Chapter 5

Gwen wasn't sure what drove her out to the stables the next morning. The staff were going about their early routines—and she smiled as she saw a few of Bert's people mixed in with the iron guards. They needed work, and she was happy enough to have more folks around in the keep. She was sure Mordred would roll his eyes, but she looked forward to having that debate in person. And hopefully soon.

One of the mares reached her head over the door of the stall, investigating her. Smiling, she reached out her hand and let the horse sniff her hand for treats. "Sorry, hon. Nothing for you this morning. But you'll get fed soon."

The mare pulled her head back, clearly uninterested since Gwen didn't have treats to bribe her with. That was fine by her—the mare wasn't who she'd come to see, anyway. She wasn't sure what had inspired her to come down here. She had woken up feeling restless and let her feet guide her to where they wanted to take her.

It was when she reached the end of the stable that she figured it out. The heavy thud of a metal hoof smashed into a thick wooden door, rattling it on its cast-iron hinges.

Ah.

Right.

She looked up at Mordred's iron stallion—with its eerie, opalescent glowing eyes. It snorted at her, frustrated, and shook its head in defiance. Its mane was made of tiny chains, and suddenly she realized she had never really paid too much attention to the animal. It was too aggressive for her to really try to get to know him at all.

"Hi."

The horse snorted again.

"I bet you're really sick of being cooped up." She tucked her hands into her pockets. She had created a long woolen overcoat for herself. She kept forgetting she was able to summon clothes out of thin air like Doc had done—but slowly, she was getting more and more used to it. Her mind still had a hard time defaulting to "just use magic."

But it was nice to have a coat. Cloaks were good and all, but coats had pockets. And pockets were fantastic. Gwen watched the horse, and the horse watched her. "I'm sorry about what's happened. About Mordred, about…all of it." Why exactly she was saying all this to a metal horse, she had no idea. But it felt right.

"Leaving you in here doesn't feel right." She sighed. "I know you're not—y'know—flesh and blood, but…you're still alive. And being stuck in here without anyone to walk you or any time in the field must be miserable all the same." Shaking her head, she glanced out the front of the stables. "I'd try to take you out for a ride, but I like having my spleen on the inside. Something tells me you wouldn't let me get close."

A heavy thud of a hoof against the door was her answer. Nope.

"I'd go talk to Tiny, but he's asleep. Always. I think he only woke up to deal with Mordred because he had to." She chuckled sadly. "Whatever." She leaned up against the wall next to the stable, watching the morning sun slowly spread over the courtyard outside the stables. "So. You won't let anybody near you. And we can't leave you in there." Shutting her eyes, she rested her head against the beam behind her. "And I don't know if I'll be successful. I have to go to war, horsie. I have to get people killed. All in the name of saving him."

An angry huff was all she got from the animal.

"And there's a real, real good chance I fail and wind up dead. The odds of me surviving any of this are…minimal. I'm not naive enough to think anything else. And if I'm dead, this place'll get overrun. The elementals will come and slaughter everyone who's left." Gwen cringed at the thought. Tim. Mae. Eod. They wouldn't spare anyone or anything.

Including Mordred's horse.

"So, here are the options—I go to war, I succeed, and Mordred is free. And you get to go back to normal life. Or, I die, and you get destroyed. Or, even worse, I die, and they leave you here—and you wait a thousand years for Mordred to come back. And who knows what'll be left of him if that happens. Or you, for that matter." She rubbed a hand over her face. "I guess it's not fair to make you gamble on my choices. Even if you are a super-mean horse."

Another heavy thud against the wood was so perfectly timed that she had to laugh. "Well, if the dog can understand English, who's to say you can't too?" That made it even worse, she supposed. "Whatever."

Turning to face the huge metal animal, she had to crane her neck to really look up at him. He was enormous. Easily the size of a Clydesdale. He was a tank. Almost literally.

"Just don't—y'know—trample me, or some shit, okay?" She pulled the huge pin out of the gate's door.

The horse didn't hesitate a moment. He slammed the door open, forcing Gwen to jump out of the way. It smashed into the other wall, cracking from the impact. And just like that, the sound of hooves was like thunder pounding on the dirt as the stallion ran from the stables and for freedom.

She jogged from the stables herself to watch as the enormous metal creature ran into the field outside the keep. The guards shouted, looking to her for orders to catch the horse. She shook her head. "Let him go."

The beast ran through the grass, looking like someone had drawn a spooky monster horse onto some bucolic nature painting. He looked out of place. But also, he looked beautiful—his gait quickly reaching a gallop as he ran through the field and toward the woods.

