Enchanted Guardian

by Sharon Ashwood

  As they drove, Lancelot remained silent. Only the tight angle of his jaw revealed the temper he ruthlessly controlled. She knew that look—one of disappointment and anger that said he’d just had an argument. It was astonishing how after all this time she still remembered every one of his expressions.

  The idea made her tongue-tied, cautious of conversation that was supposed to be just the surface of a deeper territory that they’d once intimately shared. She was afraid he might peel back her words to find nothing underneath—no soul, no heart, no meaning. Nothing but a ghost of herself stubbornly clinging to survival because she didn’t know how to give in.

  A ghost, like the fae she’d killed that afternoon. The memory nauseated her.

  It was some time before Nim trusted her voice to be cool and collected. “You looked angry when you got into the car,” she said. “What happened?”

  “Arthur,” he said, his tone flat. “Hurtling through time hasn’t changed him. He needs to get drunk more often. Perhaps he’ll relax.”

  “Did you expect him to be different in this time?”

  “I didn’t expect old arguments to travel with us.”

  Nim decided to leave that statement alone. Arthur’s biggest complaint was over Guinevere, and that was one topic she refused to discuss. “I take it you stayed with Susan yourself. I saw the other knights leave before the fire trucks arrived.”

  “I stayed,” Lancelot replied, finally releasing his death grip on the door handle. “I waved the firemen over.”

  “Did they question you?”

  “I didn’t give them a chance. They didn’t get a good look at me. They were focused on Susan.”

  Nim cast him an assessing look. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.” Dulac shifted in the seat, his big body seeming to hunch against the confines of the car. “Why should I have to worry about being identified? The fae were the criminals. Is there no reward in this time for dealing out justice?”

  Nim returned her gaze to the road ahead. “That’s the kind of question that never has a satisfactory answer.”

  He looked out his side window. “There is much about this time I don’t understand.”

  Nim was tempted toward sarcasm, but held her peace. She knew Lancelot wasn’t simply grumbling; he actually wanted to find logic in the universe so he could make it better. He didn’t deserve her cynicism.

  She pulled up to a stoplight and signaled to turn. “I called Antonia and told her that we’d meet at the hospital. Right now I’m taking you home. We can’t arrive in a public place covered in soot and blood. That would inspire questions.”

  “Your home?”

  His voice held surprise. It was a mark of trust for a fae to open her doors to a mortal. She’d done that for him once before, but then he’d trampled her gift by walking away. No one else would get a second chance, but today he’d been there when she needed him.

  And, though she wouldn’t admit it, she was afraid to be alone in her empty condominium. As Merlin had said, it was only safe from assassins up to a point. She hadn’t expected to return for one second longer than it would take to put her suitcases in the car.

  The light changed and she urged the Audi forward. “After you risked your life to help Susan, the least I can offer is a place to clean up.”

  “I am always at your service, my lady.” The formal words brought back memories, like the wild, sweet sound of a far-off fanfare.

  She pulled into an underground parking lot. From there, she led him to an elevator that took them to the fifth floor. Dulac followed her down a narrow carpeted hallway and waited while she unlocked the door of her suite.

  “How do you find it living in a building filled with so many humans?” he asked in a low voice so that no one would overhear. “This is like a small village stacked together under a single roof.”

  “Actually it isn’t,” she replied, unlocking a second and third dead bolt. “In a village everyone knows their neighbors’ business. Here I could raise a dozen demons and no one would notice as long as I kept the smell down.”

  Lancelot looked up and down the hall as if he was unsure what to make of that. Then Nim invited him inside, trying to visualize her place through his eyes. Her castle in the Forest Sauvage had been a confection of white stone and purple-veined marble, every room filled with objects of rare and colorful beauty. There had been a living tree made all of silver with leaves that chimed whenever a breeze stirred the branches. There had been carpets so thick the cats had to lift their paws high as they padded from room to room. But what she thought of now, with Lancelot there, were the beds—so soft and luxuriant some days she would lie down and lose the will to rise again. Or, at least, that’s how she recalled the days and nights when he had been there.

