CHAPTER FIFTEEN
-ARTHUR-
The guard straightened when he heard my boots on the stairs.
Once he saw the white-haired witch as I thrust her in front of me, he began to fidget.
“Leave,” I said as I stopped in front of him. “Don’t come back until I summon you.”
He hesitated one breath too long but then nodded and turned around, retreating down the long and dank corridor.
I unlocked and opened the large wood door, stepping inside but not before thrusting her in front of me.
The dungeon settled around us, all torchlight and stone as well as that particular cold that lived this far underground, both wet and permanent.
Mordred’s wards hummed in the walls. They were barely audible and were really more felt than heard, like low pressure behind the eyes.
“Why are you bringing me here?” she demanded, not for the first time. And just as with the other times she’d asked, I said nothing.
Instead, I walked the length of the corridor, pushing her in front of me whenever she faltered.
We passed numerous cells. In the first, a man sat with his back against the far wall, knees drawn up, and his eyes fixed on nothing.
He was a debtor, most likely, given the softness still left in his hands despite the weeks he’d clearly been down here.
We must take our mate to our own bedchamber.
She looked back at me, but I shook my head. “Keep moving.”
Two cells along, another man slept upright against the bars, his chin dropped to his chest, one wrist wrapped in a filthy rag where he’d worn the irons raw.
Across from him, an older man with a miller’s build and a split lip stared back at me without flinching.
He was the kind of man who brawled badly or had blasphemed in the wrong company and was still too proud to regret it.
Near the end of the corridor, a gaunt woman sat perfectly still on the edge of her cot, her hands folded in her lap, watching us pass with the quiet, hollow patience of someone who’d already made her peace with however this ended. All of them stared at us.
I found Corvin’s cell at the farthest end. There was no one locked up with him, and neither was there anyone in the cell beside his, as I’d instructed.
He was sitting against the wall with his knees up and his arms resting across them, in the posture of a man who’d spent time in worse places and knew how to wait.
His entire cell was bathed in light, courtesy of Mordred’s magic.
And this wasn’t just torchlight. There were specific wards that Mordred had carved into each corner of the cell, above the iron bars and into the stone, wards that filled the cell with the light of day, an important feature when you were trying to imprison a shadow worker.
Without access to the dark, Corvin wasn’t a threat to anyone.
His head came up when he heard us approaching, and those all-knowing eyes immediately landed on her. Then they moved from her and began tracking me, calculating all the while without appearing to.
We care not for the man! Take our treasure away from here!
I ignored the relentless beast and unlocked the cell. Corvin didn’t move, but I hadn’t expected him to.
“Get up,” I said.
His eyes narrowed on me before he stood, but he didn’t say a word; just watched me. As soon as I had his cell door open, she was already inside it and throwing her arms around him.
The dragon noticed. Of course, it did.
OURS, it said in a growl, the word low and immediate, now rising through my chest like smoke.
I ignored it because I’d come here for a purpose: to prove to the fucking thing that I was its keeper, that I was in charge, that no matter what happened, I was the one pulling the strings. And I always would be.
Corvin’s arms came up around her automatically, then stopped.
His chin was over her shoulder, but his eyes were on me.
He hadn’t fully embraced her in return, not entirely anyway, because he was currently stuck on the question known as: why?
As such, he watched my face, then began reading the angle of my shoulders, trying to work out what I was doing and what it was going to cost him.
I stepped inside the cell and closed the door behind the three of us. The click of the mechanism was very loud.
SHE TURNS TO HIM AND NOT TO US! The dragon’s attention pressed against the inside of my skull, dense and hot as a coal. END HIM!
You are not in charge, I thought back. And now you will learn that lesson.
I set the key in my breast pocket and crossed my arms.
The dragon could want whatever it wanted.
That was the point. I’d come here to demonstrate something, to the beast and to myself, to stand in the same room as the woman it coveted and feel the wanting claw at me.
But I would hold still anyway, to prove the crown sat on my head and not on the dragon’s.
That was all this was: an ultimate example of my own control, my own power over the beast within me. And if there was some part of me that was taking extreme glee at what I knew would be the dragon’s complete and utter despair, well, that was all part of the game.
Corvin stepped back from her gently, putting himself between her and me with a casualness that wasn’t casual at all.
“What is the point—” he started.
