CHAPTER ONE
-GUIN-
The chains came off first, and I was glad to see them go.
One guard worked the manacles while the other stood back with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, watching me like he thought I might dissolve through the stone wall to certain freedom.
“Don’t try nothin’ funny.”
I just looked at him.
The iron had left raw bands around my wrists, the skin beneath bruised to a deep plum color. But I didn’t rub them; I didn’t want to give either bastard the satisfaction.
“Move.”
The corridor stretched long and torchlit in front of me, but it felt good to stand and even better to walk. I’d been holed up in this shithole of a dungeon for a few days now, and anything was better than the cold, the darkness, and the rats that came with it.
As I walked, the flames from the torches threw orange halos against the stone walls, and my bare feet made a pitter-patter sound.
We walked in a tight line, one guard ahead of me, one guard behind me, through passageways that smelled of tallow and damp mortar.
Neither of them said anything, and that was just as well because I wasn’t exactly in a talkative mood.
As we walked deeper into the castle’s belly and then gradually up a winding staircase, the air began to warm, the rough-hewn stone giving way to carved archways and tapestried walls.
I could hear the sounds from the kitchen, of scullery maids dashing this way and that, preparing Camelot for the revelry of yet another evening.
I was still wearing his cloak.
That fact sat in my stomach like an anvil.
Dark wool, heavy, lined with the fur of some animal I couldn’t name, Arthur had given it to me at the lake after he’d shredded my clothing and left me standing there, completely naked.
After he’d discovered I was no longer a virginal maid and something in him had snapped.
He’d pulled the robe from his own shoulders and dropped it over mine with the particular carelessness of a man who understood that the gesture itself was the threat.
I can dress you. I can undress you. I can make you disappear.
I’d worn his cloak then, and I’d worn it afterward: when he’d laid out his terms for what would come next with the calm of a man describing the weather. Either I became his spy against Merlin or I’d die for the crimes of my deception. It wasn’t really much of a choice.
The cloak still smelled faintly of him, of the king: the most powerful man in all of Logres. It smelled of cedar, smoke, and something underneath that I refused to examine too closely.
I’d agreed to his demands because... well, of course, I’d agreed.
I valued my life enough to want to keep living it.
So, I’d agreed to the king’s terms, only to find myself returned to my cell.
That was a day or so ago. Perhaps more. It was difficult to monitor the passing of time when you were stuck inside a windowless stone room and had no way of judging night from day.
The Great Hall announced itself before I saw it, before we even turned the corner. The sound around me changed first: the echo widening, the low murmur of voices pressing through the final set of doors. Then the guards swung the doors open, and the heat of a hundred candles hit me across the face.
As to why the guards were escorting me here? I had no idea. But I had to admit I was surprised... and just a little bit nervous because if Arthur was one thing, it was unpredictable.
The hall was full of courtiers, knights, and servants all jovial with drink and food, all celebrating the creation of the Knights of the Round Table.
As soon as the three of us stepped foot inside the room, though, every eye found me, drawn by our entrance, or perhaps simply by the fact that I was an unknown woman wearing the king’s cloak. A prisoner draped in the king’s robes... an interesting subject of conversation, if ever I’d heard one.
Even though I didn’t want it to, my gaze immediately found him.
But that was no surprise. Sitting on a raised dais in the middle of the room, the king was meant to be the center of everyone’s attention.
Yet even if he hadn’t been seated there, my eyes would have found him anyway. That’s just how it was between us.
Arthur sat in his throne like he’d been carved into it. He didn’t move, didn’t even twitch, just sat there watching me like a cat watches a bird right before it pounces.
The throne rose behind him on the dais of pale stone, its high back shaped like a dragon mid-flight, wings spread wide enough to frame his broad shoulders.
Very fitting considering the same beast lived within him, a dragon.
It was something I would have said was impossible before I’d ever come to Camelot and seen the proof myself.
As the three of us took another step forward and then stopped, presumably to await the king’s instructions, he still said nothing.
He just sat there and stared at me. Very quickly, the voices, the laughter, the sounds of cutlery against china quieted until the silence in the room was its own kind of suffocating.
