“Mordred?” Guinevere asked, just as a figure stepped out onto the trail ahead. He reined Rook to a halt at her side. When he looked over his shoulder, Palamedes and Gawain were nowhere to be found. Dread curled in his gut.
“We mean the mortal queen no harm,” came a slinking, self-amused voice.
Mordred’s heart thudded thickly just once, and then the distant figure suddenly stood only a few paces in front of him. Tall and willowy, draped in fine midnight-blue silks dappled with embroidery that looked less like thread and more like starlight, they held up an impossibly thin piece of parchment, glassine as a beetle’s wing.
Only a courier, but Mordred refused to let himself feel any relief. Instead, he closed his legs around Rook, asking the warhorse to step forward. The destrier obliged, but he could feel Rook’s muscles bunch and coil, ready to strike with a single command.
“Your presence is requested in three days’ time,” the courier said, sweeping into a low, mocking bow, “at the Nos Galan Haf Fete.” Mordred examined the courier’s angular features, wide black eyes, and fine silvery hair as they extended a slim handwith a flourish, the parchment held between two long fingers. Mordred did not dare dismount.
“I cannot accept,” he replied, keeping his voice even. “Not when the High Court tests the peace I brokered with arrows.”
The courier glanced up, black eyes meeting Mordred’s. “And that is precisely why youmustaccept, changeling,” they said, baring sharp teeth. “Or the High Court fears the future holds far worse things than a single arrow.”
Mordred clenched his jaw, hands closing tightly around Rook’s reins. His mind raced to the message that had been attached to last night’s arrow, warning against Arthur’s intended advancements into the northwest—long a stronghold of the Fair Folk and the Cymry people, who lived mostly peaceably alongside each other.
To his horror, Guinevere’s voice broke the silence. “The Court gives Camelot little time to reply to its demands,” the queen said, her tone icy. “And now you demand the attendance of the Queen’s Champion, nonetheless.”
The courier’s fathomless gaze turned to Guinevere, cruel amusement creasing their features. “The Queen’s Champion,” they repeated in a snarl, “was the High Court’s knight first. As such, he is bound to our rules. His presence is requested.”
Before Guinevere could speak, Mordred cocked a brow, flipping his hold on his blade’s hilt. “Strange,” he said in a low, dangerous tone. “This does not much feel like a request.”
But the courier held strong, baring their teeth in an awful smile. Their gaze flicked to Guinevere. “Perhaps the mortal queen might like to attend as well?”
Mordred was surprised by the spike of fear that slid between his ribs at the thought of anything happening to Guinevere. She went stiff at his side, the sound of her pounding blood suddenly filling his ears. The courier threw their head back, sniffing the air like a dog, before their features broke into a wide, eerie smile.
“The High Court would not dare,” Mordred said, though he was not quite sure he believed it. In his peripheral vision, he saw Guinevere straighten her shoulders in that specific way of hers, as clear a tell as a knight reaching for the pommel of his blade. His chest tightened. He could not let this encounter degenerate any further.
The courier stepped closer, their beetle-black eyes unblinking, impossibly long fingers curling beneath the wide sleeves of their cloak. “It need not be the mortal queen,” they replied, “but the Court demands you bring a mortal of Camelot. A guest of honor, you see.”
Despite the unnatural chill, a bead of sweat trickled down Mordred’s back. He could strike the courier down, he knew. But such violence was far more likely to start the war than anything else.
And that was, after all, the entire reason Mordred bothered with the mortal king and his court, the constant and exhausting attempt to build power in two opposing worlds. Because war meant spilling his blood on killing fields. It meant the end of him, and he rather liked being alive. He liked the cool autumn nights, and the smell of woodsmoke, and the low, raspy laugh of a lover, and the way mortals constantly surprised him, for better or for worse. He liked mead and horses and fighting and fucking andliving.
So, Mordred took a deep breath, the scent of petrichor and ancient stone thick in his nose. “I accept,” he said, reaching one hand forward for the parchment. “Under the condition no further hostilities occur between now and the fete.”
The courier edged forward, insect-like eyes watching his every breath. For a moment, it seemed as though the entire forest hung still, and then Mordred’s fingers closed around the parchment. He leaned back in his saddle, tucked it into hisaketon, and then firmly backed Rook up five steps, stopping just at the edge of the faerie mist.
“We cannot make such promises,” the courier said, their long-fingered hands curling into claws at their sides. “But your acceptance of this invitation fosters goodwill.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Goodwill had no currency among the Fey. “Tell your High Court,” he snarled, letting his glamour drop, his pitch-dark aura flickering into life around him, “not to harm Camelot’s throne or its people.”
Anyone else might have been at least startled, if not intimidated. But the courier just held their ground, that unsettling smile intact on their thin, angular face.
“Oh, you poor, foolish changeling,” the courier hissed. “It isyourcourt, too, no matter how much you might wish it were not.” Their silks rippled, and the shadows in the woods seemed to deepen like a widening maw. Mordred’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, but then the courier was gone. He breathed a sigh of relief that the forest mirrored, the birdsong and sunlight returning.
“Are you all right?” Guinevere asked Mordred, her face white with fear. On the reins, her hands shook even harder than they had earlier.
Palamedes and Gawain ambled up to them, completely oblivious, the latter busy rambling about a girl he had kissed in a clear bid to make the former jealous.
“Fine,” Mordred said with a wave of his hand, drawing in a deep breath that smelled of sun-warmed loam and just-bloomed honeysuckle. Guinevere drew even with Rook, peering up at him, her brow furrowed beneath her circlet. “Well, no. Not truly. I am worried, Guin. Increasing hostility from the Fey does not bode well. Not if we wish to avoid a war that no one will win.”
Guinevere went even paler, and Gawain stopped talking abruptly, noticing the change in the atmosphere. Mordredwould have rather kept the group on simpler, lighter topics, but there was no disguising his upset from the queen. The tenuous peace he had struck last autumn with the High Court had stumbled, and he didn’t even knowwhy.
“I will go,” Guinevere said, holding herself straighter. “I dare not ask another to go beneath the hill in my place. I am Camelot’s queen.”
Mordred swallowed hard, his heart in his throat. “Of course, Your Highness,” he replied with a nod of his head.
The four of them emerged on the other side of the swathe of forest to a sweeping vista of fens and low brush. Dark clouds gathered in the east, promising a storm.
