The Age of Knights & Dames Page 20

  I could stand it no longer; I had to say something.

  “Your father…he was afflicted by the curse as well. Yet he spent all that time searching for a cure…for you?”

  The queen nodded.

  “I never knew my father in person, but I knew his heart,” the queen replied. “You remind me of him, Sir Nicholas. A good man with a bigger heart. Now, let us continue.”

  Racking my brains for the story details, I said, “The curse tolled terribly on King Arthur and, though he had discovered the secret…”

  I hesitated as the scenes resumed, praying it would reveal something.

  The dark world around us lightened. We found King Arthur hunched over a table in a dark room. The only light was a candle, which he used while pouring over a book. He gave a shout. A tear came to his eye.

  Queen Coralee and I leaned over King Arthur to see what he had found. The text of the book was blurred apart from one sentence. I read it aloud, right as King Arthur did.

  “Upon the kingdom isles where time is averse, the fairest magic can break the darkest curse.”

  My heart dropped. I had been hoping for an illuminating command, a magic spell, or helpful potion. This was more like a fortune cookie.

  But King Arthur seemed to know what this meant. He slammed the book shut and hurried to a door. The next moment, we were outside a half-buried library, running to the king’s knights. Before he could share his findings, one of the knights came running to him.

  “My king,” the knight said, kneeling quickly. “Your son, Mordred. He has taken Camelot. He has imprisoned your queen and intends the most savage harm to her. We must make haste.”

  King Arthur’s face went stony. I could see the gears working in his mind, realizing that the curse was coming to bear upon him, working through his illegitimate son of yesteryear.

  He held out the piece of paper on which he’d written the verse.

  “Take this,” he instructed the knight. “Safeguard it. Should I perish during battle, deliver it to Queen Guinevere. No matter what, save my daughter.”

  The knight took the parchment. Together, King Arthur and his men rode off.

  We flew across the world with them until we stood at the edge of Camelot. A great army stood between King Arthur and his castle. Mordred mocked him from the castle turrets.

  “No,” I gasped.

  I knew this historical event. It was the Battle of Camlann, in which King Arthur breathed his last.

  “This isn’t something you should see,” I told Queen Coralee, but she would not turn away.

  King Arthur and his knights charged. Mordred’s army roared in return. Swords leveled against swords, the air was filled with screams.

  We didn’t get the chance to see the battle. Instead, the scene faded away and we stood among many fallen soldiers. Queen Guinevere, free from her captors, knelt on the ground, holding her king. He was dead, as was his first son, Mordred. Queen Guinevere let out a terrible, heart-wrenching cry that held an eternity’s worth of pain.

  It all faded from view, turning dark. The next moment, we were back in the throne room of Camelot’s castle. The lights were low. King Arthur lay on a table in the center of the room, wreathed in flowers. Hundreds sobbed as a priest gave blessings.

  In the corner, I spotted Princess Coralee and Edith. They were in their teenage years, both crying into one another’s shoulders. Two knights watched over them while their mother wept from the throne. One of the knights, I recognized, was the one whom King Arthur had given the slip of paper with the means to break the curse.

  Beside me, the adult Queen Coralee began to sob silently. My heart broke for her having to relive this terrible moment.

  We’d seen all we needed to, I realized. I had to make this end.

  “If only,” I said hastily, “King Arthur had sought out the kingdom of Dembroch, so that he and his family would be spared.”

  Just like that, we were surrounded by white smoke. It lingered a moment and then, we were back in the cavern.

  I wavered on my feet. The fire burnt near the entrance. I went to the queen’s side. Tears ran hard down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” Queen Coralee replied. “I lost my family a very long time ago. Thank you for letting me see them again.”

  She wiped her eyes. She had a strange, wistful glow about her now.

  “I suppose,” she said, “you would like to know what happened next.”

  “You don’t need to—” I began.

  “Please,” the queen said. “It is time someone else knew.”

