“I daresay I will never forget your taste, Lady Nyneve,” Mordred murmured, voice pitch-dark and silken. His wordsbuzzed in her skull like bees in a hive. By the time she managed to capture them between her hands, Mordred had straightened.
“Do not,” he warned, cold as the first frost now, though that didn’t stop the unwanted heat in her belly, “try to send a message like that one again.”
Anger sent her magic thrashing against the binding, bringing Nyneve back to herself. “Do not,” she replied, dousing his wound in too much tincture with a sneer, “tell me what I can and cannot do.”
The harsh smell of distilled rosemary pierced her nose. Nyneveknewit hurt. She’d used this same tincture on her own open wounds before, and as helpful as it was, the stinging was monstrous. But Mordred offered her no pained wince or startled gasp. Instead, he captured her gaze again, his mouth parting to release a low, hoarse groan that sounded much more like pleasure than pain.
She fuckinghatedhim.
“Oh, Lady Nyneve,” he whispered in a tone better suited to secret lovers than clandestine threats, “I would never dare such a thing.” He pulled away from her, sitting up straight, taller than her even when seated. She lifted her chin to meet his gaze, her free hand clenching into a fist at her side. “If you did precisely as I commanded, we would have no quarrel, would we?”
Confusion skittered down her spine. She leaned away from him, her brow furrowing, but his body followed hers, his torso tilting forward as though some invisible string tied them together.
“And I do,” Mordred said, those undeniably beautiful lips curling into something feral, “so enjoy when we quarrel. I fear I would start a war just for the sake of finding myself between your thighs again, your blade pressed to my neck.”
Nyneve stood there, her mouth half-open, her heart thundering against her ribs. Fire flooded her belly, licking ather bones, threatening to consume her entirely. In a different, madder world, she might have leaned forward and kissed him until the only godsdamned word he knew was her name, repeated over and over again like worship.
But that was not the world either of them occupied. Instead, the world they belonged to broke the lingering, keening moment down the center with a sudden commotion in the main hallway of Camelot’s castle. Mordred’s attention tore away from her, leaving her strangely cold in its absence, and she found her gaze following his.
She would have liked to stitch his wound closed, but Mordred was already moving, sliding down from the table with unearthly grace. Without thinking, Nyneve followed him, stalking his footsteps as the faerie-bound knight strode through the chamber and into the grand receiving hall.
Without a word or even an acknowledgment of the other, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the archway, watching some kind of procession move through the castle’s main gate. The banners hanging from the cavernous ceiling fluttered in the spring breeze, like the pale dragons on their blood-red backgrounds were coming to life, ready to take flight and tear at throats until little remained but ribboning flesh.
Nyneve’s breath hitched at the same time Mordred’s did. At the end of the procession of brown-cloaked men—monks, she realized, and from the cross symbol hanging from their necks, likely Christian, too—was a tall, slender, dark-haired man. Wrinkles lined his face, but he had an air of vicious youth, an unnatural liveliness to him that made Nyneve’s skin crawl.
“It cannot be,” Mordred whispered hollowly at her side. The moment stretched long and unwieldy. She realized with a bolt of understanding that the terrifying, powerful knight wasafraid. Her heart thudded against her ribs, palms gone damp with anticipation.
She watched wordlessly as King Arthur appeared from the far end of the hall, Guinevere at his side. Though the king was in his everyday regalia, a cloak on his shoulders and a crown atop his head, the queen was dressed much more simply in a plain riding habit, her boots still muddy.
“My king,” the tall, dark-haired man of an utterly indeterminable age exclaimed, his rich voice filling the hall. “I have returned to you bearing great news.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said, his tone vibrating with a fathomless kind of joy that Nyneve didn’t think she’d ever known. “Have you found the Cauldron?”
Merlin—the great, famed sorcerer who’d helped Arthur attain his throne, who’d built Camelot’s great walls, who’d laid the foundation of protective spellwork that Nyneve felt with every step she took in this place—knelt before the mortal king with a flourish.
“My lord,” he said, tilting his head back, a slant of sunlight crowning him in gold. “I do not have the Cauldron, but I bring you something far greater.”
The entire hall seemed to go still, Nyneve holding her breath alongside Mordred and Guinevere and the servants and the guardsmen ringing the cloaked monks. For all the wardings her people had against the Greater Forces like Destiny and Death, thanks to their distaste for anything that could not be reasoned or bargained with, the Druid girl still felt Fate’s fingers strumming her Threads, each note vibrating in her bones.
“I do not understand,” Arthur said softly, the proud line of his shoulders drooping. Nyneve had the strangest feeling that the mighty king might weep right there in the middle of the entry hall, in front of all these people.
Alarm pricked her insides with white-hot needles. So Merlin had been seeking Cerridwen’s famed Cauldron, capable of resurrection and all kinds of healing? She swallowed hard.Objects of such power were not meant to be possessed by mortal men.
“No, my king,” Merlin said, rising to his feet. He gripped Arthur’s hands feverishly. Nyneve watched as Guinevere’s brow tightened, the queen’s mouth gone hard. “You do not understand yet. But you will.”
With a grand flourish, the sorcerer Nyneve had heard spoken of in whispers her whole life gestured to the monks. One of them stepped forward, revealing a book that appeared to be plated in gold, its cover inset with rare and impossible gems. Nyneve had never seen anything like it, even surrounded by all the Druids’ wonders.
“We do not need the Cauldron of some female goddess,” Merlin said, his eyes—a bizarre shade of violet-gray, she noticed—glittering with what could be excitement as easily as madness. “A forgotten relic of this land’s past, not its future.”
Nyneve’s heart thudded against her throat, something sour stirring low in her gut.
“No, my lord,” Merlin continued, shaking his head. In a flash of understanding, she realized the sorcerer was performing. Not just for Arthur but for everyone who had gathered in the castle’s mouth for this moment. She had a sudden and terrible knowledge that this moment might be remembered for a very, very long time.
“No goddess’s cauldron will bring you the rightful heir you so desperately seek,” the sorcerer said, one hand skimming over the front of the book that the monk held. “That you deserve.”
Nyneve caught Guinevere’s eyes skipping toward Mordred a moment before her own gaze did. He did not even possess the humanity to flinch at such an insult. His mask held steady—hard, angular, cold.
“Instead of a cauldron, my lord,” Merlin said, his voice raised as if he were speaking divine, immortal words, “we must seek theGrail. And I have brought you a mighty weapon worthy of such a quest.”
