Chapter 21 #2
Galen paused, turning to look at her. For a relatively simple wound, she was surprised to find something like anguish on the physician’s expression. “One of Merlin’s monks did this,” he said in a low tone, his eyes skimming the archway, where more of the hooded men stood guard.
“What?” she whispered, alarm shooting down her spine.
“I didn’t do anything,” the injured man said tiredly.
“Just brought in my wares ahead of the market, as I always do. The hooded men—I haven’t seen them before, and they frightened me.
Started asking me too many questions about where I was from and who my family is.
Like I’d somehow traveled from some faraway place with a simple cart and no rations. ”
She exchanged a glance with Galen. Surely everyone was taking more caution given this morning’s attack, but there was no reason to assume the man came from anywhere but the hamlets that ringed Camelot’s walls.
He spoke with the same accent as everyone else.
Nyneve had seen him at the markets before with his lovely whittled figurines.
His lovely whittled figurines that often depicted the old pagan gods worshiped by the Cymraeg peoples, as well as some of the Britons’ deities—including the very goddesses that Nyneve and her people often called upon.
“It’s all right,” she said, patting his wound dry. “We know who you are. We have one of your Brigit statues by our hearth.” She smiled at him and then threaded the needle for Galen.
The work steadied her, but the back of Nyneve’s mind was a churning sea. The Druids had been persecuted before. Her people remembered the burning of Ynys M?n, that first flood of Roman conquerors. She had been taught to recognize the signs of when such a tide might rise again.
And right now, Nyneve felt as though she were standing on the beach, watching the tide come in much faster than it should.
“Nyneve,” Galen said, looking at her like she might be mad. “Did you or did you not run out onto the ramparts, somehow bend a bow meant for a grown man, and then put your life at risk to stop the Northmen from attacking Camelot?”
Nyneve took a deep breath, sitting back in her chair.
She’d covered it in sheepskin the other day, which she was beyond grateful for after a very long day dealing with the aftermath of the Northmen’s attack.
“A good archer can bend almost any bow,” she grumbled in response, blowing on the top of her steaming cup of cider.
“Why must you be so difficult?” Galen demanded, though she could see the corners of his mouth curved in a smile he was desperately trying to hide from her.
“Why must you?” she responded, turning to look at him. They sat in their usual seats at the long table in the physician’s cottage, the fire raging opposite them. Despite summer’s approach, the nights still grew cold.
“I shan’t be bossed around by a girl of less than twenty summers,” Galen said pointedly, rising to his feet.
Nyneve rolled her eyes. “You don’t let anyone boss you about,” she replied.
Galen dragged a hand through his wild mane of gray hair. “Fair enough,” he said with a shrug, reaching for his bag. “But you’re the apprentice, Nyneve. I’m the mentor, so I’m taking first shift. You should sleep. You’re no use to me or anyone else if you’re too tired to make the right decision.”
She set her mug down and shooed him away with both hands, having heard this particular lecture a thousand times before.
“Fine,” she conceded, pulling the wool blanket tighter around her shoulders.
In truth, she wanted to take the first shift because there was simply no possibility of sleep finding her anytime soon, no matter how exhausted her body might be.
Her mind ran wild with the events of the day: the merchant injured by the monks, Merlin’s show of power, the queen’s offer, Sir Oran in the back passageways, and . . .
Mordred.
She watched Galen go, curling her hands into the woolen fabric.
She’d spent the bulk of the day stitching wounds closed, sopping up blood, and arguing with a nobleman who thought his wife should be ready and willing to receive his cock a mere three days after she’d given birth to his child.
Mordred Pendragon should have been the furthest thing from her mind.
And yet. Nyneve slid down in the chair, staring into the flames. She hated how vividly she still felt his large, powerful hands on her waist, in her hair, pulling at her shift, somehow both impossibly gentle and ferociously hungry at once.
“Gods’ blood,” she muttered, tilting her head back against the chair and closing her eyes. Even now, she ached at the mere thought of him, her blood pounding between her legs. Perhaps she should find a way to tangle with him and excise her infatuation.