She didn't know what'd happen to him. But at least he wasn't rusting away in his stall. Letting out a long breath, Gwen turned and headed back into the keep. She needed coffee. A lot of coffee.

Because today was the day she went to war.

It was midday when Gwen and the others set out, this time on much more normal-looking horses. Eod was running ahead of her. Tim was walking, as he wasn't coordinated enough to sit on a horse and stay up there. He'd tried a few times before she decided they'd just hike. Lina and Mirkon, Bert's loyal companions, were in the back, chatting and bickering like the old married couple they were. Mae had stayed behind, saying that road life was not for her, and somebody had to look after the place while everyone went off to war. Gwen couldn't blame her.

Gwen preferred riding to the city this way, as opposed to in the back of Bert's cart. It was a lot less bouncy, at any rate. She had picked Sunshine, the mare that she had befriended when she had first arrived. It felt like forever since she had crash-landed in Avalon.

She'd been so afraid. And for good reason. The memory of meeting Mordred for the first time—and how abjectly terrified she'd been of him—made her smile, if a bit morosely. The whole thing had seemed so impossible. And she supposed it still was. If this turned out to be some fever dream, and she woke up in a hospital bed learning that all her friends here were the staff, and Eod was the therapy dog that came to visit her, she still wouldn't be surprised.

There was even a part of her that missed Grinn. Missed that asshole cat who had caused so much turmoil in her life. She hoped he made it back to hell to his family, but she knew that things like that didn't just happen because she wished them. Life wasn't fair. Grinn certainly had taught her that.

You know what else didn't feel real? The fact that her panic attacks were gone. She still didn't know why, but she suspected she had Avalon's magic to thank for it. It was such a relief.

Her parents would be proud of her.

That brought a small pang to her heart. She hoped they were okay. Idly, she wondered if she could send them a letter somehow. Just something to tell them that she was alive and all right. At least for now. Give it a week, that might change. In fact, now that she thought about it, it was probably for the best they didn't know anything. It might just end up causing more pain than it was worth. When she never showed back up, they'd think she was probably dead from some mysterious abduction and eventually mourn her loss and move on with life. If they thought she was out there, somewhere, they might never stop searching. They might never let go.

It was always something she wondered about when she watched Peter Pan as a kid. What about the parents? Didn't they notice Wendy and the others were missing? Weren't they panicking? But they got their kids back eventually, after all. Plus, a bonus kid, if she wasn't mistaken.

Hi, Mom. Yeah, we went missing, sorry about that. But hey, meet Peter. You always wanted a third son, right? Maybe that's what she should've done with Mordred. Hi, Mom, I'm home. Meet my boyfriend. Turns out I'm into older men. Older, stabbier men. She snorted to herself.

"What? Everything okay?" Bert asked from the horse next to her. Sunshine kept trying to eat the hay out of Bert's pant leg, so Gwen had to make sure to leave some distance between them. His own horse was eyeing him like a midday snack.

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking about home. And how ridiculous all this is." She smiled at him, doing her best to be reassuring. "I'm all right."

"It's a big thing, what you're doing. It's all right to be reflective about it." Bert gestured out at the woods around them. "But you remember how this place was when you got here—muted and trapped in a state of decay. None of this color, none of this beauty. Don't forget what you've done for us already and how much you mean to Avalon."

"Mordred broke the Crystal, not me. I tried and failed."

"Yeah, but he did it because of you. My friends would still be trapped in there, and I'd still be on the shelf in that general store if you hadn't come along. This island picked you for a reason. And I have faith that you'll see us through." She could hear the smile in his voice, even if his rusted metal jack o'lantern of a head never moved.

"I hope you're right."

"It hasn't led you astray yet, has it?"

She snorted again and shot him a look. "Grinn is dead. Doc is gone. Mordred's imprisoned. Lancelot is dead."

"Oneof those things isn't a bad thing," Bert retorted. "And I'll let you pick which one."

"Fair." Her half-laugh ended in a sigh. "Is it weird that I miss all of them?"

"It's weird that you miss one of them, and I'll let you pick which one."

That got her to laugh for real this time. The more she got to know Bert, the more she liked him. He was still overly zealous about a so-called revolution, but if she'd spent three hundred years hiding in plain sight, she'd probably be a little twitchy about the subject too. "What was it like?"

"Hum?" He pulled his foot back out of the way of his horse's hungry mouth, grumbling something about vultures.

"Being stuck on that shelf for, like, three hundred years. What was it like?"

