Chapter 15 #2
A threat, a declaration: “If the realm’s best knight cannot kill me, what chance do you stand, little witch?
” And yet the people around her—even a man who appeared to be a wealthy merchant and a highborn woman—all looked at her with what she supposed was jealousy.
To avoid further attention, Nyneve ducked her chin to her chest and closed her hand around the knife.
“Mordred’s always interested in the freshest flesh,” a man laughed from farther up in the stands. “She’s just arrived at court, I hear.”
Nyneve bit down on her tongue and reminded herself she couldn’t pivot on her heel and throw the knife at him. Undoubtedly, with her skill, it would lodge itself in his throat, and then her chance to prove she deserved to have her magic unbound and her future restored would evaporate.
Instead, she clenched her jaw and did her best to slip through the crowd and disappear.
The rains returned just after Mordred and Lancelot’s match, forcing another early end to the day’s tourney.
Nyneve worked beside Galen and Elaine to attend to pressing injuries and then check in on a few patients with ongoing issues.
All of Camelot was buzzing with Merlin’s return and the exciting duel.
By the time she dropped into a worn chair in their cottage, she was utterly spent.
She didn’t want to hear anything about the famed sorcerer or godsdamned Mordred ever again.
“Nyneve,” Galen called as he came through the door, having stayed behind to speak with a herald he appeared to be friendly with, “the day’s not over yet, I fear.”
She answered with a wordless groan, burying her face in her hands, elbows propped up on the wide worktable.
“There’s a banquet tonight,” the physician continued, sounding equally overjoyed about such a prospect.
She peeked at him between splayed fingers as he unpacked his linen bundle of herbs. “There is always a fucking banquet, Galen,” she moaned. The desolation in her voice made the physician burst into laughter.
“You agreed to court life, Lady Nyneve,” he told her, glancing over his shoulder with one bushy brow raised high. “In fact, you sought it out.”
She sat back with a sigh, her feet aching.
For a moment, she almost told Galen everything: the Druids and the binding, the Elders and Uccu’s son.
How easy it would be to unburden herself to the man who was so prickly on the outside, unveiling his feather-soft interior only to his chosen few.
No one had admired and nurtured her gifts like Galen did—not since Priestess Eirys. Something in her chest ached.
But then Elaine came through the door, a basket of Galen’s tools tucked under her arm, and Nyneve swallowed back the words. When Elaine and Galen looked at her, they did not see a monster. A murderer. A half-bound creature that was a danger to everyone around her.
And Nyneve desperately wanted to keep it that way. “I suppose I did,” she replied unconvincingly. She sighed as Elaine, looking similarly tired, collapsed into a chair at the other end of the table. “When does this banquet begin?”
“Do not become overly excited,” Galen replied dryly, leaning back against the hulking herb cabinet, “but we are to make our way to the queen’s courtyard at twilight.”
Nyneve glanced outside to find dusk was rapidly approaching. She didn’t bother holding back another dramatic groan.
Elaine laughed in commiseration. “What if I stayed and helped you with your hair?” the healer offered, absent-mindedly fiddling with the small wooden cross of the Resurrected God she always wore around her neck.
“Gods, do you really want to take up that mantle?” Nyneve replied, examining the length of her messy, tangled braid. Then she peered at Elaine, letting out a sigh. “You’ve been with us nearly the entire day, and just look at you. Fresh as a daisy.”
It was true. Elaine looked tired, surely, but her pale lilac kirtle was free of mud, her hair hanging in neat, shimmering lengths despite the mist.
“All the more reason to let me help,” the healer said brightly, leaning both elbows onto the table. “Might you show me how to do that one style you often wear, with your hair braided around your crown?”
Nyneve hesitated. She was immensely fond of the calm, competent healer, particularly when Elaine had a little too much ale at the end of the day and spoke more freely. They’d already grown close. Too close—because Elaine wasn’t safe around Nyneve.
No one was.
She closed her eyes, a sea of emotions battering her ribs.
Nyneve’s least favorite memory rose from the place where she had carefully locked it away: her hands wrapped around Eirys’s throat.
The priestess had done her best to drag Nyneve away from Uccu’s son.
And she might’ve killed Eirys for it, too, had her priestess not been particularly clever with Druidic charms.
Nyneve opened her eyes. “Elaine,” she began, taking a deep breath and bracing herself to drive the healer away.
