Chapter 21 #3
And yet, as Nyneve looked down at the graying limb and the fletching fluttering triumphantly in the night air, some of that damp, wet heat flooded her again like a storm surge.
All at once, she could feel every stitch of her clothing pressed against her skin.
That open chasm of want in her marrow widened, its jaws unhinging.
Shaking with fury, Nyneve turned her attention back to the witchlights, tracing his path with her gaze. “Of course you’re in the godsdamn woods,” she growled, but she followed anyway, striding down the stairs.
With one look over her shoulder, Nyneve followed Mordred’s trail through the medicinal garden, cutting behind the stablemaster’s cottage to avoid a group of monks—who did not usually patrol at night—and then into the pleasure park.
She wondered if Mordred was even still within Camelot’s walls or if he’d managed to sneak out of the citadel already.
The witchlights were bright, crisp, clearly defined—which meant they were fresh tracks.
Nyneve quickened her pace across the path’s packed dirt.
She was going to find Mordred and deal with him. Tonight.
It took Nyneve too long to realize she should’ve reached the edge of the pleasure park.
Too long to understand that the usual sounds of the forest had gone out—the way they might when a predator roamed.
Blinded by her rage, she hiked farther and farther into the woods that were no longer the woods she knew.
By the time Nyneve finally realized something might be amiss, she halted.
The witchlights ahead taunted her, a sure path to her quarry.
But all of this was wrong. The trees growing around her were no longer the slim birches of the pleasure park with its winding trails and little roe deer.
She tipped her head back, taking in a moon that pressed too close to the earth and the wide, hungry branches of primordial trees that scraped against its pale face.
Her bound magic went cold and uneasy within her as she drew in a deep breath of loam, ancient stone, and something that might have been dried blood, spilled a millennium ago.
Quelling the panic, Nyneve wove a protective working against glamours, but the woods remained unchanged.
She could turn her clothes inside out and walk backward, she knew, and that might well lead her home.
But whatever woods she had wandered into thrummed with power—primeval, inhuman.
She did not think she could escape from its grasp so easily. So she kept going.
Up ahead, the trees thinned out, the oddly slanted moonlight revealing a clearing ringed by standing rocks.
Dark brambles rose in a thorny swell, like the desiccated hand of some long-dead giant, fingers reaching for the sky even from its grave.
Before the strange thicket stood a figure, and it would be a lie to say Nyneve did not immediately recognize the strong line of Mordred Pendragon’s muscular shoulders, the unusual grace with which he held himself, the curl of his waves against the nape of his neck.
Her darker magics felt like a muscle bunched in anticipation for the first strike of war.
Moving from tree to tree, taking refuge in the moonshadow of their trunks, the Druid girl crept closer.
She reached the edge of the clearing without drawing Mordred’s attention—provided he couldn’t hear how fast her heart was beating or the rapid river of her blood rushing through her veins.
Taking a deep breath, Nyneve gathered herself up among the gnarled trees that circled the meadow’s edges, stark against the pitch-dark sky of this deep, endless night.
And then, with her fingers wrapped around the hilt of her dagger, she stepped into the clearing.
A twig snapped beneath Nyneve’s boot, loud as a blacksmith’s hammer.
Mordred turned halfway on his heel to face her at the same moment the bramble split down the center like a seam coming undone, leaking silvery light. Her anger returned to her, roaring in her ears.
And then Mordred’s gaze met hers. His face was different—all those sharp angles deepened into something unearthly and ancient, the points of his cheekbones so sharp she wondered if they might tear through his moon-pale skin.
In the widening light of what could only be a faerie door, Nyneve went still as she noticed one pointed ear knifing through his dark hair.
“Fuck,” said the Druid girl.
“There you are,” Mordred said, his shoulders hunched over, a wolf about to tear out a sheep’s stomach.
Nyneve swallowed, the next words little more than a croak. “You are—”
“High Fey,” he finished for her, drawing himself up to his full height—at least a head taller than the knight she knew back in Camelot.
“The last of the Tuatha de Danann.” He cocked his head, such an inhuman movement it made Nyneve’s blood run ice-cold even as that unwelcome heat curled low in her belly.
Before him, the faerie door opened wider, bathing the clearing in its silvered light.
“And you, Nyneve,” Mordred said, his eyes glittering, “are right on time.”