CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #3
I turned from the window as I remembered the moment Corvin had entered her, the sounds she’d made, the expression on her face, the fact that my cock had never felt harder.
Even though I’d thought I was in control, the opposite was true.
She’d wanted him to fuck her, and I’d allowed it to happen, thinking I was holding the strings.
But where Guinevere was concerned, I was beginning to realize I never held the strings.
“I should have slit her throat in the Great Hall when I’d had the chance.”
Lance finally looked up at me. “Why didn’t you?”
I sighed and shook my head, emptying the rest of my wine into my mouth. “I don’t know.”
I crossed to the table and poured another glass of wine, needing something else to focus on.
Our mate languishes in the dark while you stand idle and sip your wine.
The dragon’s voice pressed through my skull like a burning coal held against the inside of my temple. It was slow, deliberate, and felt like something burning my mind from the inside out.
“Then the plan is to keep them both as your prisoners, Corvin and... the woman?”
I looked at him because I was struck by the way he wouldn’t say her name. But his expression was impossible to read the way it was sometimes, when he didn’t want to reveal the fact that he had emotions just like the rest of us.
“I haven’t decided. Keep them alive for the foreseeable future, I suppose. They’re... worth something.”
Lance said nothing. Instead, he turned his goblet slowly in his hands and just stared at the contents as if they held all the answers to this game of pawns and kings.
“She had months inside Camelot’s walls,” I continued. “Months sitting at my table, training in my yards, learning about Camelot’s weaknesses... my weaknesses.” I let that sit for a moment. “She could have poisoned me six times over if that was what Merlin intended.”
“And yet she didn’t.”
I nodded and watched as I swirled the dark red wine in my glass, thinking about the conversation with her earlier.
If Merlin wanted you dead, you’d be dead.
The coals cracked and settled as a thin ribbon of smoke curled toward the flue.
“Regardless of the reasons she came here, the girl remains a direct line into Annwyn,” I continued.
“Corvin is much the same.” I set my goblet down on the table.
“Everything Merlin’s been planning: troop movements, alliances, whatever he’s building in that twilight pit he calls a kingdom... they both carry that information. All the names, the routes, the shape of Merlin’s intentions.”
I took a breath. “I crack them open, and I have all of it.”
I didn’t bother to tell him that I’d already attempted to crack her open but hadn’t gotten far.
“Torture?” Lance finally looked at me.
I shrugged, though I wasn’t sure which of them he was referring to. “Whatever it takes.”
He swallowed hard at that, and the scar along his jaw caught the dim red light. “Corvin will never bend under torture. You know that.”
I nodded. “And the witch?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Who’s to say?” He paused. “But could you torture a woman?”
I breathed in deeply. “In the past, I would have said no. But there’s a certain dark part of me that’s gleeful at the prospect of torturing her.”
He breathed in deeply, and his jaw was tight. “You don’t think you’ve tortured her enough?”
I frowned, irritated by his comment, because I didn’t fully understand what it meant. “I haven’t even started. Unless you’re referring to what happened in the Great Hall? That was hardly torture.” And he didn’t know about Corvin fucking her. No one did, and I’d keep it that way.
“Emotional torture, perhaps.”
“Do you think negatively of what I did?”
He swallowed hard, but he didn’t respond right away. Instead, his attention found the moonlight outside the window. “I believe I understand why you did it. Your motives.” He took a sip of his wine finally. “But it seemed... excessive in my eyes.”
I breathed in deeply as I wondered what his opinion would be regarding what I’d forced between her and Corvin.
But then I wanted to laugh at the thought.
I hadn’t forced her to do anything. She’d clearly wanted Corvin as much as he’d wanted her.
What a complete failure that had been. “Perhaps and perhaps not. But it was... necessary.”
“I’m not questioning your methods.” Lance’s voice was careful in the way that meant he was absolutely questioning my methods. “I’m questioning whether they worked.”
“Lance, it’s rather clear that I failed spectacularly.”
He looked at me and smiled. “Your words, not mine.”
“But you’re thinking the same. We both know the truth: she’s a fucking wild card who absolutely pulled the rug out from underneath me and continues to do so. And while I’m fucking livid about it... I’m also... caught off guard.”
“Because you didn’t break her.”
The image of her surfaced through my thoughts then without my permission. I could see her straight spine, those eyes meeting mine with contempt.
“No.” The word came out flat. “She wasn’t broken.”
