The High King’s face turned flame-bright as he stalked down from his dais, reaching out as if to grab Mordred by the throat. At the very last moment, he paused, his hand curled into a fist at his side.
“Good decision,” Mordred purred haughtily. “We might make a king out of you yet.”
“Ragrshydan,” Oryane warned from the dais as Ragrshydan growled and reached for the sword at his waist. “It matters not what the changeling thinks, nor what he wants.” She raised her eyes to Mordred’s, and perhaps he was only hoping for kindness in a world that had none, but he thought he saw a shred of apology in her gaze.
Oryane was the last of a powerful dynasty that had once ruled the High Court, the descendant of a Gentry house that decided to stay behind when Danu left for Avalon, the safe haven the Fey’s creatrix-goddess had constructed between realms. He wondered what it must be like for Oryane to serve the regent who had beheaded her mother, who dragged this court further and further into the mud every day.
“You are correct, Oryane,” Ragrshydan said. He turned to stride back up the dais and settle onto the ancient throne. “You used your might against your own kind, Mordred. Just as you made choices based on your own convictions, so must I.” He lifted his hand to the guards at the mouth of the corridor. They uncrossed their spears.
Apprehension building in his stomach, Mordred watched the members of the High Court file in, raucous and already drunk on faerie wine, no doubt craving violence. He turned back to Ragrshydan, the Cynosbythrae straining against his ribs. But the king said nothing, simply sipping from a jewel-encrusted goblet as he watched his court assemble.
Mordred stood there alone, doing his best to look as though he was holding his ground. It was difficult, surrounded by so many Fey twice his age and so desperate to see him humbled. More like mortals than They would ever want to admit, he realized—such an appetite for power and control that They would happily court the apocalypse itself.
When Ragrshydan stood and offered the traditional greeting for a sentencing, Mordred’s ears rang, the words becoming twisted and garbled. He could perhaps fight his way out again, even without Nyneve’s help. Of course, the guards had taken his weapons, but hewasthe weapon, after all. The darkness pulled at his seams, just as hungry for violence as the High Court at his back.
“Mordred, your gracious king sees the difficulty of your position,” Oryane announced, directly addressing Mordred in a way that made him snap back to attention. “Yes, you drew the blood of your own people. Yes, you conspired against the High Court. But you were playing your part in our schemes, were you not?”
His mouth dry, Mordred just watched the councilor, feeling like a fool for not anticipating the severity of Ragrshydan’scorrection. He had disobeyed the High King for the sake of the mortal man who had claimed a throne in the heart of an old faerie hill.
No. For the sake of a sorceress with eyes like a spring meadow.
He drew in a long breath.
“So you will be given a choice,” Oryane said, stepping down onto the time-worn stairs, her cloak trailing behind her. “Nyneve Or’Afon, the mortal sorceress you’ve takensuchan interest in, must serve this court for a year and a day...”
Mordred’s body went numb. The darkness the goddesses had stitched into his ribs exploded in rage. Biting down on his tongue, he wrestled to rein it back in, to stop the night from blotting out the sun. Was this king truly too stupid to see what a dangerous game he was playing?
“Or you receive twenty lashes before your people,” Oryane finished, her voice ringing out through the underside of the hill.
Mordred drew in a deep breath. It was no choice at all. A public whipping was a serious humiliation among his people. Any member of the High Court would do just about anything to avoid the spectacle and the ruin of their social standing. Sacrificing a mortal would be the obvious choice, and that was precisely the issue. If he chose to save Nyneve, it was just another public betrayal of his king. Oryane was too wily.
He closed his eyes and saw it all quite clearly: it would be an easy thing to lure Nyneve beneath the hill again. The High Court would have its way with her, harvesting her magic and her mortality until she was little more than a husk. Desperate mortals were always so quick to take this particular deal, Mordred had found. What was a year and a day of servitude compared to the cruel, hard world of endless suffering that the powerful had created aboveground?
But mortals did not realize they would never survive more than a night under the hill, let alone a year and a day. Nyneve Or’Afon would disappear from Camelot as quickly as she had arrived. It would not take long for humans to forget she had ever been there in the first place. In another blink of a faerie eye, no one who had known her would even still be alive. It might be best to excise the wild, beating thing inside him that yearned for her. He was a weapon in the shape of a person, and he had never known a sword or spear or axe capable of love.
Mordred was just as surprised as the rest of the court when he opened his mouth and said, “I choose the whip.”
The hall reverberated with gasps and giggles, sighs and shouts. Oryane watched him carefully, some distant emotion ghosting her face. Rumors said she had loved a mortal, once. It had ended badly. It always did. But then she nodded, gesturing to the guards. Mordred held his ground and began to calmly unbutton his aketon. His hands should shake, he thought. But his fingers were steady as he dropped the garment to the ground. Two Eyes approached from either side, one reaching for his arms.
“Unhand me,” Mordred snapped, lunging toward one of the Eyes, who immediately took several steps back. Just as he pulled his tunic up and over his head, the guards returned from the vault, carrying something wrapped in a gossamer-thin, bloodstained shroud. Ah. The Cut. Another old faerie weapon, handed down among court regents, enchanted to deal incredible amounts of pain with even the lightest of lashings.
Pain comprised so much of Mordred’s world. What was a little more?
He stood utterly still as Ragrshydan and Oryane engaged in some kind of power struggle over who was granted the gift of humbling the last of the Tuatha de Danann that walked this godsforsaken world. And then Ragrshydan stepped forward,the bloodstained shroud falling away to reveal something that almost looked like the long, serpentine tail of a creature long-gone from this realm.
“Kneel,” Ragrshydan commanded, enjoying every moment. “Yet again you choose the filthy mortals.”
“Yet again,” Mordred replied, “you have failed to inspire me to choose my own kind.”
Ragrshydan snapped an order, and four Eyes pushed Mordred to the ground, shoving his face into the cracked mosaic tiles. He had barely drawn in a breath to prepare when the first blow came, searingly cold and horrifically hot all at once. His eyes watered and his lungs stung, but Mordred refused to give his king any satisfaction. Two more blows came in quick succession, and then the Cut’s bite was no longer novel, no longer new. Just more pain to ignore. And that was precisely what Mordred did, shutting off any part of himself that could feel anything at all.
“I will end this now if you hand over the sorceress,” Ragrshydan said in his ear, breath sour with wine. “You have a bargain with her. Sell me her debt.”
Mordred raised his head to meet Ragrshydan’s gaze. “You talk far too much,” he replied. “Three more blows, my liege. Do me a favor and get on with it.”
The High King slammed Mordred’s face into the tile so hard that he tasted blood. The Cynosbythrae reached for Ragrshydan’s Threads, its deadly, nimble fingers grabbing an easy hold. With excruciating effort, Mordred pulled the power away from the faerie king. The Cynosbythrae would drown the entire court in a single swipe of its claws, an ink spill on vellum. And besides, any Fey who had sworn fealty oaths to the throne was only able to kill their regent if they sought to gain the throne for themselves.
Mordred had no desire for the throne, but he wanted this pathetic king to suffer. He wanted Ragrshydan to see him coming and know with terrible certainty that there was absolutely nothing he could do to save himself. And, most of all, he wanted the High King to never so much asthinkNyneve’s name ever again.
