Chapter 33 #3
Fate strode closer, but She did not walk so much as glide, Her garments fluttering in a wind that Nyneve did not feel.
“You walk a delicate path, little mortal,” Fate said, tilting Her head to one side.
There were too many teeth in Her mouth. Nyneve supposed the being needed many sharp edges on which to cut everyone’s Threads.
“It is rare for a primordial thing like Me to interfere. But I feel you should know that the Nameless One, the changeling you call Mordred, is doomed.”
Nyneve’s throat went dry. “Doomed?” she echoed, raising her lantern higher to peer into Fate’s eyes.
She immediately regretted it. She saw her birth and her death, but not just one—all of them, the beginning and end of each individual Thread.
Every single one taken between Fate’s teeth and severed.
Exhaustion struck her hard, her stomach roiling.
“Doomed,” the deity echoed. “There is a war coming. You can feel it, can’t you, child?”
Nyneve set her jaw and said nothing. Of course she could feel it.
“It is his blood on the killing field that begins the next Age,” Fate said. “The price of the Nameless One is death. Unlike his creatrixes, unlike all the rest of his kind. The Bear will strike him down with the Blade, and the new world will be born.”
Nausea gathered in the back of Nyneve’s mouth. “You hold everyone’s Threads,” she snarled, one hand sliding to her dagger even though it would never do anything against a goddess, “so change them. Change his.”
“Oh, little fool,” Fate murmured, looming over Nyneve. The Druid girl’s ears rang, and she suddenly felt as though she might not be real. “If only it were so simple. If only a dull, tiny thing like you could open your eyes and see.”
“Then why are You telling me, if I can’t do anything and You refuse to help?” Nyneve demanded in a tone that was not fit for addressing a goddess. She set her lantern down, unable to resist the impulse to have both hands free in case she needed to fight.
Fate smiled, bearing all Her many teeth. The arched, strangely shaped wings on Her back flexed, sending a rippling breeze through the clearing. Then the goddess set one long-fingered hand on Nyneve’s shoulder, nails digging into her skin so hard she winced.
“Because you could have a great and vast future,” Fate murmured. “You have heard My Songs. They promise greatness. Leave this city behind. Forget the doomed changeling.”
The Druid girl considered it. A promise from Fate Herself that the future would be so vast and great that Nyneve could not even begin to imagine what it might hold.
The bargain was simple. The price was not heavy: leave Mordred and Camelot behind.
She had contemplated doing much the same for significantly less than Fate’s favor.
Nyneve straightened her spine and willed herself to look into the goddess’s eyes again.
She saw so many of her deaths. Strange clothing and stranger worlds, all the different Threads she might have lived unspooling before her.
And in each and every one, she could not help but notice something peculiar: a tall, lithe man who was not a man at all.
His moonlight skin and dark waves of silken black hair, his eyes like an ocean in a storm, his voice like dusk over the lake and heather on the hills.
Every single Thread, no matter how outlandish the worlds Nyneve peered into became, he was there.
That familiar ache sang in her chest louder than any of the goddess’s melodies.
“What do you say, My child?” Fate asked in the voice of the strange, lilting lute notes Nyneve had heard her entire life, never understanding until this moment what they meant. Fatesongs, all this time.
The Druid girl picked up her lantern. “No.”
Nyneve slammed her fists into the door so hard that a knight she did not know leaned out of his room and furrowed his brow at her. She ignored him. When the door still did not open, she began to furiously pound on it.
“For Modron’s sake,” she heard Mordred snap from inside a moment before the door was yanked open. “What could— Oh. It is you.”
“It’s me,” Nyneve said. She hadn’t actually planned this. “Might I come in?”
It was only then that she realized Mordred had neglected to pull on his tunic. The torchlight carved out the hard planes of his muscles, running its golden fingers across his chest and stomach. Her mouth went dry.
“Of course,” Mordred replied, stepping back from the door.
Then she marched into his room. She would have been pleased by how confused he seemed, except that she was equally confused, and all of this had been her idea—hadn’t it?
She had no idea what hour it was. She probably should have eaten something.
Nyneve turned around to find Mordred closing the door and then pulling on a tunic.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’re destined to die?” she demanded, trying to keep her voice at a reasonable level and failing miserably.
