“Thank you,” she managed, “for escorting me home, Sir Mordred.”
“The pleasure,” he purred, “is mine, my lady.” He did not bother to hide the bloodlust from his tone.
Galen kept no such wardings around the cottage. The line of iron and rowan was new, no doubt placed by the Druid girl fresh from the wilds.
But he was a changeling who had endured more than ten summers at court. He had come to know the bite of iron, the constant pain, the glamour that weighed him down at all times, hiding the point of his ears and the unnatural sharpness of his cheekbones and his towering height.
Agony was Mordred’s bedfellow. He held the stretched syllables of its name in his mouth far more often than any lover’s. If Nyneve Or’Afon thought she could get to the truth of him with pain, she would have to try much,muchharder.
Chapter Seven
Nyneve
Two Weeks Later
Nyneve let out a sigh as she finished bandaging the young man’s arm to his chest. “Please keep the binding on,” she advised, stepping back and looking into his eyes. “Let it heal.”
He pouted at her. “But the tournament?—”
“There will be another,” she told him brightly, rolling up the unused linen bandaging. “And it seems unlikely you’ll ever win a match if that shoulder of yours fails to heal properly.”
He still looked sullen, gone pale beneath his freckles, too young to be injured like this by meaningless violence. Nyneve pushed her curls away from her forehead with the flat of her arm, growing warm in the tent beside the tournament field. The smell of lye soap and herbs tickled her nose, a stark contrast to the festival grounds outside, rich with noble ladies’ expensive perfumes, roasted chestnuts, and sun-warmed soil.
“Go on now,” she encouraged him with a flex of her wrist, feeling like an old maid. “I’m sure if you sit in the stands and watch, you’ll pick up a few techniques.”
The young man brightened then and slipped down from the long, worn table, striding toward the tent’s opening with newfound purpose. She watched him go, pausing for a moment. During the past few weeks, she’d patched up more squires than she could count. When would she feel her scales begin to tip, the weight of all this guilt lessening?
Tears pushed at the back of her eyes, so Nyneve shook her head to dispel the tangled thoughts. Eager for a distraction, she wiped down the table with a damp cloth before straightening the herbal stores, which Galen had left stacked precariously on a trunk off to the side. She had been delighted to find they worked well together, and that Galen was an absolute wealth of knowledge. Before Nyneve brought it up herself, he had mentioned that for years, he’d watched healers and midwives administer the majority of care. But then Arthur’s idea of court physicians—who were conveniently always male—took root.
“As long as the Pendragons reign,” he’d said mildly one evening by the fire, “this land will hold on to the Roman ways, I think.”
She didn’t disagree, though at the time, she’d only offered a firm nod. Galen’s place in Camelot was undeniable, a deeply rooted position; he could say things that would be treason coming out of her mouth. But she liked the older man, liked all the compassion he hid beneath his gruff exterior, liked the way that he respected her existing knowledge but was also eager to help her learn more. If he suspected she’d been Druid-trained, that she’d come from somewhere other than a nunnery, he hadn’t said a word.
Nyneve reached for her chipped porcelain cup, taking a long pull of the water she’d collected from the river and boiled herself. She was distrustful of Camelot’s aqueduct system, adopted from the Roman conquerors—even though that very same blood ran in her veins.
“Nyneve,” came Galen’s voice. She turned to find him entering the tent, his face red from the sun and unseasonal heat. “Why don’t you take a break? Go watch the jousting. Throw a flower at a knight or whatever it is maidens are supposed to do.”
She set her cup down and smiled at him. “I did promise someone a token,” she replied, thinking of that evening in the stable a fortnight ago with Sir Mordred. She’d thought it strange—their meeting in the forest, then the stable, both times the air charged with a peculiar intensity. A dangerous, albeit necessary, thing to lure him across the iron and rowan line by Galen’s cottage.
It’d been a relief to confirm he was just another man. Sir Mordred had no need of faerie wiles; he had plenty of his own as a mere mortal. Not that Nyneve truly thought a member of the Fair Folk would be able to embed themselves into the center of Camelot’s court, but she had to be sure. Her future depended on it—depended on not losing control again, and on the detailed letters she sent back to the Elders about the state of affairs in Camelot. The binding in her chest twinged painfully at the thought.
“Did we, now?” Galen grumbled. “Barely a fortnight, and you’re willing to abandon poor old Galen?—”
“Easy,” Nyneve laughed, holding up her hands. “I’m participating in court life the way a young noblewoman should. Nothing more.”
She’d found that she could speak bluntly to him like this, just as she did at home with the Druids—though she’d also quickly discovered she couldnotspeak to the majority of Camelot’s men in the same way. Distantly, she recognized Mordred had not fallen into that majority, at least not that night in the stables. Nyneve tried not to think about it. About him.
“You’re a pretty lass,” Galen said, crouching down to dig through the basket of bandages. “Someone was bound to notice.”
“Against my best efforts,” Nyneve replied, which earned a rich belly laugh from the physician.
“Go, Nyneve,” Galen said when he straightened, shooing her out of the tent like she had the would-be knight just a few moments ago. “Enjoy watching grown men attempt to kill each other with large, heavy sticks, because evidently Camelot does not believe you and I have enough work on our hands as it is.”
Nyneve let loose a genuine cackle, smoothing the front of her skirts. There was a little dust around her hem, but that was the case for nearly everyone out at the tournament. She’d managed not to get blood on the new gown, which filled her with relief.
Following King Arthur’s formal approval of Nyneve’s wardship, the queen had commissioned two new gowns for the Druid girl. Both were nicer than anything Nyneve had ever owned. Though the Druids of the Deceangli peoples enjoyed finery, she’d personally never had the coin or the social capital to acquire such things. She’d always told herself she preferred practical items, but there was no denying the joy she derived from the moss-green linen gown, fitted in the bodice with an elegantly flared skirt. The queen had wisely not opted for the long trumpet sleeves that were in style at the moment, instead choosing fitted cuffs that wouldn’t interfere with Nyneve’s work.
She swept her hair off her neck, tying it with a matching ribbon, and reached into her pockets for a handkerchief to blot away sweat. Then, with a final wave to Galen, she left the tent and wandered into the sunshine. The large fields at Camelot’s feet were specifically reserved for these festivals and tournaments, which she found interesting. The meadow was shorn short, the trees uprooted, any rivulets of rainwater filled in with sand or stone. In contrast, the places reserved for ceremony by the Druids were sacred groves, left as untouched as possible, cool and green and damp.
