The Camelot Betrayal Read online

  ALSO BY KIERSTEN WHITE

  Paranormalcy

  Supernaturally

  Endlessly

  Mind Games

  Perfect Lies

  The Chaos of Stars

  Illusions of Fate

  And I Darken

  Now I Rise

  Bright We Burn

  The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

  Slayer

  Chosen

  The Guinevere Deception

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Kiersten Brazier

  Cover art copyright © 2020 by Alex Dos Diaz

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: White, Kiersten, author.

  Title: The Camelot betrayal / Kiersten White.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2020] | Series: Camelot rising ; 2 | Audience: Ages 12 and Up. | Summary: When a rescue goes awry and results in the death of something precious, the devastated Guinevere, impersonated by a changeling witch, returns to Camelot to find the greatest threat yet—the real Guinevere’s younger sister.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019051653 | ISBN 978-0-525-58171-0 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-525-58172-7 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-525-58173-4 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-593-30548-5 (intl. tr. pbk.)

  Subjects: CYAC: Guenevere, Queen (Legendary character)—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Impersonation—Fiction. | Arthur, King—Fiction. | Knights and knighthood—Fiction. | Camelot (Legendary place)—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.W583764 Cam 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780525581734

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Kiersten White

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Tristan and Isolde and Brangien

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Lancelot and the Lady

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The Enchantress Morgan Le Fay

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To eighteen-year-old me, for choosing right.

  And to my husband, for letting me choose him.

  The castle breathes out a sigh, then breathes in, drawing her along. She trails her fingers against carvings, everything in sharp relief, perfect lines telling stories of light and darkness and struggle and love and growth and death, all the things that make the world what it is. Beauty and terror and the wonder that encompasses both.

  She drifts on the breath of the stone, through halls and rooms and then out to the streets, running like channels of a river down to where the lake waits, cold and ancient and eternal. Water always finds a way back to itself. She turns toward the castle to find the streets are flooded, endless streams sculpting Camelot. The current rushes against her as she is drawn back to the castle, but not inside. She flows up the outside, along one of the curving staircases, not worn with time but precise and fresh. Slipping past the pillars of a hidden alcove, she finds herself above a sheer drop into darkness. She can hear it, far beneath her, waiting.

  The water.

  The lake.

  The Lady.

  The castle breathes out once more, pushing her off the edge, and she falls.

  Guinevere’s room was dark, night more a cloak than the bed curtains she never drew. The dream clung like smoke, so real that she expected to find the surrounding stone newly carved and running with water.

  She put a trembling hand to the wall behind her, fingers curled by dread that she would find the carvings there, fresh and recognizable. But they were only hints of memories beneath her fingers. The castle was as it had been since she arrived: ancient and worn with the passage of unknowable time.

  Yet she could not escape the feel of that fall, air rushing around her, knowing what would meet her at the bottom. She climbed out of bed and pulled on her robe. Brangien shifted softly in the corner, lost in her own dreams with her beloved Isolde. Listening to her, Guinevere realized a horrible truth.

  She should not be able to dream at all.

  She had used knot magic to give all her dreams to Brangien for weeks now. Ever since her captivity at the hands of Maleagant, ever since Merlin had pushed her out of the dreamspace that connected them, ever since she was tricked by Mordred into giving the fairy Dark Queen physical form once more, ever since she chose to return to Camelot instead of escaping—no, not escaping, running away—with Mordred, she had had no desire to dream. Which meant that whatever dream she just had…it was not her own.

  As she hurried through the night-black secret passage against the mountain that connected her room to Arthur’s, she folded her arms around herself, unwilling to touch the stone again. Distrustful of it. She was awake enough now to check that every knot she was connected to was still in p
lace. The knot on the door to the secret tunnel entrance into Camelot that only she, Arthur, and Mordred knew about. The knot on her own door, her own windows, every way that the fairy queen—or her grandson, Mordred—might access Guinevere.

