“I have no desire to disrupt your place at court,” Mordred replied instead—the strategic move, he told himself, unrelated to how much he enjoyed playing this game with her. “But I must have assurances you also do not seek to disrupt mine.”
Nyneve studied him. She was far too relaxed and at ease with herself, even when pinned to the forest floor by a faerie knight. She took her time considering, biting her lower lip in a deeply distracting way. Most of his prey snatched at the first out he offered, scurrying into unfair bargains with glee. Nyneve, however, was the furthest thing from prey.
It thrilled him in a way he fervently wished it did not.
“You propose mutually assured destruction?” she asked, savoring the words like some fine, foreign fruit.
He smiled at her, baring all his teeth. “Say what you think I am, Nyneve,” Mordred entreated in a low purr. “Say it, and perhaps we will have a deal.”
Her gaze bored into his, all rushing tide and dark, bottomless currents. Her mouth parted, breasts pressing against his chest as she took a long, measured inhale. Heat pooled in his groin. “You have made a bargain with the Fair Folk for magic, Sir Mordred Pendragon,” she replied after what felt like an eternity, “and gods know what else.”
For a moment, his mind went blank and formless. Then he managed to process her words, and relief flooded him. So she did not think him Fey, or at the very least was unwilling to voice such an accusation.
He should still kill her, he knew. She would wield this discovery, even though it was not the full truth, like a battering ram against him at every last turn, waiting for the right moment to slide it between his ribs with a well-aimed strike.
But, oh, how he mightsavorsuch a tryst.
“So?” Nyneve asked in a barely-there whisper. “Am I correct? At least have the decency to tell me the truth before you try to end my life.”
He tightened his grip around her wrists with one hand, reaching for his sword with the other. He would drive his blade into the freckle-dappled skin of her chest and forget she had ever existed.
But her challenge sang in his ears like a war drum, and it made him feelalive. A rare thing for an unnatural creature. He told himself that his death was assured, marked clearly in the annals of history that had yet to pass. He was a walking corpse. Gritting his jaw, Mordred tried to convince himself that he had accepted his purpose, his Fate. That it did not matter to him if the Time of Men came to pass and the Fey diminished into greener lands he would never see, or if the Age of Fey continued for another millennia despite the attempts of mortals. Either way, Mordred would die on the battlefield that marked the transition.
But still that caged darkness within him keened in search of a different Thread, just one, where another future might come to pass. Nyneve’s weak half-truth felt terribly close to freedom. Being seen by her, even if not fully, made him feel like flesh and blood, not bones already rotting on a battlefield.
“Yes,” Mordred murmured from the back of his throat. “Yes, Lady Nyneve. You see me for what I am.”
“And pray tell, Sir Mordred,” she breathed, her expression blank. “What do you see inme?”
Clever, dangerous thing, this Lady Nyneve Or’Afon.
“You are no convent girl,” he replied. “You belong to one of the western clans. A Druid’s apprentice, I would assume. You work the magic that left this court with Merlin some ten years ago. The precise kind of magic that Camelot’s king would say slows our progress into a more enlightened age.”
She smiled at him then, pleased as a cat with a mouse between its jaws. Moonlight limned the edges of her hair, auburn turned to silver, making her look less like a Druid maiden and more like a vengeful goddess.
“Then let us strike a bargain, since you are so comfortable with such things,” she replied, her voice rich with suggestion. “You will not speak of my magic to anyone in Camelot’s court nor any souls adjacent to it, and I will not speak of your borrowed power nor questionable loyalties in turn.”
Mordred sat back, reaching with his free hand to wrap a few strands of her silken hair around his finger. “Oh, love,” he murmured, letting his eyes return to hers as he gleefully unveiled what she had failed to see. “I fear that would be impossible. You see, you are in mydebt.”
He watched with boundless satisfaction as her eyes widened. Pinned beneath him, Nyneve could not keep the horrible realization from her face as, he presumed, she understood that those two simple words at the edge of Galen’s cottage—“thankyou”—had doomed her. No, she did not think him Fey, or at least she claimed as much. But at this moment, she could make no reasonable guesses as to the breadth of his “borrowed” magic. A mortal bargaining for power from the Fey certainly had the ability to enforce a bargain in turn. Accept the magic, live by its rules.
“But you amuse me,” he admitted. “I only seek to keep you from speaking of my bargain, nothing more.” Mordred paused, tracing the line of her jaw. He would not touch her anywhere she could not pull away. And yet she did not, remaining utterly still as his fingertips ghosted her skin. “I do not wish for our games to end so soon.” The words came out hoarse and unexpected.
A color as lush as petals spread across her cheekbones. She strained against his hold on her wrists, arching into him. “Nor, Sir Mordred, do I,” Nyneve replied in a low, rough whisper.
Suddenly he could feel every stitch in his garments, the weight of his sword belt, the cool evening breeze on his skin. He took in a long breath before he dared to speak again.
“Then,” he replied, drawing out the word, his gaze drifting to the locks of her hair curled around his fingers, “there is a traditional way to seal such a bargain.” His eyes returned to hers, one brow arched expectantly.
To his surprise and amusement, she snorted at him, her gaze darting to her curl in his hand. “You will have no hair-cutting of mine,” Nyneve replied. Her eyes met his, flashing in the moonlight. “I have no interest in tying myself to whatever Fey beast you made your own bargain with. There are older ways, Sir Mordred. Surely you know them, even as a mere mortal man begging for faerie scraps.”
“If you insist,” he replied, arching a brow. “I thought you would surely find such a method repulsive. After all, you never answered me during our dance. Do you find me beautiful, Lady Nyneve?”
Her breathing went short and harsh, breasts pressing into his chest. All the world held still for a moment, but then her expression shifted into a glare. “Let me up,” Nyneve snapped, “and we’ll seal our bloody bargain.”
With a deep surge of regret, Mordred untangled himself from Nyneve. The heat of her vanished from his skin far too quickly. He reached down, offering her a hand, but she ignored him and stood up on her own with a huff. Leaves clung to the back of her gown and hair in a way that should have looked disheveled and unsightly. Instead, the debris of the forest seemed more like fine and costly decoration, far more beautiful than any pearl pins or sparkling adornments.
With an impossibly intact air of dignity, she brushed away the crushed leaves and broken twigs before meeting his gaze. His breath hitched and he could not stop himself from wondering whether she, too, was still half-caught in the spell of what their bodies had felt like pressed together. But the next moment, Nyneve refuted any such notions as she began to ferociously debate the exact language of their bargain. He might have been impressed if not for the sting of disappointment.
