by Nina Mason
She’d never felt that at ease with herself, even when alone. All her life, she’d been made to feel inferior. As much as she didn’t want to believe that she was, part of her did.
Mesmerized by the man in the pool, she went on watching. Something told her he was like her mother. Esoteric rather than religious. Open-minded instead of rigid. Accepting, not judging. She couldn’t say how or why she sensed this about him. She only knew she felt it deep down in some instinctive part of her psyche.
Hope fluttered in her heart. Could he be the one her mother spoke of in the dream? Scoffing at her romantic delusions, she smashed the thought with the rock of reason and headed back to the footpath.
The moon had gone behind a cloud and the glen was darker than before. Even with the aid of the torch, she could only see a step or two in front of her. All at once, the wood seemed haunted. Eyes watched from behind every tree. Nothing looked familiar. The hairs on the back of her neck prickling, she shone the beam right and left, unable to recall which way she’d come.
Choosing a direction, she hurried down the path a little way, searching the illuminated shrubbery for anything familiar. Gnarled roots reached out to trip her. Branches clawed at her face and hair. Spider webs endeavored to ensnare her.
An owl hooted, shattering Jenna’s courage along with the silence. As fear flooded her system, she broke into a run. Heaven help her. She was lost in a dark wood inhabited by God alone knew what.
Over the pounding in her ears, her rational mind whispered, “You are acting like a complete imbecile. There are no creatures more terrifying than badgers in these woods.”
Returning to her senses, Jenna slowed to a walk and threw a backward glance toward the waterfall. The man was just a man, and his reasons for bathing in the falls were no business of hers. Extreme fatigue coupled with the emotional distress of her cancelled wedding, looming poverty, and unresolved car trouble had robbed her of her logic. She was quite sure that, in the sobering light of morning, she would look back on this momentary episode of madness and have a good laugh. Right now, however, she just wanted to find that bloody cottage and put herself and this crappy day to bed.
After walking in circles for another half hour, she sat down on a rock she’d passed several times and opened her handbag. As she felt around for the directions, her fingers grazed an item she’d forgotten all about in her anguish. Her mother’s scorched grimoire. On a whim, she’d put it in her purse, thinking she might finally summon the courage to look through its pages.
When she’d first saved it from the fire, she couldn’t understand the words and drawings inside. It seemed to be written in gibberish and glyphs. A cipher to protect dark secrets, no doubt. Later, after her father, who’d set the fire to burn his late wife’s Pagan books, frightened Jenna with his talk of Satan, she grew too afraid to look again. Not sure what to do with the book, she hid it in the back of a drawer and eventually forgot all about it. A few days ago, she came upon it while packing up her flat.
I cannot risk my own immortal soul by marrying someone so susceptible to the darkness.
And she could not give up all hope of happiness by marrying a man who condemned who she really was. Her gifts, God bless them, had saved her from following in her mother’s tragic footsteps.
Leaving the spell book for later, Jenna studied the map under the beam of her torch. The cottage, to her relief, was hidden in the trees a few yards ahead. Numb and leaden-limbed, she found her way there and, after struggling for a minute with the combination lock-box, released the key.
As she opened the front door, the disagreeable smell of mildew rushed out to greet her. Too tired to care about the mustiness or anything else, she threw her purse on a chair, kicked off her shoes, and curled up on the sofa under her cloak. Moments after shutting her eyes, she tumbled into a deep and dreamless slumber.
Chapter 2
In olden times, the maidens of Rosemarkie decorated the pools of Faery Glen with flowers to entice the faery who lived there to keep the village’s water supply clean. Now, they brought Axel other oblations, many of which they left in an abandoned well near a curve in the footpath. Today, he discovered something in the rotting wooden bucket that had been illegal in the Viking enclave in the north of Scotland where he grew up.
Love poems.
In his day and age, suitors who wrote such intimate verses were presumed to know their subjects more intimately than the rules of courtship permitted—a presumption that often resulted in the poet’s death at the hands of the lady’s male relations.
Hence, the ban on romantic couplets kept the murder rate down.
Since the sonnets he had found in the well were penned by a woman he did not know, he could see no harm in reading her lovely, albeit melancholy, verses.
Sensing a hovering presence, Axel looked up from the page to find a dark-haired lad of no more than eighteen years of age standing over him. The fact that the lad was stark naked and sexually aroused might have alarmed him were he not accustomed to seeing many such “gillie-wet-foots” in the halls of Castle Le Fay—more often than not in some lewd pose with one of the ladies of the court.
To avoid looking where he would rather not, Axel locked gazes with the young man and waited for him to state his business.
Without delay, the page said, “Her Majesty requests that you attend her at once, my good knight.”
