Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Mordred
In the sunlight-flooded atrium, soft lute notes underscored the gentle melody of murmured conversations.
Burgeoning spring warmed the air in sharp contrast to the castle’s interior passageways, which still held on to winter’s chill.
But a different kind of chill was abundant in the atrium, the knight knew.
So many men lowered their guard in places like this one, thinking that because there were no brandished swords or open declarations of war, they were safe.
They were wrong.
Reputations were made and destroyed in the Queen’s Atrium, promises kept and broken, secrets harvested and sold. There were so many kinds of weapons in this world, the knight had learned, and the high-ranking noblewomen lounging in the atrium knew how to wield most of them.
And so he moved silently across the Roman-style tiled floors, foolishly hoping to remain unseen by the atrium’s many eyes, but every head turned his way nonetheless.
The knight pushed an errant wave of dark hair from his face, wishing he had stopped in his chambers to remove his leather breastplate and bracers.
Anything to look less beastly in this place of feigned gentleness, where battles were won without spilling a single drop of blood.
Even the lutist faltered as he walked by. The older ladies-in-waiting glanced up from their mending and poetry, gazes lingering, faces gone white. But he kept his own eyes on the sole reason he had not yet torn this place apart: Queen Guinevere ferch Gruffydd of Camelot.
“Sir Mordred,” she greeted from her usual chair tucked into a corner, just out of the sun’s reach.
A stack of letters sat in her lap, one opened in her hands, the pale green brocade of her surcoat shimmering in the spring light.
The lady-in-waiting beside the queen’s took one look at Mordred, offered a terse nod, and then strode away.
“Your Highness,” the knight said, sweeping into a low, courtly bow. Without looking at him, Guinevere gestured to the seat at her side. He obediently sank into the plush velvet. For a long moment, the queen said nothing, still engrossed in the letter.
Mordred fought to keep his body still, arms on either side of the chair, feet planted on the ground, head bowed: the very picture of courtly knighthood. But beneath the tunic and chainmail, violence coursed through his blood. His teeth ached with the effort to cling to his mask of humanity.
All because of a girl. He dug his fingers into the chair.
A single wild-eyed maiden with dirt under her nails and twigs caught in her messy auburn braid.
Mordred drew in a long breath and then released it, forcing himself to watch the queen’s free hand as it roamed the tapestry pattern of her chair.
Her fingers hovered over the basilisk embroidered into the fabric.
Frustration flared in him like a wildfire at the signal that it was not safe to speak plainly.
But then the queen’s hand slid down the side of the chair to the silver-threaded unicorn.
When her fingertips stayed there, Mordred sighed in relief. There was much to be discussed.
“A maiden of barely twenty summers,” the queen began, tucking away her letter and meeting his gaze, “rode Rook to the city gates this morning.”
The beast coiled beneath his sternum thrashed against its bindings. He clenched his teeth and said nothing, wrestling for control. Guinevere leaned one elbow onto the arm of her chair and shot him a look that would have been at home on the face of a governess dealing with a misbehaving child.
“She claimed,” Guinevere continued, leaning closer, her eyes darting about the atrium for a moment, “that you permitted her to borrow your steed. Due to her injury. How chivalrous, Mordred.”
He paused. Across the atrium, the lutist finished one ballad of courtly love and moved into another near-identical one.
An older lady-in-waiting was doing a poor job of pretending her attention was solely on her embroidery and not their conversation.
Mordred cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight.
“She stole Rook from right beneath my nose,” he admitted in a low voice, an unwelcome heat flooding his veins at the thought of the wild maiden with hair like flame.
“I must commend her for that, and for knowing no knight of Camelot would publicly contest her tale of chivalry.”
“She wants wardship. I granted it to her, pending Arthur’s approval, of course.
She claims to be of the House Or’Afon,” Guinevere said, reaching for the small table beside her chair and retrieving her goblet.
She took a long sip, and Mordred held his breath, hoping the tap of her fingers against the goblet’s stem would not tell him it was no longer safe to speak.
The atrium, in full view of her ladies-in-waiting, was one of the few places a queen and her knight might speak without rousing more of the suspicions that already clung to the two of them.