  Nothing. Everything was as she had left it, all protections in place. Which terrified her even more.

  She opened the door to Arthur’s room and drew aside the tapestry. She half expected him to be sitting at his table, writing letters or reading them, his candle merely a pool of wax and a flickering wick. That was how she found him most nights. But his room was dark.

  “Arthur?” she whispered, moving toward his bed. There was a rustle of blankets, and then quick movements and the telltale hiss of a sword being unsheathed—along with the swirling sickness and overwhelming dread that hit her whenever she was near Excalibur.

  “Put it away!” she gasped.

  “Guinevere?”

  She could not hear over the pounding in her ears, but she could feel as soon as Excalibur was once again in its sheath. She tripped against the bed and turned to sit on it. The shaking was coming, violent trembling that no amount of heat could warm away.

  “Sorry.” Arthur pulled her next to him. He tucked the blankets over them both, holding her close as though he could stop her shaking by his strength alone. “I was not awake. It is always my first response these days, ever since…”

  He did not finish. Neither of them needed him to. They had both watched the Dark Queen emerge, a creeping nightmare made real with the flesh of a thousand beetles, twisting roots, and Guinevere’s own blood. She did not question why Arthur’s reaction to being startled awake would be to seize their one true defense against that abomination.

  “What did you need?” He brushed her hair from the pillow so that he could lie as close to her as possible.

  “I had a dream,” she whispered to the darkness. It felt further away, less important now that he was holding her.

  “A bad dream?”

  “I should not have dreams at all. I knotted them away.” She had not told him about what she was doing for Brangien, or why. That was Brangien’s secret to keep or to reveal, not Guinevere’s. And with magic banned in Camelot, she would not risk her friend’s safety.

  Arthur hmmed thoughtfully. They were so close that she could feel the vibrations in his chest. “Perhaps the knot came undone? Maybe you did not do the magic right?”

  “Maybe.” Guinevere wanted to agree. It would be easier, safer, simpler if that were the case. But she did not think it was. There had been something so visceral about the dream. It was a dream with purpose, a dream with intent. And it had not been her own dream, of that she was certain. But…could she be certain? Her mind had been tampered with—holes created and holes filled by Merlin, whether or not he meant to. How could she say what her mind would dream?

  “Do you ever feel like you do not know yourself?” she whispered.

  Arthur was quiet for a long time. Finally, he answered, his voice gentle. “No. Though there are parts of myself I wish I did not have to know. Why? Do you feel that way?”

  “All the time.”

  Arthur settled, one arm around her, his hand next to her head, stroking her hair. The fight had left his body and she could feel him moving back toward sleep. Arthur was ready at a moment’s notice to face any threat, but he was also very good at accepting a threat was not there and releasing whatever was coiled to strike. She envied that ability. She had constant tension from her magic knotted into the rooms and surrounding city, and even if that had not been the case, she found herself perpetually mulling over the figurative knots of her life and her choices, checking for weaknesses, for where she could have done better.

  “This is a problem I can help with,” Arthur said. “I know you very well. You are kind. You are clever. You have far more a sense of humor than any princess could.”

  “But I am not a princess.”

  “No, but you are a queen.” She could hear his smile. His arm around her was comfortingly heavy, her trembling almost past. “You are strong. You are brave. You are quite short.”

  She laughed, poking him in the side. “That is not a character trait.”

  “No? Hmm.”

  She felt him drifting further away, back to sleep.

  “You are Guinevere,” he murmured, and then his breathing went soft and even.

  She wished with a ferocious longing that any of it were true.

  It had been a long summer, and autumn was only beginning to appear with a hint of chill in the evenings and the promise of work to come. Guinevere understood things like harvests now, how much went into them, how vital they were. A good harvest was the difference between a comfortable winter and a deadly one. With a city as large as Camelot, already they were preparing. As queen, she had taken over Mordred’s role in keeping track of supplies and making certain everything was ready. And riding all over the countryside taking stock of the harvest and speaking with farmers gave her an excuse to search for evidence of the Dark Queen’s seeping reach.

