Chapter 24 #3
“Nyneve,” he said in a gasp. His vision cleared, and he found the Druid girl standing before him, breathing hard. A shallow cut ran across her cheek, and her sleeve was ripped. A crystalline sheen of sweat graced her collarbones.
“We have to go,” Nyneve insisted, grabbing his hand and beginning to pull him away from the meadow and toward the woods. “Fuck, Mordred, move faster. You are too big for me to drag again.”
“To what again?” he demanded, still woozy, though his feet finally began to move.
“Whatever insane magic you were doing back there,” she huffed, “almost . . . I don’t know.
Consumed you. It killed the four guards at the door, I think, or at least severely hurt them.
You were still on your feet, but it’s like you weren’t even there.
I had to drag you through the door and hope it didn’t kill me. ”
His mind swam. “You did not leave me to face my king and his anger?”
She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. “How the fuck would that help me? I couldn’t get through the door without you, could I? And Guinevere is naming me her sorceress in a few days. I’m certainly not missing my own damn ceremony.”
“Ah,” he replied dumbly, nearly tripping over a log. He realized his arm felt wet, and a different pain than his usual agony banded the limb. Glancing down, he saw two stab wounds in his right forearm.
Nyneve looked back at him, eyes darting down to his arm. “Sorry,” she said, not even remotely sincere. “That was me.”
He halted then, his mind reeling. “You stabbed me?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “You made two massive kelpies out of, I don’t know, the darkness itself? And then they started tearing Fey warriors limb from limb. What was I meant to do, Mordred? Do tell.”
He swayed on his feet, catching himself on a tree trunk. “Did you also kiss me?”
Even in the half-light of the dawn-soaked forest, he saw her flush. “Only because stabbing you didn’t work,” Nyneve grumbled.
He grunted, pushing his exhausted body through the woods. The pleasure park’s path was up ahead. Glancing over his shoulder, he found no faerie door glimmering in the clearing. The pull of the Otherlands lessened. But the High Court would come for him. Of that there was little doubt.
“Are those your only two responses? Kiss or stab?” Mordred asked Nyneve, a distraction.
“No!” she snapped. “I have plenty of other methods for handling things.”
“Such as? Do tell,” Mordred said. He had no energy to suppress his amusement.
“I detest you,” the sorceress spat, glaring at him over her shoulder. “You are the most irritating man I have ever known. And oh, yes, of course, you are not even a bloody man.”
“You could leave Camelot,” Mordred said with a shrug. “Then you would be free of me.”
She whirled on him, shoving a finger into his chest. “I’m not leaving this citadel, you stupid fucking faerie,” she snarled with impressive venom. “I will die here if that’s what it takes.”
“Ah,” Mordred said with a dangerous smile. “That may be precisely what it takes.”
She glared at him a moment longer and then turned on her heel to begin tromping through the woods again, moving so loudly that any creature within a three-day ride could surely hear her.
A nymph peeked out from behind a tree, making eye contact with Mordred, her eyes inquisitive, head tilted to one side.
“I am fine,” the knight murmured, lower than Nyneve would be able to hear. “Thank you, though, cousin.” The nymph nodded and disappeared back into the shadows of the forest without a sound.
“What disgusting little spellwork did your High King put on me?” Nyneve demanded over her shoulder, entirely unaware of his would-be rescuer. “Gods, I wanted to fuck you.”
Mordred beamed at her back. “You most certainly did. Perhaps you should not place magicked hag-stones into people’s pockets and follow them under the hill in the future.”
“I hate you!” Nyneve shrieked. She almost spun on him again, but then Camelot’s citadel came into view through the tree line and her body relaxed. “Never thought I would be relieved to see Camelot.”
He came to stand at her side, pausing. “Nor I.”
Nyneve looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t agree with me as though we are . . . friends.”
Mordred turned to meet her gaze, something aching and broken turning over beneath the dark sea of the Cynosbythrae. “Nyneve Or’Afon,” he said solemnly, “believe me when I say I could never be your friend.”
She stared at him, her eyes ablaze. “Glad that’s clear,” she spat before reaching out to grab his forearm, making sure her fingers sank into his stab wounds.
Then she yanked him toward the pleasure park’s trail like a terrifying goddess of vengeance, not a maiden of less than twenty summers.
“I hope you have a bloody good excuse for my absence,” she continued, breaking through the tree line and onto the path, “because believe me, Mordred, you are going to sell it with every—”
Nyneve came to an abrupt halt. Mordred blinked in the sudden brightness of the just-risen sun. In front of him was Arthur, Guinevere, and a handful of knights, all mounted. How he had not heard the horses from the woods was utterly beyond him.
“Gods,” Guinevere breathed, looking between the two of them with wild eyes.
“Thank the Lord,” Arthur proclaimed, dismounting his horse. “We have been searching for you both. Where have you been?”
Mordred’s stomach dropped like a stone. He glanced toward Guinevere, who met his gaze slowly.
Her usually clever eyes were wide and unsure, her expression blank.
Mordred waited for his faerie nature to supply an answer to his tongue, but nothing came.
The moment stretched on, ungainly as a newborn foal.
Suddenly, Nyneve clasped his hand, hastily interlacing their fingers. A strange thing, how well they fit together. “Your Highness,” Nyneve said, bowing her head, “we are so sorry. But well, you see . . .”
Mordred’s heart pounded in his chest as Arthur looked on, the king’s expression a storm waiting to break.
“Mordred and I are in love.”