I crossed my arms and glared at no one in particular, contemplating my options.

One of the knights paused next to me.  “Uh, you know he’s only looking out for you, right?”

“That doesn’t give him the right to kidnap me,” I spat out.

“Technically not kidnapping,” another knight muttered.  “He’s the king, it’s legal for him to decide to take in wards who are in dangerous conditions.  Normally nobles, granted, but a young girl living alone in the woods?  Of course he would want to step in.”

I could have pointed out that I had lived my entire life in these woods and no, it wasn’t dangerous.  But the king, of all people, knew that.  He knew that because he’d been here on and off throughout my early years.  He knew this was my home, and he was dragging me away from it out of an absurd and entirely misplaced sense of kindness.

It wasn’t kindness to take me from my home and drag me to a city where I would be miserable.  He was dooming me to a life of complications beyond what he could dream, and I didn’t appreciate it, not one bit.

“I am just fine on my own,” I responded sullenly instead.  “I am capable of getting my own food, trading in town when I need clothes, and surviving just fine.  I didn’t need him to ‘step in.’  He’s doing more harm than good.”

 “You don’t understand the dangers you’re facing,” the first knight told me, a condescending look on his face.  “It’s dangerous here in these woods.”

I gave him a look that should have made him second-guess himself.  Namely, he was being stupid.  I had lived here in these woods my entire life.  I knew them.  I knew the dangers.  But they weren’t dangers for me.  For humans like them, sure, but for me, not so much.

The second knight, who seemed to be a bit more intuitive than the first, at least recognized that the first one’s comment about the woods didn’t entirely apply to me.  “Even if you’re used to the area, you’re not considering the Others.  People have been seeing more and more geists lately, especially here in the old woods.”  He glanced up at the giant trees around us, all of them older than these people, many of them older than the country had existed.

These woods were old.  Dangerous.  Full of magic.  Most humans couldn’t wander far in and survive, that much was true.  And the woods did seem to have a knack for attracting dangerous creatures including Others who slipped into this world.

That, however, was a human concern.  It wasn’t a problem for me.  Geists would give me a wide berth if they realized I was in the area.

Mice don’t walk into the den of a lone wolf.  And I was so much more dangerous than a wolf.

The problem was, I couldn’t explain that to the stupid king and his annoying knights.  Well, I could, but it would just create more problems.

After all, his father had been very much set against the Arcane.  He’d tried to chase all Arcane out of Logres, imprison them, kill them even.  He was thoroughly hated by all the magical people and creatures that made up the Arcane.

The new king might not be his father, and my mother had believed he might be much kinder to Arcane, but he had yet to prove it.  So I wasn’t about to trust him or his knights with the truth on why I was fine out here on my own.

From his perspective, he saw a teenage girl left alone in dangerous woods.  Maybe to him this justified intervention, but I didn’t agree.  Mostly because I was the girl and I didn’t need any such intervention, even if I was human.

Speaking of the king, from across the camp I spotted him taking a deep breath and then heading in our direction, a tentative smile on his face.

My scowl returned full force.

He noticed immediately, and gave me an almost pleading look.  “I couldn’t just leave you there.  I’d intended to just come and visit you and your mother, offer her a position at court, but when I found you alone, I couldn’t just leave you there like that.  Your mother was kind to me when I needed it most, and I couldn’t repay her kindness by ignoring her daughter.”

I rolled my eyes in response.  “Right, because repaying her kindness involves kidnapping her daughter.  I’ll bear in mind that being kind to people means you get repaid with someone ignoring your wishes and what’s best for you.”

He winced a bit, but continued stubbornly anyway.  “I’m trying to keep you safe.  I’m going to see if we can find your mother, as well, and maybe after we find her, you can return.  But until I speak with her, I plan to keep you safe for her.”

By his knights’ expressions, they clearly thought my mother had likely died somewhere in the woods, and meanwhile I knew the truth.

I knew he’d never find evidence of her, because she wasn’t in this world anymore.  Not dead, no, just moved on to the next world by choice.  Stepped through the portal.  Whatever you want to call it.  She was done here.

“She wouldn’t appreciate you kidnapping me,” I muttered.

The king shook his head firmly.  “She would want you safe.  And you’re not safe here on your own.”

I gave him an incredulous look.  “She left me here because she knew I’d be fine on my own!  That was the whole point!”

He absolutely refused to believe this, I could see it written all across his face.  He couldn’t imagine that the woman who’d been kind to him would intentionally abandon her daughter.

“Tilde loves you,” he stated firmly, as if his words were absolute truth and nothing else could be true instead, “and she would never abandon you or leave you, barely more than a child, alone to fend for yourself.”

My glare turned icy.  “You presume to know my mother better than I do?  You met only a handful of times, and nothing in several years.  You don’t know my mother, you have no idea what our relationship involved or whether she would have left me.  And she did.  She told me I could handle myself on my own and she was leaving, and I agreed.  That was that.  There is no reason for you to get involved.”

“She would never do that,” he countered.  “Perhaps there was some misunderstanding, but she would never just leave you like that.”

