Chapter 13 #2
“You killed my messenger,” she said in a low voice, digging her fingers deeper into his wound than necessary. She felt his muscles tighten, but no pained sound left his full, sculpted lips.
“You wanted to expose me,” he replied, leaning into the pressure like a madman. “Do recall that I permitted your messenger to fly those little messages home for weeks.”
“Our deal,” Nyneve spat, setting aside the bloodied cloth and reaching for a tincture that she knew would sting badly, “forbade me from speaking of your truth with tongue or ink, in song or speech. I am bound against doing precisely what you’re accusing me of.”
She made the mistake of looking up at him. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, and she hated the way it made her pulse throb, some kind of call and response she had no time to understand and even less interest in exploring.
“Yes,” Mordred replied, holding her gaze. “And so you thought you might try to write instead with your own blood.”
Nyneve resisted the urge to sink her fingers into his wound. “I did not break our bargain. You only specified ink. Your failings are not my concern.” She held her ground, so close she could feel the heat of him rolling off the knight’s skin, their gazes locked.
His expression darkened, something ravenous swimming in the depths of his eyes. “I only specified ink, yes,” he echoed in a low tone that rumbled like thunder on the horizon. “You clever thing, finding your little loophole. But now, Lady Nyneve, I have known your blood upon my tongue.”
Fear should have coursed through Nyneve’s body, she understood.
She should have stumbled back. She should have told anyone who would listen that Sir Mordred Pendragon was an absolute madman, a danger to Camelot, a terrible influence on Arthur.
And yet she stayed exactly where she was—so close that a deep breath would make her skirts brush against his legs.
Senseless, errant desire bloomed between her thighs, damp as dew, warm as the spring sun.
“I daresay I will never forget your taste, Lady Nyneve,” Mordred murmured, voice pitch-dark and silken. His words buzzed in her skull like bees in a hive. By the time she managed to capture them between her hands, Mordred had straightened.
“Do not,” he warned, cold as the first frost now, though that didn’t stop the unwanted heat in her belly, “try to send a message like that one again.”
Anger sent her magic thrashing against the binding, bringing Nyneve back to herself. “Do not,” she replied, dousing his wound in too much tincture with a sneer, “tell me what I can and cannot do.”
The harsh smell of distilled rosemary pierced her nose.
Nyneve knew it hurt. She’d used this same tincture on her own open wounds before, and as helpful as it was, the stinging was monstrous.
But Mordred offered her no pained wince or startled gasp.
Instead, he captured her gaze again, his mouth parting to release a low, hoarse groan that sounded much more like pleasure than pain.
She fucking hated him.
“Oh, Lady Nyneve,” he whispered in a tone better suited to secret lovers than clandestine threats, “I would never dare such a thing.” He pulled away from her, sitting up straight, taller than her even when seated.
She lifted her chin to meet his gaze, her free hand clenching into a fist at her side.
“If you did precisely as I commanded, we would have no quarrel, would we?”
Confusion skittered down her spine. She leaned away from him, her brow furrowing, but his body followed hers, his torso tilting forward as though some invisible string tied them together.
“And I do,” Mordred said, those undeniably beautiful lips curling into something feral, “so enjoy when we quarrel. I fear I would start a war just for the sake of finding myself between your thighs again, your blade pressed to my neck.”
Nyneve stood there, her mouth half-open, her heart thundering against her ribs.
Fire flooded her belly, licking at her bones, threatening to consume her entirely.
In a different, madder world, she might have leaned forward and kissed him until the only godsdamned word he knew was her name, repeated over and over again like worship.
But that was not the world either of them occupied.
Instead, the world they belonged to broke the lingering, keening moment down the center with a sudden commotion in the main hallway of Camelot’s castle.
Mordred’s attention tore away from her, leaving her strangely cold in its absence, and she found her gaze following his.
She would have liked to stitch his wound closed, but Mordred was already moving, sliding down from the table with unearthly grace. Without thinking, Nyneve followed him, stalking his footsteps as the faerie-bound knight strode through the chamber and into the grand receiving hall.
Without a word or even an acknowledgment of the other, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the archway, watching some kind of procession move through the castle’s main gate.
The banners hanging from the cavernous ceiling fluttered in the spring breeze, like the pale dragons on their blood-red backgrounds were coming to life, ready to take flight and tear at throats until little remained but ribboning flesh.
Nyneve’s breath hitched at the same time Mordred’s did.
At the end of the procession of brown-cloaked men—monks, she realized, and from the cross symbol hanging from their necks, likely Christian, too—was a tall, slender, dark-haired man.
Wrinkles lined his face, but he had an air of vicious youth, an unnatural liveliness to him that made Nyneve’s skin crawl.
“It cannot be,” Mordred whispered hollowly at her side. The moment stretched long and unwieldy. She realized with a bolt of understanding that the terrifying, powerful knight was afraid. Her heart thudded against her ribs, palms gone damp with anticipation.
She watched wordlessly as King Arthur appeared from the far end of the hall, Guinevere at his side. Though the king was in his everyday regalia, a cloak on his shoulders and a crown atop his head, the queen was dressed much more simply in a plain riding habit, her boots still muddy.
“My king,” the tall, dark-haired man of an utterly indeterminable age exclaimed, his rich voice filling the hall. “I have returned to you bearing great news.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said, his tone vibrating with a fathomless kind of joy that Nyneve didn’t think she’d ever known. “Have you found the Cauldron?”
Merlin—the great, famed sorcerer who’d helped Arthur attain his throne, who’d built Camelot’s great walls, who’d laid the foundation of protective spellwork that Nyneve felt with every step she took in this place—knelt before the mortal king with a flourish.
“My lord,” he said, tilting his head back, a slant of sunlight crowning him in gold. “I do not have the Cauldron, but I bring you something far greater.”
The entire hall seemed to go still, Nyneve holding her breath alongside Mordred and Guinevere and the servants and the guardsmen ringing the cloaked monks.
For all the wardings her people had against the Greater Forces like Destiny and Death, thanks to their distaste for anything that could not be reasoned or bargained with, the Druid girl still felt Fate’s fingers strumming her Threads, each note vibrating in her bones.
“I do not understand,” Arthur said softly, the proud line of his shoulders drooping. Nyneve had the strangest feeling that the mighty king might weep right there in the middle of the entry hall, in front of all these people.
Alarm pricked her insides with white-hot needles. So Merlin had been seeking Cerridwen’s famed Cauldron, capable of resurrection and all kinds of healing? She swallowed hard. Objects of such power were not meant to be possessed by mortal men.
“No, my king,” Merlin said, rising to his feet. He gripped Arthur’s hands feverishly. Nyneve watched as Guinevere’s brow tightened, the queen’s mouth gone hard. “You do not understand yet. But you will.”
With a grand flourish, the sorcerer Nyneve had heard spoken of in whispers her whole life gestured to the monks.
One of them stepped forward, revealing a book that appeared to be plated in gold, its cover inset with rare and impossible gems. Nyneve had never seen anything like it, even surrounded by all the Druids’ wonders.