CHAPTER TWELVE
-ARTHUR-
My men moved.
They always moved quickly when my voice dropped like it just had. I pushed the tavern door open, and everyone inside turned to face me. Clearly, they were shocked to see their king in such a place. I didn’t care.
The stairs.
I walked over to them without a word. Lance was directly behind me and the knights behind him. We took the stairs two at a time.
The door at the end of the hall.
The door was closed, most probably locked. I didn’t slow down to test the latch. Instead, my boot connected just below the handle, and the wood split inward with a crack that shook dust from the rafters. The hinges screamed when I pushed through them, one hand on my sword.
The first thing I saw was the bed which was low and narrow, shoved against the far wall beneath a ceiling that sloped with the pitch of the roof. In it were two shapes, one on top of the other.
ANOTHER MALE DARES TO TAKE WHAT IS OURS?! The dragon screamed in my mind. IS THIS THE SAME MALE WHO TOOK HER INNOCENCE?
I ignored the dragon. Instead, I focused on her white hair, which caught what little light came through the gap in the shutters. At our abrupt entrance, the man above her moved immediately. But my attention wasn’t on him. It was on her, where she was now sitting upright.
IF HE DARED TO FUCK HER...
She was dressed. That was when I realized the man was moving quickly, already rising from the bed, one hand reaching back, reaching back for her.
He put himself between her and the door, between her and me.
And I knew that gesture, knew it so well I didn’t even have to look at his face for confirmation.
I’d watched that gesture save my life twice.
More than twice if I were being honest with myself.
I knew the exact angle of those shoulders, the way he always led with his left, and I knew the specific tilt of his head which meant he’d already calculated three ways to kill whoever was in front of him.
The floor seemed to shift as the shock overcame me. When he turned and I saw his face, my stomach fell for the second time in the course of the last two seconds.
“Corvin.”
His name on my tongue came out rough. No, it was more than rough. It was scraped raw, like I’d dredged it up from somewhere it had been buried for a very long time. It wasn’t even an accusation; no, it was just the word, just his name.
“Arthur.”
His voice sounded the same as the last time I’d heard it.
Or maybe it was older. Quieter, yes. But it was still the same deepness, the same register, the same tone.
It was the voice that had talked me down from two sieges and more than one catastrophic decision.
I’d never thought I’d hear it again, and definitely not in a circumstance like this, with my sword at my hip and his hand braced at the small of her fucking back.
DESTROY HIM! HE STOLE OUR MATE!
She stood behind his shoulder, one hand pressed flat against the wall. Her eyes, those fucking haunting eyes, moved between us like she was already calculating, already plotting a way out. Little did she know, there was no way out.
My knights filled the room. Lance posted himself at my right, and Tristan was to my left. The others arranged themselves in a loose arc behind us, swords not yet raised but close enough to it that the intention was clear.
Corvin didn’t move. He kept his hand where it was.
That was the thing that struck me most: that he didn’t reach for a weapon. He also didn’t shift his weight or angle his body for a fight. He just stood between her and me, the way he used to stand between me and every other threat that entered a room.
HE BELIEVES SHE IS HIS. END HIM!
I silenced the dragon. Or tried to, but the beast was nearly impossible to control.
“I didn’t expect to see you.” My voice was flat.
“Yet here I am.” His was flatter, though it wasn’t unkind. Just true. That was always his particular skill: landing a blade without cruelty, but killing all the same.
Something moved in his expression then, something that was more complicated than anger. Perhaps anger mixed with guilt. It was the look of a man who’d made a decision he still believed in, standing in front of the person he’d sacrificed to make it.
And then something else occurred to me. If Corvin had broken Guinevere out of my dungeon, then Merlin had to be well aware that I’d not only found her out but that I’d captured her and placed her in my dungeon.
Thus, we could no longer operate on the assumption that Merlin only knew what I wanted him to know.
I had to admit that it was a disappointment.
Very soon he’d also realize that Corvin had failed in his mission to rescue her.
I had to smile at that, at the fact that two pawns on the chessboard now belonged to me.
Behind Corvin, she shifted as she tried to step around him, but he moved his body to disallow her.
“Arthur, this is between the two of us.”
Her voice came out steady, even as she had to speak around Corvin’s shoulder.
