The treeline didn’t move.
-KAY-
The dungeon smelled the way it always smelled: wet stone, old iron, and something organic underneath that no amount of lime could fully kill. I’d walked these corridors often enough that my boots knew the footing without a torch.
Lance’s cell was third from the end, just beside Corvin’s. When I walked past, Corvin didn’t look up, which was just as well, as I wasn’t here to visit him.
Instead, I faced Lance’s cell and noticed the narrow window that let in actual light. Arthur hadn’t stripped him of everything, just most things.
I stopped outside the bars.
He was standing. I’d expected that. Lance didn’t sit when he could stand, didn’t lie down when he could sit. Some men carried their dignity in their face or their title. Lance carried his in his spine. Even now, stripped of rank and sword and whatever fiction he’d built around himself for thirty-seven years, he stood with his shoulders back, his jaw set, and his gray eyes steady.
The ribs were healed. I’d seen Percival come back from the healing looking wan around the mouth, moving carefully, like a man who’d just absorbed a horse kick to the chest. Which, functionally, he had.
I studied Lance through the bars for a moment. He didn’t ask what I wanted. He knew I’d get to it.
“This changes the terms of our agreement somewhat,” I said.
He said nothing.
“You have less access now,” I continued. “Arthur won’t see you. You won’t be in the training yard. You won’t be at council, you won’t be at table, you won’t be anywhere near the girl.”
A muscle in his jaw moved. “You can’t seriously think our arrangement still stands?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” I asked with an almost-laugh.
He looked at me like I was the foolish one. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a dungeon cell.”
“Of course I’ve noticed. And, as I said, thatcomplicatesthings. The particular arrangement we had becomes considerably harder to maintain from your end.”
“Then you’ll have to manage without me.”
“I could,” I answered. “But I’ve grown accustomed to efficiency.” I looked past him at the cell wall, the rough-cut stone, the thin straw. “You had useful proximity. That’s gone now. Which means I need to think about what use you still are.”
He turned his head to look at me directly. His eyes were flat, dark, and completely without fear. That was the thing about Lance that had always bothered me, if I was being honest with myself. He didn’t frighten. Other men flinched under scrutiny, under pressure, under the particular kind of quiet regard I’d spent decades perfecting. Lance just looked back.
I could see what was wrong with him, same as I could see what was wrong with everything. The emptiness behind the composure. The place where something ought to be and wasn’t. He’d built himself around Arthur, the oath, and the clean story of being the best man in the kingdom, and now all three of those things were cracked through, and he was standing in the rubble of them like they were still load-bearing walls.
He believed they were, even now.
That was his real weakness. Not the girl. Not the confession. The fact that he still believed the walls were standing.
“What do you want, Kay?” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I want what I’ve always wanted.” I put my hand around one of the bars, not to grip it, just to rest it there. “Arthur functional. Camelot stable. The situation with the girl resolved in a way that doesn’t end with everything on fire.” I paused. “You happen to be adjacent to all three of those interests. That hasn’t changed.”
“I’m in a dungeon.”
“You are,” I agreed. “But you won’t always be. Arthur doesn’t have the stomach for it.”
“That’s where I disagree.”
I shook my head. “With a word from me, advocating for you, it will be another three days, maybe four. I’ll give him a reason to let you out that doesn’t require him to admit he wants you back.” I watched his face for the reaction, the small involuntary flicker that came when a man heard something true that he’d been trying not to think. Strangely, I didn’t see it. “He needs you. That’s the tragedy of it, from where he’s standing.”
Lance looked away.
“You have no allies right now,” I continued. “Galahad’s faction blames you for Galahad’s comeuppance. Tristan’s too new to spend capital on a downed knight. Percival healed your ribs, and that cost him something, so you have that, for whatever it’s worth to you, which I suspect isn’t much.” I tilted my head. “I’m the only one who knows what you are and has chosen not to make it Arthur’s primary concern.”