She is so much stronger than you credit her.
I slammed my eyes shut against the voice of the beast, and it was all I could do to force it to the dark recesses of my mind. When I opened my eyes again, I watched as Lance leaned back in his chair.
“She’s a liability.”
I shook my head. “Only because I underestimated her.”
Not a comfortable admission, certainly, but a necessary one.
Better to name it here, in the dark with the one man who would carry the truth quietly, than to lie to myself and pay for it later.
“I thought the exposure in front of all the men of the court, the public humiliation... I thought it would strip the ground from under her. Force a reaction I could use.”
“Instead?”
“Instead she stood there and let me look upon her... let us all look upon her as if her nudity was the latest in women’s fashion.”
I picked up my wine again. “Like she was unbothered to be gazed upon by the hungriest of wolves. Part of me wonders if she actually enjoyed the attention,” I grumbled that last bit.
“I don’t believe she enjoyed it.” His comment was quick, but then he seemed uncomfortable with having said it and was quiet for a long moment. The fire breathed softly beneath the grate.
“We have to constantly remind ourselves that she isn’t Lioran.”
“I know she’s not Lioran, Arthur.”
I nodded. I understood why this subject rubbed him the wrong way.
We’d all trusted Lioran. We’d welcomed him.
I’d thought of him as a younger brother or even the younger version of myself.
What was more, I’d viewed him as the underdog, and I’d taken pity on him.
I’d rooted for him throughout the Shadow Trials, and when he’d emerged victorious, I’d been proud of him.
I daresay Lance had felt the same way. We’d all been won over by Lioran in some way or another, only to realize he was an imposter.
“She’s going to be harder to break than I imagined,” I said as I turned the goblet in my grip.
“Which means I need to adjust the approach. I don’t need her shattered.”
He didn’t comment, so I continued. “Shattered women tell you what they think you want to hear.”
I’d learned that lesson expensively, years ago.
“Shattered, no, but I need her broken down enough to be invested. Convinced that cooperating with me serves her better than loyalty to a father who used her like a blade and aimed her at a king.”
“Did she not already agree to your terms? That she’d become your spy against her father?”
I nodded. “She agreed, but in word only. In all other ways, she continues to defy me.”
I took a breath. “I attempted to interrogate her, but I didn’t get very far. It was difficult to tell what was truth and what were lies. It could have all been lies, for all I know.”
I paused and took a breath. “And that’s why I need to break her.”
“And if she can’t be convinced or if she can’t be broken?”
I looked at the coals.
“Everyone can be convinced, and everyone can be broken.” I took a long drink.
Lance stared into the fire with the look he got when he disagreed with me but had decided the argument wasn’t worth having. “I don’t envy you this task, Arthur.”
I nodded. “I don’t envy myself, truth be told.” Then I emptied the glass of bitter wine down my throat and wiped my sleeve against my mouth. “But break her, I will. It’s only a question of finding the right pressure. And I believe that pressure begins with Galahad.”
Lance’s head turned slowly as he faced me with his brows drawn. “Galahad?”
I nodded and, setting my wine down, stood, moving toward the narrow window.
The courtyard below sat empty and silver-washed under a half moon, the fountain’s cascade a soft, constant murmur in the dark.
“She can’t remain in the dungeon forever. But she also can’t be left to her own defenses when she’s as magically devastating as she is.”
“Did Mordred not bind her magic?”
I looked at him and nodded. “He did, but I worry it’s not enough. And it doesn’t address the fact that I can’t keep her in the dungeon forever.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I want her to become my spy, I have to treat her as such. I have to show her that I’m bending, that I’m softening toward her so she softens toward me, even if the truth is the opposite. I still need to play the part. This constant standoff between the two of us isn’t working.
But if I remove her from the dungeon, she needs watching.”
“Watching?”
“She needs a warden because she can’t be left alone.”
He nodded. “That’s true.”
“And the guards?”
I shook my head. “I don’t trust them against her magic. They are just regular men, and if something were to happen to Mordred’s binding, they would be helpless against her. No, her warden needs to be magically able.”
Lance nodded again as I chuckled. “Now name me a man I can trust behind closed doors with a woman who looks like that.”
Lance’s jaw tightened.
“Exactly.” I looked back outside at the dark of night.
She should be here. With us.
“Every knight in this castle stared at her in that hall,” I continued, ignoring the dragon because the only words I had for it would no doubt send it into a rage.