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“Do as you will, Your Majesty. If there’s any hope at all for the wound to be healed, then I’ll endure anything. It can’t be worse than what I’ve already suffered.”

“And if it doesn’t work…” Gwen shot a worried look at me.

“Then my headless knight will put you out of your misery, Sir Warwick.”

Relief eased through his muscles and he closed his eyes. “Goddess be praised either way. Thank you.”

31

GUILLAUME

Iknew all too well what centuries of torture did to a man. I would have gladly begged for the same relief if Shara Isador hadn’t Called me to her side in Kansas City. Especially if any other queen dared to try to bond me.

“I think it would be easiest if we could put a long table beneath him,” Gwen said. “High enough for us to work but not on the floor.”

“Will this desk work?” Khalid drew our attention to a glossy mahogany desk on the far side of the room by a cold fireplace.

“Yes, perfect,” Gwen said.

I grabbed Warwick’s shoulders, Lancelot his feet, and we carried him over to the desk. Khalid swiped his arm across its surface, throwing all the useless trinkets and cups of pens to the floor. Shara came to stand by me at Warwick’s head with a small pillow she’d snagged off one of the cushioned chairs. I lifted his head enough for her to tuck it beneath him, making him a little more comfortable.

“If there are more pillows, we could use them to help lift and stabilize his leg,” Gwen said.

Bors trotted over with more pillows. “Got it.”

They propped the injured leg up slightly with a pillow beneath Warwick’s knee, his thigh slightly opened and crooked to the side. His cock lay pale and limp on his other thigh. One testicle seemed paler than the other too, as if the spear had damaged it. Blood pooled beneath him on the shiny wood, already dripping down onto the floor.

Getting a sword shoved back up into the region of his manhood was going to be far from pleasant.

“Sir Guillaume, if you can hold his shoulders down, Mordred will take the uninjured leg,” Gwen said. “Bors, grab his lower leg and keep it as stationary as possible. Lance, I need you to guide Excalibur into the wound and follow the spear’s trajectory as closely as possible. We don’t want to damage other tissue so it needs to be slow and precise, though clearly this will hurt him, so we want to be as quick and efficient as possible. I’m hoping the fae blade will pull the lingering fae magic to it. Sort of cauterize it, if you will.”

Lancelot stepped closer, bending down to study the wound. Watching Gwen’s fingers as she traced the path up through the muscle toward Warwick’s groin.

She looked up at Shara with a wry smile. “We may need Rik’s strength to help hold him down as we get deeper. I wouldn’t feel comfortable ordering your alpha.”

“We’re following your expertise here,” Shara said. “You tell us what you need and we’ll do it.”

“We can’t allow his hips to rise or flinch away from the pain.”

Without any hesitation whatsoever, Rik planted his broad palm on the man’s lower stomach and pressed hard enough Warwick grunted. “He won’t move an inch.”

Using a crescent moon pendant around her neck, Gwen drew her blood again and focused her pearly nimbus on the wound. Shining light into the channel carved through Warwick’s flesh.

Lancelot held the long, elegant sword before him in both hands. Runes glowed on the blade as blue flames rippled up the hilt and around his grip. “Ready?”

“I’ll guide you.”

Shara cupped Warwick’s cheeks and leaned down over him. “Look at me, Sir Warwick. Sink into my eyes. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

At Gwen’s nod, Lancelot slid the tip of his sword into the wound, trying to maintain the same trajectory of the original weapon. The blade was so sharp that at first Warwick didn’t feel anything. It was the kind of sword that would cleave a man’s head in one stroke and leave him wondering why he couldn’t talk, watching as his body slowly toppled to the ground.

Ask me what that’s like. I’ve lived it too many times. Though my head was never cleaved by a fae weapon. Perhaps that would finally end my legend as the headless knight.

After a few inches of the sword entered him, Warwick began to feel the sensation of metal invading his tissues. The damage of sliced skin, muscle, and ligament. Blood gushed even more rapidly from the wound, which would have made it physically impossible for Lancelot to see where to drive the blade without his queen’s magic guiding him.

“Goddesses above and below,” Warwick moaned. “Cut the leg off, man, and be done.”

“Angle deeper,” Gwen told Lancelot. “There. Yes. Now bear toward his inner thigh. Under the inguinal ligament into the canal. Gently. I don’t want to tear the femoral even more.”