Interlude: Disciple of Grail

That afternoon, Areto had settled into the forest above the residence where a gap between the trunks gave her a narrow line toward the balcony. Branches broke the view in places, but when the guards shifted she could see the king from the waist up well enough to place an arrow through his chest. The bow lay ready across her knees with a shaft already nocked, the string left slack until the moment required it. A premature draw would tire the arm and stir the cover around her, and either mistake could cost the shot.

For now, the guards denied her the shot. Xanthibarqa’s height closed the line behind Winston’s left shoulder whenever he shifted toward the court, with Hippolyta covering the other side and Penthascara and Helisparga breaking the remaining angles along the rail. Even the far end belonged to Aurascyra, whose position made the whole balcony feel arranged against exactly this possibility. More than fifty women filled the yard below, helmets and red plumes moving among upright spears, and an arrow could have passed through plenty of gaps in their formation. The women around the king were another matter. They shifted with the ceremony, though, and ceremonies always produced mistakes eventually. A shoulder would turn, someone would lean to speak, attention would settle in the wrong direction, and his chest would appear for the length of a breath. She had killed with less time than that.

Waiting required no argument with herself. The Amazons had been made for the war against the Dark God, and paradise had allowed too many of them to forget it. Myrina had remembered. Areto had followed that remembered purpose out of Themyscira and into the Dark God’s own arms, carrying from him a child she believed would one day become strong enough to kill its father. Winston’s right to rule only made the danger clearer. Her sisters could gather around a rightful king, build their loyalties around him, and gradually let the older purpose recede into something honored in stories rather than pursued in blood. Killing him would prevent that future before it settled over them. The thought carried no hesitation when she tested it. The child remained the weapon, Myrina remained right, the Dark God remained the enemy, and the man on the balcony stood in the path between them. All she needed was enough open space to put the arrow through his chest.

The king’s voice carried beyond the court and into the trees where she waited. “You will keep my life.”

The words entered her thinking before she had decided what to do with them. She had climbed into the stonework knowing his death would clear the way, but when she reached for that conclusion now, the reasons beneath it no longer joined as cleanly. A living king might still serve the war. Murdering him could scatter her sisters farther from the purpose Myrina had preserved. The child still had to destroy the Dark God, the Amazons had still forgotten what they had been made to fight, yet none of those truths now carried her as readily toward the arrow in his chest.

She tried to recover the reasoning from that morning. Kill him before her sisters built their future around him. The thought was familiar enough to remember without difficulty. Wanting to act on it was another matter.

A shift behind his left shoulder opened the line. Xanthibarqa had moved only slightly, but his chest stood clear in the afternoon light for long enough to take the shot.

Areto did nothing.

By the time the guard settled back into place, relief had already arrived. That disturbed her more than the hesitation. She had lost the chance she had spent the morning waiting for, and some part of her was grateful the king remained untouched. Explanations followed quickly enough to be useful: the angle had been brief, another chance would come, patience had always been part of the plan. She could hear how easily they arranged themselves around what she had failed to do, and none of them restored the regret she expected to feel.

Before she could test that absence any further, the king continued. “When you look at me, you will see me. Judge the man standing here by what he does. The fears you carried here before you knew me will no longer stand in my place.”

The command caught the suspicion she had brought with the bow and turned her attention back along the arrow’s path. She had spent years watching rulers for the moment authority revealed what it intended to become, and she had approached this king with the same expectation already settled in her. Calling that certainty up now took effort. Her attention kept moving instead to the man beneath the crown, measuring him in ways she had never intended to bother with: the steadiness of his voice, the ease with which the guards trusted the space around him, the fact that nothing he had done since stepping onto the balcony resembled the danger she had already assigned to him.

The suspicion was still there when she reached for it, familiar enough that she could reconstruct the argument without effort. His right to rule had always been enough. A king could become the center of Amazon life until the war against the Dark God receded into history, and that danger had justified the arrow before she ever saw his face.

Now the reasoning kept opening into questions she had never needed to ask. What had he actually done to deserve the judgment she brought with her? If the Dark God profited from division, what would killing a rightful king accomplish besides giving Themyscira another wound to carry? The questions used her own beliefs against the conclusion she had built from them, and that made them harder to dismiss.

