Blodeuwyn shuffled toward a warped table, its surface littered with bones, dried herbs, and vials thick with sludge. “And yet, your interest in her… is not merely carnal, is it?”
"She drew the blade from the stone." I faltered. "I must know whether that was genuine truth or deception meant to pass as truth."
That made her laugh—a low, wheezing sound like wind dragging through a crypt.
“The sword never makes mistakes, Arthur Pendragon. It chose you once because you were worthy. It chooses her now—for the same reason.”
My fists clenched.
“Then it truly happened? I am not delirious?"
That awful rasping laugh again. "Of course it truly happened."
I swallowed hard. "Tell me who she is.”
The witch ignored me. Her gnarled hands dropped herbs into a cracked clay bowl. “The greater question is: what will you doafteryou learn her name? Kill her? Rut her? Both?”
Her words struck deeper than I liked.
I slammed my palm down on the table, sending vials crashing to the floor. “Name her!”
She looked up slowly, utterly unfazed. “Your father made demands of me once. Same voice. Same outrage. Same fire in his eyes.” A cruel smile touched her cracked lips. “The apple, it seems, falls quite close, as they say.”
“I amnothinglike Uther."
“No?” She struck flint. Sparks caught the herbs. Smoke curled up in ribbons, thick and bitter. “Thenlook.”
The smoke shifted—gathered—took form.
A face appeared.
Myface.
Contorted with desire. Possession. The same twisted hunger I'd witnessed in Uther just before the dragon finally did him in and I had to take it into myself.
“I didn’t come here to learn about my father,” I said through clenched teeth. “And if you won’t help me, I’ll find my answers elsewhere.”
"We both know there are no answers for you elsewhere."
I turned, stepping back toward the door—anything to get away from that knowing gaze, that coiling smoke. But before I could touch it, the door disappeared. The rotted wood became stone—unyielding, cold, final.
“Information costs, my pretty lordling,” she hissed.
I turned—and recoiled.
Her tongue flicked out between yellowed teeth—much too long and serpentine, black-tipped, and slick as an eel pulled from murky waters. The appendage glistened with an oily sheen that caught the dying firelight, writhing with unnatural life as it traced the air between us. The sight of it made my skin crawl, every instinct screaming at me to retreat, to flee this cursed hovel and its ancient inhabitant.
We must leave this place!
Blodeuwyn stepped closer, her voice low, hungry.
“I hunger for warmth. For blood that stirs beneath smooth skin. You want your answers? Thenyou’ll warm an old woman’s bed.You’ll let me taste what time has stolen from me.”
Her gnarled fingers reached for my face, nails curved like talons. With each ragged breath, the stench of grave dirt filled my nostrils. My stomach turned with revulsion—yet some darker instinct kept me still.
“Feed my loneliness, beautiful boy,” she crooned, “and I’ll tell you which face she wears… which name she answers to.”
Her tone dropped to a whisper. Seductive. Damning.
