CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #3
“I don’t understand it either,” I whispered, my voice faltering somewhere between Lioran and Guinevere.
His lips were so close I could feel the warmth of his breath mingling with mine.
Without conscious thought, my hand rose between us.
I should have pushed him away. Should have laughed it off, made some crude joke about being clumsy.
Or I should have taken off after the escaped Invisible Stalker.
But I did none of those things. Instead, my fingers found the back of his neck, threading through the dark hair that curled there.
Lance's eyes widened, confusion and desire warring in their depths as my palm curved against his warm skin, drawing him imperceptibly closer.
He inhaled sharply.
“What are you doing to me?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t because I didn't know.
Before I could fully understand what was happening, my fingers tightened against his neck, pulling him down. The distance between us collapsed in a heartbeat, and our lips met—tentative at first, then electric as something wild and uncontrollable ignited.
His lips were on mine—demanding, furious, so forceful.
Time fractured around us like shattered glass.
The kiss deepened, and I felt myself drowning in the sensation of his mouth, his tongue, which was warm in my mouth.
My disguise, my mission, everything I'd been taught about right and wrong—it all dissolved into nothing.
There was no careful, calculated Lioran in this moment.
No treacherous spy sent to infiltrate Camelot.
No sworn enemies locked in an ancient war.
Just this undeniable fire crackling between us, consuming everything in its path.
His hand cupped my face with surprising gentleness, thumb brushing across my cheekbone as he kissed me like a parched man discovering water. I could feel his heartbeat thundering against my chest, matching the frantic rhythm of my own pulse.
Then—like ice water thrown over flames—cold reality crashed down on me as I realized what I'd—what we'd—just done. I jerked back, breath catching, horror sinking in.
I’d kissed him. While wearing his brother-in-arms’ face. While pretending to be someone I wasn’t. While plotting to betray not only him but his king.
“What have we…?” I pushed upright, scrambling to create space between us, heart pounding. I just needed to catch my breath. Then I could think. Then I could come up with some excuse.
Lance stared at me, equally stunned, eyes wide as he backed off. The sudden distance between us felt cavernous.
I suddenly couldn’t meet his gaze, and I looked away.
“I—I shouldn’t have,” I started, breath shaky, suddenly afraid that he might react badly. “That wasn’t…”
The words failed me. Cold dread gripped my chest.
Punishable by death.
Lance dragged a hand through his hair, and the motion made me turn to look at him. But he said nothing.
“Forgive me,” I whispered when I finally forced the courage to look him in the eyes. “I forgot myself. I don't know what I was—”
He lunged forward before I could finish the stammered apology, his powerful frame driving me backward until my shoulders hit the mossy forest floor with a soft thud.
Fallen leaves scattered around us as his weight settled over me, trapping me beneath the solid wall of his chest. The scent of earth and autumn filled my nostrils, mingling with the familiar smell of leather and steel that clung to him.
His mouth crashed against mine—hard, desperate, hungry, his tongue in my mouth, searching for my own.
And my tongue met his with fervor until we lapped at one another with a need the likes of which I'd never experienced. This kiss bore no resemblance to the tentative brush of lips we’d shared moments before.
This was raw need unleashed, a claiming that brooked no resistance and asked for no permission.
It simply demanded everything I had to give.
The rough bark of a nearby oak pressed against my shoulder blade as he shifted his weight, one hand bracing beside my head while the other cupped my jaw. His breathing was harsh against my cheek, ragged with the same wild desperation that coursed through my own veins.
His calloused fingers tangled in my hair, holding me in place with a strength that should have frightened me but instead made my pulse race faster. His broad chest was firm against mine.
A gasp escaped me.
Madness. This was madness.
But I couldn’t stop.
His thumb traced my jaw, tilting my head as he deepened the kiss, and I rose up to meet him.
Through the haze of desire, a distant part of my mind screamed warnings about discovery, about the precarious balance of my disguise, and about the mission that now hung by a thread. But those concerns seemed far away beneath the weight of his body and the heat of his breath against my skin.
My disguise. The mission. Arthur. All of it blurred under the heat of his touch.
Then, as suddenly as it started, he tore away from me with a violence that left me gasping. His hands dropped from my body as if I’d burned him, and he stumbled backward several steps, putting distance between us as if I were some kind of contagion he needed to escape.
He stood there in the dappled light filtering through the oak leaves, his chest rising and falling in harsh, uneven breaths.
The elegant composure that usually defined him had completely shattered, leaving behind a man who looked as though he’d been struck by lightning.
