“Arthur.”
I didn’t stop.
“Arthur. Do not hurt her!”
I took the first stair. Then the second. Behind me, I heard him hit the bars with the flat of his palm: one sharp crack of sound that rang out and died, but I didn’t look back.
-ARTHUR-
The first sign of the headache was a throbbing sensation in the back of my left eye.
That was how it always began, every time: needle, knife, and finally the pressure of the beast pushing from the inside, like claws biting through my cranium. I knew what each kind of pain indicated, whether just restlessness of the dragon or its rage. This was rage.
It wasn’t the only one feeling restless and angry, though. I’d been pacing for almost an hour.
The fire in the hearth had burned to nothing, but I hadn’t called for anyone. I didn’t want witnesses when I was like this; Ididn’t want anyone to see my jaw locked, my hands flexing open and closed.
WE MUST GO TO HER!
“No.”
I said the word to the empty room, to the tapestries, to the cold stone floor and the guttering light. To no one. I was fully aware of how I looked. A king, alone in his chambers, arguing with himself. If any of my men had seen me, they’d have sent for a physician. Or a priest.
WE FEEL HER PAIN! GO TO HER!
“I don’t fucking care.”
The pain spiked. I pressed the heel of my palm against my temple and kept walking. Stone to stone. The length of the room, then back again. The same path I’d worn for the last hour while the beast threw itself against the walls of its cage and screamed.
It had been like this since I’d left her with Mordred.
What I felt now was the dragon’s displeasure transmitted through my body like a hot wire, and it had nothing to do with my own conscience, which was perfectly clear. Clear because I knew what she was: a spy. Not only that, but she’d used magic against me in front of my men. Mordred’s binding was the appropriate response. Truly, it was the only response, other than her death.
“You should be fucking grateful that she’s even still alive.”
SHE HURTS BECAUSE OF YOU!
“She brought it on herself.”
GO TO HER NOW!
“Shut up.”
GO—
“I said shut up.”
I stopped walking and put both hands flat on the surface of the writing desk as I breathed through my nose. The woodgrain swam slightly in my vision, and the candlelight fractured. I waited for the wave to pass.
But it didn’t fucking pass. The dragon pressed harder, and behind it was something almost coherent, not words exactly, more like an image. Her face. The exact arrangement of her features. The precise quality of her silence.
I shoved the image away.
This was the part I hated most. Not the fire. Not the dreamflame or the seer’s visions or any of the darker gifts the creature had pressed into my blood when I’d been younger and stupid enough to think power was something you could take without cost. I’d made a fair peace with all of that.
What I hated was this: this wanting that wasn’t mine. I hated the creature’s obsessions that bled through the walls of the cage until I couldn’t tell anymore which side of the bars I was standing on.
It had never done this for anyone before her.