  Begrudgingly, not wishing the queen to suffer through any more distressing memories, I agreed.

  “Heartbroken by my father’s passing,” Queen Coralee continued, “my mother Queen Guinevere abandoned her kingdom and joined the nunnery, where she spent the last of her days mourning her fallen king. My sister, Edith, and I were left alone, orphans and heirs to Camelot. Guided by my father’s discovery, his knights sought out Dembroch. They searched for many years without any luck, though I never knew of their search. In the meantime, my sister became my surrogate mother, tending and caring for me. It was unfair to her, to grow up all at once and become the guardian adult, but she never let on how difficult it was. She loved me as much as I loved her. Nothing would separate us, or so we thought.

  “A few days before my thirtieth birthday, one of my father’s knights requested a private audience with me. Edith insisted on being present. It was then that I discovered the truth: Edith was not my sister, and I was cursed. But the knight had glad tidings to share. He had discovered the strange kingdom called Dembroch where magic flowed and time had stopped. Citizens did not age. And the king of this land—”

  “King Richard,” I assumed.

  “Indeed,” the queen replied. “He was willing to welcome me to the kingdom…if I would be his wife.” She shook her head, scowling. “I refused, wishing to stay with my sister and live out my remaining days. My father’s knights, however, gave me no choice. They had sworn an oath to my father and were bound by duty to keep it. And, truthfully, I think they feared what more damage could be done to their poor kingdom of Camelot should my curse come to bear, too. As such, they stripped me away from Edith, refusing to take her because she was neither cursed nor royalty. By nightfall, I was in a strange land with strange people.”

  “Your poor sister,” I said, though I still didn’t think that this revelation excused the witch’s actions of late.

  “I sought to bring her to the kingdom,” the queen revealed, “only to discover that Dembroch had strict rules. It was—and is—a small kingdom with a set population to ensure the proper amounts of food, water, and resources. Any visitors were meant to be the cursed, afflicted, diseased, and helpless, but of chaste heart and decent merit, an old rule established long ago. And so, when I insisted on welcoming my sister and we found and read Edith’s watch all those millennia ago, though it showed a future of ailing and suffering, she was deemed unfit to come to the kingdom, and I was forbidden from bringing her. I argued and fought and demanded to see my sister, but it did no good. The rules of Dembroch are fast, and royalty cannot exercise favoritism at the expense of the good of the kingdom.”

  “You gave up on your sister?” I gaped. No wonder Sorgana was so salty.

  The queen looked guilty as sin. Her eyes brimmed with tears again.

  “It is a decision I regret every day,” she revealed. “And no doubt why my sister despises me so. But I had no say in the matter. My king forbid me from finding her. Dembroch had—has—rules for its people, but also ones for its royalty, as ordained by the mage. No favoring your needs over the kingdom’s, spoken decrees must be executed, no deliberate endangerment of the realm… To break any of them was to abolish my royalty, and that of my king’s. It did not help that King Richard sought to hide my cursed state from the kingdom’s Civium so they would not question his authority or accuse him of bias.”

  “So, no one knows?�
�� I surmised. “About your curse? About your sister?”

  “The Watchmaker knew, but was sworn to secrecy,” the queen revealed. “I believe the seer worked it out, but she never said a word. And it lasted that way for millennia. But with the witch’s arrival, she spread word through prison bars of a curse on the island. Panic ensued. Civium left in droves, those who knew of my ailment and others who believed me an unfit leader. Truly, though the magic still reigned and time was suspended, my curse was coming to fruition.”

  She hung her head.

  “In that way, the witch…my sister… is right. She claims I use people to preserve myself. And, though I have never done this intentionally, I have indeed done it. My king has fallen, my Civium, my defenders… They have all fallen unknowingly to the curse that surrounds me. The Timeless Kingdom of Dembroch will end not because of the witch or hapless defenders or dead magic…but because of me.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said grimly. “The mage said we had until noon tomorrow. And you were brought to Dembroch right before you turned thirty. After all this time, tomorrow is your birthday.”