She could still remember how certain she had been that morning. The memory remained clear. The certainty itself did not return with it.

“Your duty will not stop at what honour can see. You will trust me.”

Her fingers tightened around the shaft at the word trust. The plan she had carried into the forest had required patience, judgment, and a clear line to the king; trust had never entered the calculation. His command forced it there. When he spoke of a blade reaching him and of the women below caring whether he survived, her gaze dropped to the arrow resting against the string. She had brought the blade he was describing, and suddenly she could picture it reaching him.

The thought of the arrow reaching him no longer ended with the usefulness of his death. His command forced her attention past that abstraction and into the wound itself: the head punching through cloth and flesh, his body striking the rail, blood spreading while the court below broke into confusion. Until a moment ago she had cared only about what removing him would accomplish. Now she found herself imagining what it would cost him to be removed, and the concern arrived strongly enough that her fingers eased against the shaft before she meant them to.

Anger followed the movement of her hand because she knew exactly where the reluctance had come from. His words had put it there. She tried to use that knowledge against the feeling, to recover the purpose that had made the arrow simple, and instead the mission began supplying reasons for keeping him alive. His murder could fracture Themyscira. Every faction would turn inward while the Dark God remained beyond the horizon, and the child she had conceived for that larger war would inherit a people weakened before the fighting even began. The logic disgusted her because she could hear the command working through convictions that were already hers, and however hard she searched, she could not find an argument inside the mission strong enough to dismiss it.

The child still occupied the same place in the future she had built around Myrina’s vision, and the Dark God still waited at the end of it. What had become difficult was tracing a clean line from those convictions to the arrow beneath her fingers. That morning the king’s death had seemed to simplify everything ahead of her. Now each attempt to imagine the aftermath produced complications her mind insisted she should have considered from the beginning. Even the slight roughening of his voice caught her attention, and the fact that she noticed his fatigue unsettled her more than any of the arguments gathering around his survival.

Hippolyta turned toward the ranks below before she could force her attention back onto the shot, opening the line across the king’s chest. The distance was right, the light clear, her bow already settled in her hand. She needed only to draw, yet her shoulder remained loose while the opportunity held. Take it. The command came easily enough inside her own head, followed almost at once by reasons to wait. The angle could change during release. A wound that failed to kill him would bring the palace down around this position. The guards were already alert, and another chance might come with fewer eyes nearby. She recognized each excuse as it arrived and still found herself accepting it long enough for Hippolyta to shift back and close the line.

Relief followed the loss of the shot before she had time to choose whether she wanted it. That was harder to explain away. Patience had always mattered, and refusing a poor opportunity could still be called discipline, but she had seen this one clearly enough to know what it was. She had spent the morning waiting for exactly that opening, and when it disappeared she was glad the king remained unharmed. Her fingers stayed on the arrow while his voice continued across the court, the shaft suddenly colder beneath them as the mission began searching for reasons why that gladness might belong there.

The king’s next words carried across the court with the same calm authority as the rest. “You will love me.”

The command turned her attention back toward him, and the first change was horribly simple: she was glad he was there. His voice carrying beyond the court and into the trees mattered. So did the steady rise of his chest above the balcony rail. Even the guards crowding the angles around him, women she had spent the afternoon resenting for denying her the shot, now gave her a measure of reassurance because they kept him alive. For a moment she could only stare at the place beneath his breastbone where the arrow had been meant to enter, and imagining the shaft there now brought such immediate fear that her fingers closed harder around the wood in her hand.

Anger came through the same grip. He had put this feeling there; she had heard the words that did it. That knowledge gave her something to resist with, and she reached for the hatred that had carried her up into the stonework, trying to turn it back into action. She pictured drawing, releasing, watching the arrow cross the court and strike him. The thought should have restored the purpose she remembered. Instead the image of his body folding against the rail made her want to stop it before it happened, and the desire to protect him survived every accusation she threw at it. She could hate what he had done to her and still feel relieved that the last opening had closed before she used it. Realizing that only sharpened the anger.

