Her eyes gleamed. “Then let me spell it out for you. Lance stares at you every chance he gets and sees only a small, slendermaleknight with feminine features—and his body argues with what his mind accepts as real and true. And Arthur…” She leaned in again, this time up close to my ear, whispering. “Arthur dreams of you nightly.”
My breath hitched. “Dreams of me?”
She laughed then, finally stepping back and giving me space to breathe, which was a relief in and of itself.
“Well,” she said, cocking her head to the side, “he dreams not of you as Sir Lioran, of course, but of you as yourself—the beautiful woman with the white hair who pulled the sword from the stone.”
Her words hit me like a lightning bolt, the revelation driving through me with such devastating force that the world seemedto tilt beneath my feet. The blood drained from my face in a rush, leaving me cold and dizzy, while my vision blurred at the edges as if I might faint right here. Even my knees had gone wobbly, threatening to buckle, and I had to brace one trembling hand against the cool stone wall to keep myself upright as the magnitude of what she'd just revealed crashed over me in waves of panic and disbelief.
My fingers moved on instinct, reaching for the concealed dagger hidden beneath my tunic.
“Peace, sister,” Elenora said gently, raising empty hands as she approached me again. “If I wished to expose you, I would have done so a long time ago." She paused. "And if you notice, I did not.”
I wanted to demand answers—how she knew the truth, how long she'd known—but I held my tongue. Better to learn what she wanted from me first.
“I recognize another woman forced to play a man’s game,” she continued as she brought her long fingers to my shoulder. Then she began trailing her hand down my chest with deliberate slowness. Her hand brushed the thick tie at my collar. The gambeson had been cinched tight for sparring; the knot resisted her at first, stiffened from sweat and strain. She tugged again, slower this time, working her fingers beneath the binding until the knot gave with a soft snap.
She slid her fingers down the line of laces that held the padded armor closed. Each tug loosened the gambeson bit by bit, the heavy fabric relaxing away from my body. I didn't know why I didn't stop her.
When she reached the last tie, the gambeson sagged open, revealing my undertunic beneath—a thin linen shirt clinging to me and covered with sweat from the training yard, translucent in places where the sweat had soaked through. She slipped her hands beneath the thick padded shoulders and peeled thegambeson back. It resisted her—gambesons always did, stiff with stitching and stuffed with wool—but soon the weight of it slid free, falling heavy into her arms before she let it drop to the floor beside me. The undertunic remained, thin and crinkled, clinging to the curve of my ribs and the hollow beneath my throat.
Elenora's eyes lingered on me, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across her face.
“Much better,” she murmured.
Where Elenora's fingers lingered above my right breast, I glanced down only to watch my disguise of a man's flat chest melting away and the swell of my own natural breast taking its place. I could feel the magic unraveling thread by thread beneath her touch, yet the change seemed to happen all at once, as if reality itself had shifted to accommodate her will.
Impossible. Yet her touch had flayed the magic from my skin as effortlessly as one might peel away a mask on a stage. I gasped, my voice swallowed by the rumble of thunder that shook the stone walls.
Elenora possessed magic of a caliber I had never imagined she could have—especially as a courtesan. Even now, I struggled to comprehend it.
“We both wear disguises," she whispered as she leaned in close and her fingers circled my breast, squeezing. "Yours is steel and silence. Mine, silk and smiles. Both are armor.”
I studied her carefully, not attempting to back away from her. She, meanwhile, continued to run her fingers over my breast, causing my nipple to harden involuntarily. As soon as she felt its rigidity, she smiled like the she-devil she was.
“Why reveal yourself to me?” I asked in a whisper, unsure of what she was doing to me.
“Because you’re drowning.” She cocked her head to the side as she studied me. Soon, she moved her hand down from mybreast and circled my stomach, above my tunic. “I see it—the toll your illusion takes on you." She paused. "Show me your true face."
I swallowed hard, my throat constricting as if the air had thickened around us. The weight of her knowing gaze pressed against me like a physical force, and I realized there was no point in maintaining the charade any longer. My secret—the one I'd guarded so fiercely, the identity I'd crafted with such painstaking care—lay exposed between us like a blade drawn from its sheath.
The magic that had held Lioran's form felt suddenly foreign against my skin, an ill-fitting garment I'd worn too long. With deliberate slowness, I allowed the illusion to dissolve, feeling the familiar tingle as the enchantment unraveled.
"Stunning creature," she said with a smile.
"What do you want from me?"
"Why should you suppose I want anything from you at all?"
She brought her hand lower, skimming it across my stomach, before I grabbed it and kept it from dropping lower.
"I'm not a fool."
She laughed at that as I released her hand. "Of course, you're not a fool. Look at how long you've been tricking everyone."
"How did you—"
"—I understand how hard it is for you here," she interrupted. "The conflict between what Merlin told you and what you’ve begun to feel here in Camelot.”
