Nyneve’s stomach somersaulted and her throat felt as though it might be closing off, but she shoved it all to the side and shrugged. All she could do now was play the young, naïve girl. “I’m rather good with animals, Your Highness,” she said simply. Then she grimaced, letting the pain take root in her mind.
As she suspected, Guinevere noticed her discomfort immediately. “Our lord king will need to verify your claim,” the queen said. “Though I know of Geraint Or’Afon, it is my husbandwho is familiar with the coloring and features of his bloodline. But pray tell, Nyneve Or’Afon: you seek wardship within the citadel’s walls. What might you be able to offer Camelot in return?”
Nyneve held the sweep of relief at arm’s length; this was not over yet. Pausing, she considered her words. “I am proficient in both basic and more advanced forms of healing, which I invite your court physician to test,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Thanks to the nunnery, I read and write and have been useful in record-keeping and transcription. I also enjoy growing medicinal herbs for use in my healing.”
“And your faith?” Guinevere asked. “Camelot professes no formal belief system. Do you seek to proselytize? Has your nunnery sent you for such reasons?”
“No, Your Highness,” Nyneve said, perhaps too quickly. “I find faith to be a personal endeavor. I seek to follow the teachings of Camelot, particularly the ideal of the common good that this citadel was founded on.”
That seemed to please the queen. “Then I am comfortable having you escorted to our court physician’s cottage,” Guinevere said, crossing her arms. “He may attend to you and test your knowledge. I will seek to verify your claim to the House Or’Afon with King Arthur within the next few days.”
Panic crowded Nyneve’s throat. When she first set out for Camelot, she had everything planned. She would show her seal. She would see King Arthur. He would confirm her claim. Butthis—days of waiting, spent in the agony of not knowing? She might tear off her own skin.
Nyneve glanced up at the queen, terror slipping into her blood. Those clever umber eyes saw far too much. What if Guinevereknew? What if Nyneve’s discomfort was her very intention? What if she had misspoken, or let something slip outunintended, and now the queen was going to carry it all back to Arthur like a cat with a mouse between its teeth?
“Thank you for your kindness and generosity, Your Highness,” Nyneve managed, because there was nothing else to say, nothing else to do. She moved into as much of a bow as she could manage.
“Welcome to Camelot, Nyneve Or’Afon,” Guinevere replied, her head canted to one side, something like amusement moving across her expression. Her large, dark eyes shimmered as she watched Nyneve turn and limp away.
Rumors of Camelot’s queen were common across these lands, brought to the Druids by roaming tradespeople and Moorish travelers and cunning Cymry folk and even the Fey Themselves—when the Fair Ones could be bothered to pay attention to the workings of mankind, of course.
But no one, Nyneve was sure, had ever mentioned Guinevere’s thorny intelligence, the way she read a thousand meanings from a single exhale or pause. Nyneve had come here thinking Arthur Pendragon was the most dangerous thing roaming these halls.
But as the guard led her from the throne room, Nyneve understood that Queen Guinevere, daughter of Cymru and Al-Andalus, was undoubtedly more powerful than anyone had bothered to understand.
And she might just single-handedly ruin all of Nyneve’s plans before they even began.
Chapter Four
Mordred
In the sunlight-flooded atrium, soft lute notes underscored the gentle melody of murmured conversations. Burgeoning spring warmed the air in sharp contrast to the castle’s interior passageways, which still held on to winter’s chill. But a different kind of chill was abundant in the atrium, the knight knew. So many men lowered their guard in places like this one, thinking that because there were no brandished swords or open declarations of war, they were safe.
They were wrong.
Reputations were made and destroyed in the Queen’s Atrium, promises kept and broken, secrets harvested and sold. There were so many kinds of weapons in this world, the knight had learned, and the high-ranking noblewomen lounging in the atrium knew how to wield most of them.
And so he moved silently across the Roman-style tiled floors, foolishly hoping to remain unseen by the atrium’s many eyes, but every head turned his way nonetheless. The knight pushed an errant wave of dark hair from his face, wishing he had stopped in his chambers to remove his leather breastplate and bracers. Anything to look less beastly in this place of feignedgentleness, where battles were won without spilling a single drop of blood.
Even the lutist faltered as he walked by. The older ladies-in-waiting glanced up from their mending and poetry, gazes lingering, faces gone white. But he kept his own eyes on the sole reason he had not yet torn this place apart: Queen Guinevere ferch Gruffydd of Camelot.
“Sir Mordred,” she greeted from her usual chair tucked into a corner, just out of the sun’s reach. A stack of letters sat in her lap, one opened in her hands, the pale green brocade of her surcoat shimmering in the spring light. The lady-in-waiting beside the queen’s took one look at Mordred, offered a terse nod, and then strode away.
“Your Highness,” the knight said, sweeping into a low, courtly bow. Without looking at him, Guinevere gestured to the seat at her side. He obediently sank into the plush velvet. For a long moment, the queen said nothing, still engrossed in the letter.
Mordred fought to keep his body still, arms on either side of the chair, feet planted on the ground, head bowed: the very picture of courtly knighthood. But beneath the tunic and chainmail, violence coursed through his blood. His teeth ached with the effort to cling to his mask of humanity.
All because of agirl. He dug his fingers into the chair. A single wild-eyed maiden with dirt under her nails and twigs caught in her messy auburn braid. Mordred drew in a long breath and then released it, forcing himself to watch the queen’s free hand as it roamed the tapestry pattern of her chair.
Her fingers hovered over the basilisk embroidered into the fabric. Frustration flared in him like a wildfire at the signal that it was not safe to speak plainly. But then the queen’s hand slid down the side of the chair to the silver-threaded unicorn. Whenher fingertips stayed there, Mordred sighed in relief. There was much to be discussed.
“A maiden of barely twenty summers,” the queen began, tucking away her letter and meeting his gaze, “rode Rook to the city gates this morning.”
The beast coiled beneath his sternum thrashed against its bindings. He clenched his teeth and said nothing, wrestling for control. Guinevere leaned one elbow onto the arm of her chair and shot him a look that would have been at home on the face of a governess dealing with a misbehaving child.
“She claimed,” Guinevere continued, leaning closer, her eyes darting about the atrium for a moment, “that you permitted her to borrow your steed. Due to her injury. Howchivalrous, Mordred.”
He paused. Across the atrium, the lutist finished one ballad of courtly love and moved into another near-identical one. An older lady-in-waiting was doing a poor job of pretending her attention was solely on her embroidery and not their conversation. Mordred cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight. “She stole Rook from right beneath my nose,” he admitted in a low voice, an unwelcome heat flooding his veins at the thought of the wild maiden with hair like flame. “I must commend her for that, and for knowing no knight of Camelot would publicly contest her tale of chivalry.”
