Nimueh stared out the bay window of the Victorian mansion at the garden beyond. A sky the color of ashes turned the thin light to a silvery wash. The mansion was set on a large lot shielded by trees, which provided privacy Mordred liked and scenery he ignored.
The Prince of Faery lurked by the door, demanding her attention. His presence was a claw hooked into her psychic senses, not quite painful but ready to tear on a whim. It was one of his power games, a way of making her address him first. It would have been more effective if she’d still had the capacity to care.
“I would have called this scene lovely once,” Nimueh said softly. “I know it should be. There is a lake and willow trees. Even though it is winter, there are many subtle shades of green and gray. And yet, my soul doesn’t feel the loveliness. My mind knows, but my heart does not.”
“Does that bother you?” Mordred asked mildly. “I thought you pureblood fae were no more than walking corpses.”
“That is cruel.” She said it without rancor. Once, she would have tried to scratch out his eyes for saying such a thing. She missed that capacity for rage.
“I’m asking a legitimate question,” he said. “I’m not cruel.”
“Yes, you are. It’s your reason for breathing.” She lifted a shoulder slightly, still staring out the window. “It’s not just beauty I miss. I miss hating you. That much anger felt clean.”
Once the fae had been the most creative spirits in all the realms. They had danced, laughed, made war and loved like no others. They had been capricious and quarrelsome, generous friends and implacable foes. Now they were dusty shadows bereft of purpose. Worse, they were immortal. There would be no final forgetting to end their loss.
Mordred himself had been spared. His power made him immortal, but with more witch blood than fae, he had escaped Merlin’s spell. Rather than sharing the fae’s loss, he’d found ways to exploit it.
“You could drink a soul,” Mordred suggested. “I’m told that restores all your lost perceptions. We have prisoners to spare.”
Nimueh turned to the prince, a faint echo of disgust quickening her pulse. “It hardly seems worth it. A few hours of feeling, and then the grayness begins again.” Worse was that brief moment when the fae realized what they’d done. The self-loathing was worse than not caring at all.
“Then have another. There’s no shortage of mortal cattle.”
“No,” she replied with a dismissive flick of fingers. “Those who’ve taken that road cannot stop. They become the fae version of a drunkard seeking their next bottle. It lacks dignity.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged.
But Nimueh knew she was right. Addiction was Mordred’s ticket to controlling her kind. Once the fae were trapped, he had a system of reward and punishment to exploit. She refused to step into that snare.
Again, a faint shudder of distaste passed through her. It wasn’t quite an emotion, but the echo of one. Such episodes came and went like the tingling of a lost limb, leaving her with a sense of profound disquiet.
Mordred was pacing, his mind obviously on other things. “You failed against the witch.”
“You failed to tell me that she is strong.”
“Of course she’s strong. She escaped me,” Mordred snapped.
Perhaps that was why Nimueh had abandoned the field and let Tamsin Greene go free. The idea of a young witch no one had heard of—one wily enough to escape Mordred—had stirred what remained of her curiosity. In another time, she might even have hoped.
“You should have crushed her,” Mordred added.
“Maybe.” Nimueh turned back to the window and the greenery beyond. “I’ll try harder the next time our paths cross.”
Was that why she’d dropped her car keys? To leave a clue the witch and her knight could follow and maybe, just maybe, put an end to the Prince of Faery?
Mordred caught Nimueh’s arm, digging his fingers into her flesh as he forced her to face him. “Indeed, you shall try harder. And while you’re thinking of all the ways you are going to carry out my orders to the letter, perhaps you can assist me with some housekeeping. There is another mess I need to clean up.”
He waved his free hand through the air, describing an arc that shimmered and then darkened into a doorway between place and time. With Nimueh still firmly in his grip, he dragged them through. She felt the kiss of cold, clammy air on her face, and the elegant Victorian parlor disappeared. All at once, she stood in Mordred’s dungeon, deep underground beneath the hills of the faery kingdom.
Nimueh looked around, certain here at least it was better to be numb. The dungeon was vast and dark, honeycombed with tiny caves that served as cells. Roots crawled through the dirt walls and ceiling of the caves and twined around the limbs of the helpless prisoners, trapping them in damp, black oblivion. Scuttling things rustled in the shadows, the hard shells of their bodies scraping as they passed. Scavengers, Nimueh supposed. There was plenty of dead meat down here in Mordred’s playrooms.
“You have been keeping busy,” she observed.
“Housekeeping.” Mordred smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in the expression. “A few of your people still had opinions about my mother taking the throne.”
