Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Nyneve
With only a small twinge of regret, Nyneve clung to the railing and watched Sir Mordred Pendragon fall from his horse, the weight of his armor dragging him down into the mud.
He shouldn’t have killed her messenger, shouldn’t have made a deal with her, shouldn’t have been such a distraction to her goals.
She couldn’t afford any kind of distraction, but particularly not one with moon-pale skin and fathomless ocean eyes and the most terribly beautiful voice she’d ever heard.
If he wouldn’t accept the peaceful death of drowning in her waves, she would batter and bruise him until he gave in.
Nyneve dug her fingernails into the damp railing in anticipation, blinking the mist out of her eyes.
Mordred hit the ground hard, the crowd offering a collective sound of sympathy.
She frowned when he rolled clear of his horse’s hooves, looking to Sir Lancelot as the knight thundered closer.
The saddle leathers were tangled around Mordred’s legs, but he managed to pull himself free just in time.
When he rose to his feet, an apocalyptic vision on a field of gray, the crowd roared his name.
Nyneve narrowed her eyes, glancing over at the king’s awning where Merlin stood.
She wasn’t particularly keen to do magic in the vicinity of the sorcerer.
Her manipulation of the saddle leather’s stitching through fiber magic might go unnoticed—women’s magic, surely—beneath the attention of Merlin.
But if the sorcerer had felt any of her working, a second spell would only confirm her presence.
So Nyneve turned back to the tourney field and hoped the famed Sir Lancelot would finish the job for her.
At the very least, everything would be so much easier if Mordred were seriously injured and out of her way for a while.
Lancelot circled the unhorsed knight with what looked like utter glee, his charger’s hooves slinging clods of damp earth.
Mordred stood motionless, a statue of glimmering mail—until he didn’t.
Moving impossibly fast, he flipped his grip on his sword so the blade pointed down, then lunged at Lancelot.
“He’s absolutely mad,” Nyneve whispered to herself with what she hoped wasn’t admiration.
Instead of trying to remount Rook or find a place to fight from the ground with a decent advantage, Mordred had chosen to try to unhorse his opponent.
Lancelot hadn’t been expecting it either, it seemed—in reflex, he clamped his legs to his horse’s sides in an attempt to stay seated.
But that only cued his well-trained charger to break into a gallop.
Mordred grabbed Lancelot by the neck of his hauberk and hauled him off his mount with terrifying strength.
The warhorse galloped away in a surprising display of panic, thundering through the arena’s gates despite the pages and squires attempting to slow the animal.
Cheers exploded from the crowd, people jumping to their feet and clambering down to the railing for a closer look.
With one hand, Mordred slammed Lancelot into the damp, pockmarked earth, the other pulling his helm off—for better visibility in hand-to-hand fighting, Nyneve supposed. But then his eyes met hers, a challenge simmering there.
Nyneve gritted her teeth and held his gaze, her hands curling into fists even as heat fluttered between her thighs.
She tried to ignore how Mordred had reduced the realm’s greatest knight to a tangle of mud-splattered mail and leather at his feet.
Backlit by the watery sun, his surcoat blackened with rain, Mordred looked like an avatar of patient, inevitable violence. It nearly undid her.
Hunching her shoulders around herself, trying to be as small as possible, Nyneve experimentally whispered to the rain that soaked the ground beneath Mordred’s feet.
It answered her call immediately, grabbing at the knight’s boot, pulling him off balance.
She smiled, pleased—until a wave of stale, humid air hit her.
All at once, it felt like a thousand insects were crawling across her skin, seeking entrance through each and every orifice, tiny barbed legs scuttling beneath her eyelids, straining against her mouth.
With great effort, Nyneve held back an instinctual scream and released her hold on the rain entirely, pulling all her Threads back and locking them down tightly.
Immediately, the sensation of being watched—touched, investigated, seen in the worst way—disappeared.
She slammed her eyes shut and pressed her hand to her mouth, trying not to gag.
In the back of her mind, she could only pray it looked like she was upset at the violent match down on the turf.
Merlin. What she’d just felt hadn’t been Mordred, that much she knew. She’d felt the brush of his faerie-lent magic, and it was nothing so vile. Nyneve bit down on her tongue. Gods’ blood, that had been impetuous—now the sorcerer might be aware someone with Druid magic walked these halls.
