“Did he force himself on her?”
“No. Lance wouldn’t force himself on any woman. You know that.”
He swallowed hard, and there was another silence, this one longer.
I moved to stand beside him then, not touching, just near. The night air between us was cool and still. Below the courtyard wall, the forest of Caer Gwyll breathed in the dark, ancient and indifferent to the small human suffering happening above it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“Do you?”
I nodded and reached out to touch him but paused, asking first for his permission. He nodded, and I allowed my fingers to circle his wrist. Then I closed my eyes and felt for him, felt for his aura, and opened it the way another person might open and read a book.
“You’re thinking that this changes something. That you’ve been holding vigil for a woman who...” I stopped myself. “You’re doing the arithmetic men always do in these moments. You’re calculating what this means and whether it diminishes something.”
He turned his head just enough to look at me sidelong. “And what do you think it means?”
“I think,” I said carefully, dropping his hand, “that she’s been alone, frightened, and in enemy territory. And Lance is...” I paused, choosing honesty over comfort. “He’s very hard to resist when he decides he wants something. I know that firsthand.”
Something moved across Corvin’s face at that: a quiet recognition, an understanding. Lance had a reputation for a reason.
“I’m not telling you this to wound you,” I continued. And I meant it, which was unusual enough to notice. “I’m telling you because you’re about to walk into Arthur’s castle ready to burn itto the ground for her sake. And you deserve to walk in with clear eyes.”
“My eyes are clear.”
“Are they?”
He looked at me fully then, and the amber of his eyes was darker in the moonlight, almost brown, almost something else entirely.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked. He wasn’t angry, just genuinely curious.
I considered the question. It was a better question than most men would have thought to ask.
“Nothing,” I answered with a shrug. “That’s rather the point. I want you to do nothing with it. I want you to know it and keep moving because the mission doesn’t change. She’s still in that cell, and her life is still worth saving. I want you to recognize that regardless of who fucked her and who fucks her in the future, none of that matters. I want to know your ego won’t impact your mission...”
He exhaled through his nose, something short and controlled. “She owes me nothing.”
“Then she doesn’t know of your feelings?” I gestured vaguely at him, at the whole of him, at the fractures still cooling in the stone beneath his boots.
“No,” he agreed. “She doesn’t know. I always... thought it best to... keep it from her.”
We stood there in the dark for a moment, just two people who understood one another, each in our own particular way. Each of us seemed to understand what it meant to want someone who was looking elsewhere.
I’d wanted Corvin for years, in the abstract, idle way you want things you know are unavailable. Not love. I wasn’t certain I was still capable of love in the way poets describe it. But desire, yes. What I harbored towards him was the specific desirefor a man who possessed both gentleness and violence in equal measure and knew precisely when to deploy each.
And he wanted a white-haired girl in a dungeon who’d given herself to the most beautiful knight in Camelot. The comedy of it might have made me laugh on a different night.
“Tell me something,” I said, moving away from him, letting my gown trail across the dark stone. “Why do you think it is that so many men lose themselves over her?”
He turned to face me with real curiosity in his gaze. “What are you insinuating?”
“I insinuate nothing; I merely look at the facts.” Then I held out my hand and extended my index finger. “You.” I gestured at him. “Lancelot. Arthur.” I let the names fall off my tongue as I raised two more fingers. Then a fourth. “Even Kay, who despises everyone with admirable consistency.” I paused as I considered the next name on my list. “And even that fool, Vaelen...” I paused to let the name land.
“Vaelen?”
I nodded. “He dreamwalked into her sleep like a lovesick boy.” I took a breath because that one did hurt to name. Hmm, strange that.
“Explain what you mean by that.” Corvin’s voice was flat.
