“Interesting,” he said, pushing his hood back.
Terror slunk into Nyneve’s blood as she found herself staring into Merlin’s startling violet eyes. Nothing about his features was right. He was too old and too young, all at once. “I was beginning to think that the rumors were false. But therearetwo sorceresses within these halls, aren’t there?”
With all the strength she had left, Nyneve spat in his face, yanking up one knee to slam into his groin. He grunted fromthe impact, but then the sorcerer’s magic washed over her, halting her limbs. That terrible parchment-dryness turned her into a dried husk, insects scuttling horribly all over her skin. Her baneful magic screamed from deep inside of her, unable to do anything at all.
Merlin wiped his face with the back of his hand and leaned closer. “Oh, stupid girl,” he mocked. “You should’ve run.”
Nyneve pushed as hard as she could against the Elders’ binding, but it would not give. Refusing to accept whatever dark end barreled toward her, the sorceress tried to scream. And then Merlin was torn away from her, like he was nothing more than an oak leaf in a storm-swollen river current.
She fell forward onto her hands and knees, coughing so hard she nearly fainted. When the dark spots cleared from her vision, she saw that one of the monks was trying to gather up Elaine’s bleeding body. With every bit of strength left in her, Nyneve forced herself to crawl toward him. Snatching her dagger from the ground, she lunged out and sliced deep into his ankle. The monk shrieked and dropped to the ground beside her, drawing his knife from his cloak, the blade glinting in the torchlight. She snarled wordlessly and lunged again, but then something dragged the monk away. It did not matter if some creature more terrible than Merlin had appeared. It did not matter if her bindinghadbroken and she’d summoned something or opened a door she could never hope to close.
Only Elaine mattered.
Nyneve grabbed onto the headboard and dragged herself up to stand. “No,” she whispered, looking down at her friend. The healer’s limbs were strewn lifelessly on the linens, everything damp with blood. Her chest was pitted with puncture wounds. Her throat had been all but torn out.
“No,” Nyneve repeated, louder now, snatching up the linens and applying pressure to Elaine’s neck. In the back of her mind,she knew this amount of blood and the color of her friend’s skin meant she had already left this plane, but Nyneve refused to give up. She pressed her forearm onto Elaine’s chest wounds, closing her eyes to reach for the Threads. Her benefic magic surged through her fingers, seeking any spark of life to nourish. When nothing happened, she pushed harder, grasping at the Threads with clumsy desperation. She bit back a sob.
Someone spoke her name at her side, but she ignored it. Nyneve willed Elaine’s wounds to stitch themselves together, for all that blood to run backward like a strange current. She gathered her friend up in her arms, speaking every healing charm she knew.
“Nyneve.” A hand landed on her shoulder.
She spun on her heel, an animalistic sound in the back of her throat, prepared to face Merlin again. But instead of the sorcerer, Mordred stood at her side. His glamour slipped for just a few heartbeats—one, two, three. He had never looked so beautiful. So terrible.
“Nyneve, she’s gone,” Mordred said gently.
“No!” Nyneve snarled, holding Elaine tighter. “She was going to live! We were going to get her out of the citadel!”
“Nyneve,” came Palamedes’ voice. In her peripheral vision, she watched the knight limp toward them. Her healer’s instinct whispered that he needed assistance, but her heart clung stubbornly to the pale-haired healer in her arms. When Palamedes reached the end of the bed, Mordred reached out to brush the knight’s shoulder.
“Do not look,” Mordred murmured. “Palamedes, please. Do not.”
A chorus of voices echoed at the door. Nyneve jumped, staring in the direction of the sound, closing her arms tighter around Elaine. The sudden movement made her head swim, but the warm bulk of Mordred’s body at her side was like a raft ina terrible storm. He remained there, silent, as Morgana led a handful of guards into the room, trailed by Lysanor and Gawain. Torches and lanterns suddenly illuminated the space. For the first time, Nyneve saw the fate of the monks.
Just like the brown-cloak strung up in the tower, she might have thought an animal had done it. The five men were torn apart. One monk had been decapitated, his face still a mask of horror at whatever he had seen in his final moments. Numbly, she counted the legs, the heads, the arms.
“Six,” Nyneve murmured as the guards began to investigate under Morgana’s instruction.
“What?” Mordred asked her in a hushed tone, blocking her from the view of the guards with his body.
“There were six,” she said, though she doubted herself the moment she spoke the words aloud. Her entire body trembled, and her bones felt as though they might snap. “Merlin was here.”
Mordred reared back at that, his gaze immediately going to Morgana. The sorceress prowled over to them, lifting the hem of her long gown so it would not drag through the blood.
“She saw Merlin,” Mordred said in a low whisper.
Morgana stiffened, her eyes falling on Nyneve. She opened her mouth, then closed it with a shake of her head. “They’re going to interrogate you,” she said slowly, looking between the two of them. “Arthur will be here any moment. You absolutely cannot say Merlin had anything to do with this bloodbath unless you can irrefutably prove it.”
“Does she look like she is in any state for such things?” Mordred snapped.
Nyneve wanted to open her mouth to disagree, but she could not seem to make her jaw move. She slumped against the knight, trying to catch her breath. But she was just standing still, wasn’t she? She was fine. It was Elaine who... oh gods,Elaine.
“So get her out of here,” Morgana said between her teeth, just on the periphery of Nyneve’s awareness.
A muscular arm banded around her waist. “Please do not bite me,” came Mordred’s voice in her ear. Then he swept her up into his arms, like she was a damsel in distress.
Her vision blinked in and out. Her ears felt as though they were filled with wax. At one point, she thought perhaps Mordred was speaking to the guards, but concentrating on more than three or four words at a time felt impossible.
An indeterminate amount of time later, she was moving, Mordred’s long strides carrying her out of the cursed room, away from the blood and the men with the questions and the heavy stench of Merlin’s magic.
