Excalibur's Seven | ✓ [LGBT]

~ 9 ~

KIT COULD REMEMBER HIS mother's death as clear as day. She was pregnant with her third child, five months along. She got sick so suddenly, no one knew how to help her. She thought it was the baby, that it wasn't viable, but the experimental surgery they performed to get rid of it just killed her quicker.

Kit had never seen as much blood as he did that day. He wasn't supposed to be there, but he wanted to say goodbye to his mother. He watched her die in a pool of her own blood. He was twenty years old then, but he felt like a child again that day.

So many things about that spectacle was cruel, too cruel for him to fathom. The infant at her feet was alive only hours ago, but someone left it alone to starve, to freeze, to die at the feet of a late Queen's corpse. All for what? To threaten him? He didn't know what else it could be.

Giselle was now tending to an unconscious Selene in the chapel, pressing a wet cloth to her forehead. Kit sat alone at the front pew, blurry eyes staring at the altar before him. He could hardly think of anything else but that haunting sight.

To his surprise, the one that came to his side was Morgana.

"Tell me about her," he said, nudging Kit's leg with his cane.

He looked down at his hands. "Why do you care?"

"Just do it, Kit. If you're going to be a stubborn ass whenever people come to help you, don't be surprised when they stop trying."

"Sorry. You're right," he breathed. "My mother... she was stubborn too, but in a good way. Not like me. She didn't ever care what people thought of her, and when she was still alive... I tried to be like that, too. When she died, I—"

Morgana's icy palm sat against his knee. "Just tell me about her. Don't think about her death, tell me about who she was."

Kit forced his mind back. "Right. Well, she was playful. She liked to steal pastries from the baker and give some to me, but if I ever stole from the baker she'd put me in time out." He smiled down at his lap. "She was smart, too. God was she smart. She should've been a Knight with how clever she was, she came up with half of our winning strategies."

Morgana squeezed his leg when he started choking up, urging him to continue.

"She was proud, too. Not in an annoying way, but she knew she was the Queen, she knew she was beautiful, she knew she was smart. She had nothing to be insecure about and she knew it, but she knew she wasn't perfect, either. She was always trying to be better, and the kicker is that it actually worked."

He swiped his cheeks before tears got a chance to fall. "I wish I could be like her. I wish I didn't care what people thought. I wish I could be proud of myself, and I—I wish I knew how to be someone worth all the love I'm given."

When he looked over, Morgana was studying him with careful brows. "You're definitely insufferable," he said, but something about it was oddly comforting. "But I think maybe if you tried really, really hard, you might be able to be just a little bit like her."

Kit couldn't help a laugh, and he nudged Morgana playfully with his shoulder. "You're not great at comforting people."

"Who said that what I was doing?"

"Isn't it?"

He could swear he saw Morgana smile. "Nah, I was just trying to uncover your deepest insecurities so maybe I could exploit them one day. Take you down from the inside."

"I thought you said faeries couldn't lie."

Morgana blinked.

"Ah. You're telling the truth. Well, I'm really not that scared of you anymore, so you'll have to try harder than that."