He could guess what the queen wanted. She had not summoned him since just before he had granted Sir Leith MacQuill the favor of petitioning an audience with Herself. Since his friend had not returned this way, Axel could only presume he was chained in the dungeon, awaiting his fate as Avalon’s Samhain tithe to Madoc Morfryn, the Dark Lord of the Thitherworld. The thought of Leith’s imminent demise gave Axel some pain. Though his fellow knight’s visits had been few and far between in recent years, he would miss the possibility of company.
Axel nodded toward the open book in his hand. “Tell her I shall attend her as soon as I have finished this verse.”
“With all due respect, my lord, my instructions were to bring you to her at once.”
“That being the case, I would never dream of keeping Her Majesty waiting.” Axel offered the page a tight-lipped smile. “For we live for her pleasure and must not make her unhappy.”
Marking his place, he got to his feet and set the book on the table beside the chair. Having done nothing wrong, he had no reason to fear the summons. So, why had his wame grown as hard as a millstone?
He followed the page to the chamber at the back of the cave where the portal was located. They passed through, coming out in a clearing surrounded by tall trees. The sky was clear and deep blue and the temperature was moderate. A slight breeze brought the perfume of sun-warmed wildflowers to his nostrils.
Avalon’s climate, as always, was perfect—assuming one’s idea of perfection was an endless stretch of sunny days. Personally, he preferred the unpredictability of Scotland’s weather. Variety, it was said, was the spice of life, and he agreed wholeheartedly.
An existence without seasoning was as bland and unexciting as the steady diet of oatmeal he was raised upon in the Highlands back in the fourteenth century. Or the life he now lived in the glen. But at least he had sunsets, starry nights, inclement weather, and seasonal changes to add a bit of flavor to the drudgery.
Axel followed the page out of the grove to the towering iron gates of Castle Le Fay, where two sentries in vintage English uniforms stood guard. They were part of the army of mercenary vampires Queen Morgan had hired. He had learned about them the day he undertook Sir Leith’s errand.
The thought brought on a spasm of guilt. Perhaps, if Her Majesty was feeling generous after he serviced her, she would allow him to drop by the dungeon to say his final good-byes to his ill-fated friend before returning to his post.
After the guards let them pass, the page led the way across the rickety rope bridge to the tidal island upon which the castle stood. At the entrance, the lad handed him off to a golden-haire
d faery in a gossamer tunic so sheer she needn’t have bothered covering herself.
“I am Lady Lilac, my good knight.” She dipped into a curtsey. “The new Mistress of the Bedchamber. Her Majesty has asked that I see you the rest of the way.”
Axel did his best not to leer as she took him through the gem-encrusted, relic-strewn corridor leading to the royal bedchamber. If the protocols played out as usual, he would soon be afforded the opportunity to ogle her attractions to his heart’s content. For Queen Morgan, who considered foreplay a chore, generally staffed out the priming of her knights to her ladies-in-waiting.
Inside the royal bedchamber, the queen, clad in a diaphanous dressing gown, reclined on the tufted silk chaise at the foot of her canopy bed. Her womb, as usual, was heavy with child. Even as Axel’s chest tightened with dread, his groin tingled with onrushing arousal.
She might be wicked, vain, and selfish, but she was still the most seductive creature he had ever beheld. Her skin was polished alabaster, her lips were ripe strawberries, and her eyes were as crystalline and perfect as the emerald into which he had carved Teiwaz. Only one thing would have made her more beguiling: if her long, thick hair were flaming red instead of jet black.
His perfect woman was a shieldmaiden with hair all the colors of autumn—an ideal that no longer existed in the world of today.
He looked around him. The elegant chamber, decorated in rich shades of gold, always made him think of a beehive. Though it was light out, the drapes had been drawn to shut out the sun. Candles burned atop every surface, filling the room with warm amber light and the scent of melting wax.
In the beginning, he had loved her, owing to her beauty and his naïve delusions about love. With the brush of youthful romanticism, he had painted her as Isolde, the queen whose love he was destined to share. Time and awareness removed the clouds from his eyes. What a blind fool he had been. But then, when first he came to Avalon, he’d had little experience with women.
Though he had bedded quite a few and had worshipped one or two from afar, never had he experienced anything he could call a genuine relationship.
Now, Queen Morgan would never allow him a wife. Even if she did, what lass worth having would want to bind herself to an enslaved shade confined to a small patch of land?
As the protocol demanded, he got down on his knees, joined his hands, and bowed his head. “Your Majesty.”
“My knight,” she returned with frost on the words. “How good of you to respond so promptly to my summons. But then, you have always served me with the utmost devotion and obedience, have you not?”
He kept his focus on the floor. “I flatter myself that I have, my queen.”
“Do you know the reason I have requested your presence this day?”
