Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nyneve
Nyneve had thought her evening couldn’t get any worse when Guinevere had delivered the news, but now Mordred was here with his stupid jawline and beautiful mouth that had brought her such exquisite pleasure.
Balling her hands into fists, she turned back to the queen, unable to look at Mordred for another godsdamn second.
“Morgana is more powerful and more seasoned than you, is she not?” Guinevere asked for the tenth time, mistaking her silence for calmness. “Why else would you be training with her?”
“You cannot say the same things to me over and over again,” Nyneve replied from between her teeth. “It’s not that I don’t understand you. I understand you perfectly. I just don’t agree with you.”
Mordred walked past them without a word and sank into one of the chairs by the little hearth, setting his elbows on his knees and then burying his face in his hands. “You are making Morgana your titled sorceress instead of Nyneve, yes?” he asked wearily, his voice muffled.
Nyneve found herself unable to focus on anything but those large hands tangled in his dark waves of hair, the candles lining the hearth’s mantel pulling out threads of gold.
Suddenly and furiously, she wanted to stride over to him and run her own fingers through those silken strands.
Startled by the errant desire, she swallowed hard and pressed her lips together.
The queen nodded in response to Mordred’s question, sinking into the chair at his side. “As I have been trying to explain to Nyneve, it is a complicated situation,” Guinevere said, folding her hands in her lap.
“Terribly complicated,” Nyneve snapped before she could rein in her anger. Between Mordred’s closeness and her frustration, she felt as though her entire body was little more than a column of flame. “You promised me something and then went back on your word.”
“She is the queen of Camelot,” Mordred replied, raising his gaze to meet hers, a warning in his dark eyes, all that exhaustion disappearing in an instant. “You shall not speak to her in such a familiar tone.”
Nyneve laughed harshly and walked four paces to stand in front of him, relishing that she didn’t have to look up at him for once. “Do not command me, Sir Mordred,” she warned. “You have no such authority.”
“Would you two please just bed one another and be done with all this?” the queen asked, slumped back in her chair, her gaze directed at the ceiling. “I am fond of you both, but this is growing tiresome.”
Nyneve choked out a few incoherent words, her face growing hot when she noticed the flush creeping across Mordred’s pale skin.
Guinevere sat up with a start, looking between the two of them.
“You did,” the queen exclaimed, genuinely delighted. “Well, do it a few more times. You are both still annoying.”
Mordred mumbled something that Nyneve did not catch. Her head spun. She felt far too hot in her gown and far too distracted by the faerie knight. Letting out a long, measured breath, she leaned against the shelf at her back, desperately needing something steady.
“Here is the part I did not get to tell you yet on account of all the yelling,” Guinevere continued, looking pointedly at Nyneve.
“When I originally conceived of this scheme, it was before you had even arrived in Camelot. I wrote to Morgana, being as she is the only sorceress I know, and asked her to take up this yoke.” Guinevere paused, an emotion Nyneve couldn’t quite read passing over her expression as she gripped her pretty umber shawl closer, though the room hardly lacked heat. “She refused.”
“Of course she did,” Mordred said, looking sideways at the queen. “She dislikes being at court.” They exchanged a long glance, something passing between them.
“You two are terribly obvious when you do this whole thing, you know,” Nyneve pointed out, gesturing between the queen and the knight. “This is why the tales about a romance between you keep spinning.”
Guinevere waved her hand dismissively at the same moment Mordred sighed. “We know,” he said. “Gods, remember how many noble ladies I courted that one summer just to try to get the rumors to stop?”
Guinevere laughed, some of the stress in her face easing. “Oh, you were miserable,” she smiled, looking fondly at the knight. “You came away even angrier about the way this culture raises our young girls.”
It had taken Nyneve a few weeks to feel confident that those rumors held no weight, though it would have been a great bit of leverage if they had.
She thought it quite possible the queen was only interested in women, or maybe no one at all.
Either way, Guinevere was certainly not in love with her husband.
And Mordred—well, the knight shared many people’s beds with no clear preference, but the consensus was that his interest waned quickly.
Except when it came to her, apparently.
By the fire, the knight said something else, his gaze flicking to Nyneve’s for a moment.
Guinevere laughed again—her real laugh, rich and throaty—but all Nyneve could hear was Mordred’s voice urging her to shatter for him.
