CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #4
“I daresay half of them fell in love with her the second she stepped foot into the room, and the other half are simply better at hiding it. I put any one of them in a room alone with her, and I’m not gaining intelligence; I’m losing another soldier to a pair of violet eyes.”
“All except for Galahad.” Lance turned the name over like he was examining a strange coin.
“Galahad is purity incarnate; you know that as well as I do. He’s never known the joys of the flesh and has no intention of knowing them. He’s moved by his religion and his religion alone.” I paused as I thought about it. “He’s the perfect warden.”
“Yet he said he believed she should be put to death for her crimes.”
“Even better still.”
Lance looked up at me and frowned, so I explained.
“He won’t be taken in by her beauty and her charm.”
“Right. He might just kill her instead.”
I shook my head. “Galahad is many things, but what he isn’t is a man who would go against his king’s orders. And once I give him the order that he’s to be her warden, he will rise to that occasion, I am certain.”
Lance leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and I watched the calculation move through his eyes. He was fast and always had been. It was one of the many reasons I kept him close. That and he was the most loyal man I’d ever known.
“I thought you had plans to test her magic in the training yard, to see just what she’s capable of? Was that not what you said in the last council meeting?”
I nodded. “I am still planning on it, but I need some time to figure out exactly the best way forward. In the meantime, she will be Galahad’s charge.”
“It’s not a terrible idea.”
I nodded. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only idea.”
I refilled my goblet and took a long sip of the bitter wine.
“Galahad’s purity isn’t sentiment; it’s architecture. Whatever she tries to use on him: charm, manipulation, that face and body... it won’t find purchase. He’s built himself into something she can’t erode.”
“Perhaps.”
I was surprised by the bit of skepticism I detected in his tone. “I would put my money on Galahad, were I a betting man.”
“I don’t know that I would be so certain of him.”
“No?”
He shrugged. “Look at what she was able to do while she was Lioran. She fooled all of us. That speaks of a conniving mind and someone not only highly capable but... damned good at it. What’s more: we only know Lioran, something that was simply a disguise, a fiction she wore like armor for months.”
“True. None of us knows Guinevere. Not her methods, not her limits, not the full measure of what she’s capable.”
And that was one of the reasons I needed time with her, whether in the training yard or elsewhere.
I needed to break through those walls so I could strip the person at her core and remake her into the person I wanted her to be.
“She’s Merlin’s instrument. That alone should be sufficient cause for caution.”
“Lance, I assure you I am full of caution where she’s concerned.” I took a breath. “And even if it were true: even if she had no interest in seducing any of my men... I wouldn’t trust a single one of them not to make the attempt himself, to press where she hadn’t invited pressure.”
He shook his head at that. “That’s not the way of the knight, not the code we swear by, and not the ideal we’re meant to embody.”
“But it’s the reality nonetheless,” I argued. “Men are thorough in their self-deception, particularly when beauty is involved.”
The corner of Lance’s mouth shifted into the expression he wore when he found something admirably cold. “And Galahad has agreed to this scheme of yours?”
“I don’t know yet, as I haven’t told him of my scheme.” I downed another swallow of wine. “Though I’m quite certain he’ll be happy to accept whatever his king wishes.” I took a breath. “And with her magic bound, I can rest assured that she won’t be able to harm him.”
“You’re putting all your eggs in Galahad’s basket, then?”
I nodded. “I suppose I am. But I believe it’s the only way. What’s more, perhaps he can reform her through prayer, penance, and whatever monastic rituals he’s got in that head of his. A woman in the process of being spiritually reformed is a woman being carefully observed.”
I turned to face him fully. “And if it happens to soften her toward cooperation... I call that an additional benefit.”
Lance sat back slowly, looking at me with that particular expression, the one that meant he’d arrived at the same conclusion I had and wasn’t entirely comfortable with himself for it.
“It’s an interesting idea,” he said finally.
“Yes. It is.”
I finished the goblet of wine before I realized I’d even taken another sip and set the goblet down with a steadiness I didn’t entirely feel.
The strategy was simple enough to articulate: I didn’t want Guinevere fully broken.
I wanted her bent. I wanted from her a genuine pivot of loyalty: for her to look at Merlin’s design and then at mine and choose mine, not because I’d made the alternative unbearable, but because I’d made her believe she was choosing freely.
Galahad was the first instrument in my arsenal. Not a weapon, but a contrast. Let her spend her days in the company of the purest man in Camelot, a man who wanted nothing from her but her soul’s improvement, and she’d want nothing more than to be free of him.
Galahad could shatter armies with his celestial light and best any living swordsman in the kingdom (except perhaps Lance), yet his most devastating weapon had nothing to do with combat.
It was the quiet, relentless pressure of his company: the lectures, the measured disappointments, the way his eyes lingered on a person’s smallest flaw as though cataloging sins for some celestial ledger.
An hour with Galahad left most men feeling simultaneously judged and found wanting.
A full day left them desperate to confess things they hadn’t even done simply to be dismissed from his presence.
He didn’t need a blade. He needed only to sit across a table from someone and look at them with that patient certainty, and they’d eventually break themselves open just to make him stop.
“And what of Corvin?” Lance asked.
I breathed in deeply. “That’s another topic altogether.”
I walked to the fireplace and held my hands out to the flames.
“Part of me agrees with Galahad that Corvin should be put to death for his crimes. But the other part of me realizes the asset he is. He’s important to Merlin, and that means he’s valuable.”
I paused and then breathed out. “What’s more... I’m afraid if I do anything too... permanent to Corvin, Guinevere will be beyond reach.”
“Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “You saw them together when we found them at the tavern.” And I’d seen them when they were both in the heat of passion, which had told me they were important to one another. Beyond important, if I were being honest with myself.
I noticed how Lance swallowed hard and his jaw grew tight. “What are you hinting at?”
“I don’t believe I’m hinting at anything,” I frowned. “Did you not see what I saw in that room?”
“I did; I just... I suppose I wasn’t entirely sure what to... make of it.”
I could have told him that I’d watched them fuck right in front of me: that important to one another was a pale, diplomatic shadow of what I’d actually witnessed, but I held my tongue. Mainly because I had no desire to sit through the inevitable barrage of questions that would follow.
“Suffice it to say their bond runs deep. And that’s precisely the kind of leverage I intend to exploit.”
Lance’s frown deepened, carving lines into that handsome face of his, so I continued before he could turn his silence into another question I had no interest in answering.
“Corvin is her weakness. Perhaps the only weakness she has that I can reliably reach. If she believes his life or his freedom rests on her cooperation, she’ll fall into line. I can use him to ensure she remains... amenable to doing exactly what I require.”
“I see.” A pause. “And if she calls your bluff?”
“Then she’ll discover I don’t have a bluff to call.”