The administrative wing of Camelot’s middle bailey was built on the assumption that governance required peace, quiet, and very thick stone walls.
In practice, it meant Princess Rowena’s private study on the second floor smelled of old paper, beeswax, and the sharp tang of ink.
Afternoon light slanted through narrow windows, cutting clean, geometric bars across the stone floor and catching dust motes that hung over stacks of parchment and dried herbs.
Mordred stood in the center of the room.
Her helmet and iron greaves sat discarded to the side.
Her golden hair fell loose around her shoulders, and she had her arms folded over her linen tunic.
A plain wooden practice sword and a heavy brass paperweight lay on the table between them.
Rowena finished adjusting a stack of notes, tapped her narrow oak focus rod against her palm, and looked up.
Her dark hair was pinned back, free of courtly ornament.
Her dark eyes fixed on Mordred with cold, intellectual focus.
“We begin with the principle, not the flourish,” Rowena said, her voice even.
“Most court magi waste years learning how to make silk banners float during royal processions.
You do not have years, and you already possess a functional magical engine.
What you lack is precision under pressure.”
Rowena rested the end of her oak rod against the edge of the table.
She watched Mordred settle into place.
“Sir Galahad tells me you solve most problems by stepping closer until they become simple,” she said.
“There is merit in that approach.
There are also moments when the wiser answer is reaching something without crossing the space between.” Her eyes drifted to the practice sword before returning to Mordred.
“If I can spare you one unnecessary wound by teaching you that distinction, then this afternoon will have been worthwhile.”
‘Straight to business,’ Mordred thought, rolling her shoulders.
‘No tea, no pleasantries, no “are you sure you want to learn from a Welsh clerk?” I can work with this.’
Mordred gave a short nod.
“Precision under pressure.
Fair enough.
What’s first?”
“Levitation.” Rowena gestured at the sword.
“The ability to move an object without touching it is more useful to a knight than the flashy combat spells the Tower produces.
A dropped weapon, a falling comrade, a heavy shield that needs a second of delay—those moments decide battles.”
Rowena took a step closer, held out her oak rod, and spoke a clean, precise incantation under her breath.
“Wingardium Leviosa.”
The wooden sword rose smoothly from the table.
It hovered six inches in the air, rotated once in the quiet light, and settled back down without a sound.
“Your turn,” Rowena said, lowering her rod.
“You do not have a wand, Ser Mordred.
Standard incantations rely on the wooden focus to shape the magic.
Without a conduit, your magic will bleed off.
Feel the weight of the object, speak the words clearly, and persuade the air beneath it to disagree with gravity.”
Mordred stepped closer to the table.
“I don’t need a stick.
My body is the conduit.
The words give the heat its direction.”
She extended her right hand, palm open, and reached for the heat of her own mana.
It answered—dragon-blood red, raw, and eager beneath her skin.
The air in the room spiked five degrees.
It baked the smell of dry parchment into something scorched and heavy.
She spoke the phrase, pushing a sliver of that coiled heat out into the vocalization.
“Wingardium Leviosa!”
The air did not so much disagree with gravity as declare open war on it.
The sword jerked six feet upward with a sudden whoosh of air, hit the low stone ceiling with a crack, and clattered violently back onto the table.
It hit hard enough to make the inkwell jump.
A brassy ringing vibrated behind Mordred’s molars—the back-pressure of unguided energy looking for a place to ground itself.
“Again,” Rowena said, her expression unchanged.
“Less force.
You are trying to throw it.
Levitation is a sustained argument, not a punch.”
‘Sustained argument,’ Mordred thought, shaking out her tingling fingers.
The hot prickle of baked dust settled in the back of her throat.
‘Right.
Don’t punch the air, negotiate with it.’
Mordred exhaled, narrowed her focus, and tried once more.
She anchored her mind to the sound and rhythm of the phrase, squeezing her mana output down until it was a thin thread.
“Wingardium Leviosa.”
This time the sword rose slowly.
It tilted, corrected, and held steady at chest height.
Rowena stepped closer.
She watched the floating wood, then looked down at Mordred’s face.
She was close enough that Mordred could smell the sharp, clean scent of crushed ink and lavender on her gown.
“The stability,” Rowena murmured, her dark eyes searching Mordred’s blue ones.
“Without a wand, you are holding that wood on the words and your own intent alone.”
Rowena reached down and touched the side of Mordred’s wrist to adjust her posture.
The contact was brief, but the quiet space between them stretched, thick and heavy, before Rowena cleared her throat and stepped back.
“Acceptable,” Rowena said, her voice regaining its academic edge.
We will repeat until the habit forms.”
She reached for the practice sword, balanced it across her palms for a moment, and set it back onto the table.
