A/N: Still haven't written that final chapter, lol. Trying to figure out if I need to lay any sort of groundwork for the third fic or if I can wrap this one up and jump into the next one cold. But that requires figure out at least vaguely what's going to happen in the third one, and that always trips me up a bit. Don't worry, I'll get the chap done before I need to post it. Here's another chap! =)


The servants had just finished laying out the dinner by the time the knock came on the door to Mordred's chambers. He rushed to open it, overwhelmed with happiness when he saw Kara standing there, alive and well and smiling shyly back at him. She had washed and been given a change of clothes, a plain blue dress that was a bit big for her slim frame but that was a far cry from the rags she had worn when she had arrived.

She had grown up very pretty, Mordred thought. Not that he was at all surprised by that; he had always thought that she was lovely when they were younger. Her hair was clean and smooth now, pulled back from her face by jeweled hairpins that one of the ladies of the court must have leant her. A white shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, the free ends held tight in her hands.

"Good evening, Mordred," she said.

"Hi, Kara," he replied before realizing all at once that he was blocking the doorway. He stood back to let her in, clearing his throat a bit awkwardly. "Thank you for coming."

She turned back, smiling. "I'm glad that you asked. I'm sure that I would take any excuse to see you."

Mordred pulled out her chair for her and she sat daintily. He took his seat across the table and gestured for her to help herself to the generous platters of food. There was a moment of almost-uncomfortable silence where neither of them knew quite what to say, each hoping for the other to speak first. Finally Mordred cleared his throat again.

"So, er, Amata," he said. "That's really where you've been all these years?"

"Yes," she said. "The country itself is lovely but I'm afraid the people can leave a bit of a bad taste in your mouth."

"From the stories I've heard, I have no doubt of that," Mordred said grimly. "How did you come to be there? I could have sworn I saw you fall."

She had been fighting one moment, determined to protect the camp all by herself if she had to, and then the next moment she had been on the ground. Mordred had tried to go back to her, but his father's grip had been like a vise around his arm and he was too stunned to break free. He had let his father drag him away from the sight of his best friend in the world lying on the ground with blood in her hair. She had been so still that Mordred had just assumed that the knight's blow had killed her. And it seemed that assumption had ruined Kara's life.

"I did fall," Kara said, shifting in her seat. "But I wasn't dead. I woke up the next morning with a goose egg on my head and no one else around for miles. No one alive, anyway." She stopped to take a drink of wine. "I just started walking." She shook her head, that darkness in her eyes more pronounced, making them look almost haunted. "I walked for days; there was nothing else for me to do, nowhere to go no one to turn to.

"It kept on just walking for probably a week or two when all was said and done, and then I stumbled into a cottage. Turned out an elderly couple lived there, out in the woods away from the cities. They took me in, even though I was a Druid," she said with a smile that looked almost fond. "They would have gotten a nice bounty if they had turned me in, but they didn't. They harbored me instead, looked after me as best they could without letting on to anyone else that I was there."

"They sound very kind."

"They were." Her smile faded away. "But they died a few years later from a sweating sickness. I had to make my own way after that."

"I'm sorry," Mordred said, his chest all but aching with the thought of what she had suffered. "Kara, I am so sorry for everything."

"What do you have to be sorry for?" she asked, head cocked.

"I abandoned you," he said, grief and guilt clogging his throat and making the words come out choked. "I should have gone back when I saw you fall. I should have stayed by your side to begin with. You were right, Kara. You were always right about everything. I should have fought."

"You were young, Mordred," she said. "You were a child. No one can expect one child to fight an army."

"You would have," he pointed out. "You tried to."

"And look where it got me," she pointed out bitterly. "Bloodied and beaten and left to die. Running and hiding for over a decade."

"But if I had stayed to fight alongside you, maybe you wouldn't have to do any of that. Maybe together we could have—"

Kara reached out to take his hand. "No, Mordred. Fighting is not the Druid way," she said gently. "I should not have pushed you to violence. And besides, you weren't trained for it. What could you really have done? What could either of us have done? Two little kids against thirty knights of Camelot!"

"I could have—"

"Mordred," she said. "Let's not talk of such things anymore. What happened back then was...unfortunate, for any number of reasons. But we're together now, aren't we?" She smiled so widely it pressed dimples into her cheeks. "After all this time, we have been brought back together. It's like fate!"

Mordred clasped her hand in both of his own. "Then perhaps the Fates have chosen to look kindly on me for once," he said.