The relief would not leave. He remained alive behind the women guarding him, and some newly tender part of her kept taking comfort from the fact. She remembered sitting in this same place waiting for his death with complete patience. She remembered measuring the distance and deciding where the arrow would enter. Those memories remained clear enough to condemn the affection now moving through her, yet they no longer restored the old desire when she called on them. Knowing exactly when the change had begun did nothing to make his safety matter less.

Even the mission began answering differently when she forced herself back through it. Myrina’s vision remained firm. The child she had conceived for the war against the Dark God still stood at the center of everything she had sacrificed. The enemy waiting beyond Themyscira had lost none of his importance. Yet once the king’s survival had become something she wanted, those convictions started gathering around that desire and giving it reasons. His murder would fracture the island before the greater war began. Her sisters would turn inward, factions would form around the empty place he left, and the child she had paid so dearly to bring into the world would inherit a people weakened before its purpose could be fulfilled.

She could hear how quickly the argument was arranging itself and knew why that frightened her. Nothing essential had been removed from the creed. The same truths were still there, carrying the same names and the same history, while the conclusion they produced had begun bending around the man on the balcony. Protecting him could preserve the unity her child would one day need. Keeping him alive could serve the war. The thought came with such ready conviction that she searched it for the point where his command ended and her own belief began, and found no boundary she trusted.

Beneath all the reasoning, she wanted him to live. No argument about Themyscira was required to sustain that desire now. His voice carrying out from the court and through the trees pleased her, and the sight of him still standing safely among the guards eased a fear that had not existed before his command reached her. The mission had already begun making use of the attachment, folding his survival into the war she still believed was coming until imagining the Dark God’s arrival brought the king into that future as well, alive when the fighting began and still there to see what followed.

This can go much further by making the command operate on attention, instinct, and desire at the same time. The important thing is that she does not merely conclude that she loves him. Her mind starts protecting the feeling while her attention keeps finding reasons to adore the man himself, which makes the violation harder to dismiss as abstract magic.

His voice carried through the court and into the trees, working deeper into the affection already rooted there. He spoke of loving the man beneath the crown and of refusing to spend the years ahead worrying at that love for evidence of his hand. She had been doing exactly that since the first command, following every changed thought backward until she found the moment his voice had entered it and using that knowledge as a weapon against whatever followed. Now even the search began turning against her. Suspicion felt uglier when it was aimed at him. Each attempt to examine the love too closely brought with it the uncomfortable sense that she was treating someone precious as an enemy, and the feeling had enough force to make her hesitate before pursuing the thought.

Knowing what he had done remained easy. Using that knowledge became harder each time she looked at him. Her attention had begun lingering on details that should have meant nothing to an archer waiting for a shot: the breadth of his shoulders above the rail, the movement of his hands when he spoke, the shape of his mouth around the commands that had already entered her so deeply. The sight of him stirred a warmth that had no place in the mission she remembered bringing into the forest. She wanted to keep looking. Worse, she wanted the distance between the trees and the balcony gone, wanted to know what his voice sounded like when it was meant for one woman rather than a court, wanted to stand close enough that she would no longer have to read the smallest movements of his face across open ground. Every one of those desires carried his authorship somewhere inside it, and every one felt entirely real.

Pride reached the feeling before she could turn disgust against it. Loving a rightful king began to feel worthy of her rather than degrading, and the thought he made you feel this lost some of the force it had carried moments earlier. The answer came readily now. He was worthy of love. Themyscira could remain whole around him. Myrina’s purpose did not require an empty throne. The child would still destroy its father when the time came, and the war she had sacrificed for would still be fought. Her thumb pressed harder into the arrow shaft while those convictions rearranged themselves around the man on the balcony, each one finding a place for him without surrendering anything she could clearly point to as false.

The proud Amazon who had settled among the trees that afternoon with an arrow prepared for his chest remained vivid in memory. She could recall the contempt, the patience, the certainty that killing him would protect everything that mattered. What she could no longer recover was the desire that had made those beliefs useful. Looking at him now awakened something much deeper than reluctance to kill. Affection had sunk into admiration, and admiration into a hungry fascination with the man himself. She wanted him safe, wanted his attention, wanted to know the habits hidden beneath the ceremony and the crown. The thought of another woman standing close enough to learn those things before she did brought a sharp possessiveness she immediately resented and could not make disappear.