  “This is very different,” he said. Indeed it was. It said everything about what had happened to Nimueh, and she knew it.

  The suite was spacious and scrupulously clean, but it was all sharp angles and almost entirely white. She found the sterility restful because it didn’t demand an emotional response. It was also so impersonal that it made the notion of walking away from it easy. “It was the show suite,” she explained. “I bought it furnished.”

  “Ah,” he said, eyeing the barely cushioned couch with suspicion. It had spindly black legs that gave it the appearance of being emaciated, as if furniture could starve. If someone with Lancelot’s bulk sat on it, there was a reasonable chance it would collapse.

  “Come into the kitchen,” she said, taking pity on man and couch both. “I don’t keep much food in the house, but I have brandy. I think we could both use refreshment after this afternoon’s business.”

  Lancelot followed, his tread sounding heavy on the tiled floor. There hadn’t been a man in her place since she’d moved in, and he made the room seem insubstantial. Suddenly she wished for a few more comforts. Before the wars, fae had always been perfect hosts.

  She took two glasses down from the half-empty cupboard and poured them each a measure. When he reached for it, she saw the slight hitch in his movement. “You’re injured.”

  “Not so much.” He drained the glass in one swallow.

  She pushed the bottle his way, leaning against the counter. “You always say that. You’d say that if you’d been chopped into bite-size nuggets, deep fried and served with dipping sauce.”

  He gave her a curious look. “What?”

  Nim realized his acquaintance with fast food had to be mercifully limited. “My apologies. It was a tasteless reference.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Was that a pun?”

  “I would have to possess a sense of humor to jest.” But she had meant it. It was a bad joke, but she was rusty after centuries of being deadly serious. Why Nim was suddenly poking fun at Lancelot was a mystery. She just knew she wanted to, and that made her feel oddly exposed. She didn’t normally want anything but she was overtired and clearly not herself.

  He was still looking at her with suspicion, so she kept her face sober. “Show me your wound.”

  “Take care of yours first.”

  “I had time to bandage mine. You go first.”

  He poured and drank another glass of brandy, but then pulled off his T-shirt with the unconscious ease of a man utterly comfortable with his body. Nim blinked. She couldn’t help it—only a lifetime of hard physical activity produced such perfectly proportioned muscles. He had the deep chest and broad shoulders of one trained with lance and broadsword, but his overall physique was lean, with no unnecessary flesh. Like a fine horse or fast car, Lancelot was built for speed as much as strength.

  Nim leaned in to examine the nasty bruise forming on Lancelot’s shoulder. The dark musk of his scent drew her closer as old instincts stirred to life. She brushed her fingertips over his purpling skin, feeling the heat. The gesture was meant to be clinical, but instead it was deeply intimate. They had been too much to each other, and the memories pressed on her with the iron grip of regret. She cleared her throat. “I’ll get you s
ome ice.”

  “You’ve always done that for me,” he said.

  “Get you ice?”

  “No—yes. Yes, but more important, you see what I need. Not what I say.” His dark eyes searched her face.

  “You need to learn to say what you need. We’ll all be less confused.”

  She moved swiftly, all but diving for the refrigerator behind him. She needed to put physical distance between them. She needed those images from the past—Lancelot on the practice field, in her bed, standing as she had first seen him with a wild hunger for experience awake in his brilliant, mortal gaze—to vanish back into the mists of time. But when she turned back, a bag of frozen blueberries in one hand and a towel in the other, her old life confronted her one more time.

  She bit her lip, stifling an exclamation. His back was to her, the broad span of his shoulder blades bare. She’d forgotten the map of scars that ran from the base of his neck to his waist, slashing across his skin like the trail of savage claws. Or maybe she’d blocked it out.

