CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
-GUIN-
Gawain was now posted outside my door.
I wasn’t sure why the King’s Guard weren’t taking on the duty, but I also knew better than to ask.
And, honestly, I was happy to see Gawain.
Even though I didn’t know him well, it was nice to see a familiar face.
And it was a handsome face, with a square jaw and the kind of red-brown hair that couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be.
He’d always been one of the quieter ones, not cold, just contained.
Now he stood in the doorway with his back straight against the corridor outside and his hands clasped behind him.
He hadn’t treated the assignment like an insult the way most of the knights would have.
When I came back from washing my hands in the basin, he was still standing in the doorway, and the door was still open. He looked at me the way people look at something they’re trying to work out.
“Whatever Galahad did to you or tried to do to you,” Gawain said in his soft voice, “it wasn’t right.”
I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I dried my hands on the inside of my sleeve because there was no cloth for it, and the motion gave me something to do.
“He’ll be punished for it,” he added.
I laughed, but the sound came out shorter than I meant it to. “No, he won’t.”
Gawain’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue with me, which I respected. He just stood there with the weight of someone who disagreed but understood exactly why I’d said what I had.
“For what it’s worth,” he started, “I hope he is.”
I gave him a smile. “Thank you, Gawain.”
He nodded. “And for what it’s also worth, I always liked Lioran.”
Something moved in my chest, and I looked at him properly then. “Lioran liked you too.” I paused. “And so do I.”
He nodded once, and that was the end of it. He stepped back into the corridor and pulled the door mostly closed, and I was alone again.
I sat on the bed, and the mattress—straw, linen, and something that smelled faintly of cedar—cushioned me. I pressed my palms flat against it and closed my eyes, feeling the sensation of it.
I could still feel the way Lance had torn my tunic from my shoulder down to the hemline when he’d ripped it in half.
Lance.
I didn’t know what to do with the information regarding what Lance had done to Galahad because of me.
That was the honest truth of it. I’d turned it over in my mind a dozen times since they’d pulled him off Galahad, and I still couldn’t find an angle that made sense.
Lance, who had told me I was dead to him...
Lance, who had abruptly taken me away from Galahad’s custody and kissed me like he was drowning...
Lance, who had just thrown himself at Galahad...
Galahad, who was untouchable, who was the king’s instrument, who was the kind of man you didn’t put your hands on unless you were prepared for what came after.
And Lance had done it anyway.
I didn’t understand him. That was the part that sat wrong with me, the part that burrowed under my skin and wouldn’t settle.
I was good at reading people. Merlin had spent three years making sure of that, drilling me on tells, habits, and the small betrayals that lived in the space between what a person said and what they meant.
I could read a room. I could read a knight in full armor from across a training yard.
But Lance I couldn’t read. At all.
He blew hot, then cold, and then hot again, and each time I thought I had him mapped, he did something that erased the whole picture. You’re dead to me. Then his mouth on mine. Then Galahad’s blood on his knuckles.
What was I supposed to do with that?
The worst part was that there was still something in me that responded to him. It was something stupid that was lodged somewhere near my heart, the kind of feeling that didn’t care a lick for logic and reason.
When Lance had told me I meant nothing to him, I’d used that information, used it like a tool to cauterize whatever had started between us.
Or, at least, I’d attempted to cauterize it.
But then he’d kissed me, and the work had come undone, regardless of the fact that I’d punched him across the face at the time.
And now this.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until I saw the dark bloom of pressure behind my lids. The emptiness was still there, just as it always had been. And the emptiness had Lance’s shape and his name.
I pulled my hands down.
Outside the window, the courtyard was smearing itself in mottled colors, even as the sun was starting to rise over the mountains in the distance. Someone was crossing the courtyard with a lantern, and the light bent and warped through the old glass until it looked like something burning underwater.
Lance was a question I didn’t have the answer to, and that was all I could say about that subject.
I heard the door open, but I didn’t get up.
Arthur came in without ceremony, without so much as even a knock, because why would he knock?
It was his castle, his room, his prisoner sitting on his bed.
I noticed Gawain was no longer on duty, and one of the king’s guards I didn’t recognize closed the door behind the king.
