Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Mordred
Lantern light leapt along the maiden’s hair, spinning threads of gold in the deep auburn locks.
Though she was garbed simply in a linen overdress, cream tunic, and well-worn boots, she held herself like an old, nameless thing of untold power.
Her meadow-green eyes captured his gaze.
Mordred watched her breath hitch, but no fear skittered across her features. Fascinating.
“It’s you,” she said lightly, though he could hear the clench of her teeth. “I’ve been looking for you.”
The maiden’s words surprised him, and Mordred hated surprises. But her unexpected statement also stirred the coil of power in his chest, a bored cat finally given a mouse to chase after an eternity of solitude.
“Have you?” he asked, walking the mare the final steps to the Druid girl. “Pray tell why a maiden of a noble house would seek the likes of me.”
“To express my gratitude, of course,” she replied, one brow arching. “How chivalrous of you to lend me your mount so I might make it to the gates safely.”
More likely, he knew, to ensure she had not made an enemy.
Beside him, Awen, Guinevere’s favorite mare, shifted and kicked at her stomach.
He stroked the crest of her neck, sliding his hand under her mane to find her coat damp and hot.
Frowning, his attention shifted back to the horse; the creature did not deserve to suffer simply because of the inept stablemaster.
“’Tis only what any knight of Camelot would do,” Mordred demurred with an incline of his head, which seemed to surprise the maiden in turn.
“I am glad you made it safely. And even gladder you have brought what Awen needs. Might you retrieve hot water from the stablemaster’s quarters?
” He gestured to the hallway at the end of the stall block.
Nyneve followed the direction of his hand slowly. When her gaze tracked back to him, suspicion glimmered in her eyes, but after a moment’s hesitation, she went, disappearing into shadow.
He turned Awen, keeping the mare moving despite her protests. “I know, love,” he murmured, rubbing the place on her withers where she was always itchy. “Just keep walking for me.”
The mare exhaled hard, her nostrils wide and pink, but she obliged, putting one foot in front of another.
By the time they reached the top of the stall block, the maiden had returned.
She stood at a tack trunk, which she had turned into a tabletop for her purpose, crushing and mixing the herbs into a small pot of water from the stablemaster’s hearth.
Distantly, he appreciated that she was making a paste and not a draught—much easier to get into a horse’s mouth, he had always found.
But he was terribly distracted by the easy, confident flow of her hands, the sway of her wide hips, the way she tucked a loose curl behind her ear.
A thrill shot through him, warmth blooming inside his chest. Perhaps making Nyneve Or’Afon reveal her secrets would be enjoyable.
“Chestnut,” the maiden said suddenly, not turning toward him. “I don’t often see that used in colic remedies.”
He said nothing, distrusting his own tongue, and continued to examine Nyneve, her striking side profile lit by the lanterns.
She moved skillfully, familiar with the mortar and pestle.
He felt her Threads of power shift with intention, felt her tie them into charms that would aid the mare’s healing.
The warmth beneath his ribs crackled like an open flame.
An unfamiliar instinct swept over him: to prowl to Nyneve and peer into the very tapestry of her being, examining where her Threads knotted with earthly attachments, where they bowed beneath the weight of her past, and where they strained against the inevitability of her destiny.
The very idea made his breath catch at the back of his throat. His Threads hummed. All at once, Mordred understood that if he moved toward the maiden and she tried to run, he did not think he could stop himself from chasing her.
Instead, the knight turned toward Awen and stroked the mare’s neck with an inexplicably unsteady hand.
At least the Druids had sent a worthy opponent in their thinly veiled bid for power in Camelot’s growing court.
A beautiful one, too, no doubt. But he could have beauty whenever he wanted it.
There was nothing novel about a pretty face.
“What is your name?” the maiden asked as she finished preparing the paste, turning to look up at him. Mordred gathered himself and met her gaze, coaxing Awen forward a few more steps. “I simply must know the identity of my protector.”
Her tone dripped with archness. Even though she delivered it with the meek expression expected from a maiden, she made it sound as though her pretty mouth was curved in a snarl. Something uncoiled low in Mordred’s belly. He set his jaw.
“Mordred Pendragon,” he replied with a smile that he knew was all teeth.