That was where the command became hardest to bear. She could still hate what he had done to her while loving him with enough force that hatred could no longer decide what she wanted. Anger remained available whenever she reached for it, yet even anger had begun circling around the fear of losing him. The king’s voice continued through the branches, and she listened for every word with a devotion that would have disgusted the woman who entered the forest. Remembering that woman did not bring her back. It only made the tenderness she now felt seem deeper, more terrible, because she knew exactly how recently there had been nothing in her where it now lived.

“This is mine. This is the law.”

The word law caught where the earlier commands had already bent her thinking and gave the new conclusions a weight they had not possessed a moment before. Her grip shifted on the bow as she ran the old creed through herself again, searching for something in it that would resist. The Amazons had been made against the Dark God. Myrina had remembered what paradise had softened. The child would grow strong enough to kill its father. All of that came as readily as it had at dawn, until she reached the arrow under her hand and the reason she had nocked it. The king will make them forget. Kill him before they build their future around him. She remembered believing the sentence completely. It simply no longer moved her toward the draw.

The future around his death crowded in instead. Themyscira fractured around a murdered king, her child inheriting a people turned inward before the Dark God ever reached their shore, the coming war weakened by a killing she had once believed would strengthen it. Each consequence drew its authority from convictions she already trusted, making the alteration harder to separate from herself.

The guards below began to kneel, red plumes descending through the court as armour struck stone in an uneven roll. Their movement loosened the formation around the king until the bodies that had denied her all morning shifted away from his chest. This opening lasted. The range was unchanged, the wind mild, the light clean enough to show where the arrow should enter. Her fingers were already placed on the string, and this time she began the draw, feeling the tension gather through shoulder and back before stopping. For several heartbeats nothing stood between the arrow and the man she had come to kill. Then she eased the string forward until the bow went slack.

No guard had spoiled the shot. She had begun the draw and chosen not to finish it, and the relief that followed only sharpened her anger because she knew whose words had made that choice possible. The woman who had settled among the trees that morning would already have loosed the arrow, yet remembering her certainty did nothing to diminish the quiet reassurance of seeing the king still standing on the balcony, his chest rising unharmed behind the women who guarded him.

The oath rose from the kneeling court, more than fifty of her sisters promising to keep his life, grieve his hurt, want his happiness and love him from their own hearts. Listening from the trees, she almost scoffed. They spoke as though devotion had only just found them, as though any of them could possibly understand what it meant to love him with the force now rooted inside her. The thought came with an ugly flash of pride. She had come here prepared to kill him and still the command had reached her, turned her toward him, made every surviving conviction in her life gather around his safety. Let the women below swear themselves hoarse. Some newly possessive part of her was already certain that none of them loved their king as fiercely as she did.

The arrow remained fitted beneath her hand while that certainty settled through her. Anger should have made it easier to draw, and she tried to use it that way, imagining the release, the flight across the court, the shaft disappearing beneath his breastbone. The image brought no satisfaction now. Horror closed around it first, sharpened by the thought that any of the sisters below would gladly throw themselves into its path to save him. An hour earlier she would have despised them for that devotion. Now the idea that they might reach him before she could, protect him before she could, even suffer for him in her place, stirred a possessiveness she resented almost as much as the love itself. Her fingers stayed on the string, but the shot had become something she could picture only as a wound against the man she adored.

Her fingers slipped the arrow from the string and returned it to the quiver without enough sound to reach the court. Memory remained painfully clear afterward. She could still recall the straight line that had once connected Myrina’s vision to the king’s death, the hours spent waiting for his chest to clear, even the anticipation of seeing the shot land. Those memories survived; their authority over her did not.

The Dark God was still coming, the child still carried the hope she had paid for with her own body, and Myrina remained the woman whose vision she trusted. Following those convictions now carried her toward preserving the king she had come into the forest to kill. She wanted him alive when the war reached them and wanted the guards below to keep him safe until then. She hated him for making the thought of losing him hurt this much, yet when she looked through the break in the trees and found him still standing unharmed on the balcony, relief settled through her before she could resist it. She was glad he was still there.

No doubt her sisters who had also taken up their positions would be glad too....