Chapter 6 #3
They walked in silence beneath the moonlight, following the stone path that wrapped around the slope.
He had expected more questions, more prying, but Nyneve was silent, like she’d already figured out what she wanted to know.
Or perhaps she did not even need to ask another question to pry whatever she was seeking out of him.
Which made Mordred uneasy. “The queen thought you would be seeking a marriage match, not wardship,” he said, hoping to push her off-balance. “And here you are, a physician’s apprentice. Interesting choice for a noblewoman from a respected family.”
Despite being half his size and only able to walk with a crutch, Nyneve slammed to a halt and then whirled on him with an impressive amount of animosity, her eyes bright with venom.
“And is that all a woman can do, Sir Mordred?” she demanded, her voice carrying through the air.
“Seek a marriage? Bend to the will of a man? Open her legs and push out heirs?”
He shifted his weight, turning to look down at her. “Is that what I said, Lady Nyneve?” he murmured. Her explosive response was unseemly in Camelot’s culture. Mordred savored it like a fine, rare wine. “I only meant you could live a life without midnight summonings to the stables.”
“Much better,” Nyneve grumbled a few heartbeats later, as though his response had caught her by surprise, “than midnight summonings from a brutish man.” With that, she turned back toward the path and began walking again.
“Fair enough,” Mordred replied, staying at her side, her shoulder nearly brushing his arm. “Rook must like you.”
She glanced up at him, brow furrowed in surprise and lovely lips parted, evidently startled by his statement, which amused him.
She seemed so much younger like this, her eyes wide and shining in the moonlight.
Much more fragile. “Did you train him?” Nyneve inquired, turning onto the narrower path that led to Galen’s cottage.
“Yes,” Mordred replied. “Rook and I have been together for a long time.” It was not technically a lie.
She glanced at him approvingly before looking straight ahead. “He is wonderfully sensitive,” Nyneve said, her voice thoughtful, losing its purposeful enunciation and biting edge. “Particularly for his size. An utter delight to be astride a creature like that.”
Fire exploded in his chest. Mordred bit down on his tongue, banishing the thoughts that crowded his addled mind: how much he might enjoy having her astride him, how she might find he was quite like Rook in such regards.
But he was not a man in charge of his own fate.
No. He was Fey. Made, not born. A weapon for his people against the coming age of humanity, a cold thing of dark power meant to hold the line.
No matter the cost. Even if he chose such a pleasurable route of information-gathering, he had only met Nyneve this morning.
And he already knew she was far too wily to invite him into her bed just yet.
Silence hung between them, save for the rustle of wind and the beginnings of summer’s insects.
Shouts rang out in the distance, then the clang of metal.
Likely the scouting party’s return. Mordred sighed.
The knights would, no doubt, carry back the names of places that could—and in their opinion should—be conquered, brought to heel under the man who would unite these lands.
He tried not to think about that, at least not now. He tried to just walk beside a beautiful, feral girl on a spring evening. He tried to feel all the things a natural-made creature should, a beast born of flesh and blood, not two goddesses’ endless rage and sharp teeth.
But they had already arrived at the physician’s cottage.
Nyneve glanced at him as she trudged past the fence line, an expression he could not identify in her gaze.
As she came to a halt at the cottage’s door, instinct slithered up Mordred’s spine and he slowed his pace.
He was only a step away from the fence line when he felt it: cold iron and the bite of rowan.
Amusement flickered in his chest, and he fought to hide the smile.
Clever thing, this Nyneve Or’Afon. He stepped across the threshold. Her eyes widened for a moment in the moonlight, but she kept her expression neutral.
“Thank you,” she managed, “for escorting me home, Sir Mordred.”
“The pleasure,” he purred, “is mine, my lady.” He did not bother to hide the bloodlust from his tone.
Galen kept no such wardings around the cottage. The line of iron and rowan was new, no doubt placed by the Druid girl fresh from the wilds.
But he was a changeling who had endured more than ten summers at court. He had come to know the bite of iron, the constant pain, the glamour that weighed him down at all times, hiding the point of his ears and the unnatural sharpness of his cheekbones and his towering height.
Agony was Mordred’s bedfellow. He held the stretched syllables of its name in his mouth far more often than any lover’s. If Nyneve Or’Afon thought she could get to the truth of him with pain, she would have to try much, much harder.