CHAPTER FOUR
-GUIN-
At the sound of the door screeching open at the end of the hall, followed by footsteps, I was on my feet before anyone reached my cell, instinct driving me forward.
Very soon, Arthur appeared in front of the bars.
He filled the doorway like the architecture had been designed around him. There were no guards at his shoulder, no Mordred. The king had come on his own and now stood there with one hand braced against the iron bars.
And that vibration within me that remained nameless lurched toward him just as it always did.
“How were you reporting to Merlin?”
No greeting, no preamble. I didn’t respond, just watched as he produced a ring of keys he must have taken from the guard on duty.
He unlocked my cage, stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind him.
The cell became half the size it had been a moment ago.
He looked at me then and raised his eyebrows in a silent rendition of: why the hell haven’t you responded yet?
“Is that any way to greet your most valued prisoner?”
I didn’t know why I said it. The words had simply come out and were edged with something that was equal parts defiance and threat.
There was no performance behind them and no careful calibration.
Perhaps that was because the moment Arthur had learned what I truly was, the part I’d spent months playing: the obedient knight, the eager newcomer, the loyal servant wearing another man’s name, had fallen away like a shed skin.
There was no more Sir Lioran to hide behind.
Now it was just me, and that was the person he was going to get from here forward.
His expression revealed that he was taken aback by my comment. But the surprise was only momentary, and he quickly recovered. “Why would you assume yourself to be my most valued prisoner?”
“What else would you call me?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Lucky you aren’t rotting beneath the earth somewhere.”
I looked around myself and then laughed. “You call this lucky?”
“Your situation could be vastly improved upon if you opt to work with me rather than against me.”
“Do you suppose it a wise decision to flaunt my naked body in front of all those men when you’re after my cooperation?”
He took a step closer to me, and I could have sworn a beastly growl echoed up from his throat. “You don’t question my decisions.”
I pushed forward, crossing the distance that separated us. And though he towered over me by at least a head and shoulders, I glared up at him as if I were seven feet tall. “I will question all your decisions.”
“You owe me your fucking life.”
“I owe you nothing.”
His hand shot out and gripped my chin, fingers pressing into the hinge of my jaw hard enough to crank my face as far upward as it would go.
Then he walked me backward until the rough stone wall bit into my shoulders.
I did my best to suppress the gasp that started in my throat, but I wasn’t quick enough to stop it.
And my own shock at his actions seemed to please him because a smile lifted the corners of his lips.
“You will address me as your king.”
“You are not my fucking king, and you will never be my king.” I spat the words out with as much venom as I could manage. “So, if that’s the reason you’ve come here, you should have saved yourself the visit.”
His eyes dropped to my heaving chest. Just briefly, but it was long enough for him to notice that both of my nipples were pebbling into hard rocks beneath my prison tunic. It had happened the moment he’d touched me: my body had reacted as it always did to this man, much though I detested that fact.
A low chuckle moved through his chest, something that was dark and unhurried. “You believe you hate me.” His thumb pressed the corner of my mouth, and it was all I could do to keep my lips closed. “But your body appears to have a different opinion entirely.”
My nipples were firmly stiff now, aching to feel his touch but thrilled that his gaze kept returning to them. I, on the other hand, was not.
Heat climbed my throat, but I refused to let it reach my face. “There’s no belief that I hate you. Only the cold, hard fact and one that’s incontrovertible.”
“And yet,” he started and dropped his hand, gliding it down the side of my face, down to my collarbones, then my shoulder, until it rested on top of my covered breast. “Your tits are rock hard.” He leaned in even closer. “And I would bet good coin that your cunt is soaking wet... and ready for me.”
I laughed, and he pulled away to look down at me with a curious expression. “Or so you’d like to believe because in your own warped mind, every woman desires you.” I took a breath. “What’s more true is the fact that you’ve kept me alive for your own enjoyment.”
“I’ve told you the reasons why you’re still alive.”
“And they’re nothing but farce. Just simply lies you’ve told yourself to justify your true reasons.”
“Which are what?” he asked in a bored tone.
“That you desire me as much as you’re convinced I desire you.”
I leaned in even closer. “And you despise the fact that you do.”
