Mordred let out a theatrical sigh, the glow of the feast’s fires coming into view up ahead. “You have little idea what I do or do not believe,” he said with an arch of his brow. “Though I will admit I have many thoughts when it comes toyou, Lady Nyneve.”
This time, she did not respond to his flirtation, though he caught the flush pinking her cheekbones. They slipped through the garden in a silence that was almost comfortable, returning to the courtyard and its festivities far too soon. And yet, for reasons Mordred could not parse out, Nyneve did not remove her hand from his arm.
Chapter Seventeen
Nyneve
The next morning, Nyneve leaned back in the leatherbound chair and smiled. The air was still cool at this hour, sweeping through the elegantly carved openings in the atrium’s tall ceiling. She took a deep breath, pulling in the rich scent of soil, damp leaves, and Queen Guinevere’s expensive perfume.
“So it is settled, then,” the queen said in a low tone.
“It is,” she replied primly. “We have a deal, Your Highness.”
Guinevere sat back in her lushly embroidered, high-backed chair with a rueful sort of grin. “I wish such measures were not necessary,” she said, the mirth fading from her expression. Doubt flickered across her face like candlelight. “But it is good to have your help, Lady Nyneve.”
“It is the least I can offer,” she replied, folding her hands on her lap. “Your willingness to accept me into Camelot has meant so very much to me.”
Guinevere’s dark brow arched as she glanced at a serving girl offering ale, to which she shook her head. “I daresay two dresses, food, and a roof over your head are hardly worth the risks you have just agreed to undertake,” the queen replied. Hergaze swept out over the atrium, which was quiet this morning. A lutist sat in the far corner, the soft notes of his aching song just barely meeting Nyneve’s ears over the sound of the fountain in the center of the stone-terraced space.
“No,” Nyneve agreed, drawing a surprised look from Guinevere. “But your secondary offer? Certainly enticing.”
The queen held her gaze for a long moment, her eyes like twin black pools. Then she broke into a dazzling smile. “I know what it is to yearn for some sense of belonging,” she said, lifting one shoulder to her ear in a surprisingly casual shrug. “And power, of course.”
Nyneve couldn’t help herself. She smiled back, accepting a goblet of ale from the serving girl with a quiet murmur of thanks. “It’s hard to look at someone like you,” she found herself admitting, “and think you ever hungered for power.”
It might have been mere flattery, given the vast gap in their positions, but Nyneve was being genuine. She’d admired Guinevere since she’d first laid eyes on the woman. The bargain with Mordred had been forced—nothing she would’ve chosen for herself. But a partnership with this strange, clever queen? Another thing entirely.
The serving girl bowed and left Nyneve alone at the far end of the atrium with Guinevere, who watched her carefully. “I was quite young when I came to this court, Lady Or’Afon,” she said. “My older sister was meant to be Arthur’s wife. Not me.” She let out an arch laugh. “Never me.”
Nyneve leaned in, trying to disguise the keenness of her interest. “I had no idea,” she said—because it was easy, and because it was true. Rumors about Camelot’s queen were abundant, but glimpses of her history were far harder to come by.
Guinevere sighed, adjusting the long ornamental sleeve of her gown—a russet brown that gleamed like copper. “Yes,” thequeen said, lowering her voice as she cast her eyes about the atrium. “I traveled with the wedding party from Cymru. A sign of good faith, you see. But the plague traveled that year, too, and took my two older sisters and my mother before the ceremony.”
Nyneve couldn’t hide the surprise that flooded her features, though she hoped she had a good handle on pulling back the pity. She’d lost her mother early, but somehow that paled in comparison to what Guinevere seemed to have gone through. “But your father still wanted to broker the alliance, I imagine?” Nyneve asked, because men were predictable. She raised the goblet back to her lips.
The queen’s gaze took on that hard, sharp look. “Of course he did,” she said with a dagger-like smile. “I was ten-and-three when I married Arthur Pendragon.”
Nyneve swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat. It was hard to reconcile the woman who sat across from her with a child-bride reeling from such a monumental loss. “Too young,” Nyneve murmured, shaking her head.
“Far too young,” Guinevere said, raising one dark brow. She made an elegant movement with one slim hand, her mouth parted. “But now, all these years later, I have crafted laws against such things. I have helped mold Arthur’s vision of a fair, equitable city.” She winked, so quickly Nyneve thought perhaps she had imagined it. “Though don’t tell any of the old-stock nobles that. They wouldn’t like it very much.”
A sense of kinship bloomed in Nyneve’s chest. Perhaps she need not return to the Druids at all—not for anything but the removal of her binding. It wasn’t that shedidn’twant to return to her people. It was just that... everything was so different after what had happened. Would she ever be able to walk the paths of the village or even the meadows without accusing stares?
“No, I suppose they would not,” Nyneve replied automatically, thinking of the old-stock Druids who did not like her very much, either. “Those nobles are also not exactly happy with me being Galen’s apprentice.”
“Ahh,” Guinevere replied, another sharp, amused look crossing her expression. “I wish I were surprised.”
The lutist’s notes rose in a lush swell as the wind blew, pulling at Nyneve’s hair. This deal with Guinevere felt very good—to have any other path forward than being at the mercy of the Elders’ will felt unimaginable only days ago, and now here she was.
But Merlin. Nyneve set her teeth together, not looking at Guinevere. Her mind pulled her back to the day of the sorcerer’s return in the great hall, the bizarrely ageless man and the sword that thrummed with horrible power. Her heart quickened, unease curling around her intestines. She realized all at once that she was putting herself in grave danger—far graver than anything the Elders would have ever asked of her. Her fingernails dug into the arms of the chair, her mind adrift. For the first time, she wondered whether she was actually capable of this task. Mordred’s words came floating back to her. “You are meant to entice him. Enchant him. Not blatantly display that you are his superior.”
Last night in the garden, she’d told herself it was obvious flattery and that she should ignore it entirely—but looking back now, she understood how much the knight’s words had riled her blood. Had, quite possibly, gotten her into this meeting today, into this seat directly opposite the queen, agreeing to a deadly game in the heart of Camelot’s power struggle. She shivered.
“You will need to be very, very careful, Lady Or’Afon,” Guinevere said, her tone calm as it broke the stormy seas of Nyneve’s thoughts. “You understand that, yes?”
Unease twisted into a knot inside her lungs, taking her breath away. She responded the only way she knew how, pulling together everything she had to grin at the queen. “On the contrary, Your Highness,” she replied. “I must be very, very bold if we are to succeed.”
The sun broke through the overcast morning, piercing the skylights and haloing Guinevere in a cloak of rich gold. She leaned closer to Nyneve, something not unlike mischief playing in the depths of her eyes.