“—I’m not the tyrant you think I am.” I kept my voice even as a smile lit my lips. “Perhaps you could, instead, consider me a benevolent king.”
“Arthur—”
“—I’m giving you the one thing you came here for.”
He watched me.
“Which is what?”
I lifted my hand and pointed past him. “Her.”
Silence.
Corvin looked at me for a long moment, and the torchlight put shadows under his cheekbones, making him look older. He shook his head slowly.
“I don’t understand.”
“She’s yours,” I said again with a shrug as if it were completely obvious. “Consider this a gift from your king.”
“Arthur.”
When I spoke next, I kept my voice pleasant, conversational.
“You made quite a production of it: riding to Camelot, breaking through my wards, and smuggling her out underneath my nose.”
I tilted my head. “You went to extraordinary lengths for her. So now she’s yours. I’m simply formalizing the arrangement.”
“That’s not—”
“—Fuck her, Corvin.”
The silence that followed was very complete.
SHE IS OURS! the dragon roared, and the words seemed to shake my entire body. YOU DISHONOR WHAT IS OURS!
I just laughed at it.
But the dragon pushed back; it pressed against the walls of my ribs like something trying to split bone. I felt its rage as a white heat behind my eyes and a trembling in the tendons of my hands that I controlled by sheer force of will alone.
YOU WILL NOT ALLOW HIM TO TAKE WHAT IS OURS!
I am the fucking king, I thought back, my words cold and precise. I am the one who wears the crown! You are a feral thing that lives in my chest, and you will be still.
The pressure didn’t leave, but it retreated a fraction underneath my own anger.
I looked at Corvin.
He was shaking his head slowly, the way he used to when I’d propose something reckless and he was the only man with enough courage to tell me no.
“No,” he said.
“No?” I smiled. “Interesting. Back in the tavern, when I interrupted you both, you seemed rather committed to the idea. Not only that, but I believe when pressed, you admitted you wanted her.”
“Those were your words, not mine.”
“Weren’t they though?” I let the smile settle into place and then allowed the cold to bleed through it.
“I walked in on a very particular scene, Corvin. You were on top of her. Your hands were all over her, as were your lips. You looked very much like a man in the process of taking what he wanted.”
I paused. “Now you have my blessing. So fucking well take it.”
“This is wrong, Arthur, and you know it. So, whatever game you’re trying to play—”
“—I don’t play games. I’m simply offering you the prize you’ve been coveting on a silver platter, as it were. And now you’re going to accept your king’s generosity by fucking your prize.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to do that.”
I noticed that the entire time this conversation was going on, she remained as close to him as possible, as if taking strength from the heat of his body. And he kept one arm wrapped around her while the other was fisted at his side.
He held my gaze, and I held his. “Is this about principle?” I asked, the laugh still riding my tone. “Or is this about weakness? Are you afraid to fuck her?”
He shook his head. “This isn’t you,” he said quietly. “This isn’t the man I knew, the man I bled with, the man who said he wanted to build something worth building.”
I laughed. The sound came out easy and genuine, and I let it fill the cell and bounce off the damp stone walls.
“That man,” I said, “died the morning I took the dragon into my blood. You were there for the end of him, Corvin. You’ve just chosen not to acknowledge it.”
I uncrossed my arms. “And, in case you wonder, I don’t mourn him. He was soft. He believed that men would honor a just king simply because justice existed.”
I let the smile go as anger began to work through me.
In general, I didn’t like to deal in the world of memories because memories were dangerous. “He was wrong about everything.”
Corvin’s jaw worked. “This has nothing to do with justice.”
“You’re right,” I answered. “It doesn’t. It has to do with greed... Your greed.” I gestured at her. “So take her. Satisfy your needs.”
“And if I don’t?”
The question hung between us. He’d asked it quietly, without theater, which was the Corvin I remembered. He always chose the quieter option when a louder one was available.
I let the silence stretch before I answered.
“Then I kill one of you,” I said with a shrug. “Or both. I haven’t fully decided.” I looked between them. “The dragon has a preference, naturally. It would very much like me to kill you. I’m still entertaining the possibility.”
“No,” she said finally as she looked up at him and shook her head, her eyes wide with concern.
YES! The word came with a pulse of heat that was so violent my vision went briefly red. END HIM. END HIM AND TAKE HER. TAKE HER. SHE IS—
—Be fucking quiet.
TAKE—
—I said be quiet.