Page 32 of Vale of Dreams

“Fine. I can swear an oath that I, Mordred, Scion of Morgan, King of Avalon, have no targets for vengeance other than the Pendragons. Happy?”

I swallow hard. “And I will not tell anyone about you or about the moth’s existence.”

He releases my hand. Blood drips to the ground, and smoke rises from the spatters. When I look at my palm, the cut has already closed. All that remains is an angry red line across my palm.

“So.” He hands me a new silver moth. “Now that we trust each other.”

I take the moth from him and shove it into my pocket.

I wouldn’t trust this man to do my laundry, and I suspect the feeling is mutual.

But no matter how we feel, our fates are threaded together.

CHAPTER 12

By the time I finally get back to Avalon Tower, the rising sun is spreading a rosy blush across the Camelot sky. I’ve been gone for less than eight hours, but it feels like days, maybe weeks. My legs burn with weariness, and it hurts to keep my eyes open.

Somehow, the fatigue dulls the pain of the heartbreak. A breakup doesn’t sting quite so badly when you feel as if you’re under water.

I stumble into the door of Lothian Tower and push through it into a stairwell, my legs shaking. It smells comforting. Like home.

It almost feels impossible to walk the rest of the way to my room. So. Many. Stairs.

I lean on the stairwell as I climb, trying not to imagine my father rampaging through here with a blood-stained sword in his hand, just like he did centuries ago.

But when I get into my hallway at last, it’s hard not to think about it. Hanging on a wall is a large painting that I’ve seen a thousand times and noticed the day I arrived in Camelot. It’s a painting of Mordred thrusting his sword through a naked woman, corpses littered the ground around him, and it captures his cold beauty incredibly well, even his smile as he slays the woman—cruel and mocking. It’s the same smile I saw on his face just a few hours ago.

This is the Fey to whom I’ve bound myself in a Hemlock Oath, this heartless creature.

The silver moth is ice-cold and heavy in my pocket, and when I slide my fingers in, the wings feel sharp as blades.

Mordred is trapped for another seventy-four years, at least, but doubt nags at me. Who is using whom? Mordred has millennia of experience over me. What made me think I could outsmart the ancient heir to the Fey throne, who has had centuries to plot his revenge?

I force myself to keep walking until I reach the circular stairwell that leads to my room, then drag myself up. At the top of the stairs, I push open the door, blearily staring at a dark-haired cadet guarding the stairwell. He wears a coat of arms on his blue uniform jacket, one with a stag and an iron helmet and swords. He’s one of the brand-new Iron Legion sentries, part of the Pendragon cult, set up to spy on the demi-Fey. He goes pale as he stares at me, his jaw dropping open.

Right now, he’s wondering if he fucked up.

“Aren’t you…” He sputters. “How did you?—”

“Dame Nia of the Avalon Steel? I was in the library all night. Did you not notice me leave? Not a very attentive guard, are you? Close your mouth, darling, you’ll catch flies like that.” I brush past him and climb the stairs.

Reaching my door at last, I open it softly, my bed calling to me, and creep inside. Serana is gently snoring, and Tana is asleep as well. I stumble across the room to my desk and the wooden case that Amon gave me when I returned from Dover. The case houses my Avalon Steel torc. I unlatch it and pry open the lid, running my finger along the torc lying on the smooth red interior, admiring its rosy sheen. Only King Arthur, Merlin, and a few powerful Fey from Arthur’s court wore Avalon Steel torcs. Now, I have one. What does it say about me, that I’m willing to work with the man who murdered Arthur?

I let out a long sigh. Espionage is a delicate act of playing people against each other—a tightrope routine between one total disaster and another. We have to keep secrets, even from our allies.

Gently, I lift the velvet off the bottom of the box, revealing a hollow underneath where I keep a hidden key. It’s the key to the French cottage where Raphael and I spent a glorious week together, pretending to be newlyweds. It’s the only thing I have to remember Raphael by. Holding it in my palm is helping me steel my resolve for what I’m about to do next. I close the box, and I slip the silver moth from my pocket. With a tightening throat, I drop it just behind the box—a spy device for an enemy of the Tower.

I let out a long, slow breath. There. Mordred’s demand is done.

“Nia?” Tana’s sleepy voice rises behind me. “You’re back!”

I snap the case shut and whirl around, blood rushing to my face. I want to tell her about it, to warn her. Anything she says, Mordred will hear. But I can’t. Mordred forced me into this impossible position, lying to my closest friends with a fatal oath.

“Morning,” I say, trying to act natural. “I have good news.”

“What happened?” she asks.

“Why were you gone so long?” Serana asks, now awake, too. She rubs her eyes.

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