She turned back to the fight, hoping it would at least be worth it. But Lancelot was still down in the mud, struggling. Mordred stood above him, batting away the older knight’s sword arm with one swipe of his armored hand, wolf-like in the shadow of the rain, his dark hair plastered to his skull.
Then the gray-eyed knight turned and whistled.
Rook came galloping from the sidelines a heartbeat later.
Nyneve fumed as Mordred took a running step forward, using the movement to spring onto Rook’s bare back as the stallion raced by.
The crowd went absolutely wild, a group of scullery girls at Nyneve’s side screaming so loudly she thought her eardrums might ring for weeks.
Now Mordred was circling a downed opponent, the pale flash of his grin apparent even in the dim afternoon rain.
Lancelot righted himself, looking for his horse, but the golden charger was long gone.
With an enraged yelp, the knight went for his belt, pulling a knife free and throwing it at Mordred.
Nyneve arched her brow at the storied knight’s excellent aim, the knife whistling toward Mordred’s exposed neck.
Evidently, Mordred was well-accustomed to people throwing weapons at him, because he simply reached one gloved hand forward and plucked Lancelot’s knife from the air like a flower from its stem.
Despite herself, Nyneve’s mouth dropped open; she’d felt no Threads of magic in the unlikely feat.
Mordred sent Rook cantering forward, the warhorse’s plaited mane streaming like war banners.
The charger slammed to a halt right in front of Lancelot at the perfect distance, the point of Mordred’s sword just coming to the older knight’s neck.
Even from the stands, Nyneve could see the fury in Lancelot’s eyes as he pressed his lips together and held his hands up to yield.
Her anger mirrored the knight’s own: how dare this interloper claim such a victory against her efforts.
Ears ringing with the sound of the crowd’s cheers, body white-hot with rage, Nyneve realized Mordred was riding toward the stands.
Without a saddle, his blackened mail nearly disappeared into Rook’s coat.
Only once he was a few steps away did Nyneve realize her hair ribbon was still looped around the hilt of his sword.
Her heart did a strange thing, an unwanted ache awakening low in her belly.
Mordred met her gaze, his mouth moving into a slow, predatory smile that made her pulse slip to the apex of her thighs.
When he reached the stands, twenty-some handkerchiefs suddenly appeared, dotting the air like doves.
Nyneve, it seemed, was the sole woman not offering a token over the railing, hoping to be chosen.
And yet Mordred only had eyes for her.
“Lady Nyneve,” he said, too loud, bowing his head with false modesty. “It seems that yet again, your token brings me good tidings.” His gaze met hers, eyes gleaming with wickedness.
For once in her life, Nyneve was utterly speechless, so she just stared at him—at his broad chest heaving beneath his mail, the strong line of his shoulders, the gloved hands closed around his horse’s reins.
Then Mordred moved suddenly, making her jump, and she noticed something glinting silver in his hands.
“For you,” he murmured, quieter now, offering her the knife that Lancelot had tried to kill him with.
She stared at him in disbelief and gathering rage, her fingers curling into fists. “Sir Mordred,” she stammered, falling back to maidenly shyness as a last resort.
But the godsdamned knight reached toward the railing, taking one of her hands in his.
Despite his leather gloves that kept their skin from touching, just the warmth of his hand sent fire racing through her entire being.
She found herself incapable of commanding her own body as her arm willingly extended, the knight bringing her fingers to his mouth.
Her throat closed as he brushed his lips against the skin of her knuckles—the lightest touch and yet her entire body keened.
Every single stitch of her garments pressed hot against her flesh, suddenly too tight for her to breathe.
When Mordred withdrew, she drew in a gulp of damp air.
But then he turned her palm over—why in the name of the gods was her body so bloody pliant for him?
—and placed Lancelot’s knife in her open palm.
“A jewel,” Mordred told her, eyes capturing hers, the curve of his mouth cruel, “for a jewel.”
And then he wheeled Rook away, cantering off the field without looking back, all the proffered tokens hanging limp and heavy with mist. Nyneve’s blood pounded relentlessly in her ears as she looked down at her hand and the mud-stained knife lying between her fingers.