“I know,” he said. That was all.I know.
It was worse than any argument he could have made. I turned away from him because there was nothing else to do in that moment, and I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth, waiting for the dragon to say something so I’d have something to be angry at.
But the dragon was also quiet. Even the beast, it seemed, understood there were wounds fire couldn’t touch.
“Arthur... If I go with you willingly, if I return to Camelot, will you release Corvin?”
I turned to look at her and immediately noticed her eyes. The violet had gone dark, her pupils blown wide. Suddenly feeling the need to be close to her, to touch her, but not understanding why, I took the steps that separated us until I was right in her face. She’d bested me in the Great Hall, and she’d bested me by escaping my dungeon. She wouldn’t best me again.
“What you say,” I told her in a quiet, deliberate tone, every word placed with care, “means nothing to me. You are my prisoner. You exist in this conversation only because I haven’t yet decided what to do with you. But you don’t negotiate, and you don’t make requests.” I held her angry gaze. “But you will fucking refer to me with the respect I’m due.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm the shaking that had overcome my whole body. “I am your fucking king, so if you call me by my given name once more, I will slice your pretty little head clean off your pretty little shoulders.”
She held still, but her eyes narrowed with her own anger. We both just stood there, each of us looking at the other with eyesblazing. I noticed how she breathed through her nose in slow, measured pulls, like she was counting them.
The dragon pressed forward, clearly unhappy with the way I was treating her, but I pushed it back down again.
“You might think your quarrel is with her,” Corvin said from behind me. “But we’re both very aware it’s with me.” His voice was measured and unhurried. It was the voice of a man who’d decided how this conversation would go before I’d kicked the door in. “Whatever you think she’s done, whatever Merlin sent her to do, I vouched for her. So take it out on me, Arthur. That’s where it belongs.”
I turned around and studied his face as I breathed in deeply, forcing down the sudden urge to run him through with Caliburn. Doing so might alleviate my anger for the moment, but it would be reckless and foolish. Corvin alive was worth so much more than Corvin dead.
“Everyone who isn’t holding Corvin, leave us,” I said, not bothering to look behind me to ensure my demands were being followed. Lance didn’t budge, but I hadn’t expected him to.
The door pulled shut behind the others as they filed out, and the room shrank until it was just the six of us. Corvin stood where I’d left him, blood still dribbling from his mouth, landing on his chin. His hands were open at his sides.
She went to him then, and I didn’t stop her. It was Agravaine who took a step back, tugging Corvin with him, and Tristan was forced to follow. I bypassed the white-haired bitch and stopped in front of Corvin, close enough that I could smell her on him.
END HIM! HE WEARS THE SCENT OF OUR MATE!
“The best thing I could do,” I said, keeping my voice low and conversational, “is kill her. Not only for the trouble she’s caused me but for the trouble she’s caused all of us.”
Nothing moved in Corvin’s face. But Lance shifted his weight from one leg to the other and breathed in deeply.Agravaine nodded his agreement, while Tristan just studied my face, as if to ascertain whether or not I was serious.
“I should run her through with my blade and end this before it goes any further than it already has.” I glanced at her briefly, to those narrowed eyes, then returned my gaze to Corvin.
“Arthur,” he said softly.
I shook my head. “Look at what she’s done. There’s nothing but a trail of wreckage behind her, and she hasn’t even broken a sweat. She’s a plague, Corvin. A disease with a beautiful face.”
He said nothing.
“I should do us all the fucking favor by ending her.”
“No,” he said.
The word landed flat and final.
Behind me, I heard the whisper of metal: a hand testing the grip of a scabbard. Not drawing, just touching. The way a man does when he hasn’t made a decision yet, but his body has already started making it for him.
Lance.
I didn’t turn around to look at him. Instead, I tilted my head at Corvin.
“We all know what the problem is, even if we don’t want to admit it.” I exhaled through my nose. “If she didn’t look the way she does, she’d be cold in the ground by now. I’d have had her throat cut in the dungeon and thought nothing more of it.” I glanced back at her again, longer this time. She stood there, just watching me. And she was very still, but the expression on her face wasn’t so still. Her eyes were blazing, and her lips were tight. It was as if she was daring me to end her. “Pity she is so fucking beautiful. And every man who sets eyes on her immediately wants to—”
I stopped speaking, smiled, and turned back to Corvin.
“That’s how she does it. That’s the whole mechanism. She takes what lives in us already: the desire, the need... our male weaknesses... and she turns it back against us. Uses it like a key.”
Corvin’s jaw was tight.
