath fell that it wasn’t what she meant, and he returned her smile with a slight, thoughtful nod. “Thou’rt correct. It is impossible.”
“Most things worth fighting for are.”
“And is there anything thou’rt not willing to sacrifice to get it, my Queen?”
“Thou shouldst know the answer to that by now, Kitten,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. “And the more we love it, the more likely it becomes that it will be stripped from us.”
“Oh, thatI know.” He stepped back and bowed, a practiced gesture with his cloak. “May I be of service to a lady, then? What may I do?”
She laughed. “Don’t look back. Don’t step off the path. And never trust the guardian.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere before,” he said. She nodded.
“I know. I imagined he would tell you.”
“Geoffrey?”
“Geoffrey the Hart.” She smiled, and reached out to brush his lips with her fingers, and very carefully reached out and opened his collar to expose the brand high on his chest.
Her touch burned, but he bore it irritably. Thou dost inflict this pain thyself.
“It’s inevitable now, what happens, Kitten. The wheels are in motion. But I managed a little trick you might approve of.“
“Yes?”
“The battle–”
“The one when Elizabeth dies?”
“Not when Elizabeth dies any longer, ” she said, and dragged her fingers through her long, red hair. “It cost me something of myself, though it was Spenser op’ed the way. The Prometheans will have to manufacture their rift in the collective soul of London themselves. Elizabeth’s legend will linger past her death. Gloriana will not die with the Queen.”