“Isolde,” I continued, picking up my sword again, “is a lady of standing. A lady of ancient bloodline. She was educated at the finest court in the south. She carries herself accordingly.” I let the pause stretch. “You aren’t remotely like her.”
The next exchange was harder. She came in with her full weight behind the blow, abandoning the careful footwork, and drove me back two steps through sheer aggression before I planted and held. Wood clashed against wood, but all I couldfocus on was the set of her teeth and the fact that her controlled patience had burned off entirely.
Good.
“Careful,” I said.
She hit me again.
I caught her wrist this time, turned her momentum against her, and walked her backward until her shoulders met the fence post. I wasn’t rough, just immovable. She strained against my grip, and I let her feel that she wasn’t going anywhere.
-LANCE-
I stopped at the archway in the training yard as soon as I saw her with Arthur, then stood there long enough that Gawain nearly walked into my back. He muttered something and went around me. I didn’t move.
She held the practice sword in a grip that was technically correct and yet somehow also entirely her own. Arthur circled her. She circled him back. Neither of them spoke.
I’d seen Arthur train a thousand times. I knew his footwork the way I knew my own name: the slight forward lean before he committed to a strike, the way he telegraphed nothing with his face while his shoulders told you everything that was worth knowing. He wasn’t doing that now, though. Now he was patient. Measured. Letting her set the tempo. That was not a thing Arthur Pendragon did.
She drove forward. He blocked and gave ground. Not fully, just enough to let her feel the give, then he held. She reset. He came again from a different angle, and she caught him. Then hesmiled. It was small. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it.
I turned away and walked to the weapons rack.
The wooden practice swords were fine for footwork and form. I selected one, then found an empty stretch of yard along the eastern wall and began drilling. These were combinations I could do blind, had done blind.
You kissed her.
I hit the pell harder than necessary. The post shuddered. I hit it again.
Strangely, I remembered when she’d pulled Excalibur from its pedestal. In truth, I’d never been able to get the image out of my mind. Arthur needed it to be nothing more than a trick, something constructed by Merlin’s magic. But I was fairly convinced it was neither. What was more difficult to digest was what it meant. And more: how could an enemy of the crown pull the exact sword that crowned kings?
I’d been standing twelve feet away from her at the time, hiding among the trees. I’d seen her face in the moment before she touched the hilt, before she knew it would move, before she knew anything. There had been no smugness in her expression. No calculation. She’d looked the way men look when they’re shown something they were never supposed to see.
Surprise.
The sword had gone to her like it was coming home.
I hit the post again. Wood cracked down the grain. I found another pell and started over.
The thought I’d been turning away from for two weeks now surfaced and wouldn’t be dismissed.
The sword knew what Arthur would become.
I buried the thought fast. Drilled faster.
My shoulders screamed by the seventh combination. I added footwork. Then the full sequence: strike, recover, pivot,drive. Again. And again after that. My lungs burned. Good. Pain was better than thinking. Pain stayed inside the body, and the body I could manage.
Gawain said something to Agravaine, who was standing nearby. I caughtunhingedandpell, but I didn’t care.
-ARTHUR-
“I demand,” I said, “to know who took your maidenhead from you.”
Her breathing was quick and shallow as she stared up at me with those stunning eyes, and I saw the war in them clearly: anger and something that had been there since the moment I’d put her into that dungeon.
“As I said before, it’s none of your fucking business.”
I came in so close, the ends of our noses nearly touched. “It is my fucking business. Everything within these walls is my fucking business. Every person inside them answers to me.” I held her gaze. “When I ask something of someone under my roof, it’s not a question. It’s a command, which means you will answer me.”