Chapter 1
Chapter One
The hounds bayed, closer now, and the Druid girl shrank back against a towering oak tree. The hunting dogs seemed preternaturally aware of her presence, as though her strange, spiky wildness stood out plainly within this forest that had been tamed by a mortal king.
Settled into the oak’s embrace, she drew her arms around herself, closed her eyes, and let out a long exhale. An inhale next: damp moss, newly budded leaf, rain-drenched fern. And then, farther away but still terribly distinct:
Blood.
Another howl sounded. She opened her eyes, dragging her gaze across the meadow.
Avoiding the jaws of the hunting party had cost the Druid girl her sense of direction.
Even though the morning light barely penetrated the thick canopy of trees and she desperately needed a moment to tend to the merciless throbbing of her twisted ankle, she knew she couldn't risk staying out in the open.
“Gods’ blood,” she hissed, slipping back into the thicker underbrush, careful not to snap any twigs that might mark her path.
As she took a deep breath, trying to get her bearings, the Druid girl caught a hint of woodsmoke and wheat in the air.
She must still be headed in the right direction, then—toward the city called Camelot, where the fate of everything sat in the hands of a man who had made himself king.
The Druid girl hefted her knapsack up one shoulder, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch, keeping her weight off her right ankle.
The scent of warm hearths and baked bread grew stronger, loosening some of the tension in her chest. She never imagined feeling safer within a citadel’s walls instead of outside, but this forest was untrustworthy, like it only wore the guise of her beloved oak and fern.
The thought made panic flare in her chest, and she rushed forward, sliding on a lichen-covered stone, still damp with rain. She slipped, her injured ankle failing to hold any weight, the worn leather soles of her boots proving useless. Her feet went out from underneath her.
At the last moment, she just barely managed to grab onto the trunk of a slim white birch and steady herself.
She bit down on her tongue and fought to slow her racing heart.
It’d been too long since she’d slept properly, since she’d eaten more than the hard, dry bread and pickled vegetables in her travel bag.
But the Druid girl forged ahead, realizing she’d skirted up against a small clearing.
She peered past the tree line, moving silently through the underbrush despite her injury.
In the clearing stood a horse. Fully tacked, the silver buckles on its bridle and saddle winking in the morning sunlight, and entirely unattended.
“Oh,” she breathed, her heart pounding in her throat.
She slunk just a little closer, peering about the meadow, eyes sharp for the knight the animal surely belonged to.
But she found no one. She strained her ears, holding her breath.
She heard only birdsong, finally returning after the hunting party had crashed through the underbrush.
The Druid girl looked back at the horse.
It was a war destrier, no doubt—massive and powerfully built with a thick, arched neck.
Its shining midnight coat was so dark that it seemed to swallow the light.
The horse’s heavy, flowing mane had been plaited into a single braid that followed the line of its neck, accenting its musculature.
No shield hung from its saddle, though she had already thought it obvious such a creature could only belong to a knight-errant.
Dangerous men, knights-errant—bound to no lord, no code, and no consequences, wandering the lands in search of glory. And, often, victims.
The Druid girl knew the war-courser in the meadow was no mount for a fine lady.
She had little doubt the monstrous thing had seen warfare, torn flesh with its teeth and crushed skulls with those enormous hooves.
A well-bred woman with any sense wouldn’t even dare to approach such an animal, let alone try to climb astride it.
The Druid girl was technically noble by birth, but any of those finer instincts had been lost years ago when her own father cast her out of his home on account of the magic she couldn’t control—and, notably, the death of the mother who’d always defended her.
So, the girl had tumbled from the soft bed and thatched roof of her childhood and into the arms of the Druids, where she’d known little since but strange magics and star-studded skies and woodsmoke braided into her hair like ribbons.
Lucky, some might say—for her father had died when the Anglo-Saxons raided his lands only a few months later.
Her childhood home was little more than rubble now, her father’s bones lodged somewhere beneath the blackened rock.
She banished thoughts of the past and took a deep breath, glancing around the meadow again, eyes keen for any glint of armor in the dark cover of the woods.
But she still found nothing. So, the Druid girl braced herself for the pain and then walked out into the open, trying her best not to look injured.
It was no surprise when the horse’s head snapped up, the lush grass forgotten, dark eyes meeting hers in an instant. It seemed to appraise her, watching carefully, but it was not afraid.
“Greetings,” she murmured, studying the horse’s body language for any sign in the ears or eyes that it might lash out at her. “I am terribly sorry to bother you, but my ankle hurts quite badly, and I would love your assistance to reach Camelot’s gates.”
Moving slowly, the Druid girl reached into her knapsack for the apple she’d taken from an orchard just the day before. Strange that she hadn’t eaten it already, but some instinct had pressed cold, knowing hands onto her skin and bidden her to wait.
She held the apple out. The horse blew from its nostrils and took one step closer.
“An offering,” the Druid girl whispered, stopping just beyond the destrier’s reach.
She noticed that despite the animal’s impressive size, its bridle was simple, unrestrictive, lacking the typical metal bar between the teeth.
For a moment, she wondered what absolute madman would ride a creature this powerful with just a few straps of leather.
