My stomach dropped as I wondered if she would name me as the man she’d chosen. Because if she did, I’d have a fight on my hands. And not just against Arthur. I’d have to fight him, Agravaine, and Tristan. Not to mention the other knights whowere waiting in the hall. I’d have to fight them all because he’d order it. I was sure.
Arthur’s expression didn’t change all at once. It was the warmth that drained out first. Then the amusement. Then everything else, until what was left wasn’t a man at all but something carved from old stone and colder purpose.
I’d seen that expression 0n the battlefield. I’d seen it in the throne room when a vassal pushed too far. I’d seen it in the moment before Arthur did something irreversible and felt nothing afterward.
My sword arm came back up.
I didn’t decide to do it; it was reflex. The same reflex that had kept me alive through years of fighting, the same instinct that read a room the way other men read the weather. The blade cleared the air between us, and my feet shifted, and suddenly I was no longer standing behind him. I was standing beside him, angled slightly forward, close enough.
She stood her ground. I had to give her that. Whatever else she was, whatever she’d done, whatever I thought of her now, she stood completely still with her chin lifted and her eyes steady, and she didn’t flinch.
Say something else,I thought at her, furious and desperate in equal measure.Say something that pulls it back. Say anything that gives him somewhere to go that isn’t toward you. You aren’t giving him an out, and if he releases that outrage against you...
She just looked at him with those eyes and let the words sit between them like something she’d placed on a table and stepped back from.Chose him over you.Neat, precise, and aimed exactly where she’d intended.
The line across his jaw went rigid.
I’d fought beside Arthur Pendragon for years. I knew his body the way you know terrain you’ve crossed in the dark, everyrise and hollow memorized not by sight but by consequence. And what I read in him now sent something cold down the length of my spine.
I watched him absorb her words, watched the way they landed.
Corvin had gone very still. I didn’t look at him directly, but I felt it. Tristan’s hand on his other arm had tightened.
“Arthur,” I said.
My own voice surprised me. It came out even, measured. It was the voice I used on a battlefield when I needed men to hear me over the noise without breaking formation.
“Let me take them both.”
Arthur’s eyes finally moved to mine.
“Put them under arrest,” I continued, keeping my voice flat, offering him nothing he could read as a challenge. “Return them to the dungeon. They’re enemies of the crown. Both of them.” I let that land before continuing. “There’s nothing further to be done here but take them to the dungeon, where they both belong... asyourprisoners… as prisoners of the crown.”
It was the only way I could give him an exit that didn’t require him to back down. Because a king doesn’t back down, but he can redirect. And that was what I was offering him: a direction. And I fucking hoped he’d take it.
His jaw worked once, but soon the stone in his expression shifted, fractionally, something calculating moving beneath it.
I didn’t look at her; I didn’t look at Corvin. I kept my eyes on Arthur and held completely still, the way you hold still in front of something large and unpredictable that hasn’t yet decided what it’s going to do.
“They belong in chains,” I said. “Not here.”
The wordheredid the work I needed it to do.Herewas a tavern room with witnesses.Herewas beneath him.
A long silence stretched.
Arthur finally moved.
Not toward her. Not the lunge I’d been braced for. Instead, he stepped back. One deliberate step, the way a man moves when he’s deciding that the moment isn’t right for a particular action, not because he’s abandoned the action but because he’s chosen a better time for it.
He turned away from her, and the room exhaled.
My sword arm stayed exactly where it was for three more seconds before I let it drop. My hand ached. I hadn’t realized how hard I’d been gripping the hilt.
Arthur walked to the window, and he stood with his back to the room, looking out at whatever lay beyond the glass, his shoulders very straight and very still.
Nobody spoke.
She hadn’t moved. She was still standing where he’d left her, chin still up, and I couldn’t tell from this angle whether she was breathing hard or not. I couldn’t tell anything from this angle. I deliberately didn’t try.