The knight suspected she might have already learned his name from Guinevere, but revealing his identity was a favorite amusement: pulling the rug from beneath the feet of sneering nobles, so sure the object of Merlin’s prophecies would be visibly twisted and undeniably evil in appearance.
Like the real world was as simple as a child’s fable.
Nyneve considered him, dragging her gaze from his boots to his shoulders without a shred of shame.
“Interesting,” she murmured, approaching the mare.
To his surprise, Awen, a sensitive, complicated creature, offered a soft nicker.
She strode to the opposite side of the horse, gently stroking the mare’s silvery mane.
“How is she with medicinal pastes?” the maiden asked, meeting his eyes over Awen’s elegant neck. “I added honey, of course.”
“I can handle it,” he told her, using two fingers to check the mare’s heartbeat under her jaw. “She is picky about people.”
“Hmm,” Nyneve replied. “Cannot blame her for that.”
Amused, Mordred glanced back over at the maiden.
She smirked at him, her cheekbones gilded in the light.
A worthy opponent, indeed. His blood throbbed all at once, roaring in his ears.
With a hunger he did not recognize, the knight watched Nyneve continue to stroke Awen, the mare relaxing under her touch.
He wondered how her hands might move across his own skin.
Her mouth still curved into that distracting little smile, Nyneve handed him the mortar.
Their fingertips brushed for the faintest of moments.
Beneath the tides of the mare’s breathing, Mordred heard a Fatesong loop.
It was low and lonely and full of ache, disappearing before he could examine the melody.
The maiden pulled away as though she had been stung, sliding her hands into the pockets of her overdress.
His mind wheeled, so he anchored himself to the task at hand, holding the mare’s head as gently as possible to administer the paste.
“And may I have your name, my lady?” he asked, watching Nyneve as she walked back toward the trunk, her limp worsening. The maiden did not answer for a moment, pulling herself atop the trunk with a huff.
“You may call me Nyneve Or’Afon,” she replied. She did not even glance his way as she spoke, tossing her full name out like it was little more than table scraps for a pack of half-starved hounds.
Well, by the gods, Mordred was rather ravenous.
He took her name between his teeth, speaking it aloud. The syllables tasted of summer storms and river floods. When he walked Awen to the end of the aisle, he cued the horse into a halt and faced Nyneve properly with a courtly bow.
Then he held out one hand toward her, as Arthur’s customs dictated.
To his surprise, she lifted her palm from her lap, though she watched him fiercely, eyes glinting with sharp intelligence.
Still, he felt the tremble go through her when his lips brushed her knuckles.
Perhaps Guinevere was right. Perhaps this Druid girl was more susceptible than he had thought.
“A pleasure,” he murmured, watching her face flush prettily, though her gaze was still dagger-like.
“All mine,” Nyneve replied, tilting her chin up to look at him.
She spoke from the back of her throat, her mouth curved into something cruel and taunting.
“I certainly owe you a token for your next tournament.” A threat, he realized with surprise, such maidenly words woven into something far more sinister.
Mordred’s body responded with flooding heat: molasses-thick, amber-dark, and utterly unwelcome.
“If you insist,” Mordred said, fighting to sound bored as he turned the mare and continued walking back down the shadowy aisle.
“I have received many tokens in my days, all to little effect, I fear. I invite you to discover whether yours tastes any different, though do not forget the eyes of the court are everywhere.”
With his back to her, Mordred could not watch her expression to gauge whether she knew about him.
About his bastard birth, some unnamed Cornish noblewoman ensnaring the would-be King of the Isles—at least as Arthur told it—and about the prophecies Uther Pendragon’s powerful advisor, Merlin, had made.
Arthur would do his best to usher in an illuminated age of chivalry and a united nation. Mordred, according to Merlin, would do his best to destroy all of it. To drag Camelot back into the dark ages of ancient magic and cruel Fey, mankind trembling around their fires as the night crept in.
He heard no sharp inhale from the maiden, which he supposed meant she already knew.
Not so sheltered as a girl from a nunnery ought to be, though Guinevere had suspected that was a lie.
Mordred urged Awen forward, trying to root himself in the soothing sounds of the mare’s hoofbeats on the dirt.
But his mind sailed away, tumbling into darker, deeper thoughts.