"Now tell me of Carthis," Kara said eagerly. "I haven't heard much about it, really. Such whispers were harshly punished in Amata. It took me three years to find someone willing to even give the magical kingdom a name, much less tell me how to find it. Is it true that there's a clutch of dragon eggs in the vaults?"

Mordred's eyebrows rose, surprised that such a rumor had reached her ears when Amatan words were so closely watched. The eggs weren't common knowledge even among Carthis' own people. "Yes," he told her. "There are a number of eggs in the vaults. They've been there for years. Everyone thought they would never hatch because all the Dragonlords were assumed dead, but with Merlin there is new hope for them."

"So he intends to hatch them?" she asked, leaning forward in her seat with a strange glint in her eyes that Mordred couldn't quite identify. "He is going to revitalize the dragon race? Will he do it soon?"

"I don't know what Merlin intends to do with them," Mordred said slowly. "He hasn't said."

"He's got them protected though, right?" she pushed. "I mean, surely he wouldn't leave such valuables unguarded, even down in the vaults. They would make a pretty target for his enemies, after all."

"Of course they're protected," Mordred said. "One of the first things Merlin did after he was crowned was set men to stand guard all hours of the day and night. He's put a slew of protective enchantments around them as well. Personally, I thought it might be a bit excessive, but Arthur says that he's right to do everything that he can."

"What sort of encha—" Kara stopped abruptly, her brow furrowing. "Wait. Did you say Arthur?"

"Oh, yes," Mordred said, realizing his mistake. "King Arthur of Camelot. He and Merlin are good friends."

"Arthur Pendragon?" she asked in a strangely cautious tone. "And you're on a first name basis with him?"

Her reticence made sense, considering the Pendragons were the reason that she had suffered so terribly, the reason that their home and their lives there had been destroyed. And in Amata, she likely would not have heard yet of Arthur's change of heart, of all the good he was doing now in Camelot. She still thought that Arthur was his father's son, the scourge of all magic. The name Pendragon had never exactly inspired hope in their kind before. To think that Mordred was in any way connected with that family probably made her skin crawl.

"I forget that you wouldn't have heard the story," Mordred said. "I've obviously gotten ahead of myself."

So he started from the beginning. He told her his entire tale, from the moment he had left her behind in the ruins of their campsite through his father's death in Camelot, through his own travels across the lands, through the brief time that he had stayed in another Druid camp and the good it had done him before the pain of his memories had overwhelmed him and he had had to move on, through his unfortunate time with the slave traders that had led him back to Arthur, Merlin, and Morgana. He told her of Merlin's claim to the throne, of Arthur's struggle to accept magic, of the final battle with Morgana. He even told her of his own fate, the one that he had sworn to defy.

Kara was wide-eyed and rapt the whole time that he spoke. She gasped in all the appropriate places and never once let go of the tight grip she had on his hand. When Mordred finally finished talking, she shook her head.

"That is quite a tale," she said, sounding dazed. "It seems that I am not the only one to have suffered much over the years."

"And yet in the end, I have been very fortunate. I would never have dreamed that I would end up in a place like this."

"It is an amazing kingdom filled with amazing things," she said. "And you have certainly made friends in high places. You've got two powerful kings who trust you implicitly."

"They are some of the best friends that I could ever have asked for," Mordred said warmly and with utter sincerity. Something in Kara's expression tightened and Mordred wondered if she had somehow taken that as an insult to their own friendship. He opened his mouth to reassure her, but she spoke first, suddenly smiling again.

"I'm pleased that things have gone so well for you, Mordred," she said. "I'm sure that you have many important duties here."

Mordred shrugged. "I suppose. Honestly, I'm mostly running errands at the moment." He told her of his most recent task.

"They just let you wander in and out of Camelot whenever you wish?" she remarked.

"I was one of their own for a while. They know that I mean them no harm."

Kara stood up and came around to Mordred's side, leaning her hip against the table next to him. She reached up to brush his hair out of his face, her fingers lingering and then tracing their way down his cheek.

"I am so proud of you, Mordred," she said softly. "I always knew that you would come to great things. And not just because of your magic," she added, "but because of your good heart. It's always been my favorite thing about you."

Kara traced the pad of her thumb over Mordred's bottom lip. He immediately reached up to draw her hand away, fighting a grimace; Cecily had done the same thing to him a few days before but it hadn't made him nearly as uncomfortable as this did. He tried to smile at Kara anyway.

"And I have always admired your bravery and your forthrightness. However—" He paused, wondering if there was any way to say this gently. "I'm sorry, Kara, if I've given you the wrong impression, but—"

Kara leaned back, her expression going carefully blank and her hands twisting into the free ends of her shawl again. "Of course," she said quickly. "It's been a very long time. I can't expect you to still feel the same. If you ever did, that is."