His dark hair was disheveled from my fingers, and his lips were swollen from my own, but it was his eyes that made my heart clench.
"You've bewitched me," he said, shaking his head as he ran his hand through his hair and looked away from me. "I don't know what the bloody fuck it is about you, but I…" His voice faltered as he stood there panting.
"I—" I started, but I didn't know what more to say.
"You don't even feel like a fucking man!" he nearly yelled at me. "Your face—your skin is so soft—no hint of hair, no hint of a beard."
Those eyes churned with a tempest of emotions I could barely begin to decipher.
Confusion warred with desire, self-loathing battled against need, and beneath it all lurked something that looked dangerously close to panic.
He stared at me as if I were a puzzle he couldn't solve, a riddle that threatened to unravel everything he thought he knew about himself.
His hands hung at his sides, fingers still trembling slightly from the aftershock of whatever had just passed between us. The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of our labored breathing and the distant rustle of leaves in the breeze.
“This can’t happen,” he muttered, wiping his mouth as if it burned. “I’m not—I’ve never—” He turned from me, fists clenched. “I’ve never wanted a man before.”
His hand ran through his hair in agitation, sending dark strands flying in every direction. He spun back, voice tight, as if he couldn't accept his own explanation for what had happened.
"And yet there's something about you, Lioran. Something so damnably feminine it’s driving me mad.
" He took a breath. "I know it’s impossible, and yet…
yet my body identifies yours as a woman—your diminutive size, the smallness of your proportions, the softness of your skin—even kissing you just now—there is nothing masculine about you—not a fucking thing. "
The words hit me like ice water. I felt stripped bare underneath his gaze.
“Lance,” I began, but my voice cracked.
He began pacing, articulating his confusion aloud. "The way you move, the sound of your laugh just now... Even the feel of your lips. You feel like a woman, Lioran!" He nearly shouted as he shook his head. "But you are not a woman."
“No…” I said quietly, my heart pounding for a different reason now.
“None of this makes any fucking sense.”
“Please—” I started, but he cut me off.
“You don’t understand.” His eyes searched mine as if they could force an answer. “I’ve trusted men with my life. Fought beside them. And now I’m—” He broke off, jaw clenched. “I’m feeling things I shouldn’t.”
I wanted to reach for him. To undo the space between us. But I stayed frozen.
“I never meant for this to happen,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Lance turned away, fists tight at his sides. When he spoke again, he wouldn't look at me. “I can’t make sense of this. But every time I look at you… it’s as though something inside me wants more.”
The forest around us seemed unnaturally still, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath. I stood up and stepped forward, meaning to soothe or comfort him, but he raised a hand to stop me.
“No.” His voice was hard now. Final. "Whatever this is, it ends now. We complete the trial and speak no more of it." He paused. "This… what just passed between us… it can never leave this forest, and it can never happen again. This truth dies right here—with only the two of us as witnesses."
I nodded. "I understand."
He nodded once, then bent to gather the orbs, which I had completely forgotten about.
I didn't know how it was possible, but the remaining two glass orbs had not shattered, thank the gods.
As for the Invisible Stalker, I didn't know what we were going to do about it.
But I was also too nervous to ask Lance.
“Nothing can happen between us ever again,” he repeated, almost to himself. “Nothing.”
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My lips still burned from his kiss while my chest ached with everything I couldn’t say. But I had to say something. "What… what about the Invisible Stalker?"
He paused but didn't face me. "I will explain to Arthur and Mordred that it was captured but was released when you fell. They will take my word, and they will not count it against you."
I swallowed hard. "Then it will just roam this forest?"
"Yes." His voice carried the weight of finality, his tone brooking no more questions, no further conversation, no acknowledgment of what had just transpired in the shadowed depths of this cursed forest.
For a moment that stretched like eternity, he stood there with his back rigid, shoulders set in absolute resolve. I could see the tension coiled in every muscle of his frame—a man at war with himself and losing.
Then, without even a backward glance, he turned and walked away.
His movements were deliberate, controlled, each step carrying him further from this moment we could never speak of again.
I hurried behind him, but the difference in our gaits made itself known as the distance between us stretched like a chasm.
Even the sound of his footsteps faded, leaving only the whisper of wind through leaves and the terrible silence of words that would forever remain unspoken.
I wanted to tell him the truth: that he wasn’t mad, that he was right—I was as much a woman as his body believed me to be. But I couldn’t—not without dooming myself and my mission.
So I let him walk away, thinking he’d crossed a line he couldn’t live with, thinking I was someone I wasn’t.