The first time my mother called me mage, I cradled a blue-bellied lizard in my palm. I’d heard the word before, hushed like a curse during garden parties, passed across white teeth in expensive restaurants, but I’d never imagined magic and mystery and mystic would ever belong to me. I was two and twenty years, and the world was flayed open in the aftermath of a coup—the Born King rises!—while Camelot’s future unhappened before us. She said the word reverently. Mage, like secret. Mage, like finally. And then, of course, you’ve been summoned, son. The King would like to meet you.

That’s how it came to happen. Not it—we. Me and him. I waited on the clean steps outside the castle and busied myself with my phone. I had no idea how to right myself against a King, and my phone was thankfully not a King, so the device was safe to analyze. Someone sent their Subaru speeding through a craggy pothole, tossing piss-stained rainwater over the sidewalk. The sticker on its rear windshield read FOR THE SWORD, and a knight cooed desperately to their spooked piebald, angling its hooves away from the filth. I hadn’t a clue how to be a mage, if a mage was something I could be, but I tipped my thoughts toward the frightened animal and willed it to be still. Sure enough, the horse quieted, and I thought, fuck, okay, I guess so.

“Westley Binx, the King will see you now,” the castle secretary said, clutching a clipboard to her finely tailored blouse. 

I stood, because you’re supposed to stand for royalty, and I walked, because the King wouldn’t be greeting me in the foyer—heaven forbid—and I found myself guided to the Throne Hall. Castle staff poked iPads and whispered to neatly tucked ear-pods. He needs better PR and this all happened very fast and most of the reputable suitors have left. I hadn’t understood my purpose until then, and when I did, I wished I was back home, holding that blue-bellied lizard.

But instead, the secretary nudged me with her pointed Chelsea boot, and I stumbled into the hall, empty except for the throne and King Arthur splayed on the polished floor. He stared at the ceiling, one arm resting above his head, the other curved over his belly. His beige tunic was awry, hiked toward his navel and wrinkled at the collar. He sighed like a mule, and I thought this is our Born King. Fuckin’ batshit guy with pretty eyes. I cleared my throat. The sound echoed, terribly.

“Your Highness, I—”

“Arthur,” he bellowed. “Call me Arthur, man. C’mon.”

I startled. “Arthur,” I tested, because I’d never imagined saying his name to him. “My family received your summon, I’m honored to—”

“Cut the shit. Are you a mage or not?” he asked and tipped his head to look at me. Blonde hair fell away from his furrowed brow, and mottled light skipped through the window, chasing knuckle-deep dimples and fine mouth and crooked canine.

I wrung my hands. “I’m not… I’m not sure, honestly. I’ve been told as much. Yesterday, literally.”

“You probably are, then. Since yesterday, literally.” He bared his dock-teeth, sallow, like mine, and laughed at his own joke. “Plan on standin’ there all day?”

“Plan on layin’ there all day?” I snapped back. Panic surged. That’s a King you’re talking to. You huge idiot. Monumental dumbass—

But King Arthur laughed. Beautifully, to be fair, and patted the space beside him. “Maybe.”

I went, because he’d implied that he wanted me to, and I placed my gangly limbs next to our Born King, our saving grace, our birthright ruler. At first, I was too afraid to look at him, but when I mustered enough bravery to turn, his nose was an inch from mine.

“Do you know why I called for a mage, Westley Binx?” 

My name, his lips. I became a tight-chested mess. “No, I’m not sure.”

“Because the people—my people—they call me lionhearted, and I want someone who can speak to the heart of me,” he said, timidly, like someone trapped in boyhood. And he was just a boy. Nineteen. Twenty, maybe. “I didn’t ask for the crown,” he added. “I’m not cut out for this.”

I hadn’t a clue if I could hear his spirit. I didn’t know if I could reach between ribs and commune with his heart. But he was smiling, so I told the truth. “I’m not sure if I’m cut out for that, either.”

“But you might be.”

“And you might be,” I said. I had no idea where my breath had gone, but it was missing. Stolen, I guess.

Arthur stared at me for a long, disquieting time. Beyond the castle, car horns honked. Horses whinnied. Someone shouted, he is here, he has returned. “You’re handsome,” he said, stupidly.

My breath remained missing. “Do you say that to all the mages?”

He laughed—I’d made him laugh—so I laughed, too, and my thoughts wrecked around inside me: he was a market-worker, he was a fisherman, he was a boy sowed from reverence and born into secret. 

Before I left home, I’d released the blue-bellied lizard into a petunia bed and asked my mother why she hadn’t told me I was mage-born. It was better, she’d said, to be nothing and free than to be something and caged.

Arthur asked, “Do you see anything, mighty mage? Am I truly lionhearted?”

I reached for his heart. Found it, beating and wild, frightened and strong. “Yes,” I said, and when he kissed me, I saw violet petals in my mother’s garden, and cobblestone near the castle steps, and loneliness—aching, hopeful loneliness—nestled behind his sternum. I was a market-worker, too. An apothecary. A boy sowed from power and born into secret. 

Yesterday, he was not a king.

Yesterday, I was not a mage.

When Arthur pulled away to say I’m sorry, I swallowed his apology. I kissed him something fierce. How could I not?