Morgana had sighed from across the table, the warm weight of her hand the only thing that kept Mordred from drowning.“Because you are meant to chafe against your destiny,”the sorceress finally said.
At that, Mordred had raised his head, finally finding it within him to meet her gaze.
“We all are,”she added, sitting up straighter.“We are soldiers in Fate’s war, it’s true. But She is more afunctionthana goddess, and the future balances on our free will. The Threads do not sing unless we make choices. If She simply moved us about our lives like toys, the Oracles would be blind. Fatespeak would turn hollow. Magic itself might leave us, because as I taught you, there is one thing mortal, faerie, and divine magic have in common: you want something, and then youchooseto let yourself have it.”
Morgana’s voice had grown near-ferocious before she had paused and drawn in a deep breath.“It is choice, Mordred, that makes destiny open like a door.”
He had just watched her mutely, wondering whether it were only the hearth, or if her eyes were truly gleaming with unshed tears.“Then why,”he had asked his guardian, his voice an open wound,“do I never seem to have a choice at all?”
The gleam of an unearthly ghostlight up ahead in the dark of the wood drew Mordred from his reverie. He slowed Rook to a trot, eyes seeking the place in the clearing where the world split at its seams. And then he went toward it with all the agency of a moth to a flame.
“What did you expect me to do?” Mordred asked his High King. “My patience is fraying, Ragrshydan.”
The faerie king lunged forward on his throne, pausing only when he seemed to remember that it would take nothing for Mordred to destroy the entire court. All he had to do was let go. Ragrshydan had long occupied the position of the High Court’s most powerful warrior. But thathad all changed when Nyx and the Morrigan created Mordred. Ragrshydan had never quite gotten over it, in Mordred’s opinion.
“I expected you to follow the orders of your king,” Ragrshydan spat, his fingernails digging into the arms of the throne.
“Unfortunately, I have two of them,” Mordred replied sharply. “And you want very different things.” He could not say it had anything to do with the Druid girl. Could not say that he cared far too much about her being trapped beneath the hill, ceasing to exist as herself and instead becoming something twisted and sunken.
“Ah, yes, the mortal king who carries an ancient faerie blade corrupted by that bastard Merlin’s magic,” Ragrshydan replied. “I am so glad you hold fealty to him. Enough fealty, evidently, that you would injure your fellow Fey.”
Mordred almost straightened at Ragrshydan’s reveal of Caledfwlch’s origin, but held his body still. “I understand I should be punished, my lord,” the knight said, bowing his head. “Might we please just get on with it?”
Ragrshydan leapt from his throne then, prowling down the first two stairs of the dais. He clasped his hands behind his back, a look on his face that Mordred did not like. “You can control the Cynosbythrae,” the king mused, beginning to slowly pace. “I was led to believe that if the mortals created a weapon powerful enough to end us, it would cleave your chest and release a small apocalypse, from which we might rise again. You never mentioned it can be... incrementally released.”
Mordred’s blood went cold. He kept his head bowed, mostly for the sake of hiding the expression on his face. “No, my liege,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “What I felt forced to do earlier today was not the Cynosbythrae. I put a glamour onworkings to make it look that way. It was an attempt to frighten the guards away and leave with minimal bloodshed.”
“Hmm,” Ragrshydan said, disbelieving. Mordred stared at the tiles beneath his feet and shoved his anger as far down as it would go. “And what was so pressing that you had to depart immediately? Why could you not wait for your king as he commanded?”
Mordred wanted to ask why Ragrshydan had told a fucking courier to slip past Camelot’s wards last night, but he knew it would get him nowhere. Perhaps Ragrshydan had intended to hold Nyneve over Mordred’s head as a bargaining chip, keeping her imprisoned until Mordred gave him what he wanted or her time ran out.
In his peripheral vision, he watched one of the creatures that used to be mortal offer spiced wine to Oryane with spindly, withered hands. A husk. Nausea rolled in his stomach. Were he ever king, he would strip all the faerie hills in the Isles of that old, terrible enchantment. It was an easy thing to sit back and watch atrocities occur if you could convince yourself you were not directly responsible for any of it. He had spent the past ten years watching men and Fey do precisely that. But if the Fair Folk were going to be so terribly cruel, he reasoned, They should at least have the gall to do it with Their own bare hands.
“You know how close I am with Arthur,” Mordred finally said, raising his head to meet Ragrshydan’s gaze. “On his war council. Often at his side. I have his ear. It is something that must be maintained, my lord. He expected me at an important gathering that I could not miss if I wanted to keep my influence.”
“What about your closeness withme, Mordred?” Ragrshydan demanded, suddenly only a pace away from him. The king’s hand slipped to the hilt of his sword, fingers tight.
“We do not need closeness,” Mordred said as firmly as he could. “We are of the same body, the same blood. You have my undying fealty. You have my oath.”
Ragrshydan’s pale eyes held Mordred’s. He felt the king strum his Threads. The song of the oath Mordred had indeed made to the High Court filled the space, a low melody that sounded like war and blood.
“The courier asked Arthur for Caledfwlch in exchange for the northwestern lands,” Mordred said, breaking the silence, his voice low. “Do you seek the blade, my lord? I am beside Arthur, day in and day out. If it is truly an ancient thing of power, I can obtain it for you.”
From the shadows to the left of the throne came a harsh laugh. Oryane shifted forward in her seat, the jeweled pin in her intricate pile of graying blonde curls winking in the low light. “Could you be trusted to return such a powerful thing to this court, Mordred?” the advisor asked.
The knight sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “Why do you believe I would not? Why do you believe I want one of our storied weapons in the hands of mortals?”
He glanced at Oryane this time, knowing Ragrshydan would grow angry that his attention strayed. The advisor held her ground perfectly, her brow arched, mouth firm. Then he understood.
“You think I would not give it to this Court,” Mordred sighed.
“I cannot imagine it is easy to stomach your fate,” Oryane said, though there was no sympathy in her voice. She rose to stand beside Ragrshydan, making sure she was a half-pace behind her king. “Why would younotseek any path that might lead you somewhere different?”
Something that might have been foolish, damned hope stirred in him. “And how might an old, cursed blade I cannotwield aid that quest, precisely?” Mordred asked, too sharply, too curiously.
“I am not here to discuss such things with you, boy,” Ragrshydan spat. In his peripheral vision, he caught movement in the corridor leading into the hall and frowned. A High Summons was almost always a private meeting, the hall empty save for the Faerie Throne and whomever it wished to speak with. “I am here to deliver your punishment.”
Mordred’s frayed patience snapped, and he laughed. “My punishment? For what, exactly, Ragrshydan? Do you truly expect the last of the Tuatha de Danaan, the last Fair Folk forged by divine hands, to heed your demands as readily as a fuckingdog?”
