She wanted to confront her Fate and see if she would tumble into its gaping maw or best the great beast like a heroine of old.
As she rode out of the fens and into the farmland, a few folks raised their heads from tilling and planting, staring at her with wide eyes. She must be quite a sight, she knew—an enormous warhorse commanded by a girl with dirt on her cheeks and twigs in her unraveling braid. A quieter entrance might havebeen better, shuffling through the gates alongside the traveling merchants and laden carts and barefoot, unruly children.
But the Druid girl had never been very good at making herself small.
The destrier galloped right up to the gates, only wheeling on its hindquarters at the last moment, raising its front legs from the ground. She grabbed a handful of its braided mane and just barely managed to keep her seat. The massive creature’s hooves slammed back down onto the dirt like a challenge.
The two guards at the gate exchanged a long glance before one stepped forward, hand sliding to the pommel of his sword. “State your business in Camelot,” he commanded.
It was not lost on the Druid girl that he did not address her as “my lady.” Flipping her long braid over her shoulder, she pulled the seal from beneath her cloak, brandishing it like a weapon. The metal winked in the sun, bright as the dawn.
“I am Nyneve Or’Afon,” the Druid girl announced, pleased—and a little surprised—at the way her voice rang out in the clear morning. “My father, Geraint Or’Afon, helped put King Arthur on his throne. I seek a place at court, as is my due.”
The guard peered at the seal and then startled, shifting away from her. “Apologies, my lady,” he said, sweeping into a low bow. “Your traveling clothes concealed your noble birth.”
Nyneve bit down on her tongue, forcing herself to smile demurely and gaze at the ground. “My horse spooked,” she explained in that soft, trembling voice she’d cultivated for situations such as these. “A kind knight in a hunting party offered me his mount, though I fear it is unused to a simple lady rider like myself, and it bolted.” She stroked the destrier’s arched, muscled neck with her fingertips, hoping it did not take offense to her falsehoods.
The second guard—older, with the bearing of a soldier—stepped forward. “Consider yourself lucky this horse broughtyou to the gates,” he said, taking hold of the destrier’s reins. “’Tis no mount for a woman.”
“Lucky indeed,” Nyneve agreed, though her face heated at his words, her fury rattling in its cage. She slipped down from the saddle, careful to ensure her skirts kept her legs covered. “I owe much gratitude to the knight. I’m afraid all the excitement flustered me and I did not manage to catch his name.”
That ancient yearning slunk out from beneath her breastbone. She didn’t need to know his name, Nyneve realized. She’d know him by his eyes, by that full mouth, by the line of his powerful shoulders. By the sound of his voice, dark and rich as an autumnal night.
She gritted her teeth against the oddly romantic thoughts, rising unbidden from the strangest corners of her being. The younger guard offered Nyneve his arm, which she took gratefully. Again, the two guards exchanged a glance. She tried to hide how keenly she watched them, unsettled by their own unease.
The older guard cleared his throat and led the destrier forward, waving to the soldiers atop the gate with one hand. The towering, iron-latched gates began to creak open. Nyneve let out a sigh of relief.
“A word to the wise, my lady,” the older guard said, keeping his voice low as the four of them walked toward the threshold of the great city, into the mouth of Nyneve’s destiny.
“Yes?” she asked, turning toward the guard. The pain in her ankle hammered her mind with each step.
“My lady may not wish to be associated with the knight whom this mount belongs to,” he said, fatherly now, his kindness genuine, as far as she could surmise. “If you seek a marriage match, I mean.”
Nyneve swallowed down her rage. She could gallop a monstrous destrier to the very gates of this city, rein it in withone hand, and display the seal of her once-great house, andstillthe first thing on this guard’s mind was her marriage options. Evidently, limping on an injured ankle was a better option than riding the destrier of a knight she shouldn’t be associated with—all for the sake of some nebulous future husband.
“Of course,” she said through clenched teeth. “But I still wish to thank him, you see.” And she wanted to know the name of the enemy she may have made.
No knight of the Round Table would publicly refute her story of assisting a hapless maiden—as long as she told the story first. But still, she’d made a choice. The tree of her Fate had borne another limb, and she’d be a fool not to know the names etched into its bark.
The guards led Nyneve into a vestibule of sorts—a wide space between the outer wall and the first inner one—which was old and made of stone, not preserved wood reinforced with wrought iron. They’d barely stepped inside before the gates began to swing closed. The air felt dry and overly warm, prickling her lungs. She tried not to flinch when she heard the locks latch, feeling too much like a mythic stag cornered by a mortal man’s slathering hounds.
“My lady,” the older guard said, his mouth turned down into a frown, “the knight you wish to thank is Sir Mordred.”
Even with her pained ankle supported by the strength of a young guard, Nyneve faltered. Clouds gobbled up the sunlight, pitching the courtyard into gloom. Her stomach fluttered as she bit down on her tongue and straightened.
“Thank you, Sir Guard,” she said in a harsh exhale, her heart throwing itself against her ribs. Sweat pricked her palms, and she forced breath into her lungs. So she’d managed to steal a horse from not justanyknight of the Round Table, but Sir Mordred Pendragon.
King Arthur’s bastard son, who had been prophesied by the great sorcerer Merlin to destroy the very city within whose walls she now stood.
The noble seal dangling from the chain about her throat afforded Nyneve Or’Afon many things she was not used to—not from this kind of place, all orderly and proper on the outside but ruled by conquest and violence at its bloody, beating heart. The older guard took Sir Mordred’s destrier back to the livery, while the younger man left his post to escort Nyneve to the castle.
To an audience with thequeen.
“I do not wish to cause trouble for Her Highness,” she demurred even as the guard continued up the wide, cobblestoned path. Nyneve hadn’t been expecting this—most petitions were made to one of the king’s men. It was the Roman-Briton Pendragon line her family held strong connections to, not the queen’s Moorish-Cymraes dynasty.
And it was to the king and his men whom she’d prepared herself to present a tale of why a noble girl had disappeared into the wilds only to return a decade later, seeking the comforts of the citadel and her family name.
“’Tis no trouble,” the guard reassured her kindly. “The queen agreed to take on petitions today. We have court visitors, you see, whom the king wished to entertain properly with a good hunt.”
