Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Nyneve
Her head snapped in the direction of Mordred’s attention, locking onto the arrow a beat or two after the knight had. Before she could react, Nyneve felt an undeniable surge of magic—palpable as a stormfront, dark as nightfall—and watched as the arrow’s trajectory shifted abruptly.
She turned back to Mordred with wide, suspicious eyes, only to find the barest outline of an aura had flared to life around him. It was the deep black of ancient nothingness, the darkness that had existed long before the light, with a thread of silver shimmering on the outer edges.
Sir Mordred Pendragon, mortal man and knight of the Round Table, effortlessly batting away an arrow with magic he should not under any circumstance possess.
Sir Mordred Pendragon, Queen’s Champion and confidant of King Arthur Pendragon, glimmering with the power of an aura that should have been any other shade but that deep, endless black.
Her heart still in her throat, Nyneve watched the arrow veer away from the king and burrow into the stone of the throne dais. Too late, the knights and guards around the dais reacted, covering Arthur and Guinevere with their armored bodies and shields.
And then Mordred stalked away, shouting commands and directing the feast-goers with an unflappable calmness.
Even Nyneve followed his instructions without thinking, gathering with the others at the far, windowless end of the hall.
Knights raced outside onto the stone pavilion, disappearing into the night.
Only once some sense of order was restored did the king emerge from the dome of shields, Guinevere at his side.
Under the utter hush of the hall that had been filled with music and laughter just a few moments ago, Arthur yanked the arrow out of the stone. She watched him examine it and saw his face fall when he realized it was Fey-made.
But Nyneve had known the very moment it pierced the stone.
No mortal arrow would be capable of biting into the dais’s hard granite.
She drew in a sharp, involuntary breath as the king unrolled a piece of parchment secured around the arrow’s shaft.
Her heart raced wildly in her chest as his eyes scanned whatever was written there, gaze growing darker and darker.
Through the guards penning the feast-goers in the far end of the hall, Nyneve watched the king look up from the parchment and search the room until he found Mordred, who was already walking toward the dais from the shattered window.
Without a word, Arthur handed the parchment to the knight, who read it quickly.
She watched, fascinated despite the still-present danger; she’d never have thought it would be his bastard son with an apocalyptic prophecy that the king would look for first. Mordred raised his eyes from the parchment to meet Arthur’s.
The pair seemed to communicate wordlessly, exchanging a long glance.
Then Arthur nodded and Mordred turned on his heel, hand sliding to the pommel of his sword before taking off at a run toward the doors to the pavilion.
Nyneve glanced around as nonchalantly as she could, well aware that the single door by the dais was the only way out of the great hall and onto the castle grounds.
The other archways only led into the bowels of the castle.
Her gaze darted about the hall, peering past the noble families and moneyed merchants, who were now dissolving into panic.
At the last moment, she spotted a small corridor—a servants’ passage, she wagered.
Gathering up her skirts, Nyneve began to slip through the crowd toward the passageway.
She drew just the smallest Thread of her magic around her, pushing attention away from her.
It was dangerous, she knew, to work magic around so many people, but she had little other choice.
She had to follow Sir Mordred. She knew it deep in her bones.
If she ever wanted the binding on her magic released so she could be restored to her full glory, Nyneve had little choice but to ascertain the inner workings of Camelot’s court, to learn to speak the same language as the king’s innermost thoughts.
Would there be war? What Druid-stewarded land would he lay claim to next?
What was the future of the Isles with the land caught like a desperate rabbit in one man’s fist?
And she’d have to do it all while holding back her apparent bloodthirst.
Nyneve pushed away thoughts of her power, centering instead on her growing belief that no matter the answers to the Elders’ questions, Sir Mordred Pendragon was a central piece of it all.
So, she stole past the guards, tripping a nobleman as a distraction.
Just as she’d hoped, one of the knights ringing the crowd of feast-goers turned away, focused on helping the nobleman back to his feet.