Ice. Arthur’s expression was that chilling, not cold in the way winter is cold: something distant and impersonal.
No, this was the cold of a decision already made, the cold of a blade: sharp, and aimed.
Every line of his face had settled into something final, a verdict without a trial, a decision without a confession.
“You may leave,” he said and motioned to the guards on either side of me.
They immediately bowed and eagerly made their retreat, leaving me to face the king down a long walkway of open floor.
From my peripheral vision, I could vaguely see the outline of the numerous courtiers who packed the sides of the room in dense clusters.
They were heaped in velvet, furs, and the particular stillness of people who smell blood before it’s drawn.
No ladies. Only men. Hmm, curious that.
I recognized the many noble houses standing in loose formations according to allegiances I’d spent months mapping. And to the left, separated from the courtiers by a strip of empty floor, stood the knights.
My knights. The men I’d eaten with, trained beside, taken blows from in the training yard.
Percival stood at the end of the row, his straw-colored curls catching the candlelight, his hands clasped in front of him, making him somehow look like a little boy.
Lance stood two men down with his jaw set and his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above my head: perhaps the wall, or the ceiling, anywhere that wasn’t me.
He couldn’t look at me, and the truth was, I couldn’t look at him.
Not after everything that had happened between us.
Not after the lies I’d told him, lies that might have been justified in my own mind but would never be justified in his.
I wondered if I’d ever be able to face him again, if he’d ever even let me.
Arthur rose from his throne, pulling my attention back to him.
He didn’t hurry. Instead, he descended the steps with the measured pace of a man who understood that every second of silence was its own form of dominion. He walked the entire length of the aisle until he stopped in front of me. He was so tall, I had to crane my neck upward to meet his eyes.
He was close. So close.
For one suspended moment, his eyes moved across my face.
There was nothing in them that might have hinted at his mood or the thoughts going through his mind.
No flicker of the man who’d argued strategy with me over dinner or trained me in swordsmanship.
No rage of the man who’d discovered the truth: that I was his enemy’s daughter.
“You might wonder,” he began, eyes still on me, but his voice was loud enough to carry through the hall, “who this woman is and why she’s been escorted into my Hall.”
He turned slightly, letting his gaze travel the full length of the chamber, sweeping across the assembled knights, the noble houses in their fine clothing, and the courtiers pressed together along the walls. No one said a single word.
“You might further wonder at her state,” Arthur continued.
“The dirt on her face, or the mud caked into her hair and on her feet.”
A pause. He let them look at me, letting the silence do its work.
“Perhaps you might question why she wears the cloak of a king and yet stands before you like someone dragged from a ditch.”
His eyes moved over the crowd casually, as though giving each man time to sit with their discomfort.
“Perhaps some of you have already decided what she is.”
Another slow, considered look around the room.
Still, no one responded. They all knew better.
“If you assumed she was a prisoner, you’d be correct… she is a prisoner and a spy.”
I didn’t once turn my attention from him, and when his eyes alighted on mine again, the hall went quiet the way a held breath is quiet, as if no one knew what to expect next. I was right there with them.
Arthur reached out and closed his hand around the fur of the cloak’s collar. Then, before I could understand what he intended to do, he yanked it away. In one single motion, the fur and wool dragged across my skin, and then it was gone, leaving me as naked as the day I was born.
Even though my heart was racing, even though I was beyond humiliated, being the only woman now standing naked in a room full of men, I refused to let it show.
I refused to let Arthur believe he’d won.
Instead, I held my head higher, lifting my chin to look at him directly, allowing my eyes to blaze into his.
He held my gaze for maybe a second more before he turned his back and walked toward the dais and his throne, leaving the long line of empty space between us.
When he took his seat this time and turned to face me, there was a smirk on his face.
And then I understood. He’d choreographed this whole thing just to show me he could, just to show that he held all the power and I held none.
This was entirely tactical: a way to break me down completely, to guarantee I had no defenses left.
“This woman—” he continued, his voice filling the room without effort, “—stood beside you under the fictitious name of Sir Lioran.”
There was a round of gasps and other remarks of shock, as anyone might expect.