Chapter 9 #2
But then she felt something. The force of her strike had activated something in the wall, the Threads singing.
Nyneve turned back to face it, her eyes wide, and searched for magic this time—not a hidden lock or hinge.
When she found it, the Druid girl gasped.
Layered deep inside the stone was a positively ancient working, the oldest kind of ward, and undoubtedly of Fey origin.
She would have to close her eyes, let her magic loose, and walk through the solid stone wall as if it were an open door.
The ward would either let her through, or it would devour her.
There was a smaller chance she would simply glance off the stone wall, looking for all the world a fool, but Nyneve felt how hungry and old the magic was.
There were rumors Camelot had once been a faerie hill that Uther conquered—but now was not the time to let her mind ponder such things, she realized.
Instead, Nyneve took a deep breath, opened her Threads, and stepped into the stone.
For a long moment, there was nothing, and then she emerged on the other side of the ward, her heart racing.
A cool, damp breeze brushed her face. The sounds of the citadel—shouts breaking an eerie quiet underscored by the orchestra of insects—disappeared as though they’d never existed.
Instead, the melody of deep forest bloomed all around her: rustling trees and the calls of owls, the hair on the back of her neck rising with the intimate sense that other predators stalked these grounds.
Nyneve took a deep breath and crept into the woods. There was no path, so she moved slowly, alert for any change in the wind or unsettling sounds. She wasn’t surprised to discover Mordred had left nothing to track, moving through the underbrush like a godsdamned phantom.
“Handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, an excellent horseman, and impossible to track?” she spat, trying to keep her skirts gathered up by her thighs. She couldn’t even imagine attempting to explain to the queen why her generously gifted gown was shredded by branch and thorn.
Nyneve bit down on her tongue and kept going, uncoiling the scant Threads of her unbound magic. She might draw the attention of things that should stay sleeping, but there would be no point to all the risks she’d taken if she couldn’t find the suspicious knight.
Besides, if Nyneve was honest, Mordred pulled her in with the undeniability of duskfall, and no one could escape the descent of night.
Some kind of current ran between the two of them, and as deeply inconvenient as that was given his place at the king’s side and her debt to the Druids, in this particular moment, it was helpful.
She let her magic wind around the dark, slippery thing binding them together, and all at once, the wind changed, bringing her the scent of woodsmoke and rain-damp stone.
Her head snapped up like a hunting hound’s might.
She plunged westward, suddenly heedless of her gown, booted feet swift over the loamy ground.
Minutes or eons passed as she ran through the dark wood toward the dark knight.
Breathlessly, she surged forward, her body begging for her to give up this hunt.
Finally, Nyneve came to the edges of a clearing.
Thickets surrounded the far side, glowing in the meager moonlight, looking like a door to another world.
She hunched in the moonshadow of a tree, eyes sweeping the clearing.
And there, she saw, stood a few figures by the thicket.
She couldn’t see their faces, but they emanated power, the feeling of it thrumming through the ground like a drumbeat.
They were dressed in rich garments of jewel-toned hues and stood too tall to be men.
“Fey,” Nyneve whispered. She reached for her belt to grab her dagger, only to remember she’d left it back in the cottage, thinking there’d be little need for such things at a feast. She bit down on her lip with a grunt, furious with herself.
She edged closer, hoping to at least catch a scrap of conversation.
But she caught little more than murmurs.
Just as she worked up the courage to creep along the tree line and bring herself closer, magic surged through the clearing.
Only one figure remained, the others having blinked out of existence.
The thicket crowning the far side of the clearing suddenly just looked like a tangle of thorny branches, not an archway or a portal.
She settled back on her heels, watching the remaining figure as they turned and strode across the meadow.
When the stranger passed through a slant of moonlight, Nyneve barely stifled her gasp. It was Sir Mordred Pendragon. Seeing him didn’t surprise her; it would’ve been stranger to find someone else here in the clearing, an unexpected quarry at the end of a long hunt.
What surprised Nyneve was the realization that hit her all at once, and then the frustration of not having realized it sooner.
As Mordred stalked through the moonlight, his face a mask of fury, Nyneve understood the truth behind his beauty and his grace and that bizarre meeting in a meadow and that odd, sudden appearance of magic back in the great hall.
Sir Mordred Pendragon had Fey-granted magic. The bastard son of King Arthur, knight of the Round Table, had made a fucking faerie bargain.
Nyneve swallowed and sank deeper into the brush, waiting to hear his footfalls pass by farther down the tree line.
But the blood drummed so loud in her ears that she barely heard anything at all.
She froze, unfamiliar with the feeling of being prey, eyes roving through the forest’s blue-tinged dimness.
Her instincts sent her whirling, still in a crouch, and she found herself looking up at Mordred. His sword was drawn, and he looked down at her like one might look at an insect they planned to tread on.
Nyneve didn’t hesitate. She sprang at him from a crouch, wrapping her arms around his calves and toppling him to the ground. The rest was pure muscle memory—she elbowed him hard in the jaw, groped for his belt, and yanked a dagger free, bringing it to his throat.
He stilled, dropping his sword onto the leaf-strewn floor. “I yield,” he murmured, catching her gaze. She snarled wordlessly at him, pressing the dagger closer to the place where his neck and jaw met, where even his Fey-blessed skin would still give to the edge of a blade and bleed.
It was then that Nyneve realized she was straddling him, skirts bunched at the waist, muscular thighs wrapped around his hips.
Her mind raced at the same time an unwanted ache throbbed between her legs.
He could unseat her, she knew, grab her by the throat and shake her like a rabbit in a wolf’s mouth.
Instead, he just looked up at her, expressionless, his eyes a particularly beautiful shade of gray in the moonlight. Then his mouth curved into something dangerous as he slid one hand around the wrist she supported herself with, palm flat in the dirt.
“Lady Nyneve,” he murmured, her name dripping like honey from his mouth. “If you plan to kill me, I have but one request.”
She stared down at him, her thoughts reeling as wildly as gulls in the headwinds.
“Please,” Mordred continued, his breath ghosting her skin, “do it slowly.”