CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE #4
“His home, mostly.” Her voice shifted fractionally, something warming in it at the memory, and my jaw set against the feeling that registered in my chest when I heard that warmth. “The harbor. The way the water looks there. The heat.” She stopped. “It was nothing of consequence.”
“And yet you remember it.”
“I remember most things people tell me.”
I turned back to her. She was watching me with that patient, measuring expression that I was beginning to understand wasn’t calm, but rather something she wore over whatever was actually moving beneath it.
She had no reason to lie about Tristan. That was the point I kept coming back to. She’d answered every question about him with the same flat honesty she employed when she felt strategically indifferent to the topic. There were no flinches, no careful constructions, and no redirects.
Which meant either she genuinely felt nothing beyond passing comfort in his company or she was better than I’d given her credit for.
She is our treasure, the dragon said. Guard her. Claim her. Hoard her. Always.
She held the practice sword in a grip that was technically correct and yet somehow also entirely her own. Arthur circled her. She circled him back. Neither of them spoke.
-LANCE-
I didn’t know what I was doing, but before I could stop my own actions, I’d circled the training yard from the western approach, and now I stood under a copse of ash trees, where no one would spot me.
From there, I could see the training yard, and more specifically, the king and his prisoner, where they were sparring.
I was close enough that I could hear the sound of their boots against the dirt.
Arthur circled her slowly. His sword arm was loose at his side. He wasn’t here to train. He was here to peel something open.
She stood her ground.
That was the first thing I’d noticed about her, back when she was still Lioran: the way she stood. Most men, facing Arthur like that, found reasons to shift their weight, to look elsewhere. She didn’t.
I overheard Arthur asking her, yet again, who had taken her virginity.
And just as with all the other times he’d forced this question on her, she refused to answer.
The silence stretched out long enough that a crow landed on the far wall, studied them both, and decided there was nothing worth staying for.
There was some more back and forth, and then the topic of Isolde came up, and Guinevere’s reaction to the talk of Isolde was an interesting one. She almost seemed to rise to the occasion, to become more violent in her attack against him. And based on his expression, he noticed the same.
I’d known Arthur long enough to read the small things: the almost imperceptible tension across his shoulders, the way his chin lifted just slightly when something surprised him.
She surprised him constantly.
He asked her to name the man again and, again, she refused to answer.
My hand was against the tree behind me, and I pressed it flat against the rough surface and made myself breathe.
She didn’t owe me this.
That was the thought that kept arriving like a tide I couldn’t turn back.
She didn’t owe me a single thing. I’d gone down to that dungeon and told her exactly what she was worth to me, which was nothing, which was less than nothing.
I’d been very precise about it. I’d made sure she understood.
Then, in a moment of fevered madness, I’d kissed her, and she’d thought I simply wanted to use her as an outlet for my lust.
By all accounts, I’d treated her poorly.
And yet here she was, in the yard, taking Arthur’s questions like body blows, and giving him nothing.
For me.
I didn’t understand it. I’d turned it over a dozen times in the past week, and each time I arrived at the same unresolvable point.
There was no angle in it for her. She gained nothing.
Telling Arthur would’ve bought her something: leverage at minimum, mercy at best.
My name in Arthur’s ear from her lips would have shifted the entire weight of his attention from her to me.
She knew that. She wasn’t stupid. She was, in fact, one of the sharpest people I’d encountered in a decade of being surrounded by men who believed themselves clever.
So, she was choosing this then? Why was she choosing to keep what had happened between us a secret. It made no sense to me.
I watched her shoulders. There was a new tension in them that hadn’t been there when she was Lioran. This tension was something careful, something that came from whatever Galahad had spent three weeks installing in her. But her spine was still straight, and she still had that same posture.
She had every reason to hate me. I’d given her every reason, yet for all intents and purposes, she stood between me and the one man in this kingdom with the power and the will to end me. I didn’t know what to do with that.
Arthur sheathed his blade. The lesson, such as it was, was over.
-ARTHUR-
I looked at her for a long moment. “To answer your question...” I took a breath. “I’ve always wanted to fuck you.”
“So, why haven’t you?”
I swallowed hard. “Because I don’t want to give the beast the thing it desires most,” I answered truthfully, and her eyes widened a bit in honest surprise. “We’re done here,” I said. “Clean the practice blades before you return them.”
I walked toward the gate without looking back and motioned to Galahad to collect his ward.