“Well, I will tell you, and hopefully for the last time, that I don’t care what you order me to say or to do.”
“You are alive merely because I have allowed it.”
She shifted forward then, rising up onto the very tips of her toes until her face was only inches from mine, close enough that I could feel the whisper of her breath across my face. The scent ofher wrapped around me, and my body tensed as her eyes locked onto mine, and I knew I wouldn’t like what was about to come from her mouth.
“I owe you nothing,” she hissed, each word sharp and deliberate. “After everything I’ve endured, everything I’ve suffered, everything I’ve sacrificed in the name of Arthur Pendragon, in the name of this kingdom, this throne, this cursed crown, I don’t owe you one fucking thing. Not answers. Not obedience. Not one single breath of explanation.”
-GUIN-
One moment, Arthur was circling me, controlled the way he always was, and the next, the blade was in the ground and he was mere inches away from me, with nothing in his hands and everything in his eyes.
I backed up, or at least I tried to, but the stone wall was at my back, which meant there was nowhere left to go. At the sound of voices, I turned to see Agravaine, Percival, and Gareth, who had entered the training yard and were headed for the practice blades. Close on their heels were Lance and Gawain. Lance looked at me once, then his gaze moved to Arthur before it dropped back to the ground. I couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes, but it was there. Something was there.
“You forget yourself and you forget your fucking place in this court,” Arthur snarled at me, pulling my attention back to him.
I’d sparred with this man for weeks, taken hits from him, and given them back. I’d stood my ground against him when my legs were shaking and my ribs were bruised, and not once had Ifelt what I felt now, which was the clean animal certainty that I needed to be somewhere else.
Even with my back to the wall, he moved in even closer.
The stone was cold through the thin linen of my practice tunic, and the heat coming off him was like standing too close to a forge. I had a feeling it was the dragon. My chin came up on reflex, or pride, my usual armor, but it put my face close to his throat, close enough that I could see the pulse there, the way it jumped and raced.
Something in my chest answered it, and I hated it. Gods, I hated it, with a specific and exhausted fury that was directed entirely at myself. My fingers curled against the stone wall behind me, but I didn’t touch him. I also didn’t close that last terrible inch of distance, even though something nameless and stupid in me was screaming to.
This was the power he had over me, something that ate at me, no matter how much I pretended it was otherwise. There was just something about this man that sang to something inside me, and whatever was inside me answered whatever was inside him.
His eyes were wrong, but they weren’t wrong with anger. Angry Arthur I knew; in fact, it seemed the angry version of Arthur was the only version I knew. And when he was angry, he was cold and surgical, almost bored. But this was something else, something much more concerning. The gold in his eyes had swallowed the blue and was now swimming with red. He looked at me like I was something he’d lost, just now recovered and never intended to misplace again.
My breath came out uneven, and my heart started pounding in earnest. I was sure he heard both because I watched him hear both. As he studied me, it wasn’t with the eyes of a man. It was with the eyes of the beast within him, and they were both cold and calculating.
“You will tell me the truth.”
His voice came out wrong. It was so much deeper, with more of a pronounced growl than any human voice could ever hope to be. As he said the words, one hand slipped around my throat and tightened just enough to prove that he could be deadly if he wanted to be.
“I will tell you nothing,” I managed.
Whatever was in his expression blanched, and the red of his eyes began to deepen. He stepped back as my heart thundered. One step. Two. He turned to face the training yard with his shoulders squared and his jaw set. His voice, when he spoke, came out like gravel dragged over iron.
“I want to know who the fuck touched her!” he yelled out to all the knights assembled.
Everyone stopped what they were doing, and the yard went completely quiet as every set of eyes moved to him.
“Which of you.” There was a subtle growl in the undertones of his voice that sent a shudder through me. “Which one of you took what was mine?”
It was no longer the voice of the man; it had been entirely usurped by that of the beast, of the dragon, and within the deep register was the sound of possession, of something territorial, something that was furious.
I stood by the wall, my heart pounding in my ears as all the knights in that yard went still. Now it was only Galahad who was missing, because his early morning hours were reserved for his chapel. But the rest were here, and they were all staring. Maybe it wasn’t a surprise that my gaze found only one of them. Lance. He was standing on the other side of the yard, having gone absolutely still, wearing his expression like a mask of blank wariness.
Arthur’s gaze moved across all of them like a blade looking for the seam, and all I could feel towards him was complete andtotal disgust because he was talking about me like I was a stolen horse, like I was something he owned. The possessiveness in his voice wasn’t even dressed up. No, it was real, it was ugly, and it was raw. But what upset me the most was the part of me that didn’t hate it, the part of me that reveled in his obsession.
I pressed my palms flat against the stone wall as I just stood there, watching Lance’s careful blankness begin, very slowly, to crack.
-LANCE-
Arthur stood at the center of the training yard with his sword across his shoulders and his wrists draped over the blade in that particular way he stood when he was waiting for something or someone to break. He’d been in one of his moods since dawn: the kind that made stable boys press themselves flat against walls and senior knights develop sudden, urgent business in other parts of the castle.
I’d positioned myself near the gate, which was an old habit: always know your exits. Meanwhile, a few of the knights had developed a sudden, intense interest in their boots.
The silence stretched and, of course, my attention found Kay’s. He was already watching me with a smile on his face, and that smile said he not only held my strings but in this moment, he was aware of nothing else. Just one word from him and my truth would be laid bare at Arthur’s feet.
