Page 75 of To Love a Dark Lord

Sitting on the counter.

Ring still stuck on it.

It should have been upsetting, seeing it. She should have puked. But instead, she felt…nothing. It wasn’t hers anymore. It was just a thing.

But that wasn’t true. She didn’t feel nothing.

She felt something all right.

Rage.

Anger, plain and pure and total, was burning in her chest. She didn’t think she’d ever been so furious in her entire life.

“Enough.” Her one word stopped Tim and Maewenn. They stared at her. Maybe it was the way she had said it. She didn’t know.

But what she did know was what came next. “This ends now.”

Grabbing some of the gauze, she wrapped up her severed finger, and headed for the door.

This ends now.

And Gwen was going to be the one to put a stop to it.

One way or another.

TWENTY-FIVE

Mordred had felt nothing at the death of Percival, except perhaps some minor relief. But not because a so-called threat was dead, but because he finally knew he was free. Free of the laws that he had bound himself in, tighter than any chain and more maddening than any cage of his creation.

Not so long ago, he had spared Percival’s life. He had ensured that the traitor had suffered for his betrayal, but the Knight in Copper had survived. Why? So that Mordred would not incur more wrath from the supposed rules held sacred by the elementals. The law of hospitality. The law that barred death of another elemental unless it was unanimously decreed.

None of it mattered now. It was all stripped from him, like a weight that had been carrying him to the bottom of the ocean’s crushing depths.

Mordred was free.

Free to do what was his birthright.

Galahad and the Gossamer Lady were putting up a valiant fight. But in his new world of broken restraints, he did not fight with the honor and dignity that he had been trained to conduct himself with. No. This was about violence. About wrath.

And it was glorious.

He barely felt the strikes of Galahad’s sword, or the blasts from Zoe’s pathetic magic. Encased in iron as he was, there was no damage the Gossamer Lady could do to him that would matter. Especially not since he had removed Caliburn from the equation. Once her head was cut from her shoulders, he would reclaim the sword as his own.

But for now, he wished to rip the two remaining usurpers apart with his claws.

The Knight in Gold always fought with a speed and surety that was surprising for someone his height and age. But there was a weariness in him that Mordred could sense in his swings, in his stance. Galahad was not simply tired—it was as though his heart were not fully committed to the fight.

Shame.

It would not spare him.

Mordred idly wondered, through the crash and clang of metal and the scrape of claws on golden armor, if Galahad was even aware of this difference in fervor. He was fighting to spare his own life, and yet seemed lackluster over the topic.

It was almost disappointing, now that Mordred thought about it. This was to be their last sparring match, and this would be how he remembered the golden fae warrior.

There was an easy way to see if he could spur the old beanpole into a more passionate fight. Perhaps he should kill Zoe first. He had been trying to do the fae a favor by taking his head before that of his love.

Now, he wanted to see if it might inspire his old “friend” to put up a proper fight.

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