  Guinevere had wards set in Camelot; she would know if a threat arrived on their shores. But she wanted to know long before then. She would not be caught off guard. No one would trick her, ever again.

  “Should we check the perimeter of the forest?” Lancelot asked. They had just finished with one of the farthest tracts of land. Guinevere was hot and itchy in her dress, layers of bold blue and red. She envied Brangien her simpler clothing. But Guinevere was out here as the queen, and she had to look the part. Lancelot, too, looked the part. Her armor was no longer patchwork. She wore uniform leather with metal plates over chain mail and a tunic with Arthur’s sigil on it. Guinevere missed Lancelot’s old armor, though she was glad Lancelot no longer had to wear a mask.

  Brangien looked longingly over her shoulder in the direction of Camelot, but offered no complaint. Only Brangien, Lancelot, and Sir Tristan could accompany Guinevere on these trips. They alone knew that she wielded magic. If word reached anyone else, everything would be at risk.

  Arthur rode with them when he could, but it was not often. Guinevere preferred it that way. Though normally she longed for more time with him, the Dark Queen was her fault. Her responsibility.

  “Yes.” Guinevere guided her horse toward the dark smudge of trees waiting meekly on the edge of the tamed land. Elsewhere the forests loomed and lurked, dominating the countryside. But in Camelot’s boundaries the trees had been felled, and where not felled, tamed. They were gentler forests, there to serve man.

  Guinevere’s sleeves rubbed at her wrists, where she bore thin white tracings of scars from trees that were old and hungry and angry.

  “Did you sleep well?” Brangien asked, riding at her side. Her tone was so deliberately even and pleasant that Guinevere immediately knew she was fishing for information. Brangien was never pleasant without a reason. Guinevere had not slept in her own bed, and her friend and maid wanted to know about it.

  Alas. As always, sleeping in Arthur’s bed had simply been sleeping. Guinevere had awoken to find herself alone. She always woke alone. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if he stayed. If, warm and muddled with sleep, he reached for her in something other than companionship. If they shared a kiss as fierce as the one Mordred had stolen the night Lancelot won her tournament.

  “Is that a blush I detect?” Brangien teased.

  Guinevere yanked her mind back from where it had wandered. That was the treacherous path that had led her to the fairy queen’s meadow. A path with clever smiles and eyes like the pools of green shadow beneath a tree. Mordred had not been the one to abduct her, but he had used her to hurt Arthur. And he had hurt her, too. Guinevere would not forget it. “I will let you know when there is something to blush about,” she told Brangien.

  Brangien frowned at Guinevere’s curt tone, but Guinevere could not explain. “Did you dream with Isolde
last night?” she asked instead, remembering her own disturbing dream and Arthur’s suggestion that her knot magic giving away her own dreams had failed.

  “Yes.” This time Brangien blushed, a dreamy smile on her face.

  That was not good news. It made Guinevere’s odd dream even more puzzling and worrisome. It would need to be addressed, and she hated anticipating how Brangien would take the news. So much of magic was about taking—power, control, even memories—but with Brangien and the dreams Guinevere had been able to give.

  Guinevere hurried toward the trees, pulling away from her companions. It was a problem for tonight. She did not have to think about it now, not while she was out here. She wanted to reclaim the sense of peace she found in wild lands. Though Camelot was home now, she had grown up in a forest.

  Once again her mind halted. Had she grown up in a forest? She had mere handfuls of memories, and if her last visit to Merlin was any indication, they were not accurate. The cottage she remembered sweeping was a ruin, uninhabited for decades. How could she have lived in a place that was unlivable?

  Lancelot had caught up to her. She was subtle about it, but Guinevere’s knight never let her too far out of reach.

  “How much do you remember of your childhood?” Guinevere asked.

  “My childhood?”

  “Your teeth.”