CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE #2
“On the outside of it, perhaps.” He shook his head again.
“And only because Arthur would rather have my magic allied with him than against him. But beyond that, I’m almost as much a pariah as you are.”
He looked back out at the yard before looking back at me, and he smiled.
“And besides... I find you interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Genuinely.” His mouth curved slightly.
“How do you find me interesting?”
His eyebrows reached for the cloudy sky.
“You’re sitting in the worst possible position, with no power and no allies, and you’re still watching everything. Still strategizing from a place that most people would term hopeless.”
He glanced at me again. “Most people in your position would have stopped thinking clearly by now, yet you haven’t.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. My chest felt strange, warm in a way I didn’t entirely trust.
I wondered if it was simply that he was kind to me and I was starved for any sort of kindness.
Perhaps I was confusing relief for something more significant.
The thought was uncomfortable enough that I held onto it deliberately, kept it between myself and whatever pulled me toward him.
He’s being kind. That’s all. Don’t be an idiot about it.
“And there’s only so much male company a man can put up with,” he added with a chuckle. “I found I always preferred the company of women... especially beautiful ones.” I gave him a look, and he feigned affront as he laughed again. “What? I’m just being honest!”
I couldn’t help my smile.
“It appears the king has finally arrived,” he said, and I looked beyond him, realizing Arthur was now here and I hadn’t even noticed him. I turned back to face Tristan and the warmth of his eyes. “I hope you’ll be in the dining hall later,” he said.
“I don’t know if I will be.”
“Well, I hope you are.” He picked up his practice sword and paused. “How is it? Being in Galahad’s care?”
The answer hit the back of my teeth, but I swallowed it down.
All of it. The ice baths, the scourge, and the chalk-white look of Galahad watching me with those gray eyes that wanted something he refused to admit to wanting.
I swallowed every syllable of it because I knew what would happen if I complained about my treatment at Galahad’s hands: nothing.
Yes, Tristan would take it to Arthur, but no, Arthur wouldn’t do anything about it.
I was an enemy of the court; no one would care what happened to me in the darkness.
“It’s... incredibly boring.”
Tristan looked at me for a long moment, and there was something in his eyes that said he didn’t quite believe me. Yet, he also didn’t push, and I appreciated that. He just nodded, slow and deliberate.
“I assume the more you play Galahad’s game,” he said quietly, “you’ll earn more rights. More freedoms.” He paused. “It won’t always be like this.”
I looked at him. “You don’t know that.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.”
He walked back toward the weapon racks. I watched him go and then turned my face away, toward the far wall, where the stone caught the afternoon light and held it poorly.
Galahad watched me the entire time.
-ARTHUR-
The gate latch was cold under my hand.
I didn’t lift it. Not yet.
They were already moving: Tristan circling left, Guinevere matching him, the two of them in a rhythm that had clearly been running for a while.
She caught his blade on the cross-guard and redirected it low, and he laughed at being caught out.
She said something I couldn’t hear. He said something back. She grinned.
Not smiled. Grinned. The kind of expression that reaches the eyes before it reaches the mouth.
I stood there, watched it, and didn’t open the gate.
Her footwork was different. That was the first thing I’d noticed.
Her footwork with me was deliberate, every placement considered.
She was always thinking three steps ahead when we sparred, which made her good and also made her easy to read, because thought creates hesitation, and hesitation is a tell.
With Tristan she wasn’t thinking; she was just moving. Her back shoulder dropped in a way it never did with me, and her grip on the hilt was looser.
She wasn’t unguarded. But the truth was that she was never unguarded. Yet she was... less guarded now.
I lifted the latch and walked in.
Tristan stepped aside.
He gave me no bow, and there was no sudden attention to his posture.
Instead, he nodded at me the way you nod at a man who’s entered a room you both have reason to be in, and then he rested his sword point-down in the dirt and watched Guinevere with the same mild interest he’d probably been watching her with before I arrived.
He doesn’t fear us.
The dragon’s voice came low and flat, stripped of its usual hunger. It was observational, and that was strange because it usually was beyond judgmental or demanding action of some type.
Every man in Camelot was afraid of me. Not all of them showed it the same way.
Lance’s fear lived in his jaw, in the way it tightened when I gave an order he disagreed with but would follow regardless.
