“I have... no fucking idea... what you’re talking... about.”
“The veil,” he continued. “Is he thinning it deliberately? What’s he doing that’s causing the veil to crumble? And why would he want to do so?”
I was more than sure there was nothing but genuine blankness on my face because the question didn’t land the way questions land when you know the answer but are choosing towithhold it. It landed the way a question lands when you don’t have any understanding of what’s being asked.
“I don’t... know what you’re... talking about.”
Something was happening to the boundary between Annwyn and the mortal world; I knew that much but only because Merlin had spoken of it in fragments, though never completing the picture. But him acting as the agent, someone who wasdeliberately thinning it, or working against it, those were two very different things, and I had no information that supported either one. Whatever crossed my face in that moment was real, and I knew Arthur could see that it was real.
Because he went quiet.
-ARTHUR-
Was it possible that Corvin didn’t know the veil was thinning? I doubted that very much.
“Soldiers at the eastern watch posted a report six days ago,” I explained. “They saw the ghostly outline of a woman at the tree line.‘Luminous’I believe was the word they used to describe her. She was standing there, then gone before anyone could reach her.” I watched Corvin’s face for the lie, but I still didn’t see one. “Then there was another report that the river at Caer Vann reversed course for half a morning. Three men witnessed it. One of them drowned trying to cross what he thought was shallow water moving in the wrong direction.” I cleared my throat. “Another report mentioned a strange fog that settled over a patrol camp near the old mill road. When it lifted, one man couldn’t recall his own name. He recovered after two days. Mostly.” I paused. “Shall I go on?”
Corvin said nothing, but he also didn’t need to. His jaw had tightened at the mention of the second report, and by the third, his eyes had moved off me and toward the middle distance where men go when something they’ve half-suspected becomes solid enough to hold.
That wasn’t the face of guilt. It was the face of a man who knew the shape of the room he’d just been locked inside.
Before I could open my mouth and ask another question, the image dropped into my mind’s eye without any warning. It was a memory of Guinevere bent over in front of Corvin. His hands were on her hips and his cock was inside her. She was moaning, and her eyes were closed.
My grip closed on the edge of the table, and somehow I managed not to look down at my knuckles, but I knew they were white.
Destroy him!The dragon blared through my mind, filling me with the glee I’d experienced earlier when the guards had hoisted Corvin into the air by his arms, and his shoulders had made a popping sound.
Tear him apart!
“Tell me what Merlin knows about these incidents,” I insisted.
Corvin met my eyes for the first time in several seconds. “Merlin has nothing... to do with any of... that.”
I gestured to the guard closest to me with two fingers. The rope went taut, and Corvin’s breath left him in a hard exhale as his arms took his full weight once more. His shoulders pulled wrong immediately; there was already damage there from the previous session, and the body remembers what it’s been through even when the mind decides to be brave about it. His face contracted and his jaw locked as his eyes fixed on something above my head.
The dragon flooded me with warmth.
The image came again. Slower this time.
Corvin’s mouth on hers, his fingers in her hair, the sound of her moan as he thrust inside her...
I watched his face contort and thought:good.
The word arrived before I could intercept it, so I let it stand.
I also let him hang longer than the question required.
When the guards lowered him, his breathing had gone ragged and uneven, the kind that means the body is deciding what to prioritize. His shoulders sat at the wrong angle, but I didn’t fucking care.
I waited and noticed how the room was quiet except for the torches and the sound of him trying to reassemble himself. The dragon purred against my ribs like a sated cat.
When Corvin’s eyes cleared, I leaned down and whispered into his ear, so no one would hear me. “Is Merlin trying to free the dragon from within me? Is he the reason it’s been growing stronger?”
The silence before Corvin’s answer was different from the silences before his others. It wasn’t a protective silence, but neither was it strategic.
“Leave,” I told the guards, and they dutifully nodded and then retreated. Only then did Corvin speak.
“Merlin... doesn’t want the dragon... to overcome you,” he said. His voice was wrecked but direct. “If the dragon... defeats you, that... means ruin for all of us. Not... just you.” He paused. “Not to mention... he can’t even... speak of it. He’s oath-bound to Blodeuwyn.”
