CHAPTER THIRTEEN #3
The marble statue of me gazed serenely over a marble Excalibur and represented a time when my life had been infinitely easier than it now was.
I dismounted without looking at it.
“Lance.”
He was already there, awaiting my order.
“Take Corvin to the dungeon.” I handed off my reins to a stable boy without looking at him either.
There was a pause and barely a breath from Lance in response. Then: “Understood.”
I heard Corvin’s low exhale from somewhere behind me, not in protest and not in surprise.
Just acknowledgment. He’d always been pragmatic, even when I’d considered that a virtue.
Later, we’d have words. Well, we’d have considerably more than words, but not today, and not in a courtyard full of witnesses.
I turned.
Guinevere was still on her horse with Gareth behind her.
She sat straight-backed in the saddle with her silver hair loose around her shoulders and those fucking eyes fixed on me with an expression that had no business existing on the face of a prisoner.
Not defiance, exactly. Something more specific than that.
Something that looked disturbingly like refusal.
I walked to Gareth’s horse and looked up at her.
“Down,” I said.
She got down. Not quickly.
I took hold of her bound wrists and turned toward the north tower.
The door to Mordred’s domain stood at the far end of a covered walkway, set into stone that was older than the rest of the castle.
The wards around it were visible if you knew how to look: a faint shimmer at the threshold, like heat rising off summer stone.
“Don’t try anything,” I whispered down at her. “You won’t like the consequences.”
She said nothing as she fell into step beside me. Not behind. Beside.
I noted it but didn’t comment.
We crossed the courtyard, and I still refused to look at her. What was more, the heat building within me that was now spreading throughout my body was enough to make me want to punch myself. The fucking dragon was beyond pleased to have her so close to us. I wasn’t.
“Corvin.” Her voice was flat and tight when she finally spoke. “What are you going to do with him?”
“He’s going to the dungeon,” I answered. “Where traitors belong.”
“He isn’t a traitor.”
“He broke into my castle, breached my wards, and removed my prisoner.” I kept walking. “What would you call it?”
“Rescue.”
“Same thing, from where I’m standing.”
She stopped walking. I took three more steps, as much as the rope holding her wrists would allow me, before I stopped as well. Then I turned slowly as I looked at her standing in the middle of the courtyard with her chin up and the sunlight catching all that white hair, and the dragon stirred.
Ours.
I breathed through it.
“What are you going to do with him?” she repeated.
The question landed with a kind of quiet force that told me she already understood how little ground she stood on, but she’d decided not to care. I studied her face for a moment: the high color in her cheeks, the set of her jaw.
“That,” I said, “is not your concern.”
“It is my concern. Whatever consequences—”
“—you don’t get to negotiate.” I took a step toward her, my temper getting the better of me. “You forget your fucking place. You’re a prisoner of the crown. You have no fucking standing here. You have no rights here. You don’t get to make demands of me.”
Her eyes didn’t waver. “I’m not making demands. I’m asking a question.”
“You don’t get to do that either. All you do get to do is obey me because I’m your fucking king.”
Something moved through her expression then. Something that looked like irritation.
“You aren’t my king,” she said, glaring at me, a repeat of the same thing she’d said in the Great Hall, in front of so many witnesses. “You never will be.”
My hand came up. Fast. Instinctive.
But I stopped it.
The air between us went very still. My palm was level with her face, but she hadn’t flinched. We stood there for one long, precise moment in which I saw myself from the outside and found the view unpleasant.
I lowered my hand, but I held her gaze and kept my voice absolutely level.
“You should be less concerned with Corvin’s future,” I said, “and considerably more concerned with your own.”
Then I turned and walked forward, yanking her behind me, all the way to Mordred’s tower.
As soon as we walked inside, the smell of brimstone and old parchment hit me.
The stairs wound upward in a tight spiral, and I climbed them without touching the walls, still pulling her behind me.
She was quiet now. And I welcomed the fucking break.
At the upper landing, I stopped and faced the door.
It was a heavy oak thing, with iron hinges.
The triangular crystal mounted above the frame threw a faint blue light downward, and in that light, Mordred’s handwriting was visible across the doorframe in sigils so small they might have been carved by a man with a very thin knife and a bigger grudge.
I knocked once.
Mordred opened the door immediately, which meant he’d known we were coming. His eyes moved from my face to Guinevere’s, and that careful, evaluative expression arranged itself behind his features the way it always did: orderly, precise, performing neutrality with professional skill.
“Your Grace,” he said. “And our prisoner returns.”
“She needs containment,” I answered. “I need her power bound.”
Something shifted behind the black eye. A small recalibration.
“You’re binding my magic?” she demanded and sounded both shocked and outraged.
“I see,” Mordred responded.
I didn’t bother looking at her. “The binding requirements are specific. Not only do I want her water magic disabled, but I want the bindings to be reversible.”
I watched him absorb this. “And whatever channel exists between her and Merlin, it needs to be closed, but able to be opened again when and if we require it.”
“Why are you binding my magic?” she insisted.
“Because I won’t have you harming any of my men.”
She just glared at me. And that was fine.
Mordred’s gaze had moved fully to her now. The triangular crystal at his throat pulsed once, dim and slow, but she didn’t appear to notice it. I did: it meant he was already reading her.
“Achievable,” he said. “Complicated, but achievable.”
“I need it done today.”
“I’ll require the next few hours, but I should have the binding finished by this evening, sire.”
I looked at her. “If you try your magic against Mordred, he has my express permission to kill you.”
“That will be unnecessary, my liege,” Mordred answered. “I can protect myself.”
I noticed she didn’t say anything, which was just as well. I nodded to Mordred and then turned to leave.
“And after containment?” Mordred asked. “What is the plan for her?”
I stopped, but didn’t turn around immediately. Behind me, I could feel Guinevere’s attention sharpen. I turned enough to look at Mordred, though not at her.
“You can return her to the dungeon,” I said.
I’d thought about what would come next on the ride back with the clarity that comes from sustained fury and is more reliable than calm. Guinevere’s power was real. More than real. Left unchecked, it was a threat. Left ungoverned, it was worse.
So, Mordred would close the channel to Merlin, and he’d suppress her abilities. And then she’d spend the coming days demonstrating, whether she intended to or not, exactly how much of a risk she was.
I left her standing in the blue light of Mordred’s doorway without looking back.
The dragon’s heat followed me all the way down the stairs.
Keep her.
I descended into the cold of the corridor below and said nothing to anyone.