“Gods,” Guinevere breathed, looking between the two of them with wild eyes.
“Thank the Lord,” Arthur proclaimed, dismounting his horse. “We have been searching for you both. Where have you been?”
Mordred’s stomach dropped like a stone. He glanced toward Guinevere, who met his gaze slowly. Her usually clever eyes were wide and unsure, her expression blank. Mordred waited for his faerie nature to supply an answer to his tongue, but nothing came. The moment stretched on, ungainly as a newborn foal.
Suddenly, Nyneve clasped his hand, hastily interlacing their fingers. A strange thing, how well they fit together. “Your Highness,” Nyneve said, bowing her head, “we are so sorry. But well, you see...”
Mordred’s heart pounded in his chest as Arthur looked on, the king’s expression a storm waiting to break.
“Mordred and I are in love.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nyneve
Mordred slammed the door so hard that the entire cottage seemed to shake. Refusing to look at him, Nyneve poked at the hearth even though the fire was going just fine.
“What in the name of the fucking gods were you thinking?” he demanded in a low voice that was much worse than any threatening yell or snarling roar.
Nyneve scoffed, hanging the poker back on its hook. “Oh, my apologies for not having a better idea after being terrorized by your people,” she snapped, whirling to face him. “It bloody wellworked, didn’t it?”
“It worked because I made it work, and you know that,” Mordred replied, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Unfortunately, Nyneve did know he was right. She’d thrown out an utterly absurd line and let Mordred use every bit of charm he possessed to convince Arthur and his retinue. To her chagrin, she’d been forced to come to terms with the reality that the faerie knight possessed a good deal of charm—he just seemed to primarily use it on people who were not her.
“Well, you haven’t been outed as a changeling, so you’re welcome,” she retorted. Bitterly, she thought about how she had lost that leverage over him. If the truth came out, her standing would suffer greatly now, too. “You know, it’s actually insane how much mortal men will accept if they think love is involved. Dare I say that Arthur is perhaps even happy about it?”
“I hardly give a damn about Arthur’s happiness if his sights are set solely on whatever Merlin says and the mischaracterized words of the Resurrected God,” Mordred spat, advancing on her. He moved with a lithe, predatory grace that set her entire body on edge.
Nyneve should have been afraid of him, she knew. She had witnessed the extent of his might less than an hour ago, that unexplainable darkness deep within his Threads that he could apparently summon at will. What evenwashe, truly?
“Now, in addition to all the other lies you and I are telling this court,” the faerie knight continued, one arm caging her against the cottage’s wall, palm flat on the stone, “we have to keep up a ridiculous charade of courting and love.”
The problem with his unspoken threat, Nyneve thought distantly, was that she rather enjoyed it when he pinned her up against a wall. “What, as if it’s difficult?” she demanded. “You didn’t seem to struggle much with the idea when you had your tongue inside me last night.”
Mordred cocked his head at her, and she noticed all at once that he’d let his glamour drop. It was just the two of them in the cottage, but she hadn’t thought he would let her see him like that. Not above the faerie hill.
The knight slid his thigh between her legs. “That is hardly synonymous with love,” he murmured, though she could feel the hard press of his desire against her belly and burned with frustration over how much she liked it. His long fingers captured her jaw as he leaned in closer. “Is that why you made such aclaim to Arthur, Nyneve? Do you need my mouth between your legs again so terribly?”
In all honesty, she did, but Nyneve certainly wasn’t going to confess. “I would hardly have to go to such lengths to get you in my bed,” she scoffed.
Knowing full well that she was playing with fire and likely to destroy herself in the process, Nyneve raised one hand, brushing the muscles of his chest. The knight said nothing, though she watched his breath hitch. Without a word, she traced the centerline of his abdomen, her hand meeting the front of his trousers as she found the long, hard length of him pressing against the linen. It did not matter, she told herself, that her clothes suddenly felt too tight and her blood thrummed at the apex of her thighs.
“See?” Nyneve murmured with a teasing stroke, meeting his dark, fathomless gaze. She stood up on her toes, stretching to bring her nose almost to meet his as he bowed over her. “I can have you whenever I want you.”
The changeling watched her, his body entirely still like some great beast about to pounce. Nyneve wondered if he wanted to kill her or fuck her, or if maybe for the Fey, the impulse was one and the same. It had certainly appeared that way during the fete.
Suddenly, Galen burst through the cottage door, arms filled with the tiny bottles they used for tincture dosing. Mordred pulled away from her so quickly she almost didn’t process it, but that hardly stopped Galen from coming to an awkward halt in the middle of the cottage’s front room.
“Ah,” he said, raising one heavy brow. “So it’s true.”
“What’s true?” Nyneve sputtered, having hit her limit of what she could handle with poise.
“The love match,” Galen replied gruffly, depositing the bottles onto the counter. Then he straightened, taking them both in. Mordred was, as always, an incredible help, remainingcompletely silent at her side. “Exactly what I was worried about, lass.” He eyed the knight then, who held his own under Galen’s intense scrutiny. “Could have made a safer bet, at the very least. I’m always patching this one up. Though I admit I’m also fond of him.”
“Neither of us have any intention of altering Nyneve’s work,” Mordred said in a measured tone, so different from how he’d spoken to her only a few moments ago. “To be frank with you, Galen, we care for each other, but it is also a rather convenient match given the increasing pressure on both of us to marry.”
Nyneve fought to hold her face completely still. “It’s true,” she said with a shrug, trying to affect ease. “But you know how people are. Mad, ravishing young love always goes a bit further.”