But it also meant evading the keen ears of Camelot’s noblewomen and all their political conniving, which Mordred maintained might actually be more dangerous than accusations of an affair.
“More importantly,” Guinevere said, setting her goblet back down, her fingers clear of its stem, “she interests me.”
“She is likely a Druid’s apprentice,” Mordred replied in warning.
He tried not to think about the Fatesong in the clearing, but it was impossible.
He needed no more of Fate’s heavy attention resting on his shoulders, particularly not if it had anything to do with the girl in the meadow. He already carried enough weight.
Guinevere considered his response, scrunching her features in concentration.
“I cannot say I’m surprised,” the queen said, looking over to meet his gaze.
She closed her mouth, dark eyes sweeping across the atrium before she spoke again, her voice lowered.
“Perhaps I should have had more caution. Have I erred? Should we find a way to . . .”
Mordred arched a brow, a smile moving across his full mouth as that barely contained nexus of power deep inside him thrummed with pleasure at the promise of blood. “Dispose of her? I would recommend it.” He paused, canting his head to one side. “Is that a command, my queen?”
“Gods, no, no. At least, not yet,” Guinevere replied hurriedly with a wave of her hand. She paused as a noble lady rose to her feet from a chaise, wandering closer, coming almost within earshot. “No, I don’t think they’ll want to see the stables after the hunt, Sir Mordred. Save that for tomorrow.”
He nodded sternly as if this were of grave import. “I will ensure our best destriers are in the front stalls, Your Highness.”
The lady—willowy, blonde, perhaps sixteen or seventeen summers—stepped closer, her cheeks flushed. Guinevere turned away from Mordred and looked at the maiden expectantly.
“Lady Massiele,” she greeted. “May I ask why you approach your queen so boldly, even as she is already engaged in conversation?” The question itself was stern, perhaps even harsh, but a genuine softness entered Guinevere’s voice.
Mordred knew that no one had taught Camelot’s queen how to behave around royalty, not as a fourth daughter. She often gave extra attention to girls she felt might be in a similar situation, sent into the mouth of the beast with little to no preparation.
“Oh, Your Highness, I apologize,” Lady Massiele replied, the blush on her cheeks deepening. “I—I only wanted to give Sir Mordred a token of luck for the tournament.”
Revulsion twisted in his stomach, and he did his best to conceal his sharp intake of breath. He reminded himself how young noble women were taught to behave, how this world shaped them into empty vessels that thought of nothing but how to serve and please. It was not Lady Massiele’s fault, he knew.
But Mordred still detested it all. When he had come to this court as a page more than a decade ago, his daily life consisted of being shoved down stairs, trampled into puddles, mocked by much older noblemen who should probably have taken up a hobby instead, and generally treated with endless disdain.
Rooms quieted when he walked in. Whispers followed him down every street like snarling dogs.
But then he had hit fifteen or sixteen summers, sprouted up to a towering height, and begun to handily defeat everyone at tourneys.
He had a mind for tactical strategy and knew all the right things to say, how to mollify, how to agitate, how to find the dark and seedy places where secrets were passed around like a jug of wine.
It also helped, Mordred knew, that he was beautiful and that mortals had an appallingly short memory. This youngest generation, new to court, seemed to have entirely forgotten Merlin’s prophecy.
“How kind of you, milady,” he said, feeling the heavy weight of Guinevere’s gaze. Her eyes on the ground, Massiele offered him a daintily embroidered handkerchief. Gently, Mordred took it and thanked her, breathing a sigh of relief as Lady Massiele turned and trotted away.
“Could you be less distracting?” Guinevere wanted to know the moment Massiele was out of earshot, narrowing her eyes at him. “Whatever you’re doing—could you do less?”
“I fear I am simply existing,” Mordred told her dryly. “I cannot be held responsible for my effect on young women.”
Guinevere sat back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. Then she studied him. “I suppose you are rather nice to look at. Your voice is pleasant enough. And you are not an utter brute despite your size. I can understand how these things might be appealing.”
“See?” he replied with a grin, crossing his arms. “Even you understand, and you do not enjoy men in that way.”
Her sly brown eyes slid this way and that about the atrium, and then she leaned closer, mischief tugging at her mouth. “But you are not a man at all, Mordred. Not truly.”