My voice came out steadier than I deserved because on one subject, he was correct.
I did want him. More than I was willing to admit.
“Or is it the beast within you that does? The thing underneath the crown.”
His expression dropped, any amusement bleeding away from it in an instant. He immediately turned his head to face the guard who stood at the far end of the dungeon, as if concerned the man might have overheard me. I wasn’t fazed.
“I know what lives inside you, Arthur,” I continued in a soft voice, one that no one could overhear. “I watched it climb out of you at the lake. When you put your hands on me and nearly forced yourself—”
His free hand rose into the air fast, palm flat, the threat of it sharp and absolute. He held it there, just inches from my face, warning of violence if I continued.
I couldn’t help but wince against him. The response was automatic even though I hated myself for it.
“Do not.” The words came out of his mouth and they were scraped clean of everything but a dire warning.
“You will never fucking repeat those words again if you value your fucking life.”
He took a breath, and it was then that I realized he was panting.
“And as for nearly forcing myself on you...”
His voice dropped, deliberate now, each word placed like a blade.
“I would never have to.” He brought his hand to my face again, his thumb dragging slowly along my jaw, and I felt it everywhere, felt my own traitorous skin respond, felt heat pooling low, immediate and hateful.
“Every time I touch you, you yield. Every single fucking time.”
His eyes traveled down my body again, and he let them linger on my pebbled nipples that were straining against my tunic.
His eyes found mine once more, and they were full of victory.
“You wear your need for me like a second skin. It disgusts me.”
He released my chin and stepped back. “I don’t chase willing prey.”
Then his gaze moved over me once more, but this time it was clinical, dismissive, cutting.
“There’s no satisfaction when there’s no chase.”
I hated the fact that his comments cut me so sharply, but even though they did, I wasn’t about to let him have the last word. “The only feeling for you that I harbor is absolute hatred.”
“I’m uninterested in your feelings towards me, witch.” His eyes narrowed, and his demeanor was now all business. “All I care to know is the method by which you contacted your father while pretending to be in service to me. Be specific.”
“And if I’m not in the mood to comment?”
He paused, and his eyes narrowed even further. “Would you prefer death? That can absolutely be arranged. And quickly, for I’m growing exceedingly tired of you.”
I swallowed hard. He had me exactly where he wanted me, and he knew it. We both knew it. Fuck, even the moth on the stone wall knew it.
“Water mirror.” My voice came out steadier than I expected.
He smiled, and I wanted to punch the expression off his fucking handsome face. “How did you manage it?”
“I’d send my voice through the reflection in the water that connected me to Caer Gwyll. He’d receive it on his end.”
Arthur’s jaw moved slightly, as if he was processing. “You could do this from anywhere?”
“Anywhere with standing water. Though I only ever attempted it through the water mirror in my bedchamber, where it was private.”
“You’ll continue,” he said with a quick nod. “Same method. Same location. I don’t want Merlin to know anything is amiss. You’ll contact him, and you’ll say what I tell you to say. He’ll believe you’re still his.”
I glared at him. “And if he asks something you haven’t scripted?”
He shrugged. “Then you’ll improvise.” He paused and then smiled again. “The point is that you’ll continue doing exactly what you were doing. The only variable is who you’re now serving.”
My power moved even though I hadn’t touched it. It simply rose within me like a slow tide climbing my sternum. Mordred’s wards immediately tamped it down again, but the air between us felt charged anyway, the way it did before lightning found ground.
I had to brace myself with one hand against the wall because the rise of it was so sudden and so extreme. When I glanced up at Arthur, I could immediately tell he’d felt it too. His expression was blank, but his left hand had closed around the cell bar beside him, and his knuckles were pale.
Almost as if in response, every drop of moisture in the room strained toward him.
The condensation on the ceiling gathered itself into something with direction, with want and need.
My own blood felt loud in my ears, singing at a frequency I’d never heard before, like a second pulse underneath my own.
His pupils spread wide, dark flooding over light blue. And for one unguarded second, I saw it in him, saw the beast and how it was responding to me.
We both stepped away from each other at the same moment.
He released the bar as I pressed my spine flat against the wall as if the cold stone was sufficient armor. It wasn’t. Nothing would have been.