"Boring. Really, really boring." Bert finally convinced his horse to stop trying to eat him and put his foot back in the stirrup. "I wasn't there for all that time, though. I was in some lady's shed for a while. Then I was a garden decoration. Then I was in an attic, and then I wound up in that store."

"What did you…like… do for all that time?"

"Told myself stories. Like I said, I don't sleep—I don't dream, not really—but I can tune out. If it wasn't for that, I'd have gone insane, I expect." He chuckled. "And I told myself that my waiting would pay off. That if I just held on a little longer, we'd all be saved. Lo and behold, I was right."

"I'm not Joan of Arc."

"I don't know who that is."

Gwen slapped a hand over her face. Right. She forgot about that. "I'm not your savior. I'm not some holy blessed warrior of God."

"No, but you were chosen by Avalon. You can't deny that. You talked to the island itself."

"Sort of?" She scrunched her nose a little. "Insomuch as you can talk to a thing like that."

"You know who was the last person to talk to the island? Your wizard friend." Bert sounded so proud. So certain. "And he saved this world once before. Now, it's your turn, and they all know that."

"Wait, what?" She blinked. "Doc saved the world? When?"

"He didn't tell you?" Bert tilted his pumpkin head to the side slightly. "Huh. I wonder why." He shrugged it off. "It was when the demons arrived. When hell collided with Avalon for that brief moment."

"I know about that part—that's when Grinn and the others got stranded here, and everyone but Grinn was killed."

"Yeah. But do you really think a bunch of scattered, warring, unprepared elementals could murder a legion of demons? Especially demons in service to Astaroth, the Great Duke of War?"

"I…didn't think about that." Gwen frowned. She really hadn't, and now she felt like a moron for not having put that together.

"The wizard warned everyone. Got everyone together to fight them. Without him, we all might have been overrun. But because he did, well…" Bert trailed off.

"Because he got involved, all those demons died. At least—at least they go back to hell, though, right?"

"Some do. But not all of them. Or, at least, that's what Grinn said during his trial. That the newer the soul, the less likely it was that they'd go back. And that they only get so many times, also. There was no telling how many of the demons died for good." Bert's shoulders slumped. "Which, I know it sounds weird to feel bad about demons,but…"

"They can love and have families. That means they're not all bad. It means they're worth caring about too." Gwen stared ahead at the dirt road that stretched into the woods in front of them. "And Doc must have blamed himself. Especially for what happened with Grinn afterwards."

Bert nodded. "He felt responsible for Grinn's rampage. He vowed that was the last time he'd ever get involved."

That made so much sense. She shut her eyes and let out a sigh. "Now, I feel like such an asshole for pestering him for answers all the time."

"But if he hadn't gotten involved that day and saved us, we'd all be dead instead. I don't know how many lives have to go on the scales before it evens out. But I know what feels like justice and what doesn't. That felt terrible but unavoidable. But this? This feels like justice."

"Fighting Thorn and the elementals?"

Bert nodded. "I don't want them to die. I just want them to stop. And if that means war? It means war. Sometimes, you have to fight for the people you care about. Sometimes, you have to fight for the things you believe in."

"Yeah. I suppose you do." She just hoped things went differently for her than they had for Doc. She couldn't say that she wouldn't have done the same thing he had so long ago. And even if the choice was maybe not the wrong one, the deaths still would have haunted her too. The not knowing how many souls went back to hell or were gone for good. Or if Grinn's family was alive or dead. "War is messy."

"Even when you're on the right side of it, it's always messy."

"Isn't that the thing, though? Everybody thinks they're on the right side of the war." She paused. "Except maybe Mordred. He knew he was being a jerk."

Bert laughed. "That's fair."

"I think we're doing the right thing, though. We have to stop Thorn from taking over. We have to stop the elementals from tearing this world apart. And we have to free Mordred."

"How selfish is that last bit?"

She took a moment to think about it. "Honestly? Probably more than it should be. But we're going to need him. I'm sorry, but a bunch of pitchfork-wielding villagers and one idiot witch who doesn't know what she's doing? We wouldn't stand a chance."

"Don't sell us short!" Bert tutted. "We have better weapons than pitchforks."

It was her turn to laugh. Despite the stress of what was to come, she was smiling. "Thanks for being a friend, Bert."

"Thanks for being our savior, Gwen."

"I wish you'd stop calling me that. I'm not your savior." But she had made a promise to Avalon to protect it. One way or another. "But, fine. On one condition—no speeches. I refuse."

Bert slapped his hand on his thigh. "Deal!"

Somehow, she suspected he was lying.