“Raw strength is the easiest quality to admire,” she continued, adjusting the weapon’s position by an inch.
“It is also the easiest quality to predict.
The men who concern me are the ones who never need to raise their voices.” She glanced toward Mordred with a hint of approval.
“You have enough strength already.
Precision will make people underestimate you for exactly as long as you need.”
They did.
There is a brand of misery reserved for turning raw destruction into delicate routine, and for the next hour, Rowena’s study hosted it in full.
The room echoed with the sound of snapping air, tumbling wood, and Rowena’s short, exact observations.
The wooden sword rose, drifted, spun, and occasionally launched itself into a bookshelf as though driven by a personal grievance against Welsh history.
Rowena offered no wasted praise, and Mordred’s internal monologue grew creative in its complaints, but she kept working.
Eventually, the sword hovered obediently at shoulder height.
Mordred walked a slow circle around the table and let it down with care.
“Better,” Rowena admitted, rubbing her temple.
“You will practice daily.
Ten minutes of controlled hover, then directional movement.
Do not attempt it in full plate until the control is reliable.”
‘Daily practice,’ Mordred thought, wiping sweat from her forehead.
‘At least it’s not carrots.’
Rowena moved to a different shelf, returned with a short iron training dagger, and set it on the table.
“Second lesson.
Disarmament,” Rowena said.
“The goal is not to destroy the weapon.
The goal is to separate it from the hand that holds it, cleanly and at speed.”
She picked up the dagger, took a stance, and spoke the formula.
“Expelliarmus.”
A sharp, snapping pop echoed in the room.
An invisible force ripped the dagger out of her grip and sent it spinning into the far wall, where it stuck point-first into an oak panel.
“It targets the point of contact between the wielder and the tool,” Rowena explained.
“The vector must be precise.
Too wide and you only shove the opponent.
Too narrow and you break fingers.
You want the weapon, not the man.”
Mordred’s eyes lit up.
A slow, dangerous grin spread across her face.
‘Now that is a knight’s spell,’ Mordred thought.
‘A clean, sudden yank right out of the grip.’
She spent the next stretch of time learning the shape of the force, the timing, and the moment to push the mana on the final syllable.
The first dozen attempts either did nothing or knocked the entire table sideways, scattering quill-shavings across the floor and testing the princess’s administrative patience to its limit.
Rowena watched until Mordred finally stepped forward, snapped her wrist, and uttered the word.
“Expelliarmus!”
The iron dagger ripped out of the wooden panel with a CRACK like a whip, sending it clattering across the floorboards.
“Again,” Rowena said, her dark eyes flashing with satisfaction.
“Faster.”
Mordred reset her stance while Rowena retrieved the dagger.
The princess weighed it in one hand before offering it back hilt-first.
“A proper spell should save your breath rather than exhaust it,” Rowena said as Mordred accepted it.
“If casting leaves you winded after every exchange, the spell is poorly chosen.
Save the expensive miracles for moments that deserve them.” She stepped back.
“Now again.”
By the time the light in the high windows turned amber, Mordred could disarm the post three times out of five at conversational speed.
Sweat darkened her collar, and her mana hummed under her skin with the tight, bound burn of focused work.
Rowena stacked her notes and regarded her.
“You learn quickly when the application is obvious,” Rowena said.
“That is useful.
It is also dangerous.
Power without the habit of restraint becomes a liability.”
Mordred wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and gave a crooked half-smile.
“I’ll try not to levitate anyone important off a balcony.”
“See that you do not.” Rowena’s tone was dry, but the sharpness in her eyes had softened a fraction.
“We will continue in three days.
Bring the same sword.
I want to see directional control under mild fatigue.”
Mordred collected her practice blade and greaves, feeling the new shapes of magic settling into her body like unfamiliar muscles.
‘Wingardium for the heavy lifting,’ she thought, strapping her gear together.
‘Expelliarmus for the awkward conversations.
Not bad for an afternoon.’
She paused at the heavy oak door.
“Rowena.”
The princess looked up from her ledger.
“Yes?”
“Thanks,” Mordred said, resting the wooden blade over her shoulder.
“For keeping your head about it.”
A small pause filled the room.
“You are a poor student of courtly manners and an adequate student of applied force,” Rowena said.
“The second quality is rarer.
Do not waste it.”
Rowena lowered her gaze to the ledger, though her pen did not immediately touch the page.
“Sir Mordred,” she said without looking up, “if any knight tells you that learning ends once the sword is earned, ignore him.” A quiet breath escaped her before the pen moved across the parchment.
“Camelot has buried enough talented fools.”
The sun was dipping below the western battlements when Mordred made her way back across the bailey.
