“I won’t be long.”
I felt my eyes narrow of their own volition. “You’re disgusting and I’d rather die than suck your cock.”
Kay chuckled, and the sound was low and satisfied, like I’d confirmed something he’d already known. He pushed away from the bars and dropped his hand from himself.
Then the sound of boots on stone interrupted the moment, and a guard appeared at the corridor’s end, a torch in hand, and his face carefully blank in the way of men trained to see nothing. I’d never been happier to see one of Arthur’s guards.
The man’s eyes moved briefly, uncomfortably, from Kay to me, then back to Kay again. “The prisoner is expected by the king.”
“Well,” Kay started. “Don’t keep the king waiting.”
He stepped aside, and when the guard unlocked my cell door, I walked past Kay without another word, close enough to smell the wine on his breath as I followed the guard toward the stairs.
“Think about what I said, Guinevere,” Kay called out behind me.
But I didn’t think about it because I couldn’t think about it. Because it was that off-putting. Instead, I focused on the fact that one of the guards’ hands was on my arm the whole way up the stairs. He wasn’t gripping me exactly; it was more like a reminder that I didn’t belong to myself any longer.
Regardless, stone walls soon gave way to plastered ones, and then to tapestried ones, and then we stopped in front of a door that was wide enough to drive a cart through.
The guard knocked twice.
“Enter.”
It was Arthur’s voice.
The guard swung the door open, and we walked inside. The first thing that struck me was that the room smelled like beeswax, cedar, and something underneath both: the king. I opted to breathe through my mouth.
The fire burned high in the grate, fat logs crackling and spitting amber light across everything it touched: walls, floor, and ceiling. Pretty soon, the whole room took on that particular jaundiced gold that made healthy skin look sallow and shadows appear deeper than they were. The heat pressed against my face, and after the cold stone of the dungeon, it should have felt like relief. It didn’t.
Arthur stood by the window with his back to me, and his back appeared so broad, his shoulders even broader, heavier, like he wore the weight of the world on them. His hair was a dark wheat at the nape of his neck, and the last light of the afternoon caught the silver at his temples.
A copper bathtub sat behind him, steam rising off the surface in lazy curls that drifted toward the ceiling. Someone had scattered dried herbs in the water. I could smell lavender and something sharper underneath, rosemary maybe. The room smelled like the kind of bath I hadn’t had in months, the kind of bath I would have killed for if it hadn’t been located in the king’s bedchamber.
“Leave us,” Arthur said to the guard. The man simply nodded and turned around, leaving me standing there. Arthur motioned me further inside, then closed and locked the door behind us.
When he turned to face me, his eyes moved from my face downward, slow and deliberate. Not lecherous, exactly, but more like assessment. He looked at me the way a man looks at a horse he’s deciding whether or not to purchase.
“Strip.”
One word with no inflection, like he was telling a servant to stoke the fire.
My jaw tightened. “Planning on parading me naked in front of every male member of the court again?”
He gave me a look. “If I wanted to, yes. But no, I don’t want to.”
“Then what do you want?”
“You to keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Every nerve in my body pulled taut, but I started unlacing the prisoner’s tunic mainly because I couldn’t wait to get it off. The thing was three sizes too large and smelled like the man who’d worn it before me. Once I’d shed the tunic, I stepped out of the rough-spun braies and left everything in a pile on the stone floor.
“Get in.” He motioned to the bath.
I didn’t argue. Instead, I stepped into the bath, lowered myself into the water, and let the heat swallow me to the chin. The water was so hot it turned my skin immediately pink, but I didn’t flinch because the heat was beyond heavenly.
The fire crackled. Then the sound of his footsteps interrupted as he came toward me. He crouched at the side of the tub, beside me, and close enough that his sleeve almost touched the water’s surface. His eyes moved over my face with the same careful attention he probably gave to the study of maps. Then his gaze moved to my breasts and my nipples, which met the line of the water.
I hate you,I thought.I hate this room. And I hate the way this water feels so good. But mostly I just hate you.
