Guinevere glared at the scroll in front of her as if sheer hatred might will it into making sense. It didn’t. It sat there, completely unreadable, full of cyphers and squiggles and B???k’s infuriating handwriting, which was somehow both florid and spidery. Like a trained frog had tried to write calligraphy while falling down a well. She sighed and leaned back, or at least attempted to. Her spine hit the back of the chair three inches earlier than anticipated.

  Being heavily pregnant in Tintagel was no great treat. The castle was all stone and draughts and stairs, which meant every trip to the privy now felt like a small expedition into the mountains, undertaken by a party of one with swollen ankles and a bladder the size of a walnut. Everything creaked. Including her. And her centre of gravity had defected sometime last week, possibly relocating to Powys.

  What baffled her most, however, was how fast she had become this pregnant. By all accounts, everyone told her she looked like she was about nine months along. Possibly ten. Possibly an entire litter. Yet it had only been a few months since Nimue had raised her wizened brow and said, “Well then.”

  Apparently, the presence of Morgan in the castle had something to do with it. Cultivators, Guinevere was informed, accelerated growth. Normally this was a good thing—useful for vegetables, hair, magical talent—but nobody had thought to mention that it worked on foetuses, too.

  Was it better? The baby would be here soon. Possibly at the end of the week. Possibly in the next ten minutes. But it felt like she’d skipped the graceful maternal bloom stage and gone straight to the ‘giant cow in a gown’ stage, and frankly it was getting harder to pretend she wasn’t slightly furious about it.

  She rubbed her temples and tried to refocus on the spy report.

  “Skirmish near Caerwent… rising tensions in Gwent… message from the western watch…”

  She blinked. The words on the page might as well have been written in druidic chicken-scratch. Her mind was more than capable of outmanoeuvring lords and generals before breakfast, but it was now struggling to remember why she was holding paper. Strategy had been replaced by fog. Coherent thought by cravings. And somewhere in the haze lurked an urgent, utterly unshakable desire for pickled pears, which she was fairly certain she didn't even like.

  Baby brain, she thought mournfully. No one had warned her it would be quite this literal. She had once debated troop placements with three of her father's generals and come out victorious. Now she couldn’t remember if she’d already sent for lunch or just thought about sending for lunch.

  Someone coughed politely. She looked up.

  Sir Bors stood there, looking like an ogre who had been put through a very thorough wash. Although, considering he normally was a mountain of a man, he now resembled something akin to a crumbling cliff in a robe. His crutches leaned against the table, and there were faint scars still visible beneath the collar of his tunic. The great warrior who had once carried a broken siege tower on his back now looked as though a stern word in the wrong tone might carry him off.

  “So what do you think?” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About what we’ve been discussing for the last ten minutes. You were listening, right?”

  “I was,” Guinevere said automatically. “Probably. What did you ask me?”

  “I said, do you want my honest advice about childbirth, or the version where everything’s gentle and glowing and doesn’t involve things tearing?”

  She considered. “How honest is honest?”

  “Graphically honest. Anatomically specific. Possibly illegal in most right-thinking kingdoms,”

  Guinevere wasn’t sure she needed this in her life. But someone else talking, was less effort than her talking. “Fine. Proceed.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat with the care of someone very aware that something might fall off. “Right. First of all, the noises. You’re going to make noises you didn’t know your body was capable of. You’re going to shout things. Definitely at Arthur. Possibly about Arthur. You may threaten to murder him. That’s traditional. In fact, it’s considered bad luck not to.”

  “Noted.”

  “And you’ll feel like you’re dying,” he continued cheerfully, “but you won’t. Hopefully. But you’ll think it. And the first time you hold that child, you’ll realise your life is never going to be your own again, and also that you’d already kill a man with a soup spoon to protect them.”

  Guinevere stared at him. “How do you make that sound both terrifying and sort of lovely?”

  “Practice,” Bors said. “This will be our eighth. Or ninth. One of them’s twins.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Guinevere laughed despite herself. “How is Mrs Bors?”

  “Your level of rage timed a million. Why do you think I’m hiding out here?.”

  “Does she ever get tired of it?”

  “She threw a chair at me for breathing too loudly this morning.”

  “Fair.”

  “Fair. You two have wanted this a long time, haven’t you?”

  Guinevere nodded, slowly. There was no point pretending otherwise. It had been the one thing, through war and waiting and worry, she’d never quite let go of.

  Bors shifted slightly, his voice gentler now, as if speaking not to a queen, but to a friend. “Then let me give you the most important advice of all.” He leaned in, careful with his ribs. “Don’t forget to enjoy it. Even the messy bits. The exhausting, ridiculous, sore and swollen parts. Especially those. Because when it’s over—and it will be, faster than you think—you’ll look back and realise those were the best bits.”

  Guinevere didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure about that at all, but she appreciated him saying them.