  And this, I realized, must have been the truth of it. Through her father’s cursed lineage, Queen Coralee had been doomed to lose her kingdom, people, and royalty by the time she was thirty. Though she had escaped the seemingly unbreakable curse by living in this kingdom of timelessness, the curse had arrived anyway and was unfolding at the hands of the witch, her sister. Within twelve hours, the witch’s plot would surely come to fruition, as would the curse. Dembroch would fall and the curse of King Arthur would claim everything his daughter had cherished.

  CHAPTER 34:

  A Curse Unbroken

  “We have to end the curse,” I said. “Plain and simple. That verse your father found… ‘Upon the kingdom isles where time is averse, the fairest magic can break the darkest curse.’ We have to find it.” I raked my brains, trying to remember if I’d heard or read the phrase anywhere. “Dembroch’s lightest magic…”

  Queen Coralee shook her head unknowingly.

  “Your quest, Sir Nicholas,” she interrupted “is to save the kingdom, not me.”

  There was a moment of silence. I felt my cheeks turn red.

  “Actually,” I said.

  The queen’s cheeks reddened too. She had forgotten the specifics of my quest, but now fully remembered them. I was to heal the most broken heart in the kingdom.

  “That will not remove the curse,” the queen said pointedly.

  “How do you know?” I dared. To me, it all felt interconnected. To save the kingdom was to save the queen and vice versa.

  The queen’s brow furrowed.

  “Because,” she finally said, her tone curt, “I have been in love before, and it did not break my curse. King Richard was still—” Queen Coralee choked on her words. She took several deep breaths before continuing. “I have lost much, Sir Nicholas. No one can possibly heal that many hurts that even love cannot heal.”

  “I can,” I said before I knew what I was saying.

  If possible, my cheeks burnt hotter. My heart started beating faster. We were headed into dangerous waters.

  “You care for me?” the queen said, the statement so bold and straightforward I almost died of embarrassment.

  “I—”

  “Then why,” the queen said, her voice once again calm, “did you say what you did in the castle?”

  And we were back, full circle. I’d known it was coming, that I would have to explain what I had said. But I didn’t want to go down this road. There was too much hurt there, too much bad blood.

  “I was just trying to distract the witch,” I said.

  The queen didn’t smile or even blink.

  “Even the greatest lie has an ounce of truth in it,” she said.

  It was my turn to pause and collect my thoughts. Then, unbeckoned and unwanted, it all came spilling out.

  “Twenty years,” I said. “I wrote to you twenty years ago. Dozens of letters. And you read every single one of them.”

  “I did,” the queen replied.

  “And you never answered me,” I said. “Instead, you took our titles. You abandoned my friends and I. You abandoned…me.”

  My heart beat faster—all the cards were on the table now. I might as well have fallen to my knees and held out my heart for her. But, now that I was going, I couldn’t stop.

  “I loved you,” I spat out, anger making the words sharp and dispassionate. “I loved you from the first moment I read your letter, and I didn’t even know you.”

  “You were in love with the idea of me,” the queen corrected.

  “And you’re even better than I ever imagined,” I shot back, angry with myself for feeling this way. “You’re kind, caring, smart. More than I ever dreamed. Only to find out you got all my letters, every single one. That you read them. And one of them may have been your most prized possession?”

  The queen’s cheeks flushed too. I’d been right, and it made me angrier, reckless, justified.

  “So why?” I begged to know. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you respond?”

  Queen Coralee stammered.

  “Why didn’t you call me here to help you!” I shouted. “Just tell me why!”

  “From the moment you wrote me, I knew your heart, Sir Nicholas,” the queen said, still even tempered. “I could hear the knight within the boy. But what monster would I be to call a young boy into a battle that would cost him his life?”

