But I would not tell her about Accolon’s final words. She carried too many burdens. I would not let her shoulder the guilt for this as well.
After several heartbeats without a response, she swung her eyes begrudgingly back to Isolde. “What do these gaps in his power mean? Will they heal?”
Isolde started quivering again. “I don’t know.”
Veyka turned to me. “Can you feel them?”
“No.”
She growled in frustration. “So someday you’ll reach for your power and… it won’t answer? Or you’ll suddenly no longer be able to shift?”
The beast roared inside of me.
“I am fine,” I said again. As much to myself as to her. I’d sensed no gaps in my power. Since waking in Avalon, it had behaved exactly as I’d always expected and experienced since I’d first learned how to control it hundreds of years ago. “Morgause cannot be trusted.”
Veyka rolled her eyes. Twice, for emphasis. “Obviously she had this planned from the moment she asked for a seat at the Round Table. I do not believe her explanation about the new terrestrial proving their worth. She watched me battle the Dolorous Guard. She knows you. She knows we will best anyone who enters that Pit.”
The thought of poison entered my mind again. Morgause had not poisoned our food. She knew we would not die in the Pit. So what were all these machinations about, then?
Veyka offered no possible explanations as she rolled her shoulders back to stretch.
“Well, best order some more wine,” she said, unsheathing Excalibur from her back. “I will be the one fighting in the Pit. Enjoy the show.”
36
EVANDER
“How do you move in these?” Mya spun to examine the back of her garment in the mirror. “These laces are impossible.”
She’d chosen fitted silver trousers and a flowing blue tunic. The laces at the back were meant to cinch in her waist and accentuate her figure. It was a relatively simple ensemble. But considering Mya’s clothing usually consisted of a woven brassiere and a tail…
“Stop smirking,” she ordered at his reflection. She considered the laces for another few seconds before sighing and turning to face him. “You don’t have any laces.”
Evander finished buttoning the tunic he’d selected. Gaheris had sent his trunk from the seaside estate where he had abandoned it months before.
“No, but I have these.” He buckled the shortsword to his belt. But that was just the beginning.
Mya’s eyes dropped from his, following each motion as he added several daggers to the bandolier across his chest. Then the quiver of arrows and a bow.
“I forget, sometimes,” she said softly. She reached into the space between them, trailing her fingertips across the straps of leather now in place over his chest.
She found an expanse of open chest and covered it with her hand. Evander could not feel her in his mind—he never could—but he recognized the gesture. She was anchoring herself in him. Mya’s ethereal powers allowed her to access the feelings of others. In doing so, she incorporated bits of them into herself. Too much, too fast, could make her lose all sense of herself and her own motivations. Her identity.
Evander breathed in and out, giving her all the time she needed. The growing clamor outside of their tent could wait. Agravayn’s war camp was immaculately organized, but enough soldiers in one place would always be loud—and only seemed to be getting louder.
Mya’s eyes finally opened. She kept her hand pressed to his chest, but her shoulders relaxed and a soft smile turned the corners of her sensuous lips.
“Thank you,” she hummed.
“Always.”
Her smile deepened, her light blue skin flushing slightly across her cheeks. “If you’d been half this accommodating to your own queen and king, they would not have sent you away.” He’d been sent away to assist Gawayn’s brothers with investigating the disappearance of elemental children. But he took her meaning just fine. No one at the elemental court had missed him.
Evander snorted. “Wait until you meet Veyka Pendragon before passing judgement.”
Mya reached for her sea glass crown, leaning down in front of the mirror to adjust her black curls around it.
“I am certain I will adore her,” she insisted.