  Lancelot’s back was a ruin of scars left by a sword belt. He’d come to her that way, savaged by a father he’d been desperate to please. As a child, Lancelot had been too young to bear the weight of his father’s sword or his father’s wrath and yet he had been expected to do both. The harder he tried, the more old King Ban demanded. That heartbreaking, heartbroken thirst for excellence had started the future champion of Camelot on the road to greatness, but that foundation automatically had cracks of self-doubt. She’d tried to mend them with kindness, but she couldn’t give a father’s love. Not for the first time, she wondered if that was one reason Lancelot had left her to join Arthur’s court. He’d still had something to prove, even if his father was dead. What better patriarch to serve than a king, even a young one?

  He moved then, scattering her thoughts. It was time to stop dwelling on things she couldn’t change.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he murmured. “Have I said that yet?”

  “And I am grateful for you. I owe you many thanks for helping when I asked.” With brisk motions, she wrapped the towel around the berries and pressed it to his bruise. “I’m being a terrible hostess. Why don’t you get cleaned up? There’s a shower through there.”

  She pointed to the bathroom, one in a trio of identical white doors down a short hallway. The Lady of the Lake was a water fae and the Jacuzzi tub—along with the building’s swimming pool—assuaged her need for cool, wet places. Lancelot obeyed her directions with a bemused smile, taking the ice pack with him. Unfortunately, he opened the wrong door. He’d started to close it when she saw him pause, then let the door swing wide to reveal her luggage waiting just inside the bedroom door. “Your suitcases are packed,” he said, his voice quiet. “You’re leaving.”

  She could hear the words he didn’t say—that she was leaving him when they’d just found each other again. The accusation was more potent than any show of temper. Nim’s lungs were suddenly stiff, every breath an effort. “I told you before. LaFaye knows where I am. She won’t stop sending her assassins.”

  His expression was steady, his eyes fathomless. “I can protect you.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “No need?” He closed the bedroom door as if erasing the existence of her packed bags. “I searched for you. I left Camelot and lived like a wild man in the woods, seeking you in every glen and shadowed thicket of the Forest Sauvage. They thought I’d run mad. Perhaps I did.”

  Nim was confused. “When was this?”

  He tossed the ice pack aside, apparently done with finding comfort. “Before the demon wars. Your castle had disappeared. Even your lake was gone.”

  “I went back to the Hollow Hills, Lancelot. You said you’d come back to me, but even I could only believe a lie for so long. I went home.”

  “I didn’t lie. I came back.”

  “You were too late.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “I just had to wait a very long time to find you.”

  She stiffened, pushed beyond endurance for the day. “Enough. You left me. Maybe you left to serve the king, but you finished by loving the queen.”

  She’d tried to find him in Camelot, but it had only served to show her how much she didn’t fit in. The visit had started well. Arthur had welcomed the Lady of the Lake with great honor, as befitted her rank and accomplishments.

  And then everything about the visit went wrong. Guinevere was little more than a child, with a bell-like voice and a fretful pucker between her golden brows. Nimueh saw at once how matters stood between the queen and Lancelot. Guinevere could not do without him, and he raced to tend to her every whim.

  Nimueh had left Camelot at first light.

  Now Lancelot shook his head sadly. “I became a pawn in a very complicated game. I was a country boy overawed by the brilliance of Camelot. I made a lot of mistakes.”

  All the while that he’d been speaking, he’d come toward her with the grace of a stalking cat. There was no hesitation, none of the diffidence she remembered in her young knight. This was an older Lancelot, and his expression held no apologies. He took her arms, holding her in place. “Don’t go.”

  She was still sorting through his explanation. Parts of it made sense, but she’d believed in his betrayal too long to revise her thinking so soon. “You left Camelot to look for me?”

  “I did. In the end, I walked away from the Round Table. I only went back to Arthur when the war came and I couldn’t find you. Whatever my feelings for the king, the mortal realms needed my sword.”

  “It doesn’t matter what happened before,” she said, knowing that wasn’t true. “In any event, I can’t stay now.”

  “Trust me, you can.”

  Trust the man who had abandoned her? “No.”

