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The guard rapped his knuckles on one of the bars of the cell.
Maewenn shot the guard what Gwen would assume would be a glare if the woman’s face, y’know, moved. “Oh, calm down, you useless tin can.”
The guard knocked his knuckles again.Clang clang clang.He wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“It’s all right, Mae.” Gwen smiled. “Thank you for coming. And thank you for the food.”
“Of course. I’ll bring you more for dinner. And maybe the pup can join me, if this rusty old piece of junk here will take pity on the poor animal.” Maewenn walked from the cell with aharumph.
Gwen chuckled but couldn’t help but feel entirely hopeless about the whole ordeal. And a little sad for the silent guard. Maewenn left the jail, and the guard took up his position by the door once more.
“Hey,” she called out to him.
The soldier turned his head.
“Thank you for the blanket yesterday.” She smiled. “I really appreciate it.”
The soldier looked down at the ground for a moment, then nodded with a squeak, and went back to what he was doing. Which was just standing and staring.
She finished eating her breakfast and slid the tray aside. With nothing better to do, she lay back down on the mattress and dozed. Then she got up and paced. And then she dozed. And then she paced. And braided hay. And paced. And braided more hay.
Being a prisoner was going to get insanely boring.
There sounded like there was action going on outside the cell window, like someone rolling heavy machinery around. The creak of wood and metal. Gwen tried to hop up to see what was going on, but the little barred window was way too high up for her to reach even by jumping. She sighed. She really wished she could have at least had a view, if she was going to be locked in a damn cell.
This sucks.After that, she even resorted to some push-ups. Wasn’t that what people did in prison to pass the time? Not like she really knew.
She also had no idea how much time had passed. Maybe an hour. Maybe twelve. The soldier hadn’t moved—it didn’t seem like they needed to sleep. She figured that must be convenient. There were more sounds of heavy machinery and hammering, but…she couldn’t see shit, so there was no telling what was going on.
The door opened. She wondered if it was going to be Maewenn and Eod. Or maybe even Percival, come to drag her off somewhere again.
No. She wasn’t so lucky.
Her heart hitched.
It was Mordred.
EIGHTEEN
Gwen scrambled to her feet and pressed her back against the stone wall behind her. Once again, Mordred looked like a living nightmare—a shadow figure in a black cloak over twisted armor, the hood pulled up to hide his features.
Was he going to torture her for information? What would he do when he found out she healed too quickly, even for an elemental? It wouldn’t take long for him to figure out that something was linking her to Grinn.
The door to the cell opened for him without a key, the iron simply clicking open at his silent command. She was shivering as he approached her, though she tried to swallow the lump in her throat and be brave.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” she said, with no idea where she got the balls to joke. She supposed it was her last line of defense. She had nothing else.
What she could see of his expression was hard and unreadable as he approached, looming over her. He reached over her head, grasping the chain where it connected to the wall, and she watched as he simply pulled the chain free, the links melting through the bolt that it connected to the wall before solidifying on the other side.
That would never stop being fascinating.
Mordred dropped the chain in front of her. “Come.” He turned on his heel and left her standing there as he headed for the exit.
Why had he come to fetch her? He had knights and soldiers. He’d always sent them. But he came personally. Why? Chewing her lip, she followed after him, afraid of angering him any further. And also, because she was entirely certain he’d drag her to wherever they were going if she put up a fuss.
He brought her to the room with the large circular table, dominated by the map of Avalon. It made a lot more sense, now that she had seen more of the island in her pretty-much-entirely-pointless adventure. She had some things to reference. Mordred walked up to it and placed his gauntleted hands on the surface of the map. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. We didn’t really have a plan.” That wasn’t entirely true—they didkind ofhave a plan. They were going to wait for Lancelot to raise his army and then attack all at once. And she had a suspicion that Grinn must be close. He had told her that they couldn’t get too far apart without it causing them both pain. He might have been lying. But if he wasn’t, she felt fine. Okay, she felt bruised and cold, but that was Mordred’s fault.
