CHAPTER SIXTEEN #3
I left what the alternative was unspoken. They all knew.
What I didn’t say, what I had no intention of saying to this table or to anyone, was that the assessment was only half of it.
The other half was simpler and considerably less noble, but it delivered a message all the same.
And the message was that a king who could put a blade in his enemy’s hand and stand across from her in open court without so much as adjusting his footing wasn’t demonstrating military prudence.
He was demonstrating something far more fundamental: that she was so completely within the boundaries of his authority that he could afford to play.
That the woman who had walked into Camelot wearing another man’s face, who carried Merlin’s blood and Merlin’s power, could be handed a weapon in front of every knight, courtier, and lord who cared to watch and still not be a threat worth fearing.
Every eye in that courtyard would understand what it meant, not that she was being trained, but that she was being kept.
That there was a difference between a wolf and a wolf on a leash, and that I held the leash.
It was, when reduced to its plainest form, a performance. And I’d always been very good at those.
Afterward, when the table had emptied and the servants had cleared the maps, I stood at the window and let myself think about just what had gone on in the dungeon the night before.
The way the dragon had risen. It hadn’t been the slow creep I’d learned to manage, the gradual heat at the base of my spine that I could breathe down and contain if I caught it early enough.
This had been something else. This had been the floor dropping out from under the cage I’d spent years constructing.
I’d gone down there to prove something. To the dragon, to myself: the distinction had seemed meaningful at the time. If I forced Corvin to fuck her right in front of me, I’d demonstrate that the creature inside my chest didn’t own me. That I alone held all the power.
The logic had seemed airtight.
What I hadn’t accounted for was standing in that cell and watching the two of them react to each other as if the outer world not only didn’t matter but didn’t even exist.
Of course, I’d known the dragon would riot, that it would revolt against what it considered an absolute injustice. I just hadn’t been prepared for the level of that revolt.
I’d nearly lost control, and the beast had nearly overcome me. That couldn’t happen again.
I was the king of Logres. I’d held this crown through a succession war, two assassination attempts, and the calculated abandonment of the one man who had ever truly believed in what I was building.
I hadn’t survived all of that to be unmade in a dungeon cell by a white-haired woman with violet eyes and her father’s ability to rearrange the inside of a room without appearing to do anything at all.
The dragon rumbled, low and satisfied, at the thought of her.
Ours.
“She’s not ours, and she never will be,” I told the bare walls of the tower, the window panes, and the gardens outside where the towers of Camelot stretched into the afternoon haze like they’d always be there, unmovable and unfaltering.
I looked away from the window.
She was my prisoner to manage, and that’s exactly what I’d told them around the table. I’d meant it too.
I just needed to figure out what managing her entailed.
-ARTHUR-
Hours later, I’d made the decision that I was going to interrogate her.
Such was what I told myself as I dressed, as I dismissed my servant, and fastened my own buckles in the quiet.
It was the same thing I told myself as I walked the corridor toward the dungeon stairs without a guard at my shoulder because I didn’t want one, and what I wanted was the only thing that mattered.
Closer. Yes, we must go to her.
Her cell was lit by a single torch, and it seemed to act as a spotlight against her, highlighting her hair and skin. I stood at the bars for a moment before I pushed the key into the lock and heard it disengage.
She never once looked up, even though I knew she was awake.
Instead, she continued to sit with her back against the far wall, her knees drawn up, and her head resting on her arms.
When she finally looked up, once I’d walked into the cell and she was now forced to look at my leather boots, her expression was composed, but I could see the tension around her jaw.
Her skin was pale beneath its natural fairness, and there were shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there a week ago.
The cell had no warmth, and the temperature had dropped overnight.
I noticed as much, but did so from a distance, the way a king notices his prisoner is suffering but doesn’t care.
I didn’t fucking care.
The dragon settled; that was the thing I really noticed. Seeing her, it had quieted as if the proximity to her was enough, as if all its problems were solved now that we were in the same room.
She watched me take another step closer to her, then I stopped at a deliberate distance: standing close enough to read her face, but far enough that I wasn’t crowding her. I put my hands behind my back and said nothing. Neither did she.