She woke up on the island, on her knees before a throne. For a moment, she only saw a bright gray light, flickering with white specks and black ones, like stars or dust motes. It cleared, and what she saw looked like nothing so much as a tear in air before her. The tear pulsed with a steel green light, like moonlight through the needles of evergreens, and with white, spreading tendrils over the throne-like chair. A shiver traveled down her spine, cold fingertips digging their nails in between vertebrae, and she rubbed sleep from her eyes and stared. Even the air hung heavy. Hands on her shoulders made it impossible for her to rise, and the thickness of it deafened any noise from the disaster zone that was her island.

When Arkady--no, Avalon, she must have transformed at some point--reached out to touch it, it thinned and then vanished, as if it had never been there. Her ears popped, and the invisible hands on her shoulders vanished. She rose from her knees, soft-soled boots finding purchase on the broken and mossy stones of the ancient hall. The throne (she lacked another word for it) sat there, unassuming.

Once upon a time, it had likely been covered in gold. She could see the flecks of metal clinging to the hard dark wood, in the carved feathers of the owl’s head that crowned it. The wings of the great bird curved around to form the arms of the chair, and the wood at the handrests was worn smooth from long use. Even in the nighttime starlight, she could see the warm, bloody tone of the wood beneath the gilt. In a world dominated by cold colors, it drew her eye, again and again.

Which begged the question: How had Avalon come to be here? She had not recited her oath, or intended to come for quite a while. The results of her last trip to her wonder hung heavier than stones on her shoulders--the vision of Macha’s sisters, Macha’s words in her mouth. Myrddin. A cambion. What did that mean? The internet said it meant a child of a human being and a witch, but witches weren’t real, were they?... Not like knights and senshi.

In the end, it didn’t matter. She was on the island now, its sea-salt breeze ruffling her long hair. The siren song of its need was silenced inside her head, for the moment a low susurration of sound, easily ignored for greater concerns. Below her feet sprawled the golden glow of Avalon’s unbound power. It whispered: No knight after you/and after you/no idea like knight remaining. She shuddered, again, clenching her fists at her sides.

It wanted her to approach the throne. The sensation of something inside her skin, tight on her bones and pulling her forward, told her so: she took one unwilling step, and then another one, and then she remembered:

His skin was riddled with dark, venous markings, a shade of green that turned his attractive face sallow. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead, dark hair damp, head hanging low, and there on his head a golden crown. Avalon could feel the golden mist of his island’s power there, suffusing the man, slowly eking away at the force that was killing him.

“You know it won’t last,” said Ian, turning the black blade over on his knees. A screeching of stone-on-metal jarred Avalon’s teeth, and he ground them together to ease the shuddering feeling. It was always Ian’s way to sharpen that sword when it was least welcome, as if the sword ever needed sharpening. The heart of a star did not dull, after all. “He’ll die someday, no matter what you do. Exposing the island to his corruption will only corrupt us down the line.”

“The Code won’t corrupt, not from the power from one man,” said Avalon. “We would know by now if it were possible.”

“Would we,” challenged Ian, setting the whetstone aside. “Perhaps no one has done something as foolhardy as this. We are on untraveled ground.”

It was true enough, but Ian didn’t have the gifts that Avalon did. His brother couldn’t sense the contained maelstrom of Avalon’s power beneath their feet, coursing through the gold-crusted owl’s throne upon which the Good King rested. This was necessary. This had a purpose. It might tear his brother from him now, but in the future--this binding, this taste of tainted blood, that would save Avalon in the future. Like an immunization, the island would know the feeling of corruption and be able to fight it off.

And their king had to live. Avalon had seen it: the Good King still had a purpose to fulfill. “You are not the knight, Ian,” he said. “You don’t know the things I do.”

“And I never will,” agreed Ian. “But I do know that you are putting all of us at risk. I don’t want the legacy of Niall, knight of Avalon, second of his name, to be the death of his wonder.”

The pause that followed this pronouncement was pregnant with anticipation. Avalon killed it stillborn: “It won’t be. Thank you for your concern, brother.”

“I’m returning to Venus soon,” said Ian, abruptly. “Shall I leave the sword?” He placed the blade into Avalon’s outstretched hand, and the biting cold sent a jolt up his arm. “I think it likes me better,” joked Ian.

Avalon looked down at his hand, at the braided brand there, and frowned.

When the memory passed, she was seated in the throne. In her lap was the golden crown she remembered on the head of the Good King, the circle broken into four pieces. The compulsion to take them, to keep them, was undeniable; she closed her hands around them and, gently, thumped the back of her head against the throne. Just what she needed: more people in her head that seemed more real than herself. This time a man, Niall, and his brother--and another man, the Good King. The title reminded her of something, though she couldn’t say exactly what.

Nails, tapping on her soul. Avalon, are you there?

She closed her eyes and wished, as hard as she ever had, to go home.