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His hand tightened on the hilt of Caliburn where it was sheathed at his side. One knight would die this day. There would be no mercy granted, no quarter given, no pleading from the woman he loved to convince him to spare his foe.
Today, Lancelot would fall.
And this time, Mordred would put him in his grave where he belonged.
A horn sounded from the woods. The blast to signal the rallying of forces.
Mordred grimaced.
It was time.
* * *
“In.”
“Hey!” Gwen glared at Percival as the knight shoved her unceremoniously into her room. Mordred had reattached the iron chain connecting her wrists once she had the chance to change into a new dress, finally ditching the metal clothes for the time being. “You don’t need to push me around, you—”
The door slammed shut in her face. Percival clearly hadn’t cared to listen. Tim was standing guard at the outside of the door, watching the whole ordeal in silence. Idly, she wondered if the poor soldier had been left standing there for the day and a half she had been out of her room.
Probably.
People seemed to overlook him at the best of times.
“Asshole!” she screamed through the door. No one answered. She figured the knight was already long gone.
She hadn’t bothered to ask to be let free to help. She knew what the answer would be. Mordred might have forgiven her for what she had done—but he certainly didn’t trust her yet. So she would be left to her own devices, locked in a room like the so-called “princess” that she was, and wonder who was going to live and who was going to die.
A whimper from behind her told her at least she wouldn’t have to wonder alone. Turning around, she saw Eod lying on the bed, his head on his paws, those big soulful eyes asking her if everything was going to be okay.
“Hey, doggo.” She walked up to the bed and sat down next to him. He was quick to plop his heavy head into her lap. She petted him and the coarseness of his fur had a grounding effect on her. She knew Mordred had put the dog in the room specifically to console her.
And damn it if it wasn’t already working.
Someone was going to die today. A lot of people were probably going to die today. The question was simply—how many and who.
Would it be Mordred? Would it be Lancelot? Would it be her and Grinn? What about Galahad and the rest of the knights? Percival could go get wrecked as far as she was concerned, but she didn’t think even his shitty behavior was enough to deserve death.
But it wasn’t just going to be one person who fell.
Off in the distance, she heard a trumpet.
A moment later, and it felt like the whole keep had come alive. Something shifted in the air. She shivered as magic rolled over her like the buzz of electricity. The fur on Eod’s back stood up, and he growled.
“I know, baby. I know.” She kept petting him for both their sakes. “I’m scared too.”
The creak of enormous metal wings filled the air. The building shook as something large landed on it. A dragon, she had no doubt. Either Tiny or one of the other knights’ enormous monsters.
Her family had gone to a baseball game once. They had traveled to Kansas City for a packed game against the Cardinals, the Royals’ sworn enemies. She had heard the roar of thirty-seven thousand people cheering and jeering, and she wondered if that wasn’t just a little bit like what an Ancient Roman colosseum must have sounded like.
Or a medieval battle.
At the time, it had been thrilling, to shut her eyes in that stadium and imagine what it would be like to hear the clash of weapons and the battle cries of opposing forces, fighting to the death for victory. She had wished she could have been there to witness it.
But as she heard it for real, the sounds muted and far away as they drifted in through the open window?
She very much regretted having made any wishes at all.
TWENTY-FOUR
