“She wants wardship. I granted it to her, pending Arthur’s approval, of course. She claims to be of the House Or’Afon,” Guinevere said, reaching for the small table beside her chair and retrieving her goblet. She took a long sip, and Mordred held his breath, hoping the tap of her fingers against the goblet’s stem would not tell him it was no longer safe to speak.
The atrium, in full view of her ladies-in-waiting, was one of the few places a queen and her knight might speak withoutrousing more of the suspicions that already clung to the two of them. But it also meant evading the keen ears of Camelot’s noblewomen and all their political conniving, which Mordred maintained might actually bemoredangerous than accusations of an affair.
“More importantly,” Guinevere said, setting her goblet back down, her fingers clear of its stem, “she interests me.”
“She is likely a Druid’s apprentice,” Mordred replied in warning. He tried not to think about the Fatesong in the clearing, but it was impossible. He needed no more of Fate’s heavy attention resting on his shoulders, particularly not if it had anything to do with the girl in the meadow. He already carried enough weight.
Guinevere considered his response, scrunching her features in concentration. “I cannot say I’m surprised,” the queen said, looking over to meet his gaze. She closed her mouth, dark eyes sweeping across the atrium before she spoke again, her voice lowered. “Perhaps I should have had more caution. Have I erred? Should we find a way to...”
Mordred arched a brow, a smile moving across his full mouth as that barely contained nexus of power deep inside him thrummed with pleasure at the promise of blood. “Dispose of her? I would recommend it.” He paused, canting his head to one side. “Is that a command, my queen?”
“Gods, no, no. At least, notyet,” Guinevere replied hurriedly with a wave of her hand. She paused as a noble lady rose to her feet from a chaise, wandering closer, coming almost within earshot. “No, I don’t think they’ll want to see the stables after the hunt, Sir Mordred. Save that for tomorrow.”
He nodded sternly as if this were of grave import. “I will ensure our best destriers are in the front stalls, Your Highness.”
The lady—willowy, blonde, perhaps sixteen or seventeen summers—stepped closer, her cheeks flushed. Guinevere turned away from Mordred and looked at the maiden expectantly.
“Lady Massiele,” she greeted. “May I ask why you approach your queen so boldly, even as she is already engaged in conversation?” The question itself was stern, perhaps even harsh, but a genuine softness entered Guinevere’s voice.
Mordred knew that no one had taught Camelot’s queen how to behave around royalty, not as a fourth daughter. She often gave extra attention to girls she felt might be in a similar situation, sent into the mouth of the beast with little to no preparation.
“Oh, Your Highness, I apologize,” Lady Massiele replied, the blush on her cheeks deepening. “I—I only wanted to give Sir Mordred a token of luck for the tournament.”
Revulsion twisted in his stomach, and he did his best to conceal his sharp intake of breath. He reminded himself how young noble women were taught to behave, how this world shaped them into empty vessels that thought of nothing but how to serve and please. It was not Lady Massiele’s fault, he knew.
But Mordred still detested it all. When he had come to this court as a page more than a decade ago, his daily life consisted of being shoved down stairs, trampled into puddles, mocked by much older noblemen who should probably have taken up a hobby instead, and generally treated with endless disdain. Rooms quieted when he walked in. Whispers followed him down every street like snarling dogs. But then he had hit fifteen or sixteen summers, sprouted up to a towering height, and begun to handily defeat everyone at tourneys. He had a mind for tactical strategy and knew all the right things to say, how to mollify, how to agitate, how to find the dark and seedy places where secrets were passed around like a jug of wine.
It also helped, Mordred knew, that he was beautiful and that mortals had an appallingly short memory. This youngest generation, new to court, seemed to have entirely forgotten Merlin’s prophecy.
“How kind of you, milady,” he said, feeling the heavy weight of Guinevere’s gaze. Her eyes on the ground, Massiele offered him a daintily embroidered handkerchief. Gently, Mordred took it and thanked her, breathing a sigh of relief as Lady Massiele turned and trotted away.
“Could you be less distracting?” Guinevere wanted to know the moment Massiele was out of earshot, narrowing her eyes at him. “Whatever you’re doing—could you doless?”
“I fear I am simply existing,” Mordred told her dryly. “I cannot be held responsible for my effect on young women.”
Guinevere sat back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. Then she studied him. “I suppose you are rather nice to look at. Your voice is pleasant enough. And you are not an utter brute despite your size. I can understand how these things might be appealing.”
“See?” he replied with a grin, crossing his arms. “Even you understand, and you do not enjoy men in that way.”
Her sly brown eyes slid this way and that about the atrium, and then she leaned closer, mischief tugging at her mouth. “Butyouare not a man at all, Mordred. Not truly.”
“Thank the gods for that,” he grumbled in response. “The majority of Camelot’s men have not impressed me much.”
“So let us speak no more of them,” Guinevere replied brightly, an effortless change in topic. “The girl, Mordred.”
“You do not wish me to get rid of her? It is the path I would recommend,” he replied. Camelot’s recent peace was tenuous. He had no interest in adding a Druid girl making a claim to one of the great old houses favored by the Pendragon line to his list of problems.
“No,” Guinevere said, drawing out the word. The breeze slipped through the atrium’s open ceiling again, rippling the queen’s long, fluted sleeves that Mordred knew she hated. “You are too eager for violence.”
He shifted to his left, propping his chin on his hand. “’Tis my nature, Your Highness,” he murmured, his voice low and dangerous. It was a tone that the older court members rather dramatically claimed sent chills down their spines and proved that all of Merlin’s prophecies were true.
But Guinevere did not flinch the way the others did. She only sighed, tilting her chin up to peer into the sunlight pouring down into the space. “Sometimes I wish you had not told me,” she admitted in a murmur, reaching for her goblet to take another sip of mead. She used her left hand this time, so he knew he did not need to watch for one of her signals.
And he could not blame the queen for her wish, he supposed. The truth of him was a heavy weight. “You left me with little choice. A secret for a secret,” he reminded her with an arch smile. Then he sobered, considering. “I know it is a burden.”
Guinevere leaned forward on instinct, reaching her hand out for his until she remembered they were in the atrium, surrounded by noblewomen, the guardsmen at the door always watching. She shifted the movement easily into a straightening of her sleeve. How fluidly the both of them lied these days. Too much practice. Too little truth.
“Watch the girl, please,” she said instead of all the things they could not say, at least not here. “I do not doubt she is who she says she is, but there is an... undercurrent of something else. Something strange.”
