I’d walk the remainder of this hall exactly as I was: stripped of disguise, stripped of armor, stripped down to nothing but my own skin because the alternative was to cover myself like a woman who was ashamed.
And I wasn’t ashamed.
Every eye in the room had already seen everything that was worth seeing. Covering myself with the cloak now wouldonly suggest that I wished they hadn’t. But I wanted every man watching me to understand, with perfect clarity, that I wasn’t diminished by what had just happened here. I wanted them to understand that Arthur could strip me, repurpose me, rename me, could stand before his court and announce my purpose as though I were a weapon he’d simply redirected, but I was the victor, not him.
“Anyone who touches her will be severely punished.”
Thank the gods for small mercies, I supposed.
-GUIN-
The prisoner’s clothing I was given was rough and stiff wool. It was the kind of fabric that scrapes skin raw, but I was grateful for it, all the same. Grateful not to be naked any longer against the constant chill of the prison walls and grateful not to be wearing the cloak of the fucking king.
The torch in the corridor just outside my cell threw a strip of light across the floor, but beyond that, there was only darkness. It was the same as it had been for however long I’d been down here: nothing beyond the blackness of shadows. They were the kind that press in from the corners and settle in the lungs, the type of dark that made you fear for what could be sitting inside it.
I put my back against the far wall and slid down until my knees met my chest. I could still feel the cold and the wet of the stone through the wool, yes, but it was still better than being naked, even if the prisoner’s rags smelled of the sweat of whoever had worn them before me.
I allowed myself one breath, and with it, a tear. In truth, I could already feel it streaming down my left cheek. Whatever had happened in the Great Hall, whatever performance I’d forced myself to play, it was hitting me now.
An image of Corvin’s face appeared behind my eyes, the way memories do when you’ve stopped fighting them. I could remember the warmth of his hands when he’d pulled me into his arms after so many nightmares, his low voice steady and unhurried, talking me back down from wherever awful place the dreams had taken me.
“I’m sorry I failed you,” I whispered.
I allowed myself another breath as I blinked against the tears that now overflowed my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. I thought of The Round Table, of the candlelight on the knights’ faces. I thought of Gareth’s white knuckles and Percival’s locked jaw. I thought of these men who had trained besideLioranfor months, men who’d shared bread, sweat, and stupid jokes. Gone. All of it...
Another breath. And more tears.
Lance.
My breath caught as the thought of his face assaulted my mind. Now the tears threatened to completely overtake me, but I couldn’t allow that to happen. Not when I was stuck in this pit in my enemy’s stronghold. I had to stay strong. I had to keep my wits about me and thinking of Lance...
No, I couldn’t allow my thoughts to go there: to his face, to the way he’d refused to look at me when Arthur had paraded me naked through the hall. Gods, his eyes had been so impossible to read, the dark gray like a door slammed in my face, refusing to grant me access to what lay beyond them.
Please stop,I begged myself.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my chest and held it there, felt my own heartbeat pushing back against the pressure. Then Iput my hand back down and shook my head, my hands fisting at my sides.
No more crying.
I was done with the grief, the humiliation, the memory of standing bare while the men of Camelot looked at me like they were appraising a particularly handsome horse. Whatever humiliation I’d experienced, whatever self-pity I now had, I locked it all away under something that was heavier than stone, something that was heavier than pride, and I left it there to wither and die.
There would be no more feeling sorry for myself. I was done. It was over. Now there was nothing left but strategy, of figuring out a way out of this nightmare.
I reached for the water in the air again, with the same patient searching, my fingers spread against the stone, hunting for that thread of moisture that always answered me.
But there was nothing. Just as there had been nothing the last time I’d attempted it. The damp seeping through the mortar wouldn’t even respond, almost as if it was ignoring me. Mordred. It had to be. He must have warded every stone in this dungeon, along with every shadow and every crack. I could feel the shape of it, the invisible lattice of his signature pressing down like a thumb on a bruise. And it was thorough work. Elegant, even, in a way that made me hate him for it.
Not that it mattered anyway.
Even if I tore through Mordred’s wards and pulled every drop of moisture from these walls to flood the corridor, to freeze the guards where they stood... Even if I managed to escape, the Round Table knights would be on me before I reached the gates leading into Camelot. And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. Not now. Not after they knew who and what I was: their enemy.
No, attacking anyone at this stage wasn’t the answer. Neither was calling on my magic. Not yet, anyway. My situationrequired something more sophisticated. Survival had a shape, and its shape was attention, calculation. It was the slow and patient accumulation of small advantages.
I’d been Lioran for months. That meant I knew the patrol rotations, the guard schedules, the narrow corridor behind the armory that flooded when it rained and went unguarded because no one likes water in his boots. I knew which knights drank and which ones prayed, which ones were afraid of their king and which ones were afraid of something older. I knew the castle’s bones.
Arthur thoughthehad a weapon. Well, he was right about that much. Iwasa weapon. But I wasn’thisfucking weapon.
And now I was playing a game that was so much bigger than it ever had been. But the thing about games is that they have rules, and Arthur had just revealed his. He needed Merlin deceived more than he needed me dead. That meant I had value; it meant he’d keep me breathing for as long as I was useful to him. He’d give me information to give to Annwyn, and I’d deliver said information, but in the delivering, I’d learn the shape of Arthur’s plans from what he left out.