It was steadier than I would have expected from a woman who was facing down death in a room full of armed knights.
“Corvin has no part in whatever argument you have with me. Let him go.”
I looked at her, and I was torn between laughing and slapping her across the face for her fucking audacity.
At the violence of the thought, the dragon lurched against my ribs.
The heat that moved through me was entirely the beast’s, but I refused to pay it any attention.
Just as I refused to look at her the way the dragon did, as our fucking mate.
No, she was my prisoner, and she was going to fucking suffer for attempting to escape me.
I suddenly laughed, surprising myself. “Let him go,” I repeated while shaking my head as I took a step closer to the two of them. My tone was soft, almost amused. “Next to you, Corvin of Blackhollow is at the top of my most wanted list.”
“This doesn’t have to get ugly,” Corvin started as she pushed away from him and took a step towards me.
“I’ll go with you willingly if you allow Corvin to leave.”
And that angered me more than I could say because it meant that he meant something to her. And a great deal, it seemed.
WE MUST DESTROY HIM! HE CLAIMS WHAT IS OURS!
I shook my head, still amazed at her nerve. “You’re a prisoner in my kingdom. You broke out of my dungeon. You’ve led all of us on this chase...” I tilted my head, the anger billowing within me. “And you have the fucking audacity to issue instructions to me?”
“I’m pointing out what’s—”
I crossed the room in four steps and then my hand found her throat as I slammed her against the wall behind her.
“Arthur!” Lance and Corvin called out at the same time.
But my attention rested entirely on her and my fingers which were closing over her throat.
My hold wasn’t hard enough to hurt her, but it was hard enough to communicate, with absolute certainty, that she was the puppet and I was the one holding her strings.
I held her there against the wall and watched her eyes go wide with the calculation of a woman deciding whether to fight.
“If you attempt your magic against me, you will regret it.”
I watched the choice play out in her eyes: even as powerful as she was, she wouldn’t be victorious against a room full of magically powerful knights. And she had to have realized as much because something changed in her eyes and the fight started to die out of them.
Regardless, my free hand found the dagger at my hip.
The blade cleared the sheath with a sound that seemed to silence the entire room.
I brought it up slowly and pressed the flat of the blade against her cheek, just as I’d done in the Great Hall when I’d tried to put her in her place and failed.
I would put her in her fucking place this time.
“Perhaps what you need most is a lesson,” I snarled between gritted teeth. “I should slash each of your cheeks and ruin the beauty which has doomed more than one man.”
At the feel of the dagger against her skin, her breath caught, but then she held my gaze for three full seconds. Defiant to the last, her chin raised despite the steel threatening her.
Lance moved first. His sword cleared the scabbard in one motion, the steel catching the gray light from the shuttered window, and for one suspended moment, the blade was angled toward me, toward my arm, toward the dagger at her face.
“Please tell me you didn’t just pull your fucking sword on your king,” I said, without turning to look at him.
“Arthur, this isn’t the way,” he started, concern in his tone.
“Whatever I say is the fucking way.”
He didn’t come any closer, and when I turned just slightly, I watched the muscle in his jaw jump, watched something move behind those dark gray eyes, some private argument with himself that lasted less than a breath.
He didn’t drop his sword, but neither did he make any move against me.
He just stood there, armed and ready. But when he nodded at me, I understood that his sense had returned.
I moved the dagger down to her throat, and her pulse beat against my palm.
Fast. I could tell she was working to keep it controlled, but it was racing regardless.
I looked at her for a long moment, and she looked right back at me.
Her eyes held mine; they didn’t flinch, and the dragon said something I refused to translate into language.
It was then that Corvin lunged for me. But my men intercepted him easily.
I glanced to the light outside, which was quickly turning from the nascent blue of dawn to the yellow of full morning.
And daylight meant Corvin’s magic was at its lowest.
Truly, he was now only as powerful as any other man, a particularly adept one but a man, all the same.
His shadows wouldn’t return to him until the evening, and by then, he’d be in my dungeon where Mordred’s wards would disallow him from using his magic at all.
“Restrain him,” I said, without letting my eyes leave her face. I could hear a shuffle behind me as my men did as instructed.
Dropping my dagger from her throat, I turned around and approached Corvin.