He said nothing, distrusting his own tongue, and continued to examine Nyneve, her striking side profile lit by the lanterns. She moved skillfully, familiar with the mortar and pestle. He felt her Threads of power shift with intention, felt her tie them into charms that would aid the mare’s healing. The warmth beneath his ribs crackled like an open flame. An unfamiliar instinct swept over him: to prowl to Nyneve and peer into the very tapestry of her being, examining where her Threads knotted with earthly attachments, where they bowed beneath the weight of her past, and where they strained against the inevitability of her destiny.
The very idea made his breath catch at the back of his throat. His Threads hummed. All at once, Mordred understood that if he moved toward the maiden and she tried to run, he did not think he could stop himself from chasing her.
Instead, the knight turned toward Awen and stroked the mare’s neck with an inexplicably unsteady hand. At least the Druids had sent a worthy opponent in their thinly veiled bid for power in Camelot’s growing court. A beautiful one, too, no doubt. But he could have beauty whenever he wanted it. There was nothing novel about a pretty face.
“What is your name?” the maiden asked as she finished preparing the paste, turning to look up at him. Mordred gathered himself and met her gaze, coaxing Awen forward a few more steps. “I simply must know the identity of my protector.”
Her tone dripped with archness. Even though she delivered it with the meek expression expected from a maiden, she made it sound as though her pretty mouth was curved in a snarl. Something uncoiled low in Mordred’s belly. He set his jaw.
“Mordred Pendragon,” he replied with a smile that he knew was all teeth. The knight suspected she might have already learned his name from Guinevere, but revealing his identity wasa favorite amusement: pulling the rug from beneath the feet of sneering nobles, so sure the object of Merlin’s prophecies would be visibly twisted and undeniably evil in appearance. Like the real world was as simple as a child’s fable.
Nyneve considered him, dragging her gaze from his boots to his shoulders without a shred of shame. “Interesting,” she murmured, approaching the mare. To his surprise, Awen, a sensitive, complicated creature, offered a soft nicker. She strode to the opposite side of the horse, gently stroking the mare’s silvery mane.
“How is she with medicinal pastes?” the maiden asked, meeting his eyes over Awen’s elegant neck. “I added honey, of course.”
“I can handle it,” he told her, using two fingers to check the mare’s heartbeat under her jaw. “She is picky about people.”
“Hmm,” Nyneve replied. “Cannot blame her for that.”
Amused, Mordred glanced back over at the maiden. She smirked at him, her cheekbones gilded in the light. A worthy opponent, indeed. His blood throbbed all at once, roaring in his ears. With a hunger he did not recognize, the knight watched Nyneve continue to stroke Awen, the mare relaxing under her touch. He wondered how her hands might move across his own skin.
Her mouth still curved into that distracting little smile, Nyneve handed him the mortar. Their fingertips brushed for the faintest of moments. Beneath the tides of the mare’s breathing, Mordred heard a Fatesong loop. It was low and lonely and full of ache, disappearing before he could examine the melody. The maiden pulled away as though she had been stung, sliding her hands into the pockets of her overdress. His mind wheeled, so he anchored himself to the task at hand, holding the mare’s head as gently as possible to administer the paste.
“And may I have your name, my lady?” he asked, watching Nyneve as she walked back toward the trunk, her limp worsening. The maiden did not answer for a moment, pulling herself atop the trunk with a huff.
“You may call me Nyneve Or’Afon,” she replied. She did not even glance his way as she spoke, tossing her full name out like it was little more than table scraps for a pack of half-starved hounds.
Well, by the gods, Mordredwasrather ravenous.
He took her name between his teeth, speaking it aloud. The syllables tasted of summer storms and river floods. When he walked Awen to the end of the aisle, he cued the horse into a halt and faced Nyneve properly with a courtly bow.
Then he held out one hand toward her, as Arthur’s customs dictated. To his surprise, she lifted her palm from her lap, though she watched him fiercely, eyes glinting with sharp intelligence. Still, he felt the tremble go through her when his lips brushed her knuckles. Perhaps Guinevere was right. Perhaps this Druid girl was more susceptible than he had thought.
“A pleasure,” he murmured, watching her face flush prettily, though her gaze was still dagger-like.
“All mine,” Nyneve replied, tilting her chin up to look at him. She spoke from the back of her throat, her mouth curved into something cruel and taunting. “I certainly owe you a token for your next tournament.” Athreat, he realized with surprise, such maidenly words woven into something far more sinister. Mordred’s body responded with flooding heat: molasses-thick, amber-dark, and utterly unwelcome.
“If you insist,” Mordred said, fighting to sound bored as he turned the mare and continued walking back down the shadowy aisle. “I have received many tokens in my days, all to little effect,I fear. I invite you to discover whether yours tastes any different, though do not forget the eyes of the court are everywhere.”
With his back to her, Mordred could not watch her expression to gauge whether she knew about him. About his bastard birth, some unnamed Cornish noblewoman ensnaring the would-be King of the Isles—at least as Arthur told it—and about the prophecies Uther Pendragon’s powerful advisor, Merlin, had made.
Arthur would do his best to usher in an illuminated age of chivalry and a united nation. Mordred, according to Merlin, would do his best to destroy all of it. To drag Camelot back into the dark ages of ancient magic and cruel Fey, mankind trembling around their fires as the night crept in.
He heard no sharp inhale from the maiden, which he supposed meant she already knew. Not so sheltered as a girl from a nunnery ought to be, though Guinevere had suspected that was a lie. Mordred urged Awen forward, trying to root himself in the soothing sounds of the mare’s hoofbeats on the dirt. But his mind sailed away, tumbling into darker, deeper thoughts.
Merlin had been right, in a way. The actual bastard son of Arthur was long dead thanks to the king’s purge of noble baby boys. There was only the powerful changeling who had stolen the real Mordred’s name, his place, his prophecy, raised by Morgana of Tintagel to blend seamlessly into Camelot’s court. And destroy it, if necessary.
The darkness that two goddesses had stitched into his chest leapt at the mere thought of such destruction. He exhaled and turned Awen as they reached the end of the aisle, patting the mare’s shoulder. Her skin had begun to cool, her breathing no longer so harsh. As it should be. Mordred had already healed her with his magic, but the stablemaster insisted on sending forherbs. Powerful allies, plants were, but no match for twisted guts inside a large mammal.
“How did she come to be in such a bad way?” Nyneve asked, even though she could take her jars of herbs, her crutch, her mortar and pestle, and go away from here whenever she damn well pleased.
“Stablemaster left her out on spring grass for too long, I am afraid,” Mordred found himself replying, though he wanted to tell the Druid girl she had better places to be than alone in the stable with a knight who was nothing he claimed to be.
Nyneve frowned. The expression was genuine, he realized. So this maiden did not take well to poor management of animals. He resisted the way that made him like her. It was still quite possible he would need to be rid of her, if Guinevere bid it—or if he disagreed enough with the queen to take matters into his own hands.
But Mordred had played with his prey before. There seemed no harm in doing it again. At this moment, though, all he wished for was for her to be gone. To cease her distractions: those nimble hands and pale golden skin, the mane of curls he wanted to wind around his fingers, the slender neck he wished desperately to feel between his hands.
“Needless suffering due to foolishness,” Nyneve said as she crossed her arms. “Quite infuriating.”
