“No,” she snapped some time later, her hand clearly going to the place on her belt where her dagger would normally be. “Do you take me for some blushing maiden who has never had a man between her thighs before? Please, Sir Mordred. If you are going to attempt to seduce me into accepting an uneven bargain, you’ll have to do much better than that.”
And in any other situation, lounging against the same wide, towering oak that Nyneve was leaning her shoulder into, he would. Mordred would have used all his honeyed words, leveraged the power of his dark lashes and oceanic eyes, trailed his fingers along her collarbones and beneath her skirts, intoxicating her with his touch. A simple enough thing, well-practiced. Doing so would surely result in an uneven bargain, yes. Butnotfor Lady Nyneve Or’Afon, he feared.
So, instead, Mordred accepted her admittedly fair alterations to the language. Then they faced each other, both making their promises to the powers of the forest, to the old things sleeping beneath their feet.
“To fulfill my debt with the man known as Sir Mordred Pendragon,” Nyneve said, her nose wrinkled as if the words were sour in her mouth, “I shall not speak of his Fey bargain, nor the magic he has gained from it. I shall not inscribe the truth of him in ink. I shall not sing of his dealmaking in song nor hymn. I shall not seek to tell anyone that a Fey-bound man has taken residence at the heart of Camelot’s court.”
“And so your debt is cleared,” he murmured in response.
Then, following the ancient way of things, the knight and the maiden stepped close. With a trembling thrill, Mordred saw that her breath was quick, fast, pupils blown wide as she tilted her chin up, gaze meeting and capturing his eyes with all the ferocity of a wild summer storm.
There was no need, he knew, but his hands went to the curve of her waist before he could stop himself. Nyneve did not protest. In fact, her palms found their way to his chest, fingers curling into his tunic.
And then he bent low and kissed her, the bargain humming on his tongue as her mouth met his. Beneath the metallic, sour tang of a faerie deal, Mordred found Nyneve tasted of river water, wildflowers, and white-hot rage. Despite his better judgment, he tumbled into her, hands sliding up her back as she clutched at his tunic, pulling him closer. Nyneve thrummed with a fierce kind of aliveness, with freedom taken instead of given, with all the potential of a just-born thunderstorm to ravage even the oldest of forests.
He broke the kiss first, or perhaps she did, but neither released the other, her soft curves still pressed against all his hard angles. She drew a shivering breath against his lips, and then, together, they whispered the bargain’s close: “A jewel for a jewel.”
The spell broke, and Nyneve violently shoved him away, taking several steps back. A cloud passed over the moon above them, blanketing them in darkness. All Mordred saw for a moment was the gleam of her eyes, alight with an endless fury he could only admire. He might have gazed at her more, drank her in, had the solid soil beneath his feet not suddenly given way.
His mind twisted as the forest floor rippled; the rich loam suddenly turned into black mud that sucked at his boots. Before Mordred understood what was happening, he was treading water in a place where there had been nothing but tree roots and glovewort.
“You should know something, faerie-bound knight,” Nyneve said from the edge of the sudden and seemingly bottomless pool of water.
He reached for the shore, which should have been just past his fingertips, but the forest seemed to lurch away from him, a tiny pond turned to a vast lake all at once. And still, Nyneve was somehow so close, her face a mask of dark and deadly amusement.
“You did not, as you thought, make a deal with a Druid’s apprentice,” she murmured, reaching across the watery expanse and capturing his jaw in her warm hand, such a contrast to the ice-cold waters closing in around him.
Mordred tried to calm his racing heart, tried to think, but all he could do was stare into her wide green eyes, alight with power.
“I am a godsdamned Druidsorceress, you fool,” she snarled with half-mad glee. Nyneve released his jaw, and he struggledfor the shore, but again, it was impossibly far away. “Enjoy your swim, Sir Mordred.”
And then she was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Nyneve
Nyneve stumbled through the woods, bleary eyes seeking the lights of Camelot. Her feet felt like lead weights. She dragged herself three more steps forward, only to fall to her knees and vomit onto the mossy forest floor. The Elders’ binding burned beneath her breastbone like a wildfire. Biting back a cry, she fell onto her side and curled into a ball.
Silent tears streamed down her face as the binding magic sought to devour her whole. With everything she had, Nyneve battled to soothe the searing knot tied around her heart. This was the price. She had known it the moment she’d decided to call to the waters in the soil and drown Sir Mordred in her currents—precisely the kind of magic the Elders had bound her against working after that stupid, foolish duel went wrong. And now that binding wrapped itself even tighter around her magic, the punishment she’d been warned about.
Nyneve pulled herself up onto her elbows, dry-heaved so hard that her spine felt as though it snapped in half, and then vomited blood.
Was it worth it?asked Elder Uccu’s reedy voice in her head, his sneering face appearing like a phantom before her.Alwaysso arrogant, so eager to prove your prowess. Prove it, then, Roman girl,withoutthe power we unlocked within you. Prove it half-bound, in the halls of your father. Only once you do so will you be permitted back within our foldand see your magic freed.
Nyneve gagged, physically shaking her head to banish Elder Uccu from her thoughts. He’d only been so harsh because she’d killed his son, she told herself, her thoughts disjointed and uneven as she stretched her hand forward, digging her fingers into the ground for traction. Only so harsh because Uccu had never wanted to adopt the orphan girl in the first place. Because he hated her for being better than his weak heir, for growing into something that might be stronger than evenhimone day—despite the inferior Roman blood in her veins.
Perhaps if Uccu had been more concerned with strengthening his lackluster child instead of pulling her down, Nyneve thought as she dragged a hand across her mouth, that stupid unsanctioned duel never would’ve happened. Uccu would still have a son. Nyneve would be studying under Morgana de Bois, learning charms and ancient workings instead of crawling through the woods on her belly.
With a sharp flood of pain, her shoulders gave out, and Nyneve collapsed onto the forest floor. The air she managed to drag into her lungs was heavy and metallic with blood. She might die here. Uccu’s binding was a violent thing, vicious enough that the other Elders proclaimed it too harsh a punishment, but he’d gotten his way, as he always did.
The side of her face pressed into the cool, damp soil, Nyneve let out a shaking breath. Blood filled her mouth. If she stopped with all her endless excuses and was actually honest—and shecouldbe honest here, wrapped up in the dark sweep of the forest, far from Camelot’s faux civilities—she probably deserved this. The binding, the exile. All of it. She hadn’t meant to kill Uccu’sson. It would be one thing, maybe, she thought as she curled tighter around herself, every bone in her body feeling as though it was breaking over and over again, if she had meant to kill him. But she hadn’t. It was an accident.
And that terrified her.
She’d never killed anyone before. Not until that boiling tide of indomitable fury surged in her veins and overcame her entirely. That’s the only reason Nyneve had permitted the Elders to bind her. She could have fought them. She was powerful enough to resist. But she didn’t because she had a terrible, sinking feeling that she needed the binding if she didn’t want to become a monster. A terrible, sinking feeling that perhaps her father had been right to cast her out of her childhood home.
Which is why Nynevehadto get up. Because her water-working wouldn’t hold for much longer, and she refused to lie here, waiting for Mordred to find her, trussed up and ready for the spitfire. Because she would prove Uccu wrong.
