CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Arthur’s expression didn’t change all at once. It was the warmth that drained out first. Then the amusement. Then everything else, until what was left wasn’t a man at all but something carved from old stone and colder purpose.
I’d seen that expression 0n the battlefield. I’d seen it in the throne room when a vassal pushed too far. I’d seen it in the moment before Arthur did something irreversible and felt nothing afterward.
My sword arm came back up.
I didn’t decide to do it; it was reflex.
The same reflex that had kept me alive through years of fighting, the same instinct that read a room the way other men read the weather.
The blade cleared the air between us, and my feet shifted, and suddenly I was no longer standing behind him.
I was standing beside him, angled slightly forward, close enough.
She stood her ground. I had to give her that. Whatever else she was, whatever she’d done, whatever I thought of her now, she stood completely still with her chin lifted and her eyes steady, and she didn’t flinch.
Say something else, I thought at her, furious and desperate in equal measure. Say something that pulls it back. Say anything that gives him somewhere to go that isn’t toward you. You aren’t giving him an out, and if he releases that outrage against you...
She just looked at him with those eyes and let the words sit between them like something she’d placed on a table and stepped back from. Chose him over you. Neat, precise, and aimed exactly where she’d intended.
The line across his jaw went rigid.
I’d fought beside Arthur Pendragon for years. I knew his body the way you know terrain you’ve crossed in the dark, every rise and hollow memorized not by sight but by consequence. And what I read in him now sent something cold down the length of my spine.
I watched him absorb her words, watched the way they landed.
Corvin had gone very still. I didn’t look at him directly, but I felt it. Tristan’s hand on his other arm had tightened.
“Arthur,” I said.
My own voice surprised me. It came out even, measured. It was the voice I used on a battlefield when I needed men to hear me over the noise without breaking formation.
“Let me take them both.”
Arthur’s eyes finally moved to mine.
“Put them under arrest,” I continued, keeping my voice flat, offering him nothing he could read as a challenge.
“Return them to the dungeon. They’re enemies of the crown. Both of them.”
I let that land before continuing. “There’s nothing further to be done here but take them to the dungeon, where they both belong... as your prisoners… as prisoners of the crown.”
It was the only way I could give him an exit that didn’t require him to back down. Because a king doesn’t back down, but he can redirect. And that was what I was offering him: a direction. And I fucking hoped he’d take it.
His jaw worked once, but soon the stone in his expression shifted, fractionally, something calculating moving beneath it.
I didn’t look at her; I didn’t look at Corvin. I kept my eyes on Arthur and held completely still, the way you hold still in front of something large and unpredictable that hasn’t yet decided what it’s going to do.
“They belong in chains,” I said. “Not here.”
The word here did the work I needed it to do. Here was a tavern room with witnesses. Here was beneath him.
A long silence stretched.
Arthur finally moved.
Not toward her. Not the lunge I’d been braced for. Instead, he stepped back. One deliberate step, the way a man moves when he’s deciding that the moment isn’t right for a particular action, not because he’s abandoned the action but because he’s chosen a better time for it.
He turned away from her, and the room exhaled.
My sword arm stayed exactly where it was for three more seconds before I let it drop. My hand ached. I hadn’t realized how hard I’d been gripping the hilt.
Arthur walked to the window, and he stood with his back to the room, looking out at whatever lay beyond the glass, his shoulders very straight and very still.
Nobody spoke.
She hadn’t moved. She was still standing where he’d left her, chin still up, and I couldn’t tell from this angle whether she was breathing hard or not. I couldn’t tell anything from this angle. I deliberately didn’t try.
Arthur’s voice, when it came, was very quiet.
“We ride within the hour.”
-GUIN-
The room went quiet in the way places do right before something terrible happens.
I didn’t look at Corvin. I couldn’t. But I felt him beside me, felt the shift in his posture. He didn’t want to be taken to the dungeon. And, fuck, neither did I. We’d both tasted freedom. And what was more, we’d tasted it together. And now that freedom was threatened.
I looked at Corvin then. Just once. Just for a second.
His amber eyes found mine, and everything inside that glance was compressed down to its thinnest possible form: I’m sorry.
I looked at Arthur.
Then I looked back at the door before my eyes naturally sought out Corvin once more. And when he looked at me, the message was clear.
