I finished the goblet of wine before I realized I’d even taken another sip and set the goblet down with a steadiness I didn’t entirely feel.
The strategy was simple enough to articulate: I didn’t want Guinevere fully broken. I wanted her bent. I wanted from her a genuine pivot of loyalty: for her to look at Merlin’s design and then at mine and choose mine, not because I’d made the alternative unbearable, but because I’d made her believe she was choosing freely.
Galahad was the first instrument in my arsenal. Not a weapon, but a contrast. Let her spend her days in the company of the purest man in Camelot, a man who wanted nothing from her but her soul’s improvement, and she’d want nothing more than to be free of him.
Galahad could shatter armies with his celestial light and best any living swordsman in the kingdom (except perhaps Lance),yet his most devastating weapon had nothing to do with combat. It was the quiet, relentless pressure of his company: the lectures, the measured disappointments, the way his eyes lingered on a person’s smallest flaw as though cataloging sins for some celestial ledger. An hour with Galahad left most men feeling simultaneously judged and found wanting. A full day left them desperate to confess things they hadn’t even done simply to be dismissed from his presence.
He didn’t need a blade. He needed only to sit across a table from someone and look at them with that patient certainty, and they’d eventually break themselves open just to make him stop.
“And what of Corvin?” Lance asked.
I breathed in deeply. “That’s another topic altogether.” I walked to the fireplace and held my hands out to the flames. “Part of me agrees with Galahad that Corvin should be put to death for his crimes. But the other part of me realizes the asset he is. He’s important to Merlin, and that means he’s valuable.” I paused and then breathed out. “What’s more... I’m afraid if I do anything too...permanentto Corvin, Guinevere will be beyond reach.”
“Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “You saw them together when we found them at the tavern.” And I’d seen them when they were both in the heat of passion, which had told me they were important to one another. Beyond important, if I were being honest with myself.
I noticed how Lance swallowed hard and his jaw grew tight. “What are you hinting at?”
“I don’t believe I’mhintingat anything,” I frowned. “Did you not see what I saw in that room?”
“I did; I just... I suppose I wasn’t entirely sure what to... make of it.”
I could have told him that I’d watched them fuck right in front of me: thatimportant to one anotherwas a pale,diplomatic shadow of what I’d actually witnessed, but I held my tongue. Mainly because I had no desire to sit through the inevitable barrage of questions that would follow.
“Suffice it to say their bond runs deep. And that’s precisely the kind of leverage I intend to exploit.”
Lance’s frown deepened, carving lines into that handsome face of his, so I continued before he could turn his silence into another question I had no interest in answering.
“Corvin is her weakness. Perhaps the only weakness she has that I can reliably reach. If she believes his life or his freedom rests on her cooperation, she’ll fall into line. I can use him to ensure she remains...amenableto doing exactly what I require.”
“I see.” A pause. “And if she calls your bluff?”
“Then she’ll discover I don’t have a bluff to call.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
-MORGAN-
One of my ravens arrived before dawn.
I heard the beat of its wings before I heard it tap its beak at the window. I was already awake. In truth, I’d been awake since the third hour of the night, lying in the dark with my hands folded over my breasts, listening to Caer Gwyll breathe.
The raven stood there, patient and still, watching me with one eye. In its feet, curled around the object like a fist, was a sparrow. Already dead.
I stood up, crossed the room, and opened the window. The raven immediately flew inside, and when I held my palm out, it dutifully dropped the sparrow into my hand before taking its perch on my shoulder.
“What have you brought me, my beautiful girl?”
It cawed, and both of us lowered our eyes to look at the sparrow which was tiny and insignificant-looking; nothing special in the least. It was the sort of creature that spent its entire existence moving between the lower branches of the trees without ever calling attention to itself.
But it wasn’t the little bird itself that arrested my attention. It was the fact that there wasn’t any blood, just as there wasn’tany wound. There wasn’t anything to show it had even been killed, and that was the part that struck me.
I turned the little creature over in my palm, noting how it weighed almost nothing, something that always surprised me: how little weight life added to a thing.
The death of this particular sparrow could have been considered a trivial thing if taken on its own. Birds died constantly: taken by larger birds, crushed by carts, caught by cats, struck by stones thrown by bored children. The world was full of small deaths that went unnoticed.
But this was the sixth.