Nyneve took a deep breath and pulled one more Thread as she slipped to the servants’ passageway.
She let out a long exhale when she crossed into the darkness.
One torch was lit at the far end, but the hallway seemed empty.
If she remembered correctly, there was a door from the kitchens to the courtyard garden, and from there, a direct path to the side of the hill that Mordred had raced toward.
She gritted her teeth, breaking into a run.
He had a significant head start, in addition to not being slowed down by skirts and possessing legs that were probably twice as long as hers.
But Nyneve had never been swayed by terrible odds. She just kept going.
When she finally found the right door and broke out into the moonlight-soaked gardens, she worried there had been little point in it all—that she’d never be able to track Mordred from here, not amidst the swarms of guards.
She slipped around a stone wall festooned with garlands of apple blossoms, searching for any trace of Mordred while rehearsing a plausible excuse for why she’d left the hall.
As quietly as she could, Nyneve jogged down the winding dirt paths, letting a single Thread of her magic search for Mordred and pull her toward him.
Moments ticked by, the moon rising higher in the sky, the reasons for Nyneve to be so far from the great hall growing more and more unbelievable.
And then, finally, a stroke of luck: by an outer wall on Camelot’s northern side, she caught sight of Sir Mordred.
His eyes were bright and hungry in the moonlight as he talked hurriedly with a knight she hadn’t seen before—tall, dark-haired, lean but powerfully built, with a deep brown complexion. The knight she didn’t know nodded and then clapped Mordred on the shoulder before turning and running up the hill.
Straight toward Nyneve. She sucked in a breath and dove behind a crumbling section of the wall, tugging another Thread, pushing attention away from her.
Seconds stretched into eons as the knight came toward her, his pace slowing, eyes roving the area.
She drew even closer to the wall, the jagged stones biting into her back.
Her heartbeat thudded so loudly she feared it might give her away.
But then, finally, the knight turned away, continuing his journey up the hill.
After an exhale of relief, Nyneve rose from her crouch. She caught a glimpse of Mordred’s dark hair and picked up her pace, realizing as she drew closer that he still clutched the Fey arrow in his long-fingered hands, grip tight.
She followed him through Camelot’s spiral of stone walls, trying to keep track of her steps even as blood thundered in her ears.
She’d need to get back on her own, and the knight was traversing areas she wasn’t yet familiar with.
At the very least, the farther he led her away from the castle, the fewer guards there were—surely pulled back to Camelot’s center to protect the king and queen.
Nyneve suspected whoever had fired the arrow was long gone.
She sensed no Fey nearby, and generally, she had a good feel for Them when They prowled the woods around her clan’s settlement.
But, she thought as she nearly lost her balance on a patch of slippery grass, she supposed whoever had managed to infiltrate this far into the citadel might not be as easy to spot as Fair Folk deep in the forest who likely cared little whether They were noticed by a mortal girl.
Nyneve dodged out of a passing guard’s torchlight, keeping her gaze on Mordred’s back.
“Where are you going?” she murmured under her breath, confused by his confident strides that took them both farther and farther away from anything that made sense.
She thought perhaps he’d go to the gate guards or raise part of the army, or go to the stables for Rook.
No, she realized with what might have been a twinge of fear.
Mordred was going to the wild, untamed forest that ringed Camelot’s northwest side.
Perhaps someone had seen the archer flee or the parchment had demanded a meeting, she thought to herself, slinking along the dirt path.
But she didn’t even think there was a gate here—as far as she knew, the outer walls only broke at the main gate.
Nyneve narrowed her eyes, searching the gloom, watching as Mordred approached a seemingly random spot on the wall.
He paused for only a moment and then passed right through the stone, phantom-like.
Her heart in her throat, Nyneve stalked to the place where she’d seen Mordred disappear.
She ran her hands along the stone wall, looking for any hidden mechanism.
But her fingers found nothing. Furious with herself, Nyneve slammed her fist against the wall, turning back toward the citadel to find another way to trail the knight.