The rebels who had escaped Merlin’s spell. “I see.”
“Do you?” There was threat in the two words. “I wonder if you understand the brilliance of my plans. Conquering the mortal realms is a question of stealth. I could bring an army, thousands of fae warriors, but there is an easier way. The modern world is different from old Camelot. For all their fancy weapons, humans are even less prepared now than they were in the so-called Dark Ages.”
He was right there. In the old days, every peasant knew monsters were real and most had a few charms around the house for basic protection. “So you do not plan on a full-scale invasion?”
“No. A handful of fae here and there, strategically placed where the power brokers can fall prey to their beauty and influence. I’m thinking corporate boardrooms, political functions, cocktail parties for the rich and famous. No one will notice the soulless among them.”
“And then what?”
“Once the right people are under fae power, numbers won’t matter. Armies and weapons won’t matter. The human realms will be mine for the taking.”
As plans went, it wasn’t bad. Still, Mordred had forgotten his mother. The mortal realms would ultimately be hers. Unless he meant to fight her for them? That could get interesting.
They’d reached a long row of cells. Nimueh noticed a spider the size of a dinner plate webbing one of the entrances shut. She turned away. “Why are we here? You said there was a mess to clean up?”
Mordred waved her forward. She went, although her feet refused to hurry toward whatever he had to show her.
“I thought, after your unsuccessful venture to capture the witch, that perhaps it was time to review our plans,” Mordred said smoothly. “I find it useful to clarify priorities from time to time.”
Nimueh stopped when she came to the end of the tunnel. There was a figure huddled in the last cave in the row of cells.
“I find explanations go better with visual aids.” Mordred nodded toward the bound form.
“Angmar,” she said softly. The fae was bound to the earth with so many pale, twining roots that he was immobilized. Even so, he’d been in a recent fight because there were savage bruises wherever his clothing was torn away.
“Angmar is an example of what does not work in my regime. You, at least on days where you do not fail me, are an example of what does. The difference is a spirit of obedience.” Mordred pushed ahead into the cell and grabbed Angmar’s tangled hair, lifting the fae’s head so that Nimueh stared right into his broken face. “Those with souls have difficulty following my orders.”
Mordred made a gesture before Angmar’s face. The fae’s eyes cracked open beneath swollen, bruised lids and he began to struggle against the roots that pinned him tight. It was useless. A trickle of light escaped through his clenched teeth. Mordred bent down, inhaling it with a connoisseur’s pleasure. Angmar began to howl, the sound rising to a scream of protest and despair.
His soul. Nimueh’s heart hammered with desperate hunger. It did not matter that Angmar had once been her friend. She yearned to fill the aching void within her. Through the haze of numbness, she was aware that she should be disgusted, horrified, revolted. Merlin had damaged the fae, but Mordred made them monsters by tempting their hunger.
Nimueh had refused Mordred’s offer to feed her craving, and now he was dangling the bait again. If she took it, she would be his slave. She drew herself up, setting her jaw in refusal, but she couldn’t look away from the spectacle of Mordred tearing out Angmar’s soul.
“My lord, you don’t need to feed,” she said with cool precision. “Merlin’s spell never touched you.”
“That’s part of the joy in stealing it,” he retorted. “Excess is its own delight.”
Nimueh made no response, giving him nothing. With a loud sigh, Mordred stopped, letting Angmar’s head drop. The fae collapsed, sobbing in pain.
“There’s quite a bit left if you want it,” Mordred said, sulking. His flat expression said that he knew he’d failed to seduce her.
Nimueh stared at a spot just above Mordred’s head. The urge to wipe him from existence welled up in her like a madness. There were so few things that could kill the faery prince or his mother, and she’d possessed the greatest of them all—the sword, Excalibur. She’d given it to Arthur Pendragon to bring peace to the mortal realms, and now the sword was lost along with the king’s effigy. If only she still had it so that she could skewer Mordred’s slimy carcass!
That was anger! Nimueh schooled her face, hiding the fact that she’d just had a bout of genuine rage. Sweat slipped down her spine, a symptom of her episode. Mordred could never find out she had a scrap of individuality left or she would end up like Angmar. Mordred’s smile speared her as her gaze slowly, painfully crept toward her old friend’s shuddering form.
“There is a disturbance in the aether that tells me the witch has awakened another knight,” said Mordred. “That would be the witch you failed to destroy. I suggest you rectify that situation.”
Nimueh struggled to find her tongue. “Yes, my Lord Mordred.”