But the moment the Druid girl’s mind wandered, the destrier grew unsure, its ears flicking back flat against its skull.
“My apologies,” she murmured, extending the apple again.
Of course there couldn’t be some lady’s palfrey grazing in a meadow, or even a simple mule.
No—the gods might intervene on her behalf, but always precisely like this.
A twisted ankle? Worry not, here’s the most terrifying destrier in these lands.
A loveless father? What a shame, but the Druids will surely feed and clothe you—if you display talent with magic and perform every single task they set you to.
Like using her noble birth to infiltrate Camelot’s court, for one.
The not-quite-Druid girl swallowed hard, reminding herself to take things one step at a time. The destrier, doubt still shimmering in its eyes, stretched its neck forward and took the apple from her.
“Good,” she murmured, patting the horse’s neck gently. It allowed the touch, the tension in its face relaxing.
She looked around the clearing and found a large rock at one end—possibly tall enough for her to scramble onto the courser’s back.
With a deep breath, the girl reached forward and took the horse’s reins, which were draped over its neck and tied off to ensure the animal wouldn’t entangle itself.
It chewed contentedly, raising its massive head to look her in the eye.
“Please?” she asked, her ankle throbbing as she took a step toward the rock.
The destrier considered and then acquiesced, turning on its haunches, impressively nimble considering its size.
Well-trained, she noted, hoping she’d even be able to get the creature to do as she wished.
But the war horse seemed to understand her desires, lining itself up with the rock.
The Druid girl took a deep breath, preparing to scramble to the top.
At that precise movement, something in the air behind her changed—the slightest of disturbances, like an exhale in a quiet chamber. Her hand went to her knife, and despite the pain burning in her ankle, she whirled around in half a heartbeat.
Unerringly, her blade found flesh—a neck, it seemed—her arm braced against a broad, armored chest. She blinked, pulling in a deep breath. Where there had only been empty air, a knight now stood: tall, broad-shouldered, his helm removed to reveal wavy dark hair.
Everything held still for a long moment, stretched taut as a drum. She wasn’t breathing. The knight didn’t seem to be, either.
Then the baying of hunting dogs shattered the hush of the clearing. The knight lunged toward her, testing her resolve, but the Druid girl held firm, thankful for the rock at her back that helped her stay upright.
A large, gloved hand slid around her forearm as she looked up into the knight’s face, a snarl creeping onto her own expression. She didn’t know what she was expecting, or perhaps she hadn’t been expecting anything at all. But somehow, what she found still managed to surprise her.
Sunlight dappled his ivory skin, deep-set eyes, slightly aquiline nose, sharp jaw, and long neck.
Their gazes met, and again, the world slowed to half-pace.
Every instinct in the girl’s body told her to press the advantage, to draw blood from that lovely skin, to bring her knee to his groin, to slip out of his grasp—to do anything at all but freeze like an inexperienced whelp.
“At long last,” the knight breathed, his voice low and dark, like heather on the hills or dusk over the lake. “I have been waiting for you.”
His words carried no sense, none at all—and yet the Druid girl’s throat crumpled beneath the sudden weight of her loneliness.
Her mind spun as the ancient, nameless ache she’d known all her life pulsed wildly in her marrow.
Before she could even begin gathering her wits, something peculiar happened.
A distant lute’s low, mournful notes slunk into the clearing.
The girl barely reacted, but the hunting party’s music stole the attention of the knight-errant, who tipped his head back like a bloodhound.
She couldn’t fathom why the long, looping notes would halt a man who cared for only blood and glory.
It didn’t matter, the Druid girl reminded herself.
She took advantage of his distraction, shoving him back with all her might, using the momentum to break his hold and scramble up the rock.
Later, the girl wouldn’t be able to explain precisely how she did it, exhausted and in pain, but she flung herself into the saddle and gathered up the destrier’s reins before the knight could reach for her again.
Relief and victory flooded every inch of her body as the horse responded to her request to leap into a powerful, ground-devouring gallop. She pressed herself low to its neck, only turning for the briefest of moments to glance back into the clearing.
The knight watched her go, not attempting to run after the strange girl who had stolen his horse.
Instead, he just gazed at her, one ink-dark eyebrow raised, an odd quirk to his sculpted mouth, as if he were more amused than anything else that she had held a knife to his throat and absconded with his destrier.
The Druid girl let a wild, hoarse laugh tear from her throat. But the sound cut short as the sun caught the shimmering surface of an object resting on the far side of the rock, gone unseen in her desperate scramble.
A shield, after all—so the man in the meadow was no knight-errant. She had only had a split second to look before the terrain demanded her attention, growing rougher with trees and ditches and brush to navigate.
But there was little mistaking the crest on his shield: a blood-red dragon rampant, proud and vicious across a white background.
“Fuck,” the Druid girl muttered into the destrier’s mane.
All the ways her Fate branched out like the limbs of a wide and mighty oak, with possibilities as endless as the acorns that covered the ground, and yet she had stolen a horse not from some unknown knight-errant but from a powerful, dangerous man.
A godsdamned knight of King Arthur’s bloody Round Table.