She made the mistake of closing her eyes, and then she saw the terrible, fierce expression he’d made at the faerie fete, shoulders straining beneath his aketon, those powerful, vascular hands closing into fists.
“No one will touch you against your wishes, neither beneath this hill nor above, not as long as I breathe.”
Something low in her belly went taut. Nyneve gathered her curls up off her neck, trying to clear her mind. Perhaps it was this thought of romance that made her realize where she’d seen the queen’s unusual umber shawl before: tossed over the silk screen in Morgana’s chambers.
“Oh,” Nyneve said, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh, gods. I’m an idiot.”
Mordred and Guinevere both turned to look at her. The queen understood immediately, but the knight had to follow Nyneve’s eyes to Guinevere’s shawl before realization dawned on his face.
“Speak, Lady Nyneve,” the queen commanded, no trace remaining of the smiling woman sitting by a fire with her friend. “What do you believe you have just stumbled upon?”
Nyneve stepped forward, holding her hands up in a peaceful gesture. “You and Morgana,” she said. “You’re in love. I’m happy for you. I would never speak a word to anyone.”
Guinevere held the Druid girl’s gaze for a long moment. Then the queen turned to Mordred, arching a brow.
“I believe we can trust her,” he said softly.
The queen nodded and looked back toward Nyneve with a heavy sigh.
“Yes,” she said, stroking the tassels at the end of the shawl.
“She does not stay at court. In the past, we have become too . . . comfortable. That is dangerous. So she comes for three months each year during all the autumn festivals and hunts, when Camelot’s court is the most distracted. Three months. That is all we can have.”
Guinevere’s voice was wistful and delicate, like it might break under the smallest amount of force, so Nyneve moved toward the hearth and settled onto the floor. She looked up at the queen, hoping that her face conveyed the understanding she felt.
Guinevere and Mordred glanced at each other again, and then the queen continued.
“But,” she began, “when I told her of Merlin’s return, she agreed to a short visit.
Upon her arrival, she saw him and his monks, the influence he held over Arthur .
. . and she could not in good conscience stay away any longer, nor could she refuse to be my titled sorceress. ”
“Morgana is fearsome,” Mordred added, his tone hushed. “She is experienced. She knows more about High Fey magics than any other mortal, Merlin included. And she is the king’s half-sister. That insulates her more than any marriage to a knight could ever protect you, Nyneve.”
Like a girl, she blushed at Mordred speaking of marriage. With great effort, she redirected her mind. “How did Morgana learn so much of Fey magics?” she asked, crossing her legs beneath her skirts. “Even the Druids have limited knowledge.”
Mordred drew in a deep breath, glancing between Nyneve and Guinevere. “You both know,” he said simply, “what I am. Morgana does, of course, as well. No one else.”
Nyneve drew back in shock, unable to stop herself from staring up at Guinevere.
The queen arched one brow, a sharp smile easing over her mouth.
“You are wondering, I’m sure, why a queen permits her own court to be infiltrated by the High Fey,” Guinevere mused, leaning forward and resting her jaw on her open hand.
“Something like that, yes,” Nyneve admitted.
“Mordred is a powerful ally,” the queen said, her dark eyes sliding to the faerie knight, who lounged casually in his chair as if they were telling old stories by the fire.
“To have an emissary from the High Court is a boon, not a threat. And to be frank, I had grown too fond of him by the time I discovered the truth.”
“Well,” Mordred added with a rueful smile, “I knew your secret, too.”
“You, my handmaiden Lysanor, and Mordred,” Guinevere said, meeting Nyneve’s gaze. “Only you three know of . . . my relationship with Morgana.”
“I am honored to be given your trust, milady,” Nyneve said, meaning it.
The queen sighed, pulling the shawl from her shoulders and folding it up, though she kept it in her lap, staring down at the shimmering fabric.
“I am becoming careless,” she murmured, mostly to herself.
“Forgetting there is more at stake than my own happiness.” She paused, but neither Mordred nor Nyneve spoke.
“I was raised to believe peace was a lack of conflict,” Guinevere continued.
One of the candles on the hearth burned down to the wick, beeswax dripping over the mantel.
“When Arthur bent this region to his will in his quest for a united kingdom, I thought peace was obeying a single leader who, in my eyes, had the common good at the forefront of his mind.”