Chapter 3 #2
“Do you have any proof?” Queen Guinevere asked. Her words drew Nyneve back to the cavernous room and its harsh light.
For a long moment, Nyneve’s mind swam with a thousand tumbling thoughts, swift as river currents, before she managed to nod.
Then she grappled for the chain around her neck and pulled it free, holding the seal in the palm of her shaking hand.
The queen said nothing, leaning closer, peering into Nyneve’s eyes.
All the Druid girl could do was hold steady and beseech her goddesses that Guinevere accept her words.
Silence strung tight as a bowstring, motes of dust dancing in the sunlight.
“Geraint was a treasured member of this court,” Guinevere finally said, drawing back.
She spoke the words so calmly, as though they were little more than an open-ended observation, which neither confirmed nor denied Nyneve’s claim to the Or’Afon line.
The queen watched Nyneve closely, her face an emotionless mask without a shred of anything the Druid girl could act upon.
Her lungs felt sticky against her ribs, unable to draw air. Heat rose to her face in a sudden rush.
“You know of my father?” Nyneve asked, purposefully vague, trying to cling tight to all her cunning. She had never expected the Cymraes-Moorish queen to be familiar with such old Pendragon history, and was apparently an utter fool for it.
“Yes,” Guinevere confirmed with a prim nod. “May I see the seal?”
Biting down on her tongue, Nyneve offered it to the queen, hoping Guinevere would not notice the clamminess of her palms or the tremble of her fingers.
Slowly, the queen reached for the seal and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that.
Nyneve used every shred of her willpower to resist the urge to run.
When Guinevere’s sly eyes slid back to meet her gaze, nausea curled in the pit of Nyneve’s stomach. “A nunnery?” the queen asked, making no attempt to hide the open way she examined Nyneve’s clothing and wild hair.
“I had a bad fall in the woods,” she said, furious at herself that she’d created this situation, now forced to spin not one story, but two. “That’s how my ankle came to injury. One of your knights kindly lent me his horse.”
At that, Guinevere startled, something almost like panic coming across her features.
Her attention intensified—which Nyneve wouldn’t have thought possible—as she stepped closer.
She watched Guinevere with confusion and no small measure of fear, not comprehending until the queen’s gaze brushed her throat, her wrists, her skirts.
Understanding landed on her chest like a heavy, cursed stone.
“No, Your Highness,” Nyneve murmured, shaking her head. “Truly, only a fall. I should’ve taken more care on a slippery riverbank. That is all.”
“Do you know the name of the knight?” the queen asked, her chin tilted up, not satisfied with Nyneve’s response. Concern softened her rich voice, throwing Nyneve entirely off balance.
“I believe it was Sir Mordred, Your Highness,” the guard cut in. “She came to the gates on his destrier.”
Two fascinating things happened in quick succession.
Nyneve watched Guinevere begin to react to Mordred Pendragon’s name—widened eyes, breath hitching—but the queen caught herself before offering up anything of use.
Instead, she responded to the guard’s second sentence, looking back at Nyneve with renewed interest.
“Rook?” she asked, amusement flooding her features, though her eyes were keen and searching. “A girl raised in a nunnery rode Rook from the King’s Wood to the city gates?”
Nyneve gritted her teeth before smoothing her skirts with her free hand.
“We had horses, Your Highness,” she demurred, her heart quickening its pace again, the steady ground she thought she’d found falling away from her.
Once more, her impulsivity had risen from the past to haunt her present—and also her future, she realized, if the queen found this truth too suspicious.
Then any chance she had at redemption and the life she yearned for so desperately would be gone.
“There are horses,” Guinevere said slowly, arching a brow, “and then there are the beasts Sir Mordred favors. I doubt a nunnery’s stable held such creatures.”
Nyneve’s stomach somersaulted and her throat felt as though it might be closing off, but she shoved it all to the side and shrugged.
All she could do now was play the young, na?ve girl.
“I’m rather good with animals, Your Highness,” she said simply.
Then she grimaced, letting the pain take root in her mind.
As she suspected, Guinevere noticed her discomfort immediately.
“Our lord king will need to verify your claim,” the queen said.
“Though I know of Geraint Or’Afon, it is my husband who is familiar with the coloring and features of his bloodline.
But pray tell, Nyneve Or’Afon: you seek wardship within the citadel’s walls.
What might you be able to offer Camelot in return? ”
Nyneve held the sweep of relief at arm’s length; this was not over yet.
Pausing, she considered her words. “I am proficient in both basic and more advanced forms of healing, which I invite your court physician to test,” she said, keeping her voice level.
“Thanks to the nunnery, I read and write and have been useful in record-keeping and transcription. I also enjoy growing medicinal herbs for use in my healing.”
“And your faith?” Guinevere asked. “Camelot professes no formal belief system. Do you seek to proselytize? Has your nunnery sent you for such reasons?”
“No, Your Highness,” Nyneve said, perhaps too quickly. “I find faith to be a personal endeavor. I seek to follow the teachings of Camelot, particularly the ideal of the common good that this citadel was founded on.”
That seemed to please the queen. “Then I am comfortable having you escorted to our court physician’s cottage,” Guinevere said, crossing her arms. “He may attend to you and test your knowledge. I will seek to verify your claim to the House Or’Afon with King Arthur within the next few days.”
Panic crowded Nyneve’s throat. When she first set out for Camelot, she had everything planned. She would show her seal. She would see King Arthur. He would confirm her claim. But this—days of waiting, spent in the agony of not knowing? She might tear off her own skin.
Nyneve glanced up at the queen, terror slipping into her blood.
Those clever umber eyes saw far too much.
What if Guinevere knew? What if Nyneve’s discomfort was her very intention?
What if she had misspoken, or let something slip out unintended, and now the queen was going to carry it all back to Arthur like a cat with a mouse between its teeth?
“Thank you for your kindness and generosity, Your Highness,” Nyneve managed, because there was nothing else to say, nothing else to do. She moved into as much of a bow as she could manage.
“Welcome to Camelot, Nyneve Or’Afon,” Guinevere replied, her head canted to one side, something like amusement moving across her expression. Her large, dark eyes shimmered as she watched Nyneve turn and limp away.
Rumors of Camelot’s queen were common across these lands, brought to the Druids by roaming tradespeople and Moorish travelers and cunning Cymry folk and even the Fey Themselves—when the Fair Ones could be bothered to pay attention to the workings of mankind, of course.
But no one, Nyneve was sure, had ever mentioned Guinevere’s thorny intelligence, the way she read a thousand meanings from a single exhale or pause. Nyneve had come here thinking Arthur Pendragon was the most dangerous thing roaming these halls.
But as the guard led her from the throne room, Nyneve understood that Queen Guinevere, daughter of Cymru and Al-Andalus, was undoubtedly more powerful than anyone had bothered to understand.
And she might just single-handedly ruin all of Nyneve’s plans before they even began.