But then that tender, bottomless ache sang out from her marrow, threatening to pull her down into the dark.
“That sounds lovely,” Nyneve breathed, because she was selfish and lonely and tired.
“I’ll make myself scarce,” grumbled Galen, but he winked at Nyneve as he made for the living quarters in the back of the cottage.
A little while later, Nyneve was freshly bathed and dressed in the second, more formal gown the queen had gifted her: a rich sapphire cloth that clung to her curves.
“It’s much easier than I thought it would be,” Elaine exclaimed as Nyneve finished showing her how to braid her hair into a crown. When the healer smiled up at her, Nyneve understood why Elaine often had a kind but stern expression on her face.
Elaine of Astolat was quite striking when she smiled, and Nyneve knew very well how dangerous a young woman’s beauty could be.
“Here, sit,” the healer said excitedly, interrupting the Druid girl’s thoughts as she gestured for Nyneve to trade places with her. “Your turn.”
Nyneve stood little chance against the coziness of it all: a fire crackling in the hearth, rain beating down on the cottage’s roof, Elaine finger-combing her hair.
She had missed this kind of intimacy with other women, the simple act of sitting together and gossiping.
After the accident, no one, save for Priestess Eirys, would even speak to her.
But now here was Elaine, who had little idea what Nyneve truly was, smoothing oil over her hair and giggling as she told a story about Galen.
“So you grew up here—at court—then?” Nyneve asked, glancing over her shoulder.
“I did,” the healer replied, gathering up a new section of Nyneve’s heavy curls.
“It was hard as a child, being the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman. But when Mordred came to train as a page, he . . . oh, I don’t know.
I feel terrible about it, but he took the brunt of that stigma, I suppose.
” An odd flutter beat gossamer wings in the depths of Nyneve’s stomach when she heard the knight’s name, but then Elaine let out a snort of laughter.
“All the other little bastard children in Camelot got some reprieve,” she continued.
“Then the queen arrived. Even though she was barely more than a girl herself, she demanded better of this place.”
Nyneve was unsurprised that Guinevere had possessed the same iron-clad will as a child. “What was Camelot like then?” she asked, passing Elaine the jar of hair oil.
The healer hummed in thought. “Frightening,” she admitted, looking up as Galen trudged out of the living quarters to throw another log on the fire before disappearing again.
It both amused and worried Nyneve how much he clearly wanted her and Elaine to grow closer.
“Constant war. Endless raids. It felt like everyone was always holding their breath. People were there one day and gone the next.”
Nyneve’s childhood was much the same, even on her father’s lands. She opened her mouth to say so, but then the memories suddenly pressed heavy, smoky hands against her face, shrill cries resounding in her ears. She swallowed hard, pushing it away. “And what about Merlin?” she asked instead.
Elaine’s hands went still on Nyneve’s hair. “Merlin is no friend of ours,” the healer said, her tone cool. “Be careful around him.”
“Oh, I am quite disinclined toward men of his nature,” Nyneve replied archly. She tried to organize everything the Deceangli Druids had said about the ancient sorcerer in her mind, hoping to glean something useful from Elaine.
The healer let out a breath. “I am glad to hear it,” she said, beginning to work through a different section of Nyneve’s hair. “Though I should hardly think Merlin, nor anyone else, would have much interest in going up against Mordred to claim your affections.”
Nyneve’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” she asked blankly, twisting in her chair to meet Elaine’s gaze.
The healer raised one thin, golden brow. “Surely you jest,” Elaine laughed. “Come now, Nyneve. Sir Mordred is obviously infatuated with you.”
Nyneve’s mouth hung open as heat crept along her cheekbones, her stomach somersaulting at Elaine’s preposterous idea. She certainly couldn’t explain to her friend that just the other evening, she’d looked right into Mordred’s eyes and seen his naked intent to drive his sword into her chest.
“We’ve known each other since we were children,” Elaine said meaningfully, mistaking Nyneve’s silence for disbelief. “And I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I’ve never seen him look at anyone like that before.”
Nyneve imagined Mordred had never so blatantly planned to kill anyone at court before. Perhaps Elaine could not tell the difference between bloodlust and the more carnal kind.
“You’re lucky,” Elaine said with a sigh when Nyneve still could not manage to find the right words, parting another section of her hair. “The man I care for will never return my feelings.”