"Kara, I—"

"Who is she?" she asked, trying for friendly interest and not quite managing it. Mordred sighed and let it go.

"Her name is Lady Cecily," he admitted. "She's one of the mages, and she's wonderful. You would like her."

"I'm sure I would."

Silence fell between them once more, and where the last had only been slightly awkward this one was decidedly uncomfortable. Mordred fidgeted in his seat.

"It's getting quite late," he said, standing up. "And you've had a very long and taxing day. I'm sure you're tired."

"Yes," she said immediately. "I should probably turn in for the night."

Mordred led the way to the door. "I'll walk you to your chambers," he offered, but she shook her head.

"That's alright," she said. "I remember the way." She stopped in the corridor and turned back. "You could come by tomorrow though," she said in a strangely bright tone. "I've got something that I would like for you to have."

"Of course," Mordred said.

Kara looked at him for a long time, her face inscrutable. Then she stepped in close again, almost close enough for Mordred to step back.

"I'm glad that you still trust me, Mordred," she said, her eyes dark and intense as they held his.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, confused by the way his heart raced in his chest.

She just pressed a swift kiss to his cheek and wished him a goodnight, walking away and leaving Mordred standing in his doorway with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that he couldn't place.

Kara had long since lost track of how long she had been walking. It had been days, she knew that much, but each day ran into the next and she couldn't tell them apart anymore. She moved in a haze of pain and rage, pushing herself forward for no other reason than that she knew that she could not go back, and that if she stopped going forward she would not be able to start again.

The soles of her shoes had grown thin and given out, so she had tossed them aside. The detritus of the forest floor was not forgiving and her feet were cut up and bloodied from stepping on rocks and sharp sticks, but she paid them no mind. Branches and twigs whipped her as she passed by them, leaving scratches on her arms and face, and she beat them back with all the strength that she had. It wasn't much anymore.

She grabbed berries off a bush as she passed, stuffing them in her mouth without checking to make sure that they were safe to eat. What did it matter if they killed her? She ate more, just for spite, but she kept moving unaffected. She stumbled into a stream and drank from it before moving on. She thought that she might be going south, but it made little difference when she had no destination.

She slept only when she could walk no further, collapsing beneath the nearest tree and succumbing to the exhaustion that muddled her mind, her thoughts reduced to little more than incoherent snarls of the impotent rage that wouldn't let her stop pushing on, wouldn't let her simply lie down and surrender and wait for death to claim her. Whenever she woke, she walked again, eating whatever came within reach and drinking when she found water and stopping again when she fell and could not pick herself back up.

She did not know how long she had been walking when the sound came. It took her a long moment to figure out what it was—days, weeks maybe, of the silence of the forest had robbed her of her quick thoughts—but the pounding of horses' hooves was not a sound that she would ever forget, no matter how long she lived. It made her heart race and her blood pound, rushing loudly in her ears. Her magic buzzed under her skin and she scratched at it harshly, wanting the horrible sensation to go away.

When she heard voices along with the horses, growing nearer by the second, she ran. Fear gave her the strength to move quickly, though her malnourished limbs shook with fatigue and her eyes blurred with tears. She collided with the trunk of a tree, the impact knocking a cry from her lips, but she simply shoved herself forward again. She wasn't sure if the pounding she heard was the hooves gaining on her or her own heartbeat thundering in her chest, but she ran anyway, the echo of old screams chasing her on and the remembered stench of smoke and rot clogging her throat until she couldn't breathe.

When a gloved hand caught hold of her arm, Kara fought against it with all her might. She flailed and lashed out and screamed until her throat was hoarse. Her magic reacted instinctively to her distress, exploding out of her hands in a rush and forcing her captor to let her go. Another man grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms tight around her torso to trap her arms against her sides.

"Dirty little witch!" the first one spat out, picking himself up off the ground.

"Druid," the other said, his breath hot and wet against her ear. "Look at her arm."

The first man wrapped his fingers around her wrist in a punishing grip and turned her arm over to see the swirling symbol tattooed on her skin. "That means a bounty," he said with a sharp, greedy smile. "Let's take her in."

In a last fit of desperation, Kara reached for her magic again. She tried to set the ropes they used to bind her hands on fire, but there was hardly a single wisp of smoke. With a cry, she tried to knock the men over again, but they just laughed. One of them slapped her across the face and the other tossed her bodily over the back of his horse and strapped her down.