Arthur stopped a few feet inside the door and looked at me.
I stood up and then just looked at him. Neither of us said anything for long enough that I could hear the conversation the guards were having in the hall outside, as well as the faint creak of the building settling, and the distant clang of something metallic from the courtyard below.
“Did he succeed?” Arthur asked finally. His voice was flat.
“Did who succeed in what?”
He frowned. He knew I knew exactly what he was asking me, but he also knew I was going to make him work for the answers. “Did Galahad succeed in forcing himself on you?”
“No.”
He absorbed that. His expression didn’t change exactly, but something shifted behind it.
“But he tried?”
I frowned. “Isn’t that obvious by now?”
“I suppose it is.”
Then more silence. Neither of us moved; we just stood there staring at one another.
“How long has he been... abusing you?”
I shrugged, and the motion hurt. “From the moment you left me with him.”
The muscles in his jaw moved, and he looked away from me, toward the window. I watched him do something complicated and private with his expression before he turned back.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t know he was... physically harming you.”
“That’s not worth anything.” I took a breath. “Especially when I’d told you he was beating me.” I took another breath. “You knew but you didn’t care.”
He held my gaze and swallowed hard. “I understand why you would feel that way.” Then he exhaled and turned to face me. “Why didn’t you tell anyone, Tristan or Percival as examples?”
The laugh that came out of me had no humor in it at all.
“Because I’m a prisoner.” I stood up and took a few steps toward him.
“I’m Merlin’s daughter. I’m a spy. I’m a liar and your enemy. I came here to betray you.”
I continued toward him, and he didn’t step back, which surprised me slightly.
Finally, I stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze. “Who would care?”
He said nothing.
“Do you?” I asked as I glared up at him. “Honestly, Arthur. Do you care even the slightest?”
-ARTHUR-
She was standing so close to me, maybe a mere inch or so away. And she wasn’t cowering. She was just standing there with her hands loose at her sides and her eyes steady on mine, and something about that stillness made the dragon shift.
Take her. She is ours.
I stepped away from her, needing some air so I could breathe without the fucking dragon’s constant internal dialogue.
“Tell me what happened,” I said with my back turned toward her. I stared at the stone wall for a few seconds before I realized what I was doing and turned back to face her.
“I already told you what happened.”
I crossed the room, but I didn’t do so quickly because I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of urgency. “Tell me again.”
Her jaw tightened; it was just a small thing, a thing she smoothed over quickly, but I caught it, all the same. I caught everything when it came to her, and I hated that about myself.
“He tried to force himself on me, and I defended myself.”
We must destroy him. No man attempts to force himself on our mate and lives.
“That’s not a full account.”
“It’s the only account I have.”
Without realizing it, I’d already walked back toward her and now I stopped, close enough that she had to tip her chin up to hold my gaze, but that didn’t seem to faze her.
In fact, I wondered what did faze her. She didn’t flinch, didn’t drop her eyes.
From this angle, I could see all the bruises along the space beneath her collarbones.
And there were plenty of them. She was crossing her arms over her breasts, and I found myself wondering if Galahad had harmed her there as well.
At the thought, my back teeth pressed together.
She hurts, the dragon said. You let this happen. Fix it.
“Why won’t you say it plainly?”
She stood even straighter as she glared up at me. That was the thing about her: she never stayed small when I crowded her. Instead, she stood tall and proud, and the space between us narrowed to nothing.
“Because it wouldn’t matter,” she said. “You’d weigh Galahad’s word against mine, and his word would win. It always wins. That’s how it works in your court.”
“You don’t know how it works in my court.”
“I know more about your court than you’d like to believe.”
The words landed flat and accurate. I didn’t answer them.
Tell her she’s wrong, the dragon said. Its voice was low and insistent, coiling up through my chest. Tell her her word matters. Tell her she matters. Take her into our arms and tell her—
I cleared my throat.
“You stood in front of me on multiple occasions, and yet you said nothing about what he was doing to you.” My own voice came out harder than I intended. “You had every opportunity.”
“To say what? That your holy knight climbed on top of me and would have thrust himself inside me if I hadn’t been able to break Mordred’s binding in time?”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She sealed it off immediately, swallowed it back down, but it had been there.