Mordred’s fear was intellectual: not of me precisely, but of what I represented, of power without his careful architecture around it.
Even Kay, who’d known me since I was a boy who couldn’t sit a horse, carried something watchful in the way he chose his words.
Tristan wasn’t afraid. Not with contempt and not with the performed fearlessness of a man who was trying to prove something. He simply didn’t carry any fear towards me at all, almost as though he felt fear didn’t apply to him.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
All I did know was that if he didn’t fear me, he had no reason to stay away from her.
I walked to the center of the yard and didn’t look at Tristan again. That was the only gift I’d give him: the pretense that his ease hadn’t registered. It had registered.
Guinevere had already reset. Her back was straight, and both of her hands were on the hilt. Her eyes were on me.
“Come at me,” I said to her, and my voice came out level.
She advanced without hesitation, which was the one thing she always gave me: she never hesitated. I didn’t let myself examine why that mattered.
She moved well. Better than well. Galahad’s time with her hadn’t broken her the way I’d half expected.
She was thinner; yes, that was true. The hollows beneath her cheekbones were more pronounced than they’d been, but her footwork was clean, and her eyes tracked my movements with the patience of someone who’d been properly trained.
That bothered me more than I let show.
I pressed her left, and she pivoted, redirected, and came back at my ribs with an elbow I only barely deflected. The wooden practice sword cracked against my forearm instead.
“Did Corvin teach you the elbow redirect?”
“Does it matter?”
I circled; then she circled me. The dirt shifted beneath our boots.
“Yes, it matters because I asked.”
“Then it matters only to you because it doesn’t matter to me.”
I felt myself blow out my own frustration. “You never make this easy.”
“I could say the same to you.” Nothing moved in her expression.
Those violet eyes gave me precisely as much as she chose to give and no more.
I’d hoped she would have been a bit more...
malleable by now. What was more, I’d hoped that the time she spent with me would prove more preferable to the time she spent with Galahad and his less-than-easy company.
I switched my grip and came in fast.
She blocked twice, lost the third exchange, and ended up with my practice blade at her throat. Neither of us moved; we just stood there staring at each other while her chest rose and fell. Her hair had come loose on one side, silver-white against flushed skin.
“Who taught you?” I repeated.
“You already know the answer to that question.”
“Corvin?”
She nodded.
“Interesting topic, that.”
She glared at me, but still neither of us moved. “Why is it interesting?”
“What is he to you?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why do you answer every question I ask you with a question of your own?”
“Because that’s how one verbally spars.”
I lowered the sword. “I want to know,” I said, “who took your virginity.”
When we learn his name, we will destroy him.
The flush on her cheeks didn’t deepen. She just stepped back and reset her stance. “We’ve been through this.”
“We have. I’m asking again.”
“And I’ll keep not answering.”
She came at me. I let her get inside my guard, absorbed the hit to my shoulder, threw her off balance, and caught her before she went down. My hand closed around her forearm. She yanked it free.
“Why is this such a bone of contention with you?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “Why does it matter so much to you?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then why do you keep asking?”
“Because I want to know.” I rolled my shoulder where she’d connected with it. “And I’m accustomed to knowing things I want to know.”
“That must be very convenient.”
“It is… usually.” I took a breath. “Who was it?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“You’re a prisoner of the crown,” I said. “That means everything about you is my business.”
She tilted her head at that particular angle, as though she were measuring something. I’d seen her do it before, many times actually, when she thought no one was watching.
“Unlike Isolde,” she said.
The words landed lightly. She’d meant them to, but I recognized their impact all the same. I studied her for a moment and, more particularly, the set of her jaw, the way her grip had tightened on the practice sword, even as her voice stayed even.
“Unlike Isolde,” I agreed.
Her eyes didn’t change, but something did, somewhere beneath them; a fire rose up and burned through the amethyst.
“Isolde,” I continued, picking up my sword again, “is a lady of standing. A lady of ancient bloodline. She was educated at the finest court in the south. She carries herself accordingly.” I let the pause stretch. “You aren’t remotely like her.”
The next exchange was harder. She came in with her full weight behind the blow, abandoning the careful footwork, and drove me back two steps through sheer aggression before I planted and held.