The evening air was cool against her skin, smelling of woodsmoke and roasting mutton from the lower kitchens.
She rolled her right shoulder, feeling the humming difference under her collarbones.
Rowena operated like a stone mason: cool, fitting piece to piece until the wall was whole.
It was disarming, almost soothing, the way the princess looked at a storm of raw magic and simply handed you a blueprint.
‘And then there’s Maeve,’ Mordred thought with a faint, dangerous twitch of her mouth.
‘Maeve doesn’t build walls.
She sets the forest on fire and demands to see if you burn.’
The contrast made her pulse itch in a way she enjoyed.
Rowena made her feel clever; Maeve made her feel alive.
Passing a young squire with an armful of firewood, Mordred caught herself humming a low, wordless tune—something loose and relaxed.
She was going to walk into that room, smell the bitter nightshade, and say something completely inappropriate just to watch the druid try to maintain that terrifying, icy glare.
She pushed open the heavy oak door to her chamber.
Maeve was sitting by the window.
She didn’t look up.
She was trimming a bundle of dried nightshade with a small silver knife, her movements sharp, rhythmic, and cold.
The room smelled of bitter herbs and fresh tea.
“You’re late,” Maeve said.
“Lost track of time,” Mordred said, tossing her greaves and practice sword onto the bench with a metallic clatter.
“Doing extra drills.”
Maeve set the silver knife down.
She turned her head slowly, her dark green eyes locking onto Mordred with the intensity of an apex predator watching an unpredictable pet.
“Extra drills,” Maeve repeated.
She stood up, her long green skirts trailing over the rug as she walked toward Mordred.
She stopped three inches away, her eyes scanning Mordred’s neck, her tunic, her face.
“You smell like ink and lavender.”
“I was near the scriptorium,” Mordred said, leaning back against the wall with an easy, unbothered grin.
“Rowena showed me some useful tricks.”
“Rowena,” Maeve said, pronouncing the name like a bad taste.
Maeve’s fingers tightened around the silver knife before relaxing.
“She spends half her days buried beneath ledgers and grain accounts,” she continued, her annoyance growing quieter.
“The servants speak well of her because she remembers their names.
Even the stable boys straighten their backs when she walks through the yard.” Her eyes lifted to Mordred’s.
“She has a habit of collecting useful people.”
Her hand shot out, her thin fingers gripping the lapel of Mordred’s tunic, tugging her down.
“She knows theory, Maeve,” Mordred said, not pulling away.
“She taught me how to snap a weapon out of a guy’s hand without breaking a sweat.
It’s practical.”
Maeve leaned in, her green eyes narrowing as she searched Mordred’s face.
“I gave you the blood-formulas,” Maeve whispered, her breath warm against Mordred’s cheek.
“I gave you the root-conduits.
I built your foundation, Mordred.
And you spend your afternoon letting a pencil-pusher teach you spoken spells in a private room?”
“Mind your teeth, little druid,” Mordred teased, reaching up to lay a hand over Maeve’s fingers on her collar.
“You’ll bite your tongue if you keep grinding them like that.”
Maeve pulled her hand back, stepping away with a cold, sharp turn of her head.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maeve said, walking back toward the table to pick up her knife.
She resumed trimming the herbs, though the pieces on the table had become noticeably uneven.
After a few moments, she clicked her tongue, swept the spoiled bundle aside, and reached for another without meeting Mordred’s eyes.
“You always return from training smiling,” she muttered while lining up the fresh stems.
“I simply prefer it when I am the reason.”
Mordred watched her, the smirk lingering on her lips as she unbuttoned her tunic collar.
‘She cares,’ Mordred thought, tossing her arming cap onto the cot and running a hand through her hair.
‘She cares a lot.’
She sat on the edge of the cot and flexed her fingers.
The crimson hum of her mana still vibrated under her skin—cooler now, tighter, locked to the rhythm of the incantations Rowena had drilled into her.
‘Maeve gave me the furnace,’ Mordred thought, staring at the palm of her hand as a thin, controlled ember of red light danced across her knuckles.
‘She turned me into a weapon that doesn’t break.
Rowena just showed me how to aim the blast so I don’t blow my own arm off.’
She closed her hand into a tight fist, snuffing the light out.
A slow, dangerous grin spread across her face in the dark of the room.
‘One built the engine.
The other handed me the steering wheel.’
She leaned back against the stone wall, closing her eyes as the faint scent of ink, lavender, and bitter nightshade settled over her.
‘Take your time, Gawain,’ she thought, with a smirk.
‘With Witch Princess and my druid handmaiden backing me…
you’re not just going to lose.
You are going to eat so much dirt.’