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ONE
Avalon was about to be set ablaze.
Mordred stood upon the parapet of his keep and gazed out at the world before him. At Avalon. The field between his home and the line of trees that marked the forest was no longer filled with tall grass. It was a sea of mud and iron armor. His soldiers were working to clear away the fallen. Most of them were his own iron soldiers. They would be melted down and reused if they could not be repaired.
As for the elementals? Their corpses had turned to dust, their magic returning them to the ether of Avalon. He could see the shimmering dust rising into the air, catching the sun. Elemental corpses did not linger at least.
He rested his metal gauntlet upon the stone balustrade. Out there, lurking and gathering his strength, was a demon who wished to burn the whole world down. Who wished to destroy every life here and turn the isle of ancient magic into nothing but char and cinders.
Not for glory. Not for righteousness. No. Out of spite.
No one would stand in opposition to Grinn. No one but Mordred would dare. It seemed that history was forever doomed to repeat itself—no matter how hard he worked to break the pattern.
For these events had played out once before.
And they had led to tragedy.
A thousand years ago, he had waged war upon the demon, with the elementals biding their time, falsely pretending to be neutral. When they were in truth waiting for Mordred and Grinn to kill each other—or at least for one to fall, so that they could deal with the other in a weakened state.
In the eyes of the elementals, Mordred and Grinn were equal—equally dangerous and equally abhorrent. Neither of them was meant to exist in this place.
Mordred was alone. As he always was. Backed only by the knights who were forced to serve him.
And one now-mortal woman who had betrayed him not once but twice.
Shutting his eyes, he took a deep breath and let it out in an equally deep sigh.
A woman he loved.
He clenched his fists. History was doomed to repeat itself, but for one difference this time around. Gwendolyn. And for the life of him, he could not seem to determine whose side the young woman was on. Him? Or the demon’s?
Had he fallen in love with a traitor? Was she simply toying with him? Was it all a manipulative game? She would be a lauded actor if so, but it was not without question.
He could not trust the woman he loved. What a tragic and terrible gift the Ancients had given him in the form of a bright-eyed, smiling, empathetic creature.
What was he to do?
There was only one choice before him—seek the demon and put him to the blade.
What other path forward could there possibly be? Was he truly doomed to walk the same road as before? An endless cycle of war? He knew the demon would not retreat to some far corner of the island and bide there in peace. Grinn’s hatred was too strong for that.
Wronged as the demon might believe himself to be, there would be no quenching his thirst for revenge by any means other than blood. The monster had to die—laws of Avalon be damned. It was the only way that Mordred could see that might stop the pattern. There would be no mercy for him; no quarter would be offered.
The question merely remained—what would the elementals of the island do in the meanwhile now that their meager attempts to overthrow Mordred had failed? Would they seek to oppose him a second time? Or would they understand Grinn as the threat that he was, and seek to help him? He snorted in laughter. Unlikely. No, they would do as they had done before.
The other elementals would choose to linger by the edges, watching in wary anticipation to see who might stand victorious.
But in the end, he supposed it did not honestly matter. It changed nothing. It was war that Grinn wanted, and it would be war that he received. But one matter had to be solved first. The matter of Gwendolyn Wright. What was he to do with her?
She had been beautiful as an elemental. And she was just as alluring as a mortal. But what would become of them now? She was fragile. Mortal. Powerless in a world of creatures who could end her with a thought. The forests were filled with beings of all kinds—not just elementals. Any of them would be happy to snap her up and make her a meal.
And even if she swore her fealty to him and he believed her, and they mended their situation—what then? She would age and die. He would not.
Releasing her was just as foolish as setting her free in a town was a doomed proposition. What kind of life could she lead, alone in a world she did not understand? How could he go on, knowing that she was alive, on the island, but not with him? How could he resist the temptation to watch her as she found another to love and…perhaps even raised a family?
No.
He would be too tempted to keep her, as he had vowed to before. But she did not belong on Avalon. Worse still, she was a known weakness of his. Grinn had already used Mordred’s obvious feelings for Gwen to his advantage. It would happen again. And if it meant laying down his life to save her, he could not promise that he would not do so, at the cost of Avalon.
