Ears ringing with the sound of the crowd’s cheers, body white-hot with rage, Nyneve realized Mordred was riding toward the stands. Without a saddle, his blackened mail nearly disappeared into Rook’s coat. Only once he was a few steps awaydid Nyneve realize her hair ribbon was still looped around the hilt of his sword.
Her heart did a strange thing, an unwanted ache awakening low in her belly. Mordred met her gaze, his mouth moving into a slow, predatory smile that made her pulse slip to the apex of her thighs. When he reached the stands, twenty-some handkerchiefs suddenly appeared, dotting the air like doves. Nyneve, it seemed, was the sole woman not offering a token over the railing, hoping to be chosen.
And yet Mordred only had eyes for her.
“Lady Nyneve,” he said, too loud, bowing his head with false modesty. “It seems that yet again, your token brings me good tidings.” His gaze met hers, eyes gleaming with wickedness.
For once in her life, Nyneve was utterly speechless, so she just stared at him—at his broad chest heaving beneath his mail, the strong line of his shoulders, the gloved hands closed around his horse’s reins. Then Mordred moved suddenly, making her jump, and she noticed something glinting silver in his hands.
“For you,” he murmured, quieter now, offering her the knife that Lancelot had tried to kill him with.
She stared at him in disbelief and gathering rage, her fingers curling into fists. “Sir Mordred,” she stammered, falling back to maidenly shyness as a last resort.
But the godsdamned knight reached toward the railing, taking one of her hands in his. Despite his leather gloves that kept their skin from touching, just the warmth of his hand sent fire racing through her entire being. She found herself incapable of commanding her own body as her arm willingly extended, the knight bringing her fingers to his mouth.
Her throat closed as he brushed his lips against the skin of her knuckles—the lightest touch and yet her entire body keened. Every single stitch of her garments pressed hot against her flesh, suddenly too tight for her to breathe. When Mordred withdrew,she drew in a gulp of damp air. But then he turned her palm over—why in the name of the gods was her body so bloodypliantfor him?—and placed Lancelot’s knife in her open palm.
“A jewel,” Mordred told her, eyes capturing hers, the curve of his mouth cruel, “for a jewel.”
And then he wheeled Rook away, cantering off the field without looking back, all the proffered tokens hanging limp and heavy with mist. Nyneve’s blood pounded relentlessly in her ears as she looked down at her hand and the mud-stained knife lying between her fingers.
A threat, a declaration: “If the realm’s best knight cannot kill me, what chance doyoustand, little witch?” And yet the people around her—even a man who appeared to be a wealthy merchant and a highborn woman—all looked at her with what she supposed was jealousy. To avoid further attention, Nyneve ducked her chin to her chest and closed her hand around the knife.
“Mordred’s always interested in the freshest flesh,” a man laughed from farther up in the stands. “She’s just arrived at court, I hear.”
Nyneve bit down on her tongue and reminded herself she couldn’t pivot on her heel and throw the knife at him. Undoubtedly, with her skill, it would lodge itself in his throat, and then her chance to prove she deserved to have her magic unbound and her future restored would evaporate.
Instead, she clenched her jaw and did her best to slip through the crowd and disappear.
The rains returned just after Mordred and Lancelot’s match, forcing another early end to the day’s tourney. Nyneve worked beside Galen and Elaine to attend to pressing injuries and then check in on a few patients with ongoing issues. All of Camelot was buzzing with Merlin’s return and the exciting duel. By the time she dropped into a worn chair in their cottage, she was utterly spent. She didn’t want to hear anything about the famed sorcerer or godsdamnedMordredever again.
“Nyneve,” Galen called as he came through the door, having stayed behind to speak with a herald he appeared to be friendly with, “the day’s not over yet, I fear.”
She answered with a wordless groan, burying her face in her hands, elbows propped up on the wide worktable.
“There’s a banquet tonight,” the physician continued, sounding equally overjoyed about such a prospect.
She peeked at him between splayed fingers as he unpacked his linen bundle of herbs. “There is always a fucking banquet, Galen,” she moaned. The desolation in her voice made the physician burst into laughter.
“You agreed to court life, Lady Nyneve,” he told her, glancing over his shoulder with one bushy brow raised high. “In fact, you sought it out.”
She sat back with a sigh, her feet aching. For a moment, she almost told Galen everything: the Druids and the binding, the Elders and Uccu’s son. How easy it would be to unburden herself to the man who was so prickly on the outside, unveiling his feather-soft interior only to his chosen few. No one had admired and nurtured her gifts like Galen did—not since Priestess Eirys. Something in her chest ached.
But then Elaine came through the door, a basket of Galen’s tools tucked under her arm, and Nyneve swallowed back the words. When Elaine and Galen looked at her, they did not see amonster. A murderer. A half-bound creature that was a danger to everyone around her.
And Nyneve desperately wanted to keep it that way. “I suppose I did,” she replied unconvincingly. She sighed as Elaine, looking similarly tired, collapsed into a chair at the other end of the table. “When does this banquet begin?”
“Do not become overly excited,” Galen replied dryly, leaning back against the hulking herb cabinet, “but we are to make our way to the queen’s courtyard at twilight.”
Nyneve glanced outside to find dusk was rapidly approaching. She didn’t bother holding back another dramatic groan.
Elaine laughed in commiseration. “What if I stayed and helped you with your hair?” the healer offered, absent-mindedly fiddling with the small wooden cross of the Resurrected God she always wore around her neck.
“Gods, do you really want to take up that mantle?” Nyneve replied, examining the length of her messy, tangled braid. Then she peered at Elaine, letting out a sigh. “You’ve been with us nearly the entire day, and just look at you. Fresh as a daisy.”
It was true. Elaine looked tired, surely, but her pale lilac kirtle was free of mud, her hair hanging in neat, shimmering lengths despite the mist.
“All the more reason to let me help,” the healer said brightly, leaning both elbows onto the table. “Might you show me how to do that one style you often wear, with your hair braided around your crown?”