  Then, a dull thud echoed through the floor. Then another. Shouts, clangs, the unmistakable rhythm of fists meeting practice shields.

  “Training again,” Bors said. “Lancelot’s broken another batch of hopefuls, then.”

  From below came the unmistakable cacophony of weapons clashing, boots skidding, and young men swearing in increasingly imaginative ways. It was training day. Again. Which meant Lancelot was yelling. Lancelot didn’t teach, exactly. He waged small, extremely personal wars against incompetence.

  “No, no! Too late you are! Think before you swing, yes! Not during, not after! Before! Or end up face-first in pig-muck you shall!”

  There was a thwack, followed by a yelp, followed by the solid, satisfying thump of someone being hurled into a training dummy and then through it.

  “You see? Like sack of wet turnips he fights! This one—this one is disappointment given legs!” Another thwack. “And you! Do not aim for shoulders! Aim for guts! Shoulders can be fixed. Guts are nature’s bye-bye time!”

  Guinevere winced as a particularly loud clang was followed by a distant, breathless wheeze that sounded like someone being forcibly introduced to their own ribcage.

  “I told you! Shield is not for decoration! Not hat and not tray!”

  From somewhere across the yard, a panicked voice cried, “Sir Lancelot, I think I’ve lost my spear!”

  “Then use your hands! Rip out his throat like noble badger! Come on! Violence is always the answer!”

  A scream. A crunch. Then, silence.

  Then, Lancelot again, calm and cheerful: “Very good! One of you is bleeding! Now we are learning!”

  “Let me,” Bors said, moving to the window with a groan and reaching for the shutters.

  “I’ll do it,” Guinevere said quickly, hauling herself up with the sort of noise only heavily pregnant women and people climbing mountains make. “I need the exercise.”

  “You sure? It’s a long walk.”

  “It’s four steps, Bors.”

  “For me it is. You’re carrying two.”

  “One,” she said firmly, waddling past him. “Just one big one.”

  She pulled at the shutters with effort, then gave up on the effort, leaning on the windowsill, grateful for the cool air, even if it did carry the stench of sweat and overworked recruits. The training yard was alive with motion. Young warriors clattered against each other under Lancelot’s shrill bellowing. Some had promise. Most had borderline catastrophic wounds.

  Her eyes swept the chaos—and then stopped.

  There, near the far side of the yard, was a boy she’d never seen before. Sixteen, perhaps. Slim. Broad-shouldered already, moving with a confidence that didn’t quite match his age. His spear work was clean and deceptively quick. But what caught her wasn’t the skill.

  It was the face.

  He looked exactly like Arthur. The chin, the jawline, even the way he furrowed his brow slightly in concentration—it was uncanny. And unlike her husband, he had a thick mess of hair, curling slightly at the temples.

  Another bastard. Of course. There was a veritable army of them these days. Some claimed by name, others folded quietly into the ranks. She’d stopped counting at nine.

  But this one was different. Not in what he was—there was nothing new about Arthur’s lineage appearing in inconvenient places—but in how he carried it. He moved like someone used to being watched. He held the spear like it belonged to him. And more than once, he turned with the faintest smile—Arthur’s smile—just before striking.

  She watched as he advanced on Lancelot. The older knight barked something about footwork, and the boy responded with a feint and a twist that sent Lancelot back a step.

  A step.

  “Good gods,” she whispered.

  Lancelot let out a bark of laughter. “Ah! Nearly had me, you did! Nearly! Try again you must!”

  The boy did. And for one impossible moment, he held Lancelot’s spear at bay. The clash of wood on wood cracked through the air. Then Lancelot spun, swept the boy’s legs, and dropped him flat on his back in the dirt. But even as he fell, the boy grinned.

  Lancelot offered him a hand.

  Bors came to stand beside her, leaning carefully on the stone. “Ah, yes. The new favourite.”

  “Who is he?” Guinevere asked, eyes still fixed on the yard.

  Bors shrugged. “Well, he’s obviously, you know.”

  “Yes, I know what he is. I was asking his name.”

  “Oh. Right. I think I’ve heard him called… Mordred?”

  At that, Guinevere’s blood ran cold.

  She didn’t know why. There were worse names. She’d known a Morwenna who’d stabbed three husbands and a Dredric who once set fire to a cow out of boredom. But Mordred—the name settled into her spine like ice. It had the ring of something meant, though she couldn't explain what.

  She looked again at the boy, now rising from the dirt, brushing off his tunic, laughing as Lancelot clapped him on the back.

  There was no darkness in him. No cruelty. Not yet.

  But Guinevere had learned, over years and heartache, that evil didn’t always announce itself with black cloaks and dagger-shaped silhouettes. Sometimes it arrived smiling, golden-haired, and looking *exactly* like the man you loved.

  She wrapped her arms around her belly. The child inside kicked.

  Mordred.

  “Well,” she murmured, “that’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?”