“They may object as loudly as they wish. From inside their rooms.” I straightened and turned from the window entirely. “I want names, Kay. Every noble who reacted tonight. I want toknow who moved toward a door, who whispered to the person beside them, who looked like they were already composing a letter in their heads. I want those names before I sleep.”
Not that I would sleep. Not after what had happened.
Kay nodded once, slowly, and I could see him filing it all away. He was a good Seneschal for precisely this reason: he didn’t flinch, he didn’t editorialize, he simply received the order and went to work. Whatever he thought of what I was asking, he kept it behind his teeth, which was more than most men could manage.
“That will be all, Kay.”
He bowed and left without another word.
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence. Mordred hadn’t moved.
“The court is shaken,” Mordred said.
“I know.”
“There are questions about your fitness to—”
“—I know, Mordred.”
There was a pause then, and I turned around to face him.
“Galahad?” I asked. “What is his condition?”
Mordred nodded. “He is alive. His divine magic is doing its best to heal him, but the dragon’s fire is not ordinary fire.”
“Percival? Has he been called to tend to Galahad?”
“Percival refuses to heal him, or to even attempt it.”
I nodded, because I couldn’t blame him. “I don’t want to discuss the dragon, Mordred, so if that’s why you’ve come.”
“No,” Mordred started. “That is not why I’ve come.” Then he cleared his throat. “I have come to tell you that… the prisoner is a problem.”
I said nothing, because I’d always known she was a problem. She was the fucking biggest problem on my list of problems. But to hear it now, delivered to me with such surety, surprised me.
“You will have to explain that sentence.”
“Every incident that has plagued this kingdom of late,” he continued, “correlates to her. Since she arrived, you have been unwell. I daresay you have been in a constant fight against yourself.” His voice was even, academic, as though he were presenting findings on crop rot. “She is the catalyst… I imagine the dragon responds to her in ways it does not respond to anything else.” I nodded because it was true.
“What are you suggesting?”
Another pause. Mordred wasn’t a man who suggested things carelessly, which meant whatever was going to come out of his mouth next was planned and it was well thought out.
“There are methods,” he said, “that would leave no mark, no wound. She would simply fail to wake. The court would be told she attempted escape in the night. Given her history, no one would question it.” He let that sit for a moment. “It would be clean, Your Grace. It would be quiet. And it would be over... all of this... would be over.” He paused. “I believe this step is imperative to your kingship and to the people’s support of your kingship, especially after... the events of this morning.”
The fire popped behind me as a log shifted and threw a brief flare of orange across the ceiling. I kept looking out the window. Strangely, the dragon didn’t surge at the suggestion that Guinevere should be murdered. Perhaps that was because it knew I would never sanction such a thing, especially not after I’d revealed my secret simply to protect her.
I thought about Mordred’s logic. It was impeccable, the way his logic always was. Remove the variable, eliminate the catalyst, and simplify the equation. He wasn’t wrong that she destabilized me and my court. He wasn’t wrong about the correlation.
But he was wrong about the solution.
“No,” I said.
“Your Grace—”
“—No.”
The word came out without heat. And it wasn’t a king’s refusal, full of authority and finality. No, it was just a word, small, plain, and more honest than I’d intended it to be.