  It was what she’d told me back in the prison, that she’d kept us away to protect us, but I knew there was more to it.

  “Tell me the truth!” I pleaded. “Why did you ignore us? Why did you disband us from the defenders?”

  “I…,” the queen stammered.

  “Come on,” I begged.

  And at last, my wish was granted.

  “Because I cared for you, too!” the queen suddenly shouted.

  There was a beat of silence. She looked shocked at herself. Her gaze fell to the floor. Then, quietly, timidly, she spoke.

  “I loved you,” Queen Coralee said, “and I couldn’t let myself.”

  I tried to slow my breathing. My relocated shoulder ached.

  “What do you mean?” I asked slowly.

  The queen wrung her hands.

  “Do you know the worst part of losing someone?” she asked. “Missing them. Every day, every night, you ache for them. To feel them beside you while you sleep. To see their smile or to feel their embrace. I still ache for my love, my king.”

  My heart sank. I should have known. The queen still loved her king. She was still grieving. Her heart was still broken. And there was no fault in that. Some loves, great loves, last a lifetime and can never be replaced or forgotten. The queen obviously felt this way about her King Richard.

  “Love has not been easy for me,” the queen admitted. “When I first arrived on Dembroch, I wanted nothing to do with King Richard. Our marriage was an arrangement so I would be spared my curse. Love was the last thing in my heart. I harbored regret and sorrow and anger, but no love for the king or this land. And that was a problem for the king.”

  The queen started kneading her hands again, rubbing the burn on her fingers.

  “You recall that Dembroch’s royalty must abide by certain rules? One such rule was a demand that any member of royalty was expected to prove their worth to the flames. Within days of our marriage, I had to touch each tongue. As you may expect, the flame of caritas burnt me. I felt no love for my family who had lied to me or my new king who had saved me just to have a queen. King Richard made me hide the burns and paraded me around as his great love. It was a long, difficult marriage at first.

  “But, in time, I found it in my heart to love him. It took centuries. I discovered the good man I had married. Manipulative at times, crafty, but good and steadfast. At last, it seemed I had found love…only for him to be taken from me and killed. I became lost and angry. While the kingdom fell into my hands and I struggled to keep it together,
I mourned. But then, when I called for Reserves from across the world, who should write to me…but you, Sir Nicholas.

  “From your first letter,” she continued, “I knew your heart and soul. In every word, I could hear your determination, valor, wisdom beyond your years, a childlike innocence…and how you truly felt. I knew you cared for me. I had them when I was younger, too. Flights of fancy. Fawnings. I believe the term today you use are ‘celebrity crushes’. For your character, I allowed you to become a defender, but I did not write back so as not to encourage you. And yet, you kept writing. I witnessed your growing love for my kingdom and my safety. It was heartwarming, and I could see how you were growing. I began to look forward to your letters and, before I knew it, I realized my admiration and interest in you had bloomed into something more. You were no longer a boy, but a young man and your words spoke to my heart in a tender way I hadn’t ever heard. Somehow, I had fallen in love with you. And I knew it was wrong. I couldn’t love a defender while I still mourned my king, but what had taken centuries to manifest with King Richard had overcome my heart in your words alone. I was conflicted and I realized, deep down, that I could never let you set foot on this island. And so I took your titles. I received one last letter from you, only one, and I never heard from you again.”

  “It was all I ever wanted,” I replied. “Dembroch. To be a knight. To be with you.” I paused, trying to collect my thoughts. “Why? Why couldn’t I be here? We don’t have to…be together, but I could have been your knight.”

  “My feelings would have still been there,” she replied frankly. “Regardless of my conflicted emotions, I am also cursed to lose anyone who serves me or whom I hold dear. By inviting you here, I brought you to a kingdom on the brink of disaster, where you would certainly meet your demise. And what of the curse? By loving you, I sentenced you to death. So I took your knightship. I cast you from the ranks of defenders and struck your name from the records. To protect you. To save you.”