  The past was only one problem of many. Sooner or later the faery queen would send another assassin, and even if Nim had bound her magic, they could find her if she remained in Carlyle. Lancelot would fight for her if she let him, but that wasn’t an acceptable plan. No one fought Nim’s battles but Nim.

  And yet her brain was moving too slowly to fully grasp those thoughts. Lancelot’s gaze was hypnotic, his deep brown eyes pulling her into dangerous waters. “Give me a chance to change your mind.”

  “No.”

  As if she hadn’t spoken, he leaned in to kiss her. Instinctively, she pulled back but there was nowhere to go. He’d pinned her against the wall and now his hands were braced on either side of her while his body blocked her in. She’d let herself be stalked and trapped. When she began to squirm away, he pressed closer until his bare chest was against her front, his heartbeat hammering against her ribs. It was as if he was trying to fill her with his spirit to make up for all she’d lost.

  His breath was hot, his lips soft. “Stay. Give me one day to convince you. No one will come for you for another twenty-four hours.”

  “How do you know that?” It sounded reasonable, but there was no reason why it should be true.

  “Because we just gave the queen something else to think about. The reason Arthur is annoyed is because right or wrong I just kicked over a wasp’s nest.”

  And he’d done it because she’d asked him to. She suddenly saw the enormity of it—it was one thing to patrol and stop a fae in the act of a crime, but today they’d executed fae in their own home. Morgan would have to protest, and Arthur would be forced to answer. No wonder the king was perturbed—but Lancelot had still taken the risk to please her.

  And he was right. LaFaye would be distracted for at least a day.

  He kissed her again, his palms caressing upward from her hips, up her ribs and finally cupping her breasts with reverence that left Nim shattered and hungry with a single touch. Lancelot didn’t make love, he worshipped.

  Nim’s defenses crumbled away. “One day.” Stars, she hoped she hadn’t just sealed their doom.

  Chapter 10

  “It’s not fair,” complained Gawain through Dulac’s smartphone. “Back in the day we killed
the dragon and people gave us wenches and mead. Now we kill the dragon, bury the evidence, and we have to show up for work or we get sacked.”

  “Not to mention the dragon welfare activists,” Dulac replied. The comment earned him strange looks as he came up to the huge, arched gate of the Medievaland Theme Park. Happily, Nimueh was at his side, and anyone with eyes in his head was soon admiring her instead.

  “Is that a thing?” Gawain asked suspiciously. Dulac noticed that his friend had picked up a great deal of slang from his twenty-first century witch. “Because if it is, the activists have never met a real dragon, much less hugged it.”

  “I have no idea. I’m here. I’ll see you in a minute.” Dulac ended the call and slid the phone away. The gate guard recognized him and waved him through the entrance. The evening sun slanted a golden glow over the brilliantly colored pavilions of the park, but the heat hadn’t abated one bit. It was nearing seven thirty.

  The kiss he’d shared with Nimueh had been long and tender, but he had pushed matters no further. He was coaxing her back to him, and that took skill and patience. Too much too soon would only hurt his cause, and twenty-four hours didn’t give him room for setbacks. All he needed was to convince her one day should become two, then four, and then forever.

  After he and Nimueh had cleaned up, they’d gone to the hospital to check on Susan. They’d met Antonia there, who’d been tearfully grateful but uncertain about Susan’s future. At least the young woman was safe and with her family now.

  Dulac’s phone chimed a reminder from his pocket. He didn’t need to look at it to know what it said. “The show starts soon,” he said to Nimueh. “I’ll take you to the stands and then I need to get ready.”

  “Do you really have to take part in the performance?” Nimueh said incredulously. “You’ve fought a battle and your shoulder is hurt.”

  Dulac looked down into her questioning gaze, so strange behind the dark contact lenses. He might have said the fight at the Price House was barely a warm-up for a hardened warrior, but decided that sounded less than humble. “The people like to see the jousting, and the money they pay provides an honest living. Besides, the practice keeps us sharp.”