Oblivious, delusional man.  Had he been an animal, he’d likely have understood.  Once a child was old enough to handle themselves, kicking them out of the nest – or leaving them alone there – was not only acceptable, it was necessary.  It was part of life.

I’d always known that my mother was only hanging around until I was capable of handling myself.  She’d been up front about it with me.  Granted, she hadn’t said anything when she was helping the then-prince, but that was because he was human and he wouldn’t understand.

It was fairly clear this was a topic we would never agree on.  He thought he was doing the right thing because of a mistaken view of my mother and of what was appropriate for a young girl, and wouldn’t budge even when told the truth.  And I knew I was fine alone, but without telling the full truth – that I wasn’t human – I was unlikely to be able to convince this very human man.

I had to make a choice.  Let them drag me away, unwillingly?  Let him make me his stupid ward in his stupid town and put up with life as a human for who knows how long?

Alternatively, give up on playing nice?  Turn into my true form, fight them to the death?  Rip them apart, leave their bodies to be found by scavenging animals, maybe eventually by humans wondering where their new king was?  And then letting the kingdom figure out what to do with no clear heir to the throne?

As much as I wanted to force them to let me go, killing them if I had to, there were a couple of problems with this option.

First, I could remember Mama’s words as she brushed my hair one night.  “He has the potential to be a good and kind king,” she’d mused.  “He’s not like his father, and he has respect for people that aren’t like him.  He hates what his father is doing to Arcane.  I think it is possible he might be willing to forge a peace with us, if given the chance.  I have great hopes for what his reign might be.”

Second, though, the option of killing them meant it was likely I could throw Logres into a civil war.  People would vie for the throne, and it wasn’t necessarily good people who might get it.  Whoever had the most military power, likely, and maybe another person like the last king.  Uther, the one all the Arcane hated.

It did seem like killing him and his knights was not the best option.  I didn’t want the kingdom to go to war over me.  I would hate this, having to live in a city and pretend to be a human, but it was only for a few short years, right?  A few years was nothing in the span of my true lifecycle.  Annoying, truly annoying, but not enough to justify sending a country to war.

So I shut up, still angry at being forced into this position, but I didn’t kill them.  I even decided against changing at night and slipping away unseen as a cat or a mouse or whatever creature I felt like.  The king, dedicated as he was to this ridiculous idea that I needed protection, would try to find me again.  The whole thing was likely to go smoother and faster if I didn’t run away, even if I didn’t care much for the idea.

The king, out of tune with reality as he was, seemed to take my silence as defeat, as if I believed him now, and spent the entire next couple of days while we rode to the city telling me about what I could look forward to there.  Perhaps he thought what he represented was something any girl would love, but I wasn’t exactly excited, and that didn’t change the more he talked.

When we reached the outskirts of the city and passed beyond the wall protecting the city itself, some of the people spotted us and eagerly greeted the king.  I heard calls of “it’s the king!” and “King Arthur!” echo around us, and my scowl turned even darker as many of the townsfolk looked at me with clear confusion or outright dislike.

Yeah, a wild-looking, clearly half uncivilized, teenage girl wasn’t exactly expected to be in company with their king.  If it wasn’t for the couple of female knights he’d brought, my presence might look very inappropriate, but the two women were riding next to me now, with the other half dozen knights around the king or behind us, so to human eyes, it might not look so bad as a girl all by herself with a bunch of male knights.

The castle itself was inside another set of walls, even taller and stronger-looking, and the guards let us in, bowing as we entered the courtyard.  The king dismounted, followed by the knights, while stablehands came to take the horses.

“Sire!”  A beautiful woman with long blond hair, but partially braided up around her head almost like a crown, came across the courtyard to greet us.  “Arthur,” she told him, taking his hands and giving each cheek a kiss, “I’m glad you’re back safely.  The couriers brought news of some new attacks, and I was concerned you didn’t have a large enough guard with you.”

He smiled at her fondly.  “I’m fine, Genevieve.  I had knights with me, after all.  They’re not like regular soldiers.”

She seemed to agree, then looked around, trying to see through the knights as they were removing their bags from the horses.  “Did you get her?  Tilde, the woman you wanted me to meet?  Did she agree to come?”

Arthur made a face.  “She wasn’t there and, according to her daughter, hasn’t been there for months.  I’m going to see if we can find her, but meanwhile, so her daughter isn’t left alone in the woods, I brought her here to be my ward.”  He took the lady’s hand and led her over to where I was standing, arms crossed, still scowling as I took in the new scenery.

Personally, I preferred trees and moss over stone buildings.  But whatever, my opinion was clearly worth nothing to the king.

He seemed almost nervous as he approached.  “This is Genevieve, my betrothed,” he told me.  She curtsied slightly to me, looking more curious than offended by my simple, rough clothing, tangled hair, and bare feet.  “Genevieve, this is my new ward, Merlynn.”

She gave me a tentative smile.  “Welcome to Camelot, Merlynn.  I hope you’ll enjoy it here.”

Ha.  Not likely.  Not likely at all.