Knight of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

back toward the door.
    “I don’t want to hear it,” Merewyn called to her as she started to leave. “You’ve done your own share of mischief and cruelty at Morgen’s behest.”
    “True,” she said quietly. “But I’m not now, norhave I ever been human. I lack your conscience and your conviction. Tell me, Merewyn, once you’ve done this, will you still be able to look at yourself in the mirror, knowing that your beauty was bought in someone else’s blood?”
    The centuries of brutal abuse she’d suffered here went through her like a hot lance. Men such as Varian had spat on her and beaten her for no other reason than because she was ugly. They’d never shown her compassion or mercy. She wouldn’t go back to that. Not now. Not ever. She wanted to be human again, and she would do whatever it took to make that happen.
    “Yes,” she said confidently.
    Again Magda shook her head at her. “And here I thought you were the only human in Camelot. ’Tis a pity I misjudged you so.”
    Merewyn curled her lip as the woman left her alone. “You’re just jealous that you’re trapped here while I’ve been given a chance to earn my freedom.”
    Nothing but silence answered her, but it didn’t matter. She knew the truth. There were no decent people left in this world. None. So what if she turned Varian over to Morgen? It wasn’t like they planned to kill him. They only wanted him to serve in their court. There was no harm in that. At least he had family here. And he had beauty, the one thing the inhabitants of Camelot valued above everything.
    No, she wasn’t hurting Varian. She was only helping herself. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing.
     
    Closing his eyes, Varian took himself from Avalon to the dark back halls of Camelot. He was one of the few who could travel between the two realms who was actually willing to do it. Not that he particularly enjoyed this. Since his mother was the right hand of Morgen, their most-despised queen, and his father had been Arthur’s right-hand champion, it left the inhabitants of Camelot a little…shall we say, abrupt with him.
    There wasn’t a creature here who wouldn’t love to carve his heart from his chest secretly. And the key word was “secretly.” None of them would ever come from the front.
    So with his hand on his sword, he walked slowly down the hallway with the gait of a predator. Every shadow could contain an enemy. Every whisper could be one of the braver fools coming at his back. He kept his head bent down and searched the darkness with his peripheral sight while he listened carefully for any telltale sound.
    As he neared the torches on the walls that were held in brackets made to look like blackened arms, they lit themselves, then extinguished once he’d passed. The smell of the rush lights was pungentand thick in the air and it was stirred by his movements.
    Varian cocked his head as he felt a whisper behind him that could only come from one of the sharoc—a shadow fey that was renowned for its cruelty and mischief. He gripped the sword hilt, ready to draw it instantly as he continued on his way, waiting for the attack.
    But the sharoc pulled back…no doubt going to report his presence to his mother or Morgen.
    Let it. Varian had other matters with which to concern himself. He headed down the turret stairs that led to the underground floor. On the north tower, this area was reserved for the dungeon and Morgen’s torture chambers.
    On the southern tower where he was, it was the domain of the MODs. “MOD,” pronounced mode, was an acronym for Morgen’s minions of death. At one time, they’d been servants for the Celtic god of death, Balor. Confined to the underworld by their master, they’d been the scavengers sent to battlefields to kill and torture any who turned coward and fled.
    It was rumored that they were originally the beloved children of the Celtic gods Dagda and the Morrigen. But they fell from favor when they sided with the Milesians in