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us acknowledged what had just passed between us, even though something most definitely had. But I didn’t know what. Just that my magic, my blood, had reacted to him. And his beast had responded to it.
He slipped his arm through the bars and unlocked the cell door. The sound of the bolt scraping back from the outside was almost deafening. Arthur pushed the door open and stepped outside. Then he slammed it shut again and locked it.
He didn’t look at me again. He just started up the corridor to the main door that led into the dungeon. But at the threshold, his steps slowed by a single breath before he walked through it.
I stared at the empty doorway long after his footsteps faded.
-GUIN-
The dream came for me again that night.
It always started the same way.
The Hall of Lineages stretched endlessly in every direction, its vaulted ceiling lost somewhere in the dark above me.
Torches burned green along the walls, throwing everything in a sickly jade light.
The tombs of the long-dead Pendragon kings lined both sides in rows; they were great slabs of carved black stone with effigies of dead men stretched flat atop them.
Arthur was there just as he always was.
As with every other time I’d had this dream, Arthur fucked me on top of one of the tombs, and I didn’t fight him. I never did. Instead, I welcomed the feel of him inside me, welcomed the way his body burned above me.
Then the dead kings began to move.
Bony fingers scraped the edges of tomb lids as jaws unhinged, some falling off. The skeletons sat upright in their stone beds, their faces turning toward us in unison like flowers tracking sunlight.
Arthur released my wrists, then Excalibur appeared beside him.
I never saw the last part coming even though I’d dreamed it a dozen times.
He slammed the blade into my chest with the focus of a man completing a ritual obligation.
I felt the heat of pain blooming outward as my blood channeled into rivulets, each leading to one of the dead kings.
And they absorbed my blood as they always did, all of them breathing for the first time in centuries.
The last thing I always saw was Arthur’s face looking down at me. Not regretful. Not glad. Just certain.
I woke up screaming.
The first thing I noticed was the water hitting the walls of my prison like something had burst.
Every crack and seam in the stone was suddenly weeping in thick sheets, the floor flooding ankle-deep in seconds before I wrestled my power back under my skin with both hands shaking, my throat raw and my heart slamming its fist against my ribs.
“Shut your mouth!” One of the guards came pounding down the aisle, his torch swinging. “Shut the fuck up, girl, I swear to—”
A second one came running behind him, and they both stopped outside my cell, breathing hard, water still draining between the stones beneath their boots. They took in the mess and looked at one another.
“Mordred said ‘er magic ain’t supposed to work in ‘ere.”
“But jist look at it.”
The first one nodded. “I hope they kill ye, witch,” he said as he crouched and picked something up off the floor: a broken broom handle, the end splintered to a ragged point.
He shoved it between the bars and jabbed it at me.
I pulled away just in time to avoid getting a nasty cut to my abdomen.
Then I slinked back toward the dark corner where I usually hid myself.
“Come on then, witch. Show us what you’re screamin’ about.”
The first one laughed. “Or make yerself useful an’ show us what you got between them legs.”
He grabbed the torch bracket mounted to the wall and leaned his weight against the bars, trying to angle the light into my corner.
“Show us yer cunt an’ we’ll leave ye alone.”
“Come on then, be a good girl.”
I stayed where I was with my back against the stone, just breathing through my nose until the shaking in my hands stopped.
Eventually, they grew bored. They always did.
The broom handle scraped back through the bars as their footsteps retreated and the torch glow faded.
In the dark, with cold water seeping through my clothes and the dream still vivid behind my eyes, I tried to make sense of the fact that I’d just managed to call on my water magic even though this prison cell was warded.
Reaching out to the water around me now, I tried to channel it, but it was no good.
The magic wouldn’t respond, same as before.
Was the only time I could use my magic when I wasn’t consciously attempting it? I didn’t know.
As for the nightmare, it was always the same. The same ritual. The same location. Excalibur piercing my flesh. The same certainty on Arthur’s face. What did it mean? And what did it mean that it kept repeating itself?
I pressed my knuckles against my mouth and sat with the questions I couldn’t answer as I turned my head and noticed there were now a handful or so of the skull moths. They sat on the wet stone wall, though they themselves weren’t wet at all.
And as with the first one, they all appeared to be watching me.