Arthur’s voice, when it came, was very quiet.
“We ride within the hour.”
-GUIN-
The room went quiet in the way places do right before something terrible happens.
I didn’t look at Corvin. I couldn’t. But I felt him beside me, felt the shift in his posture. He didn’t want to be taken to the dungeon. And, fuck, neither did I. We’d both tasted freedom. And what was more, we’d tasted ittogether. And now that freedom was threatened.
I looked at Corvin then. Just once. Just for a second.
His amber eyes found mine, and everything inside that glance was compressed down to its thinnest possible form:I’m sorry.
I looked at Arthur.
Then I looked back at the door before my eyes naturally sought out Corvin once more. And when he looked at me, the message was clear.
Don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’re planning... don’t.
I’d have said the same myself if the situation were reversed. I’d have said the same because it was the smart play to make. We were outmanned, outflanked, and the look on Arthur’s face was the kind that meant he was no longer capable of negotiating.
I stepped forward anyway.
The cold seeped up through the floor, just like it always did when I called on my magic. It seeped through the soles of my feet and up through my legs, and when it reached my chest, it stopped being cold and began to be something else. Something that was alive and something that was angry.
The window frosted over, the rushes on the floor stiffened and cracked beneath the sudden sheet of ice that spread out from me like rings on the surface of still water, moving quickly.
Agravaine let Corvin go and launched himself at me.
The ice took his feet. He went down hard, armor cracking against the frozen floor, but I was already moving: spinning, pulling the cold with me, shaping it. A wall of frost erupted between me and the nearest blade that was moving in my direction. I didn’t notice when the door had opened, but now the knights were entering the room, and they could see exactly what was happening. Ice bloomed across the crossbeams overhead as icicles dropped like teeth. The room turned pale, gleaming silver.
“Take her alive.” Arthur’s voice sounded, cutting through the chaos. “No one harms her.No one.”
I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t say why, only that it felt like I’d die if I stopped, and I’d already come close enough to death enough times already. Well, if Arthur’s dagger at my throat was anything to go by. I sent a wave of ice at the knights closing in from the left. Gawain slid back against a table. Gareth held up a hand, and warmth poured out in a shimmer of fire magic. I was reminded of a time at Camelot when we’d sparred together. But then there had existed nothing between us but a friendly competitiveness. This was anything but. For a moment, it was just us, pushing against each other, Gareth’s warmth and my cold, and then I pushed harder, and my cold won.
Arthur himself came for me then.
Of course he did.
He caught my arm, and I wrenched away from him, but he was stronger than I was and held onto me easily. For a second or more, we just stared at each other. But then he tried to get a better grip on me, so I swirled around and drove my elbow back, feeling it connect with what I assumed was his stomach because I heard his breath leave him. I took one step towards Corvin, who was doing his best against Percival and Tristan. Then another step.
Then a hand closed on my shoulder and spun me around, and I had one instant to see Lance before his dagger pressed flat against my throat.
Not the blade. The flat. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.
He was just stopping me.
And with that expression in his eyes, he did.
My power fell out from under me, like I’d walked through a trapdoor. The cold didn’t go anywhere; at least, it didn’t go anywhere fast, but I stopped feeding it all the same. And when Istopped feeding it, it stopped moving forward, and the room was just there, in its glittering destruction of ice, and everyone was breathing very hard.
“Stop,” Lance said.
One word. Low. There was nothing dramatic in it.
My pulse was in my ears while the dagger rested cool and unmoving at my throat. His eyes were locked on mine, and they were darker than I remembered them ever being, almost black in the poor light of the room. There was something in them that wasn’t anger, but I didn’t know what it was.