Don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’re planning... don’t.
I’d have said the same myself if the situation were reversed. I’d have said the same because it was the smart play to make. We were outmanned, outflanked, and the look on Arthur’s face was the kind that meant he was no longer capable of negotiating.
I stepped forward anyway.
The cold seeped up through the floor, just like it always did when I called on my magic. It seeped through the soles of my feet and up through my legs, and when it reached my chest, it stopped being cold and began to be something else. Something that was alive and something that was angry.
The window frosted over, the rushes on the floor stiffened and cracked beneath the sudden sheet of ice that spread out from me like rings on the surface of still water, moving quickly.
Agravaine let Corvin go and launched himself at me.
The ice took his feet. He went down hard, armor cracking against the frozen floor, but I was already moving: spinning, pulling the cold with me, shaping it.
A wall of frost erupted between me and the nearest blade that was moving in my direction.
I didn’t notice when the door had opened, but now the knights were entering the room, and they could see exactly what was happening.
Ice bloomed across the crossbeams overhead as icicles dropped like teeth. The room turned pale, gleaming silver.
“Take her alive.” Arthur’s voice sounded, cutting through the chaos. “No one harms her. No one.”
I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t say why, only that it felt like I’d die if I stopped, and I’d already come close enough to death enough times already.
Well, if Arthur’s dagger at my throat was anything to go by.
I sent a wave of ice at the knights closing in from the left.
Gawain slid back against a table. Gareth held up a hand, and warmth poured out in a shimmer of fire magic.
I was reminded of a time at Camelot when we’d sparred together.
But then there had existed nothing between us but a friendly competitiveness.
This was anything but. For a moment, it was just us, pushing against each other, Gareth’s warmth and my cold, and then I pushed harder, and my cold won.
Arthur himself came for me then.
Of course he did.
He caught my arm, and I wrenched away from him, but he was stronger than I was and held onto me easily.
For a second or more, we just stared at each other.
But then he tried to get a better grip on me, so I swirled around and drove my elbow back, feeling it connect with what I assumed was his stomach because I heard his breath leave him.
I took one step towards Corvin, who was doing his best against Percival and Tristan. Then another step.
Then a hand closed on my shoulder and spun me around, and I had one instant to see Lance before his dagger pressed flat against my throat.
Not the blade. The flat. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.
He was just stopping me.
And with that expression in his eyes, he did.
My power fell out from under me, like I’d walked through a trapdoor.
The cold didn’t go anywhere; at least, it didn’t go anywhere fast, but I stopped feeding it all the same.
And when I stopped feeding it, it stopped moving forward, and the room was just there, in its glittering destruction of ice, and everyone was breathing very hard.
“Stop,” Lance said.
One word. Low. There was nothing dramatic in it.
My pulse was in my ears while the dagger rested cool and unmoving at my throat. His eyes were locked on mine, and they were darker than I remembered them ever being, almost black in the poor light of the room. There was something in them that wasn’t anger, but I didn’t know what it was.
Regardless, I didn’t move.
Behind him, Arthur said, “Drop your weapon, Lance.”
Lance didn’t move either. Instead, he just looked at me as I looked at him.
And neither of us breathed.
-ARTHUR-
The ride back to Camelot was silent.
I set the pace: hard, fast, no stops, and no one questioned it. The riding party fell in behind me without a word. Even Lance, who’d known me long enough to read every register of my mood, kept his mouth shut and Nero two lengths back.
Good.
I didn’t trust myself to speak yet.
I’d entrusted Gareth with Guinevere, and she now sat in front of him with her hands bound before her.
Corvin was seated on another horse I’d purchased from the tavern owner (and paid significantly more than the thing was worth), his hands bound behind him.
He rode between Kay and Agravaine. It was a damned good thing the sun was in full ownership of the sky; otherwise, Corvin’s shadows would be near unstoppable.
The dragon had gone quiet once she was back in my sight. Not dormant, never fully dormant anymore, but settled. It was now just a low, satisfied heat behind my ribcage.
I kept my eyes on the road, and soon the gates of Camelot rose against the bright sky, the light catching the gold inlay of the portcullis.
The guards scrambled as soon as they saw us, and soon the sound of hooves on cobblestone replaced the soft thud of packed earth.
I stopped Cabal in the central courtyard beside the fountain.