Nyneve shrugged, her soft, pink lips closing around the edge of her dagger. “The queen did not think so,” she replied. She glanced up, her eyes sliding to meet his gaze. “I hardly think anyone else’s opinion matters.”
He resisted the urge to drop his glamour and bare his teeth at her. “Merlin is wildly powerful, but his ego is incredibly fragile,” he cautioned.
Nyneve faked a shocked look, pressing a hand to her blanket-draped breast. “A powerful man with a fragile ego?” she echoed, glaring at him. “What a novel combination! Whatever shall I do?”
Mordred wanted to reach across the table and grab her by the throat. Or perhaps graze his teeth across the swell of exposed skin on her bust to see if he could taste her pounding heart just beneath.
Instead, he swallowed, letting out a long breath. “My implication is not that Merlin is novel in this way, nor that you are not accustomed to such men,” he replied, fighting to keep his tone level. “I only mean that not only are you a newcomer to this court and its rules, but it is also safe to assume Merlin is tenfold more powerful than any other man you have ever met. He has done heinous things, Nyneve.”
Thatmade her finally stop slicing away at the apple and look up at him. Her eyes reflected the firelight at his back. “Why do you care?” she hissed, placing the half-eaten apple down on the table, though she still gripped the dagger with experienced fingers. “I seem to be quite a thorn in your side. What’s the worst that could happen? Merlin kills me? Hardly seems like you’ll mind.”
For reasons Mordred could not begin to understand, the beast caged inside his chest thrashed at the thought of Merlin taking Nyneve’s life. He bit down on his tongue, feeling faint and exhausted. “Forgive me for giving a damn,” he muttered, turningaway and clasping his hands behind his back. His mind reeled like a gull in the headwinds.
“You’re forgiven,” Nyneve purred. “But you shouldn’t expend so much energy on my account, Sir Mordred. That arrow this morning wasn’t intended to help you. Your gods must have been paying close attention.”
His blood sang in his veins, some old, wordless hymn he had never heard before but understood perfectly. With a rough exhale, Mordred turned back to face Nyneve. She had the tip of the dagger pointed down into the surface of the table, her shoulders held straight, all her attention leveled at him like a sword.
“It would not be difficult to influence Merlin into destroying you,” he replied in a similar tone, slinking with heat and not-so-veiled violence. Without thinking better of it, he prowled toward Nyneve, skirting the length of the table. He watched her visibly fight her instincts to run, holding fast to her position, like it was some sort of test or game.
“Oh?” she breathed, one brow arching. Her chest hitched with a sharp inhale, pulling the muslin away from her shoulders. The damp curls against her pale skin reminded him of pressed flowers. He took a deep breath, instantly regretting it, for damp river stone and summer meadow invaded his senses.
“And how difficult would it be to convince this court to be rid of its bastard child prophesied to bring about the End of Days?” Nyneve asked, tracing one finger down the edge of her dagger. His heart slammed against his sternum. “Especially with Merlin’s return. Surely Arthur will soon be restored, able to bear heirs not so marred by the words of the would-be kingdom’s most powerful sorcerer.”
He stalked closer to her, coming to a halt right beside her, one hand braced on the table, the other gripping the back of her chair. She should look afraid, Mordred thought, or perhapseven alarmed. Nyneve Or’Afon displayed neither emotion. If anything, she looked...
Delighted. Amused. A dog on a bone, deliriously happy to find it did not break under the first crush of teeth.
“And you have no other home to return to,” Nyneve added, her mouth twisting. “How many places might welcome a creature like you, I wonder?”
He leaned closer, desperate to know whether he might be welcome between her legs, in her mouth, beneath the thin fabric of her chemise, if his tongue might find a home in the damp, hot place between her full, lovely thighs. Desperately, Mordred buried those thoughts deep within his chest.
Instead, he cocked his head at her. “Perhaps,” he replied, drawing the word out long, “we might be of more use to each other alive, Lady Nyneve.”
She sat back, surprise filling her expression. “A truce?” she asked. “How boring.”
“You are a Druid sorceress,” Mordred said, his mind churning. “I am a faerie-bound knight. We both belong to the Old World, do we not? The very thing that this resurgence of the Christian faith seeks to destroy?”
Nyneve drew in a harsh breath, examining his face, as if looking for deceit. Then, to his shock, Lady Nyneve Or’Afon leaned forward andpouted. “But I have so enjoyed trying to kill you,” she murmured, eyes falling to his mouth.
His hand seemed to lift from the back of her chair of its own accord, fingers sliding around her jaw. “I know,” he replied, trying not to lose himself in the gooseflesh that scattered across her neck. Gods, he could not wait until Morgana helped him break this enchantment. Until then... “Imagine it, though. We would be near unstoppable together.”
She leaned into his touch like a starved cat. “I’d have much more time if I was not constantly trying to figure out how to be rid of you,” she admitted in a rough, hitched voice.
“Oh, Nyneve,” Mordred murmured, the pad of his thumb stroking her jawline. “I certainly do not wish for you to stop entirely. I only ask what we might gain if we seek our interests together.”
“Then let us make another bargain,” she said, a tremor running through her body.
“There is no need,” he replied, because if she was the one suggesting it, she likely already had the upper hand. “I am fool enough to take you at your word.”
“Well,” Nyneve whispered, leaning closer, her mouth just a breath from brushing his. “I’ve always loved stupid men.”
In truth, Mordred Pendragon, keeper of the Cynosbythrae, child of the gods, last of the Tuatha de Danann, would be an absolute fool for this woman if that was what she wished. Desire spread like wildfire through his body, lighting everything aflame until all he knew was unending heat.
“If you give me an opening,” he whispered as her hands moved to grip the front of his tunic, the steel of her dagger pressed into his chest, “I will destroy you, Nyneve Or’Afon.”
She laughed ferociously against his lips, mad as the Northmen rotting on the southern hill. “Do youpromise?”
Instead of words, Mordred kissed her, savoring the hitched sigh that left her mouth. She pushed up to stand, grappling the front of his tunic as she pulled their bodies closer together. Nyneve Or’Afon tasted like the flowers that sprang from killing fields. He drank her in, hands moving to her waist. Sliding her tongue into his mouth, Nyneve hooked a leg around his thigh, sweeping one arm out to clear a section of the table.