“No,” she reminded herself. That would put Mordred in a position of power, able to accuse her of being a fornicator and adulterer and all the other terms the Resurrected God’s worshipers had brought onto her lands.
She bit down on her tongue, pushing away the stray thought telling her, quite convincingly, that Mordred would never behave in such a way.
“You do not even know him,” Nyneve whispered, pulling her legs up onto the chair, hating how wistful her own voice sounded.
Her mind danced away from her grasp, eager to remind her of the spring morning they had met—every dewdrop an emerald, all the forest raked clean and new by the winter winds, the glovewort just beginning to bloom.
The lutist’s song that had slipped into the clearing, like the nymphs were singing just for them, and how the old, ever-present ache in her chest had bloomed into something strange and large and unnamable.
She let out a long sigh, pillowing her head on the sheepskin.
She decided to close her eyes, just for a little bit.
And when, to her surprise, sleep did come for her after all, Nyneve welcomed the peace of oblivion.
Her breaths grew deeper as the fire’s pops and crackles faded away.
She didn’t even bother taking off her shoes or undoing her belt—it felt like far too much work for her tired body, anyhow.
Just as she’d almost fallen asleep, the sharp twang of an arrowhead meeting wood grabbed Nyneve’s attention.
She bolted upright, the wool blankets falling from her shoulders.
Bleary-eyed, her gaze roamed the cottage’s front room, only to find everything exactly as it was.
She clamped one hand to her chest and stood slowly, peering out the small window that faced the forest. She saw no glint of armor or torchlight’s blaze.
Nyneve relaxed but moved to the front door anyway, just to be sure.
Now more fully awake, she realized she had likely just been slipping into a night terror.
Her sleep had been haunted by attacks and raids before.
But still, she checked her belt for her daggers, then pulled the front door open with a creak.
She’d expected to see a few squires calmly passing by on their patrol, or maybe Galen arriving, the creak of the wood deceiving her.
Instead, when Nyneve peered through the door, she found an arrow protruding from her front stairs.
Her heart leapt into her throat as she swept her gaze across the pathway and the hills beyond, but everything appeared normal.
None of the warning torches were lit. No bells tolled.
The cool wind carried the sound of laughter and the smell of cooked meat.
She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering which would be better: for the arrow to be real, or for her to have imagined the whole thing.
With a huff, Nyneve swung the door all the way open and stepped out onto the wooden structure. Between the torches bracketed to the front of the cottage and the full moon, she had no issue perceiving the arrow, nor the severed hand it pinned to her stairs.
She stepped closer, her heartbeat like war drums in her ears, the bound magic scratching at her lungs. The arrow was large, its shaft darkened with some kind of dye, the metal head buried deep into the detached limb. Its fletching glimmered oil-slick in the light. Nyneve’s hands curled into fists.
All the exhaustion suddenly fled her body as she stood over the arrow, staring down at the crow feathers—and Sir Oran’s severed hand, his distinctive gold band glimmering in the torchlight.
“Mordred,” she spat, furiously pulling at her Threads to activate the hag-stone she’d placed in the faerie-bound knight’s pocket.
She wove one Thread into the tapestry of the magic all around her.
When it sang with the same words of the ancient charm, she wove in another, letting the thrum fill up her being.
Growing close to the edge of the binding, Nyneve reached for a third Thread, ignoring the jolt of pain that served as a warning.
But scrying was not a violent magic, and three of her Threads were plenty for the spell—even with all the admittedly elegant workings that cloaked Mordred’s location.
Likely another boon of his faerie patron, whom Nyneve would very much like to have a conversation with one day.
Witchlights bloomed in front of her, illuminating the knight’s footsteps with a gentle glow.
Nyneve reached back into the cottage for her cloak, pulled the door closed, and then hovered over the arrow and the severed limb.
For the sake of the bloody gods, was it not clear she could defend herself?
She did not need him cutting off people’s limbs like a fucking emperor of old and leaving them on her doorstep in some kind of twisted offering.
Who did he think he even was—her suitor? Her protector? He was nothing to her.