Morgana took another sip of the herbal brew. “I should like to get to know you better first, of course,” the noblewoman began, something in her tone making Nyneve sit up straight. “But allow me to ask you a question.”
“Of course,” the Druid girl breathed.
“Do you want this?” Morgana asked, gesturing to the grand chamber. Magic danced along her fingers, as though the Threads begged for her touch.
Nyneve drew a deep breath. The material items were of little interest to her, if she were honest—the fine silk screen, the shimmering umber stole, the expensive robes. But the bed, only rumpled on one side? The power to appear at court only when she wished? The way Morgana hummed with magic, even more than the Elders?
“What,” Nyneve breathed, “is the cost?”
Morgana settled her chin onto her folded hands, looking deep into her eyes. “Darling girl,” the sorceress said, “I believe you’ve already paid it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mordred
Mordred checked the leathers of the sword strapped to his back one more time as Rook danced impatiently beneath him. The courtyard of the stables was quiet at this midnight hour. He fervently wished he could absorb the peace of the scene: blue-black night swathing the sky, torchlights orange against the velvet backdrop, the moon somewhere above, hidden by her gown of clouds.
Against his will, Mordred turned in his saddle to peer up at the castle, hunting for the window where Nyneve might be attending to a bed-bound patient or brewing a medicinal draught or perhaps even smiling at someone the way he so desperately wished she would smile at him. Even the cool night winds brushing his face could not temper the flush of heat.
“Fuck,” he said to no one in particular.
“Is confronting the High Court truly preferable to confronting your feelings, Mordred?” asked Rook, who had explicitly promised multiple times not to speak while within Camelot’s walls.
“Yes,” he replied, closing his legs around the kelpie. Rook ambled off like a noble lady’s palfrey, not a kelpie-turned-destrier. “This has nothing to do with Nyneve. We have no choice in the matter.”
Mordred had been unsurprised to find a High Summons curled up and tucked into the casement of his window upon returning to his chambers after an alarming meeting with Arthur. Ragrshydan had apparently used Mordred’s confinement as an opportunity to send a courier to the king’s chambers. All of Arthur’s advisors and almost the entirety of the Round Table were, to put it simply, out of their minds. Never a moment’s peace. Mordred wondered, not for the first time, why the people who had the most power were usually the least equipped to wield it.
He had not even had the time to greet his aunt, whom he had not seen in a year. His body moving of its own accord, he turned and tipped his face up again, this time to find Morgana’s window. If everything were very different, perhaps they would be sharing cider in her chambers. Guinevere might join, too. He might feel the cold dark in his chest retreat, just a little.
Something inside of him pulled taut. He was not sure how a creature like him could so desperately seek the company of mortals and the glow of hearthlight. He had been created for violence and war. His body was a crypt for the Cynosbythrae, where it would lie in something like fitful slumber until the moment the Oracle had prophesied came to pass.
Rook moved into a trot without Mordred’s command, heading down the sloping hill toward the pleasure park. It was usually the safest place within Camelot’s walls to open a faerie door, particularly after Merlin’s return, but considering a courier had appeared in Arthur’s chambers, he might have to ride out much farther.
Rook trotted down the main path in his long, floating strides. Mordred had talked him into wearing barding as a precaution. They both looked ready for a war neither wanted, covered inblackened mail and stiffened leather. Thankfully, only guards and patrolling knights were awake and out-of-doors at this hour. He nodded to them in greeting as he passed, hating the way some of the younger boys looked at him with adoration. He wanted to dismount Rook and grab them by their aketons, shaking them until they understood they were wrong to admire him. They should not want to beanythinglike him.
Mordred Pendragon did not even want to be Mordred Pendragon.
His hands tightened on the reins. Mordred Pendragon was a too-small corpse at the bottom of a river, evidence of Arthur’s penchant for brutality. So who, then, was he?
Mordred wanted to be whatever would make Nyneve want him—whatever part of him caused her to look at him strangely, made her fist her hands in her skirts, made a woman as powerful and sure as Nyneve hesitate. Only for the briefest of moments, the slightest of pauses: one, two, three.
“She has you in quite a chokehold, doesn’t she?” Rook asked over the rushing of the wind and the pounding of his hooves.
“Rook,” Mordred said, “I am begging you. Please be quiet.” He pushed out of the saddle in a half-seat, letting Rook stretch his back. He might very well need the kelpie to run as fast as his legs could carry him.
Together, they thundered into the dark, waiting for the moment the world might slip out of its skin and open a door to somewhere else. The High Court made him wait, as Mordred thought They might, but he found he did not mind. He reined the kelpie toward the ancient enchantment in the far northwestern wall and slipped out of the citadel.
The quiet communion with Rook was enjoyable, he found. In the five years they had been together, the kelpie refused to divulge his true name, arguing that since Mordred did not evenhaveone, he certainly had no intention of giving the changelingthat sort of power. Amused at the memory, Mordred let his body move in time with Rook’s as they galloped down an increasingly narrow path.
He tried to forget the last conversation he had shared with Morgana before she had departed court last winter, after he had conspired to have a nobleman stripped of his titles and cast out of Camelot. The man had, after all, suggested Mordred’s mortal guardian be burned at the stake for her abilities.
“You were not made with the capacity to feel love, Mordred,”she had told him, braiding her long hair, the way she always did when her hands might otherwise betray her nervousness.“I do not shrink back from your love. I want to find a way out of your wretched fate. You know that. But any step you take beyond your nature draws attention, and you have so many eyes on you.”
Mordred had rubbed his eyes, placing his elbows on the tabletop. Unlike when he was a boy, Morgana did not swat at him and scold him about his posture.“Why can I feel so much, Morgana?”he had asked her hoarsely, not daring to meet her quick, inquisitive gaze. All those eyes, she had said, as if the sorceress herself did not see far too much.
“I do not know,”came her quiet reply, though Mordred felt her fingers land on his forearm.
“Why make me sentient at all?”he had asked no one in particular.“Why make a weapon in the shape of a person?”
