I crouched at the water’s edge to get a better look.
The shapes behind me moved. Not toward me exactly, but also not away. It was more like they were breathing, as if whatever lived in that dark place was simply existing, unaware of the window it had opened in the reflection. Or aware of it, but indifferent.
I’d traveled every road in Logres. I knew the Thornwood at midwinter, knew the black gorge country east of Penitent’s Range, knew the sulfur flats where nothing grew and the ground cracked open in seams that glowed faintly orange. This was none of those places. So what in the hell was reflected above me?
I reached toward the surface of the lake. As if in response, the darkness shifted and then it was gone. All that remained was the outline of Thornhallow Forest just behind me, where it should have been. I stood up again and shook my head. Whatever I’d just witnessed, it didn’t make any blasted sense. Of course, this was an enchanted lake, so perhaps it was to be expected.
Well, never mind. Now it was time to address the reason I’d come here, and that reason had nothing to do with strange shadows. I took a deep breath, but I didn’t call out. There was no point. She’d known I was coming from the moment I’d left Camelot. Probably since I’d woken at two in the morning and lain on my back in the dark, feeling the dragon breathe, thinking about violet eyes and white hair and the particular way she’d looked at me before I knew what she was.
The surface of the water rippled.
Thenshewas standing there, floating on the water.
Nimue. The Lady of the Lake.
The dragon exhaled inside me.
Reverence. That was what this feeling was. Or, at least, it was the closest thing to reverence I’d felt from the beast in years. And the dragon’s reverence toward this woman, this goddess, this mother of my biggest enemy, irritated me more than I could say.
I held my ground at the shore and looked at her. And then I saw it: the shape of her jaw, the way her mouth was slightly fuller at the lower lip. I saw the high architecture of her cheekbones, both severe and elegant all at once. And that particular qualityof the light that seemed to gather rather than reflect off her skin. Then there was the shape of her eyes and the tilt of her nose. I’d been staring at a very similar face for months. Across the training yard, across a table in the Great Hall, in the war room, on horseback, the list went on. And now that face, that beautiful fucking face, was in my dungeon. Where it belonged. Whereshebelonged.
The tightness in my chest had nothing to do with the dragon.
“Arthur.” Nimue’s voice moved across the lake’s surface without disturbing it. Three layers deep, it was like listening to a chord played on an instrument. She looked at me in a way that was both patient and absorbing.
The dragon shifted, though not in an aggressive sort of way. This was something slower than that, more of an acknowledgment really. That acknowledgment surprised me. Whatever history existed between the creature in my bloodline and the woman standing on the water, it predated me by centuries and would survive me the same way.
“You are angry.”
No, I was beyond angry. I didn’t have the word for what I was standing in. Anger was a fire you could bank and direct, but this was something that had burned cold for days and showed no sign of burning out. It was the king’s fury and the dragon’s possessiveness combined.
“You knew,” I said.
She didn’t flinch, didn’t calculate, didn’t offer me the sliding, diplomatic deflections from men who feared me. But Nimue feared nothing and no one, so I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“You knew who she was.” Each word was cut to its exact weight. “You knew she was an enemy inside Camelot’s walls, lying to my face while feeding secrets to my enemy.” I paused. “And yet you said nothing.”
“I did not know the entire time.” Nimue’s hair drifted around her shoulders, though no wind touched the lake. “I suspected that my daughter could be near. But suspicions are not the same as facts.”
“They’re close enough that you should have told me.”
“I will not apologize to you.”
“I didn’t ask for an apology.”
“You came here expecting one.” She looked at me the way deep things look at surface things. “You came here expecting my guilt. Or supplication, perhaps. The mother of the spy, laying herself open to your mercy.” She let that sit for a moment. “But I am not a subject of your mercy, Arthur. I am not a subject of yours at all.”
“I thought—”
“—my reasons for what I did, for the knowledge I kept, predate you.” Her voice dropped again, and that was where the grief was, there in the lower tone, smooth and patient but with something hard underneath it. “Those reasons predate your reign, and they predate your birth. They predate this kingdom and all the men who have come before you.” Those ripple-shaped irises moved over my face, and there was no amount of regret in them at all. “There are forces at work in Logres that you do not understand, Arthur. Guinevere is part of those forces. She is part ofsomething largerthat exists beyond the boundary of your wounded pride.”
My hand tightened on Caliburn.
“Mywounded pridehas an army,” I spat the words back at her. “Her ‘something larger’ has a cell.”
Nimue stepped forward, and the distance between us shrank as she studied me for a long moment. The light shifted beneath her skin, then the lake trembled. Not on the surface: the trembling was deeper, something beneath the water that moved, in the same way earthquakes move before they arrive. Vibrationstraveled outward from the point where Nimue stood, and where the water met the shore, it pressed forward, then receded, then pressed again, like the lake was breathing.
I assumed it was her anger. Or perhaps her fear?
