“Are you okay?”
He touched his eyebrow tenderly as he wet his lips, and nodded. “I’ll be alright.”
I needed to talk to both of them about what Morty had shared. The veiled truth about Desi, her death, and I needed time to connect the dots between what he’d shared and what I already knew. But as usual, so much new information had been thrown at me, I had no idea where to begin.
Only one thing was obvious.
Torn between getting answers and fixing things with Max, I chose him.
He didn’t know it yet, but I would choose him—choose any of them—over answers.
If we could, I’d leave Camelot Court behind with the three of them, even if Drake D’Arthur’s gilded kingdom fell because of it. And if we couldn’t leave, then I’d find another way to destroy it. I’d do whatever I had to do to get to the end, and I needed to make him see why.
They weren’t using me for their goals.
I wanted it. For them.
The urge to protect them, to beat their enemies, and to do it from my position? As an outsider, a pawn, and a woman—what they thought they controlled and could wipe off the board—Iwantedthat.
So we could be free.
I wouldn’t stop unless I had no other choice, and I believed I could do it. That was my role here, after all. Wasn’t it?
Guinevere.
The woman who tore Camelot apart.
The harlot who ended Arthur’s reign.
That legend—I’d fight like hell to repeat it in our history.
Chapter Six
Isearched everywhere for Max, but I couldn’t find him. His phone went straight to voicemail, and he didn’t answer any of my texts. After waiting in his room most of the night, I got worried.
Gia answered my video call out of breath and sweating. It concerned me enough to stop the hole I planned to pace into the carpet.Resting Skeptic Facefirmly in place, I cocked my head and gave her dewy skin and flushed cheeks a once-over. “Are you working out?”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Guilt—a rare, equally concerning emotion—splashed across her features. Then a door shut in the apartment behind her.
Gia adjusted her position, angling the phone to keep her face firmly within the screen as she sat up in bed. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Nooo.” A groan, and slight gagging noise, followed. “We said we wouldn’t call it that.”
“You said. Now, spill it, please.”
She rolled her eyes and blushed. “P-town. A midnight booty call to work off some steam.”
“Work off some steam? What do you mean?”
Waving her hand in the direction of the bathroom, where I assumed he was hiding, she buzzed like she was swatting away flies. “I don’t know! That’s his drama, not mine.”
I shot her a look. “Gia, you eat up other people’s drama like it’s live-action trashy reality TV. Fess up.”
She had the audacity to roll her eyes again. “Fine.” She huffed and pulled her knees into her chest, setting the phone on top of them and frowning. “I’m trying not to…get attached.”
That caught me by surprise. More so than how she said the words like she had eaten something foul. Because Gia didn’tget attached. Or, if she did, she didn’t worry about it.
“Attached? Like, seriously attached?”
