If I hadn’t pushed so hard last night then this would have never happened.
“What did you do to him?” I asked with a hiss, my voice hoarse.
Morgana, who was dressed in a fine purple gown that I recognized as one of my own, and more nauseatingly, it was one of Arthur’s favorites for me to wear.
“I did nothing,” she said simply, shrugging one slender shoulder. “The king, however, was defending what is his, though I cannot fathom why. Must be the fickle pride of men.”
She looked me up and down as if I were a bug meant to be squashed.
I wasn’t sure if it was my heightened emotional state thanks to my heat or truly that I was a violent person at heart, but I wanted to kill her. I wanted to conjure up my water magic and pound it at her until she was a meaty pile on the floor.
She was doing this. Messing with my family and my people. For what, I didn’t know. I assumed it was something to do with her son becoming king—the iterations of the myths where Mordred suddenly teamed up with the Saxon army came tomind. But he was thirteen, so all of the stories showing him as an active participant must have been wrong.
“Oh my, that will not do,” Morgana tutted as if she was talking to a child.
I frowned, trying to understand her, when the water that had begun to float up around me splashed to the floor. I must have unconsciously pulled the moisture from the air as I thought about all of the ways I wanted to hurt the woman in front of me.
Morgana jerked her head to the side and Andrivete appeared at her side, a glazed expression on her face.
In the woman’s hands was what looked like a metal collar with runic etchings on it. I didn’t know what they said, but I definitely knew they couldn’t be anything good.
The door to my cell opened and two men in green livery entered.
I wanted to fight them off as they grabbed my arms, but I was too focused on keeping the sheet up over my naked body. Besides, there was no way I was about to overpower two men by myself while Lancelot was still unconscious in the cell next to me.
“Andrivete,” I tried softly as the woman who had been my friend since I arrived at Camelot and my biggest supporter clamped the collar around my neck and fastened the lock.
It was like someone dumped a bucket of cold water over me.
Any connection I had felt with the magic of the land was completely gone—like a piece of me had been scraped and hollowed out.
“What did you just put on me?” I gasped, trying not to gape at the woman who was enjoying my discomfort far too much.
But Morgana didn’t deign to answer my question and instead they shoved me back to the ground and left as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
Then I was alone again, save for Lancelot whose wounds looked like they were going to get infected if they weren’t treated soon.
I lifted a hand and tried to call my magic, knowing that it would be in vain, especially when nothing came. Not even a drop fell from the already damp ceiling of my cell.
Frustrated, I turned to look out of the little barred window that was set at the ground level of the castle. No human could fit through such a small hole, even if I could jiggle the bars out of place like I’d seen in the movies.
I needed a plan but I had nothing. I was, quite literally, naked and afraid and not for some reality TV show. This was very real, and if it went the way the legends did, I had a stake and some fire in my future.
Then, as if my desperate desire to be free had sent out a distress call like a beacon, I heard them.
“Guinevere,” Bedivere’s rough voice came from above, “are you in there?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Things were not right at Castle Camelot.
After leaving Lancelot and Guinevere to their conversation, Gawain and I had ventured into the forest to gather wood for my forge—a task I usually put off till the last moment but something had instinctually told me I would need to get it done this very night.
When we returned a few hours later the air in the castle waschanged. Arthur had returned, but with him he had also brought in men in green livery belonging to King Lot… and he had also brought Saxons.
I had pulled Gawain to the side after that, realizing something had gone very awry and I believed it had everything to do with the Lady Morgana who was walking about the castle as if she owned it with Arthur obediently following as if he were her dog.
Rumors of the woman’s ability to control the minds of others had been pervasive throughout the land for many years—but I had never seen such magic on such a scale aside from what Merlin could weave. This? This was a complete takeover.
