If Arthur ever fell, they would all look to me.
Silence crushed between us, a damning weight. I’d become a pillar in this twisted structure, a vital piece in Kay’s game whether I wanted to be or not.
“You could have been a king yourself,” he continued, his voice sharpening with old bitterness. “With different circumstances, worship could have been yours, but it wasn’t.”
“I never wanted to be king. I still don’t.”
He nodded. “Making you work for me instead of for Arthur,” he started, lips curling slightly as if he tasted irony, “it’s its own kind of solace.”
Arthur’s loss would be Kay’s gain, and my submission was a step toward that unspoken end.
The trap had the well-engineered finality of something built over months. Maybe longer. Maybe since the first morning Kay’s sharp eyes tracked me across a training yard and noticed the direction of my attention.
“Fine,” I said.
Kay nodded with the air of a man concluding a routine administrative matter. The morning light fell across his face, and he looked exactly like what the whole court believed him to be: Arthur’s fussy, bitter, politically irrelevant half-brother.
“One more thing,” he said, not turning back. “This conversation didn’t happen. If you tell Arthur I approached you with any of this, I’ll deny it, and I’ll release the information about you and the girl to the full court rather than to Arthur alone. You’ll be ruined publicly rather than privately. Thus, I would suggest you choose your silences carefully.”
I paused. “I always do.”
Then he walked away, and the training yard was suddenly very empty. I put my hand flat against the stone wall and breathed through my nose. Then I picked up a practice sword and started on the post closest to me. The wood was already scarred from a thousand previous sessions, but I hit it anyway. The impact traveled up my wrists, through my forearms, and into the ache that was settling behind my shoulders. I kept going until the wrappings on my palms soaked through with a mixtureof sweat and blood, the yard filled up around me with knights arriving for their morning drills, and the sun climbed above the eastern wall. The light came flat and gold across the packed earth.
I stood in the crowded yard, surrounded by the sounds of swords clashing and shouted commands, considering my predicament. Accepting Kay’s deal had been a necessity, a maneuver to buy time.
A squire rushed past, offering a salute. I nodded automatically, maintaining a semblance of normalcy.
Kay was now my captor, and his ransom had no price of gold. It was power, my power, my standing, held at knifepoint, each decision calibrated against the invisible scale Kay now wielded.
I wasn’t spying; I hadn’t stooped to that. I would feed him crumbs, glimpses of Arthur’s routine, inconsequential details, enough to keep Kay’s leverage intact but never more. Yet the real danger was more insidious.
Good instincts were now burdens. If I warned Arthur, Kay could snap the trap shut. My loyalty was my gag, chaining me to silence. Choices were calcifying to compromise at every turn.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
-GUIN-
The air changed the second we stepped out of the castle; it was now drier, colder, and carried the smell of sawdust and iron. It was the scent of the training yard. When we rounded the last arch, the morning light hit me full in the face.
Arthur was already there.
He stood in the center of the yard with his back to me, one hand resting on the pommel of a practice sword. He wore no armor, just a dark linen shirt, rolled to the elbows, and riding braies tucked into boots that had seen actual use. He was watching two of his men spar in the far corner. They stopped when the guard brought me through the gate, and Arthur immediately released them. Clearly, he wanted this time between us without spectators.
I was wearing the drab prisoner’s gray gown, which was more like a tunic that was too large at the shoulders and too short at the ankles. My hair was down because no one had given me anything to tie it with. I was aware of how I looked, and that irritated me because I shouldn’t have given a damn about how I looked.
Arthur turned, and he looked at me the way a man looks at a map he doesn’t entirely trust. He assessed me, but his expression gave nothing away except the effort it took to give nothing away.
“Leave us,” he said to the guard.
The man didn’t hesitate but immediately nodded, and with a slight bow, he turned on his toes and walked away. The two sparring knights who had been there only moments before had now drifted toward the far gate.
The yard was empty, save for Arthur and me. He said nothing as he crossed to the weapons rack along the eastern wall of the yard. He gave me a quick and appraising look before selecting a practice sword. It was made of wood, weighted at the blade, and the grip was worn smooth from use. He held it out to me.
I crossed the yard and took the sword, relishing the feel of it against my palm. Arthur drew his own practice sword and rolled his neck once. Then he looked at me across the eight feet of packed earth that separated us.
“Show me what you can do.”
I came at him from the left because he expected me to come from the right. He caught it. Of course, he caught it. But he had to move his feet to do so, and that was something.
