Camelot's Crow | ✓ [BOOK 3]

~ 36 ~

THE WORLD WAS SWIMMING around him, and he felt as though his throat was on fire. There was a gaping hole in Connor's neck where the arrow had been viciously ripped out, and it wasn't healing on its own. But no matter how much he bled and choked and whimpered in pain, he would not die and he would not fall asleep.

There was a familiar black shadow lingering beside him. "I can't help you," Crane told him with a voice that shook his core. "I've lost my mortal body."

A tear slipped down Connor's throat. He was in agony, and Crane could do nothing for him. They had no access to faery magic, either, he couldn't use it to heal himself. Was this karma? Was this what he got for all the endless suffering he caused? There was nothing he could do about it now. Crane had him wrapped around his finger, and he could do nothing to change it.

"I want... to help," he managed, though his voice came out as a coarse whisper, barely intelligible.

Crane laughed. "Of course you do. But you can't, and neither can I, beside in case I wasn't clear the first time, I don't have a body."

"Yes you do."

The voice that rang out around them was rough, feminine, angry, and it froze Crane's shadow in its place. Connor had never heard the voice before, but something about it filled him with dread.

"No," Crane breathed. "No, you can't be here."

"You can't stop me, child," she replied. "You have your body. It is waiting for you."

"Yeah, it's waiting in a cell!" Crane bellowed angrily. "You can't make me go back!"

"You're right," the woman hummed. "But I can give you... an incentive."

Connor's eyes followed the bird that flew across the woods around them, black-bodied and red-eyed, shaking the branch that it settled upon, and something twisted in his gut. He felt it watching him.

Crane hesitated. "You can?" he asked, a trace of hopefulness in his voice. "What reason do you possibly have for me to return to my body?"

The woman was quiet for several moments, and then she appeared before them. She was impossibly tall, covered in furs and armor, with thick, black hair decorated with randomly placed plaits, and crow feathers which hung from the ends. In her hand, she held a spear, and her face was painted in knots. Her eyes were black and ancient, and Crane's shadow shrunk beneath them.

Her voice was no longer echoing around them, instead, he could see were she was coming from. The crow settled on her arm. "I'll set you free."

* * *

Kit could feel the air leaving his lungs abruptly, and his stomach churned. He thought he might vomit, but he refrained. It had never occurred to him before, even though it was staring him right in the face. Argerion Crane didn't exist, he was fake, a deception. Their real enemy was Mordred. No one knew what had become of him after he killed Arthur, but it only made sense that he would return one day. But why? Didn't he have what he wanted? Arthur was dead, Camelot was gone.

"How did I not see it?" Kit asked, looking to Mab with wet eyes. "It should've been so obvious."

"He's a trickster," Mab said. "He fooled Arthur, he fooled Camelot, and he's fooled the rest of you. But you know the truth now, and you know how you have to defeat him."

Morgana had never looked so terrified, and Kit's chest ached when he saw him fighting tears beside him. "What will happen to my people? How are they meant to stop him?"

"The only way anyone can stop a violent man," said Mab. "By fighting him."

The faery clenched his jaw, and his throat bobbed. "I can't let them, they'll die."