Hesitantly, Mordred settled one palm onto the curve of her wide hips. When she did nothing but continue to breathe raggedly, he smiled. Her scent of river water and dangerous petals washed over him. Mordred closed his eyes, burying his face in Nyneve’s curls.
He had been an utter fool to believe he could resist her.
Four days passed as slowly as an entire moon. All Mordred could think about washer. Even now, in the middle of a meeting with the king, his mind strayed to Nyneve. The fire in the hearth, freshly lit by a servant with the arrival of dusk, made him think of her hot breath on his skin. He had left her pallet sometime before dawn, but even days later, Mordred felt as though his mind and soul were still tangled up in her bed linens.
“We need to be in the throne room in only a few moments,” came the voice of Camelot’s king. “Let’s finish up, shall we?”
Mordred drew in a deep breath, forcing his eyes open. Arthur sat at his battered old table on the other side of the room, the parchment he had been skimming set off to the side.
“My liege, why do they look like an occupying force if they aren’t one?” Mordred asked, his tone strained. This meeting was going poorly. His usually nimble mind refused to focus, all his thoughts consumed by the Druid girl. He should never have bedded her. Should never have learned the taste of someone he could not belong to, not in the way he so desperately wanted.
“Mordred,” Arthur replied with a sigh, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers. The circles under the king’s eyes were darker than usual. “The High Court infiltrated our citadel despite Merlin’s wards, appearing in my private chambers to make demands. I will takeanyoffer of support.” He reached for the heavy goblet set off to the side. “Besides, the monks have no interest in violence and conquest. Not like us.” With an arch smile, Arthur raised the goblet in a mock toast to Mordred.
The knight only stared at him for a long moment. “Violence and conquest?” Mordred repeated incredulously. Furrowing his brow, he examined the king’s familiar features: the closely shorn brown hair, graying at the temples; the tanned face and the laugh lines around the mouth; the short beard, a little less neat than usual.
Thiswasstill the same man he had ridden into battle beside, bravely facing impossible odds if it meant this land and its people might one day be safe, was it not? Doubt bloomed sour on his tongue, and an emotion he lacked the language for crested like a wave at the back of his throat. “Arthur, Merlin’s monks line our halls and prowl our streets,” Mordred said. “Always in those damn cloaks, their faces and weapons obscured.”
Arthur considered him wordlessly. For a dizzying moment, Mordred wondered if he knew the man sitting before him at all. Then the king leaned forward onto his elbows, looking warily atthe door before meeting Mordred’s eyes. “What would you have me do?” Arthur asked hoarsely. “Mordred, whatelsecan I do?”
There was no accusation in his voice, only a yawning ache that made Mordred’s own body hurt. “My liege,” he began. His limbs felt wobbly and strange, the room too warm with the hearth lit. “What could you possibly mean?”
Arthur stood, striding out from behind the table and leaving Mordred staring at a large tapestry behind his abandoned chair. A white stag, blood dripping from its side. A hunting party with too many spears. A crowned rider leading the charge.
“The Northmen still terrorize the coasts, even if they mostly keep away from the citadel,” Arthur said, his back to Mordred as he stared out the tall, narrow window. “The Fair Folk blithely appear within our keep as They wish. Though we beat back our latest visitors from the east, we cannot guard an entire channel, Mordred. More will come. It is only a matter of time.”
Mordred studied Arthur’s profile, outlined by the dying light. He tried to take a deep breath, but it felt as though a millstone were pressing down on his chest. “Oh. Of course,” Mordred murmured a moment later, barely audible over the crackle of the stifling fire. “You need more power.”
Arthur turned then, his face shadowed. When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow. “And Merlin has power, my boy.”
Mordred moved toward the king without thinking, Guinevere’s words floating back to him in a rush: her insistence that Arthur might be willing to accept Mordred for what he was, and that together, the three of them could usher in an era of unprecedented peace where the Fair Folk and mortals stood shoulder-to-shoulder in their verdant, rain-wreathed and beloved land.
The High Court had tried such an alliance once already, Mordred knew, when the Romans first came. Together, Fey and mortals had indeed driven the conquerors back. But then thearmies returned, the peace fractured, and now, all these years later, Mordred stood upon Roman mosaic tiles in the heart of an ancient faerie hill.
And so, the changeling knight almost opened his mouth to tell King Arthur Pendragon the Bear, son of the man who had wanted to drive the Fair Folk from the only home They had ever known, precisely what he was.
But then the king turned, meeting Mordred’s gaze, and the truth slipped back beneath the surface. “You must understand,” Arthur implored, all his sharp and careful cleverness replaced by earnest distress. “Merlin created me. Molded me. I am just another bid in his long attempt to put a king he can control on a throne of his making. As long as he thinks I am his puppet, Camelot has access to his nearly unfettered power.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mordred recognized how desperately he wanted to believe Arthur. His throat tightened, an odd pressure building behind his eyes. “My liege,” Mordred murmured. “You are playing a most dangerous game.”
“I am,” the king said, massaging his temples, his hand obscuring his gaze. “But I seem incapable of creating an heir. I know the fault does not lie with Guin. Besides, her skills in governance far surpass mine. I cannot do any of this without her.”
Mordred swallowed, his mouth dry, the heat of the room growing unbearable. He stared down at his feet. Sweat pooled between his shoulder blades, and still, the right words would not come to him.
“If there is even a chance Merlin can keep the citadel safe and remedy my inability to sire an heir,” said Arthur, gentler than usual, his hand brushing Mordred’s shoulder, “I am afraid it is worth the terrible risk.”
Mordred met Arthur’s gaze as the king’s fingers closed around his shoulder. “Were it not for that damned prophecy andthe highborns’ obsession with legitimacy, none of this would be a problem,” Arthur murmured, his eyes never leaving Mordred’s. “You have all the makings of a great king. Certainly a better one than I could ever hope to be.”
Mordred felt a thousand things all at once; a thousand things he should not have been able to feel and certainly did not understand. His tongue seemed too large for his mouth, his head spinning. Before he could even form a sentence, the heavy doors to the study swung open. He and Arthur shifted away from each other in surprise, both of them going for their weapons. Within the arch, backlit by the corridor’s torchlight, stood Merlin.
Arthur’s hand dropped from his sword, but Mordred’s only tightened around the hilt. Gods, he wanted to kill this sorcerer dressed in fine, shimmering robes, adorned with a garnet-encrusted cross that could have fed a peasant family for ten years.
“Arthur!” Merlin exclaimed jovially, striding over to the king without so much as an invitation to enter the space. “Come, your men ask for you. And I admit I find myself wishing for your presence during this most interesting evening. A sorceress for the queen—how novel!” Though his tall, thin body leaned toward Arthur and his hand had landed on the king’s shoulder, Merlin’s cunning eyes slid to meet Mordred’s gaze as he spoke the last few words.
The Fey arrow through the window. Merlin’s return. The crazed Northmen. The courier sent to barter directly with Arthur. The senseless beast Nyneve made of him. Everything felt as though it was slipping out of his hands, and there was not a damn thing he could do to stop it.
“Mordred,” Merlin said, suddenly addressing him, his eyes gone sharp. “What brings you to a private audience with the king?”
“Oh, he’s just upset about what happened with Nyneve,” Arthur said backhandedly, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he strode back to his desk. For a heartbeat, he met Mordred’s gaze imploringly. “He had little to say about your monks until that scene yesterday afternoon. You see, Merlin, Mordred has always been fiercely protective once he finally allows himself to care about someone.”
