I crossed to the table beside my bed and poured myself a glass of wine. I drank it in one go, standing up. I poured another. This time, though, I sat down in the chair nearest the dead fire and stared at the ash.
She’d reached for the bars; it had seemed like she was trying to get as close to me as possible. I hadn’t meant to notice that. Just as I hadn’t meant to notice the smallness of her wrists, or the way the grime of her cell had worked so deep into the creases of her knuckles that it looked like she’d been buried and dug back up again.
She’d reached for the bars, and I’d stepped back, like she was something that might burn me.
She killed your men.
Yes. She had.
I refilled the glass.
Her parents, who weren’t her true parents, were dead before my men had breathed their last. I knew that. I’d known it the moment I’d read the garrison report all those months ago. I remembered standing in Arthur’s solar with the parchment in my hand. I’d read the thing twice while Arthur talked about the witch of Eldenvale and how she had to be put to death for her crimes against the crown.
Self-defense had been the charitable reading: the thought had even crossed my mind back then, before I’d ever known what it meant to love Merlin’s daughter.
I drank more. Finished this glass of wine before I realized it. I poured another.
Arthur hadn’t mentioned the fact that my men had killed her parents first; maybe he’d skipped over that part? Or hadn’t considered it of importance? I hadn’t mentioned it either. Instead, I’d stood there in my immaculate black armor with Arthur’s crest on my chest, and I’d said nothing. I’d simply watched him fume about the men he’d lost, and I’d agreed that they would be avenged.
The wine was going down easier now.
She made a fool of you.
That was the part I was supposed to hold onto. That was the part that was supposed to make the rest of this simple. A woman had disguised herself as a man and entered the king’s trials, and she’d survived them. A woman with revenge in her heart and fire in her eyes. A woman who had completely turned my life upside down. That was the embarrassing part, and the part that reflected on me. I was supposed to be angry about that.
Iwasangry about that.
I gripped the carafe and didn’t bother with the glass; it was a waste of my fucking time.
Arthur wouldn’t be kind to her. Yes, his offer that she be his reverse spy was real enough; Arthur didn’t make offers he didn’t intend to keep. But the shape of the thing underneath it, the punishment built into the architecture of it, that was real too. She’d made him look like a fool. Perhaps even more so than she’d made me look like a fool. Because her mockery of Arthur had been public. And as far as I knew, no one knew the truth about the two of us. And gods be that no one ever found out.
Regardless, Arthur wouldn’t forgive someone making a fool of him. He wouldn’t tolerate it. He’d collect it, then he’d file it away and let it compound interest until the moment he chose to collect.
She didn’t know that yet.
She was down there in the dark, thinking she’d survived the worst of it. She had no idea what was in store for her. The mental punishment. No doubt, he’d disrespect her body just as completely as he would her mind.
Stop.
I set the carafe down too hard, but it didn’t break.
I didn’t know her, not truly. What was more, I owed her nothing. She was a criminal who’d stumbled into Camelot with blood on her hands and lies in her mouth, and she’d gotten exactly what that earned her. Arthur’smercy, such as it was, was more than she had any right to expect.
Had I been telling her the truth when I told her, were I in his place, I would have already executed her? I didn’t know. I hoped that would have been true, were I in Arthur’s shoes. But I didn’t know if I would have been… strong enough to see it done.
My hands were shaking again.
I went to the door and wrenched it open. One of the servants was lingering in the corridor, as he so often was at all hours of the day and night. A boy of perhaps twelve, he was gap-toothed and perpetually underfoot, one of those children who attaches himself to the idea of knights the way ivy attaches to stone. He was holding that ridiculous wooden stick he was never without, drawing it slow and ceremoniously through the air as though the shadows were enemies requiring defeat. His lips were moving as he narrated his own heroism to himself, quiet enough that he probably thought no one could hear him.
I told him, Toby I believed was his name, to send up whichever blond servant girl he could find.
I didn’t have to wait long. And just as I’d requested, she was fair-haired, though her hair was of a darker shade than I would have preferred. She walked into my bedchamber, smoothing her skirt with her palms, and gave me the practiced smile they allgave, the one that meant nothing. I closed the door behind her, then pointed at the bed, and she went to it without being asked twice.
I told her to put her face down and her ass up. I didn’t want to look at a face which wasn’t...hers. The serving girl hesitated for just a moment, half a heartbeat, maybe less, then she did as I asked, and she purred as she did it. I knew what this meant to her: it was an honor to be called to the First Knight’s room. An honor to be noticed by me, and an even bigger honor to be rutted by me.
I didn’t care. All I did care about was the fact that the wine was doing a good job of muting anything I might otherwise have felt. Instead, I felt numb. It was a feeling I wished I could hold onto.
I was rough when I thrust up her skirts and even rougher when I ran my finger down the slit of her cunt. I didn’t mean to be, but then I didn’t care that I was. She made a small groan when I touched her, and it was a sound that Guin...
