His amber eyes fixed intently on me, just watching. Not preening his feathers, not shifting his weight, not looking away—simply watching with an awareness that felt almost human.
“You know, you’ve got terrible timing,” I said with a wry smile, sinking onto the bed beside him. “Of all nights, you choose to appear when I'm not in the best of moods."
"Hoot. Hoot."
“I’ve made a mess of things,” I admitted aloud, my voice dropping to barely a whisper. “You wouldn't know anything about tangled hearts and forbidden desires, though, would you?”
Peep ruffled his feathers, a gesture akin to shrugging off the complexities of human emotion. His nonchalance tugged a quiet laugh from me, offering a small reprieve in the storm of my thoughts.
If only it were so simple to shed confusion and constraint as easily as Peep adjusted his plumage.
“Arthur's relentless quest to find the woman at the lake is closing in,” I continued, feeling the weight of the confession. “And Lance... he’s different from what I expected.”
Peep shifted slightly, his eyes locked on mine.
“Perhaps I’m losing my edge,” I mused. “Merlin would say this mission requires detachment. Perhaps he's right."
Peep blinked slowly, seemingly in agreement. I stood again and walked to the window, looking out at the moon, which was obscured by a few clouds.
I closed my eyes. I felt the water in the air, the stones, my blood. It swirled toward me, cool and steady. Loyal.
I would master this. I had to. Whatever had transpired between Lance and me, I would let it go, never think of it again. Because I had to. Because he couldn't learn the truth. Because something between us couldn't happen.
Decision made, I spent the rest of the night crafting a strategy.
Distance. Detachment. Control.
Lance would become a tool—valuable, but nothing more. Arthur’s closest confidant, yes, but not mine. If I could maintain Lance's trust, I could extract information from him. I could redirect the connection between us. Use it to my advantage. To Merlin's advantage.
The kiss? It was nothing more than a mistake. A moment of weakness. It would not happen again. Never again.
Just before I was set to drop off to sleep, I recast the moment Lance and I had shared in the forest in colder light. It was nothing more than a lapse. An anomaly. It was forgotten.
My mission came first. It always had.
Desire was irrelevant.
-VAELEN-
The window stood open—always open now. Small mercies in this treacherous game.
I alighted on the sill, talons gripping stone worn smooth by centuries of Camelot's winters. Inside, moonlight painted her in silver and shadow. White hair thrown across the pillows pooled to the floor like spilled starlight. Gods, she was a sight to see. And I was certainly a man who appreciated an attractive woman.
I flew into the room, shifting mid-flight as the familiar transformation seized hold of my bones. Feathers dissolved into human flesh, hollow bones thickening, wings stretching and reshaping into muscled arms. The change rippled through me—neither painful nor pleasant, simply necessary. My feet touched the cold stone floor with barely a whisper of sound, human once more and unclothed.
The vulnerability of nudity didn't concern me here, not in this sacred space between waking and dreams where I'd learned to walk unseen through years of careful practice.
The moonlight that had painted her in silver now revealed every detail of the chamber: the heavy tapestries clinging to the walls, the carved oak furniture, and the few personal touches that made this space uniquely hers.
My skin bore the chill of the night air streaming through the open window, but I felt none of it. All my attention focused on the figure in the bed, on the steady rhythm of her breathing that would guide me into the labyrinth of her sleeping mind.
Three strides brought me to her bedside. Her chest rose and fell in sleep's rhythm, lips slightly parted. Beautiful. Dangerous.
Both the pawn and the puppet master.
I gripped her wrist, flooding her mind with the command to remain under sleep's influence. Her pulse thrummed against my fingertips, steady and strong. My other hand pressed to her temple, and I slipped into the current of her dreams like stepping through a veil.
The throne room materialized around me—Arthur's domain rendered in dreamstuff and memory. Guinevere stood before the dais, chin lifted in the defiance I'd come to recognize, to crave.
