Chapter 10 #3
With a deep surge of regret, Mordred untangled himself from Nyneve.
The heat of her vanished from his skin far too quickly.
He reached down, offering her a hand, but she ignored him and stood up on her own with a huff.
Leaves clung to the back of her gown and hair in a way that should have looked disheveled and unsightly.
Instead, the debris of the forest seemed more like fine and costly decoration, far more beautiful than any pearl pins or sparkling adornments.
With an impossibly intact air of dignity, she brushed away the crushed leaves and broken twigs before meeting his gaze.
His breath hitched and he could not stop himself from wondering whether she, too, was still half-caught in the spell of what their bodies had felt like pressed together.
But the next moment, Nyneve refuted any such notions as she began to ferociously debate the exact language of their bargain.
He might have been impressed if not for the sting of disappointment.
“No,” she snapped some time later, her hand clearly going to the place on her belt where her dagger would normally be.
“Do you take me for some blushing maiden who has never had a man between her thighs before? Please, Sir Mordred. If you are going to attempt to seduce me into accepting an uneven bargain, you’ll have to do much better than that. ”
And in any other situation, lounging against the same wide, towering oak that Nyneve was leaning her shoulder into, he would.
Mordred would have used all his honeyed words, leveraged the power of his dark lashes and oceanic eyes, trailed his fingers along her collarbones and beneath her skirts, intoxicating her with his touch.
A simple enough thing, well-practiced. Doing so would surely result in an uneven bargain, yes.
But not for Lady Nyneve Or’Afon, he feared.
So, instead, Mordred accepted her admittedly fair alterations to the language. Then they faced each other, both making their promises to the powers of the forest, to the old things sleeping beneath their feet.
“To fulfill my debt with the man known as Sir Mordred Pendragon,” Nyneve said, her nose wrinkled as if the words were sour in her mouth, “I shall not speak of his Fey bargain, nor the magic he has gained from it. I shall not inscribe the truth of him in ink. I shall not sing of his dealmaking in song nor hymn. I shall not seek to tell anyone that a Fey-bound man has taken residence at the heart of Camelot’s court. ”
“And so your debt is cleared,” he murmured in response.
Then, following the ancient way of things, the knight and the maiden stepped close. With a trembling thrill, Mordred saw that her breath was quick, fast, pupils blown wide as she tilted her chin up, gaze meeting and capturing his eyes with all the ferocity of a wild summer storm.
There was no need, he knew, but his hands went to the curve of her waist before he could stop himself. Nyneve did not protest. In fact, her palms found their way to his chest, fingers curling into his tunic.
And then he bent low and kissed her, the bargain humming on his tongue as her mouth met his.
Beneath the metallic, sour tang of a faerie deal, Mordred found Nyneve tasted of river water, wildflowers, and white-hot rage.
Despite his better judgment, he tumbled into her, hands sliding up her back as she clutched at his tunic, pulling him closer.
Nyneve thrummed with a fierce kind of aliveness, with freedom taken instead of given, with all the potential of a just-born thunderstorm to ravage even the oldest of forests.
He broke the kiss first, or perhaps she did, but neither released the other, her soft curves still pressed against all his hard angles. She drew a shivering breath against his lips, and then, together, they whispered the bargain’s close: “A jewel for a jewel.”
The spell broke, and Nyneve violently shoved him away, taking several steps back.
A cloud passed over the moon above them, blanketing them in darkness.
All Mordred saw for a moment was the gleam of her eyes, alight with an endless fury he could only admire.
He might have gazed at her more, drank her in, had the solid soil beneath his feet not suddenly given way.
His mind twisted as the forest floor rippled; the rich loam suddenly turned into black mud that sucked at his boots. Before Mordred understood what was happening, he was treading water in a place where there had been nothing but tree roots and glovewort.
“You should know something, faerie-bound knight,” Nyneve said from the edge of the sudden and seemingly bottomless pool of water.
He reached for the shore, which should have been just past his fingertips, but the forest seemed to lurch away from him, a tiny pond turned to a vast lake all at once. And still, Nyneve was somehow so close, her face a mask of dark and deadly amusement.
“You did not, as you thought, make a deal with a Druid’s apprentice,” she murmured, reaching across the watery expanse and capturing his jaw in her warm hand, such a contrast to the ice-cold waters closing in around him.
Mordred tried to calm his racing heart, tried to think, but all he could do was stare into her wide green eyes, alight with power.
“I am a godsdamned Druid sorceress, you fool,” she snarled with half-mad glee. Nyneve released his jaw, and he struggled for the shore, but again, it was impossibly far away. “Enjoy your swim, Sir Mordred.”
And then she was gone.