His brow furrowed as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing the corded muscles of his forearms, which Nyneve found incredibly annoying.
“I thought everyone knew Merlin’s prophecy,” Mordred said, leaning against the door and crossing his arms. “Well, the Oracle of Delphi’s.
Octavia, I believe her name is. Merlin just claims it as his own. ”
“I don’t fucking care who made the prophecy,” Nyneve sputtered, not fully understanding why she’d stalked all the way over here in such a blind rage.
“Of course I know about the prophecy. Skies to black, fields to stone, Time of Men . . . I know of the parts Merlin twisted for his own purposes. But I did not think it held any power over you, only the human boy whose place you took. I did not know you were so surely destined for death.”
He tilted his head, lighting a cluster of candles on the mantel with a wave of his hand. It was too hot for a fire, even at this hour. “Who told you this?” he asked carefully.
Nyneve dropped into the chair by the hearth. “Fate,” she mumbled, staring into the candlelight.
“What?” Mordred asked in a near-whisper.
“Tall, lots of teeth, wings that look like a swan’s, smells like tarnished silver?” Nyneve rattled off, turning to look up at him. The knight had gone pale, which was a feat for someone of his complexion.
“That is Fate,” Mordred muttered. His attention on her was rapt now.
“She wants me to leave Camelot,” she said, waving one hand in the air. “Some ‘grand and vast’ future for me if I do.”
“Are you going to?” Mordred asked too quickly, the casual stance disappearing as he took a step toward her.
“Answer my godsdamn question,” she said, her tone sharp. Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? How long do you have left?”
Something passed over Mordred’s expression, a ghost of an emotion that Nyneve felt a mirror of in her own body but failed to name. “There is to be a great battle,” he said quietly. “I will perish in it. I shall not live past thirty years, though it may come sooner.”
Nyneve shot to her feet, hands curling into fists. “And you didn’t tell me?” she near-shouted. “This whole time? I’m a sorceress. I could help!”
He shook his head, the line of his shoulders resolute. “Morgana has tried,” he said. “There seems no chance of escape. It is what it is.”
She stared at him dumbly, rage and sorrow and something else rattling in her ribs. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Nyneve asked again, her voice raw.
He looked utterly bewildered as he took another step toward her. “I . . . Why would you care about such a thing? What interest does it hold for you?”
“What interest?” she spat, dragging a hand through her hair. “You must understand how fucking absurd it is to stand here and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think it of import that I know precisely when and how I will die, and I also haven’t thought to tell you—’”
“Nyneve,” Mordred interrupted—something he rarely did—coming to stand before her.
He raised both hands as if to rest them on her shoulders, but they drifted back to his sides.
His gaze held hers, an ocean in which she would happily drown.
Woodsmoke and damp stone swept over her senses.
That coiled place deep inside of her felt like it might snap.
Her heart pounded in her throat. All she could think about was how he had looked at her when she was astride him, the reverence in his gaze as he knelt between her legs.
“Why,” he repeated, eyes wide, “does it matter to you?”
“Because I’m falling in love with you!” Nyneve shouted.
She wanted to throw something or punch someone.
“And here you are, knowing damn well that Fate will cut your Thread too soon, and you didn’t even tell me.
” She sneered up at him as he watched her with something like disbelief on his angular features.
“Oh, but of course you wouldn’t mention it,” Nyneve continued, fury rising in her like a tide.
“Because—what was it you said? That you could never be my friend.”
Suddenly, both his large hands encircled her waist, his muscular frame pressing Nyneve into the stone wall. “Gods, you are such a fool,” he laughed. She hated how much she still liked the sound of it. “Of course I could not be your friend, little thief.”
Nyneve let out a wordless shriek and shoved him, fighting his hold, but he just pulled her body into his. Anger and unadulterated desire made her blood pound furiously.
“I could not be your friend,” he breathed, his mouth so close to hers, “because I am in love with you, Nyneve Or’Afon. I could never be your friend because I am a selfish, wicked thing. Going another moment without being your lover will destroy me faster than any prophecy.”
Nyneve’s heartbeat sounded as loud as war drums in her ears. There was no situation in which she had planned for this declaration. Not that she had planned at all, but even if she had, it clearly wouldn’t have mattered. So she acted, as she often did, on her instinct.