CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
“I agree with Merlin,” I said, and it was a statement I didn’t think I’d ever uttered before and probably never would again.
“Corvin failed,” Carlisle said again as he disregarded the two of us and turned to Vaelen. “That’s the fact. He went in, and he didn’t come out. The longer we wait, the deeper Arthur’s roots go into both of them. You know how this works. You’ve seen it work. The longer someone sits in that castle—”
“—yes.” Vaelen’s voice was flat. “I know how it works.”
“Then you know we can’t—”
“—what I know,” Vaelen said, “is that launching our men, what few men we have, into a castle at maximum security, without knowing where either operative is held, without knowing what Guinevere’s condition is, without knowing whether Arthur is planning for us to do exactly that—” he paused,
very deliberately, “—means I’m sending people to die. Not maybe. Not possibly. I’m choosing, right now, at this table, to kill them.”
The silence stretched.
Carlisle’s captains exchanged a look. The older one had a scar along his jaw that pulled his expression slightly downward on one side, giving him a permanent air of contempt.
The younger one was doing the thing young soldiers do when they’re uncertain: watching the senior men as if they might read the answer in their faces.
Hailey was watching the younger captain, not unkindly, but with the attention of someone who was filing information away.
When she noticed me noticing, she didn’t look away.
She just gave me that same unhurried nod as before, the one that meant she knew exactly what she was doing and didn’t require my opinion on it.
I was beginning to understand why Vaelen trusted her. She was the stillest person in the room, which was a considerable trick for someone who gave off the distinct impression of barely contained energy.
Regardless, I’d let this run long enough.
“As Merlin said, Corvin is very much alive,” I said.
Everyone turned to face me, and it was Vaelen’s face I found first as he smiled at me with that seductive expression of his. I gave him a lofty look in response before turning my attention to the others.
I kept my voice even. “Guinevere is also alive. They’re both in the dungeon, in the east corridor, which tells you something about Arthur’s state of mind. Guinevere’s condition is unchanged from last week.”
I folded my hands on the table. “Not only do I have the eyes of my ravens, but I have contacts inside those walls, contacts I’ve had for years.”
“Contacts?” Carlisle repeated.
I nodded. “Allies, I suppose you could call them.”
“Who—” Carlisle started.
“—allies who won’t be named, because the moment they are named, they stop being allies and start becoming casualties.”
Vaelen was watching me with absolute and clear amusement. If the fool wasn’t careful, someone would soon catch on that he was absolutely taken with me. We would need to have a discussion soon.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Hailey’s mouth curve slightly. She already knew, then. Of course she did. Vaelen’s right hand would have to be both blind and indifferent to have missed it, and she was neither.
“So they’re alive,” Carlisle said, shaking his head. “For now.”
“For now.”
He studied me with narrowed eyes, and I just smiled at him as pleasantly as I was able. “And you want us to wait.”
“I want you to think,” I said. “Which is occasionally different from waiting, though I understand the distinction can be difficult for a man to grasp.”
I looked at him steadily as Hailey chuckled in the background.
“Corvin’s capture changes the game, I agree. Arthur doesn’t know much yet, but he knows enough now. He knows one of Merlin’s own tried to get her out. He also probably guesses that it was coordinated. He now also knows that we are aware that Guinevere is his prisoner, as is Corvin.”
I turned slightly toward Vaelen because I could feel his gaze on me.
When I did, the fool was staring at my cleavage and licking his lips.
I did my best not to react as I turned back to Carlisle.
“That’s what Corvin’s capture tells Arthur. Not just that we attempted to free Guinevere, but that we know significantly more than we did before. It tells him we’ve been watching and we’ve been planning.”
Carlisle grumbled something low and unintelligible, the sound more reflex than argument. I let it sit in the air between us without filling the silence.
Vaelen, for his part, was still smiling at me across the table like a lovesick dolt.
His eyes moved over my face and then—inevitably, helplessly—lower.
This was what happened when you invited a man into your bed one night and refused him the next.
He became utterly and completely ravenous, like a rabies-infected hound.
Perhaps I’d throw Vaelen a bone and allow him to visit me tonight.
But, for now, I had to think of other topics.
“But another failed extraction without forethought,” I continued, “costs us valuable men and eliminates any remaining possibility of a quiet removal. Camelot goes into full lockdown and every door closes. Every contact I have inside those walls could become a liability.”
I paused. “A successful mission costs us nothing but time. And we still have time.”
“You keep saying that,” Carlisle said.
“Because it keeps being true.”
“Arthur could put either one of them to death at any moment.”
“But he won’t,” I answered. “Because in doing so, he’d destroy the power he holds over us.” I took a breath. “As Merlin said.”
Carlisle held my gaze. His jaw worked. Then he sat down.
That surprised me a little. I’d expected more. Men like Carlisle always had more. But he sat, and he reached for the tankard in front of him, and he drank his ale, and I understood: he was tired. Under the plans, the captains, and the serrated voice, he was exhausted.
Vaelen spoke. “What do you need?”
“Time,” I answered. “And our men on standby. When the window opens, I will know it. And we will move then.”
“And if the window doesn’t open?” Carlisle asked.
I considered the question honestly. “Then we reassess.”
It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the only answer that was true.
Merlin had gone quiet again. I looked at him. There was something in his expression I hadn’t seen in a long time. Something low, banked, and carefully controlled. Fear, I was fairly certain.
Not for the mission and not for the resistance, but for her.
He was afraid for his daughter, but he couldn’t say as much. Instead, he was performing steadiness at this table with the specific terror of a man who had spent twenty years refusing to feel what the word daughter cost him and was refusing again, right now, with everything he had.
I looked away.
The argument ran another hour before it exhausted itself.
Carlisle’s captains left first. Carlisle followed, pausing at the door long enough to give me a look that was equal parts suspicion and unwilling respect before he stepped into the corridor.
The door closed behind him. Merlin was the last to leave, or nearly the last.
Hailey gathered the papers she’d spread on the table beside Vaelen’s elbow...
notes, I realized, that were written in a small and very precise hand, and rolled them efficiently before tucking them under her arm.
She paused on her way to the door and looked at me with those steady hazel-brown eyes.
Then she said in a soft voice, so only I could hear her:
“He talks about you, you know.” She said the words without inflection, neither warning nor invitation. Just the fact of it. “Good luck with him,” she finished, with a glance back at Vaelen that suggested she spoke from experience. Then she was gone.
I gathered my things slowly, and I could feel Vaelen watching me.
“Morgan.”
“Vaelen,” I answered as I picked up my cloak from the peg.
“You turned me away last night.”
I didn’t bother looking at him. “I did.”
“Why?”