She stared at him, their noses almost touching, her rosebud mouth parting. “But you won’t, will you, Mordred?” Nyneve asked in a slow drawl. He loved how his name sounded in her mouth. Like something better thanmore dread.
“Take this,” he grumbled, dropping one of the pebbles in Nyneve’s hand. “Do not lose it. You need a boon from the Gentry to leave.”
She eyed the pebble. “And you’re telling me this tiny little rock?—”
“Yes,” he hissed. “Enough to get you through the ward if you are at my side, but certainly not enough for you to fuck with me so thoroughly again.”
He had not meant to make the last admission. Her gaze abandoned the pebble in her palm, racing to capture his eyes.
Mordred straightened to his full height and glowered down at her. “Let us be gone from this place,” he said before she could speak, wrapping his fingers around her wrist and pulling her from the alcove. He saw too late that Oryane, the High King’s Councilor, had just entered the front chamber. Though he tried to pull Nyneve clear of the advisor, she tripped over his boot and bumped right into the tall, wiry Fey.
Oryane went still, eyes wide, and waved a slim hand. Nyneve’s glamour blinked out of existence. Mordred fought to hold on to the Cynosbythrae, but the darkness twisted, almost as though it were trying to follow Nyneve’s magic, despite the nonsense of such a thing. Shadows still clung to them, but in the torch-ringed hall, it hardly made a difference.
“You are not permitted to leave, on the king’s orders,” Oryane said, her words slow and measured. But she did not call for the guards, staring hard at Mordred. When neither he nor Nyneve moved, frozen to the spot, the advisor let out an exasperated sigh and called, “Guards!”
“Mordred,” Nyneve hissed at his side.
“I know,” he replied, backing toward the faerie door. There had already been four guards behind them, who now rushed forward, spears raised, in addition to the twenty or so racing in from the other corridors. “Oryane, there has been a misunderstanding. I need to return to Camelot immediately, and the mortal must come with me.”
The advisor drew herself up, the torchlight on her sharp cheekbones casting hollows into her face. She looked exhausted. The guards held perfectly still, all of their collective attention on Oryane.
“The king was clear in his orders, Mordred,” she said, more apologetically than he had been expecting.
“Oryane,” he said, raising one hand in a mollifying movement. “What does he plan to do with us?”
Mordred felt as though he and Nyneve were in the gaping maw of some forgotten creature, waiting to see whether it would clamp its jaws down upon them. The large, circular room held perfectly still. Even the dance of the torchlight seemed to slow.
Mordred flinched when Oryane raised her hand, but the advisor only massaged her temples. “He suspected you of subterfuge at first,” she said in an unusually gentle voice. “But now he has heard too many comments from visiting Gentry that the High Throne suitsyoubetter than it does him. He wishes to make an example of you.”
He could not curtail the scoff that left his mouth. “If all he wants is for me to get on my knees, pledge fealty, and swear Ihave no aspirations while he scolds me, fine. Let us be done with it.”
When Oryane held his gaze but did not speak, Mordred’s blood began to pound. Her pale eyes drifted to Nyneve. “No,” the advisor said. “You made a mistake, bringing this particular mortal. He wants to hurt her because he cannot hurt you, Mordred. Not in a way that matters.”
He clenched his jaw, understanding that it was likely Oryane herself who’d suggested such a method of punishment. Ragrshydan might think of it, but not for the reasons the advisor had just stated, and only Oryane would have noticed his lack of utter disdain for Nyneve. Clearly, she had mistaken it for something more.
At his side, he felt Nyneve’s power gathering around her like an incoming storm. He squeezed her wrist, hoping she understood: the High Court could not know such a power existed in a mortal. Morgana had been the last sorceress They had gotten Their hands on. And the Court had nearly killed her.
“We are leaving,” Mordred said, pulling Nyneve into him. “I would advise you not to try to stop us.”
Oryane held his gaze, her mouth in a firm line. Behind her, the guards moved closer. The press of a spearhead in the middle of Mordred’s back told him the Fey guarding the door had closed in behind them as well.
“Surrender,” ordered a powerfully built guard standing next to Oryane. “Be reasonable. You do not even have your sword.”
Mordred smiled. “I do not need it.”
He held Nyneve tight against him and let the gates in his chest open the barest of cracks. Primordial darkness slunk into the hall, snuffing out the torchlight. A shield hit the ground with a thud. Then came a scream. He felt Nyneve go terribly still, her heart rate leaping into a run. He fought to pull the gates closed again, but the end-of-days was heady with the thrill of the hunt,galloping from its vessel to finally sink its teeth into something real.
“Mordred,” Nyneve said, a thousand leagues away. “Mordred, whatever you’re doing, you have done enough.”
Pain seared his entire body, sweat trickling down his back. The shadows lessened, and for a moment, Mordred thought he had closed the gates. But the terrible feeling in him of fathomless cold only yawned wider. Something stirred behind his sternum. It was not Death, not precisely. It was the desolation of a wide, empty world that would never permit life to exist in the first place.
He watched with horror as the Cynosbythrae wove itself into the shape of two massive kelpies, one standing right before Oryane. Its front hoof scraped the ground as it snorted hard, the gust of air lifting the advisor’s hair from her shoulders. Mordred’s vision started to go black and hazy around the edges. He heard his name spoken in a lovely voice from a sweet rosebud mouth, but he hardly understood what those words meant. Even if he did, why should he want them more than complete obliteration? He tumbled farther into the dark.
Until a curling sensation, hot and heady with need, pulled him from the depths. Woozy, Mordred stumbled back, barely in his body. A warm weight clung to the front of him, something that might have been fingers tangled in his hair. There was an insistent mouth against his, he realized, and he wanted to kiss whoever it was for the rest of his life. Mordred reached through the pitch for the taste of that kiss, river water and petal, finally aware of his hands as he wrapped them around someone’s waist.
When he opened his eyes, there was no faerie hall, no kelpies made of shadow, no spear-wielding guards. Instead, he stood in a forest clearing. Dawn streamed through the canopy above, making him squint.
“Mordred?” came a voice that he rather liked.