Surprised by the question, he lifted his gaze to find hers searing into his face. “I assumed it was for the usual reason, Your Majesty.”
“Well, you assumed incorrectly, my knight.” The fire in her eyes threatened to set him ablaze. “For I have called you here to account for your betrayal.”
“My betrayal? I know not what you mean.”
“Then let me be more explicit,” she said. “I granted Sir Leith an audience at your behest. And now he has made off with my magic chalice—and deprived me of my tithe. Do I not have good reason to hold you culpable?”
Fear’s icy fingers curled around Axel’s cods. She did barbarous things to punish the knights who betrayed her. Crucifixion, castration, curses, and impalement, among other unspeakable cruelties. Bitterness flooded his heart and fisted his hands. How could he ever have loved such a cold-blooded creature?
“I swear to you on everything I hold sacred that I had no inkling of what he meant to do. Until this moment, I believed him to be chained in your dungeon waiting to be tithed.”
She rose from the chaise, walked over to him, and stroked his head like a dog’s. “I want to believe you.” Sliding her hand down the side of his face, she entangled her fingers in his beard before jerking his gaze to hers. “But I still must have the Cup of Truth back. And my revenge. A task I shall entrust to you, my allegedly faithful knight. And if you fail me, know that it will be you I offer to Lord Morfryn come Samhain. Do you understand all that I tell you?”
“Yes, my queen. You desire that I should retrieve your stolen grail and also bring back Sir Leith to serve as the tithe—or be sacrificed myself in his stead.”
“Exactly. And, to punish his betrayal, you shall slay his new wife, who my spies tell me carries his child.” Her eyes turned to green ice. “Do it in some gruesome way—and see that he watches her die.”
Her directive split Axel’s heart like a hunk of brittle wood. On the one hand, killing an innocent woman violated the canons he lived by. On the other, he was a knight. And a faithful knight did not question the orders of his queen, however repellant he might find the assignment.
Swallowing his indignation, he looked at the floor. “As you wish, my queen.”
By nature, he had always been a man of few words. In the presence of the queen, who could turn from purring kitten to hissing wildcat over the slightest slip of the tongue, he said even less than usual.
She planted her feet on either side of his knees. Her robe was open, revealing long, slender legs and a thick, black triangle of hair. The sweet tang of her sex tortured his nostrils. Even as hatred smoldered in his heart, longing enflamed his loins.
“You will undertake your mission at the new moon.” Sliding down his body to her knees, she danced her long fingers over his chest and throat. “That will give me time enough to gather more intelligence about my betrayer’s whereabouts. When the time comes, I shall summon you for a full briefing. Until then, you will continue to perform your duties as usual—starting with pleasuring your sovereign.”
As she brushed her soft lips against his, the torque he wore around his neck grew warm against his skin. Refusing her was impossible, even if he wished to. And he did not wish to. For pounding her hard and fast would help exorcize the unspiritual sentiments she called from his core.
“My knight,” she whispered. “Do not fail me. For you have always been my favorite.”
The queen reached under his tunic and into his trews. Pleasure pulsed through him as her magical fingers enveloped his engorged phallus. He had not been with a woman in weeks, and his need for sexual release was acute. As was his distrust of her uncharacteristic behavior. Why was she playing with him while Lady Lilac stood by? Intuitively, he knew the answer. Morgan wanted to rule more than his cock. She wanted to own every part of him—heart, mind, body, and soul.
She kissed him, her mouth an opiate. All thought, all resistance, drained from his mind. He knew only that sweet taste on his tongue and the scent of overripe apples in his nostrils. She pulled away, leaving him dizzy, and looked at him with eyes like crystallized honey.
Then, she shifted her gaze to her handmaiden. “Leave us.”
Glancing backward, he caught the merest glimpse of Lady Lilac leaving the room. When the door closed behind her, he turned back to Morgan. Her eyes no longer had irises or whites. They were green-black and segmented, like an insect’s.
“Tell me you love me,” she commanded.
She was the bee, he the pollen. It seemed only right and natural that he should give himself to her, to be carried off to the hive and transformed into honey. Warm, golden syrup that could neither think nor feel but simply be what it was.
He tried to say the words she wanted to hear, but, even under her spell, his voice refused to betray him. Every terrible thing he knew about her raced through his mind. The men she’d enslaved…the newborn sons she killed…the daughters she sold into sexual bondage…the disobedient knights she tortured and mutilated.
Before he could move away, her eyes turned green again. Green, warm, and beseeching.
“Make love to me, my knight.”
Her soft command was as irresistible as Valkyrie mead. He made no effort to resist when she helped him to his feet a
nd led him by the hand to the bed. The massive oak headboard, carved like a honeycomb, reached all the way to the overhanging canopy. Her grip on his wrist was strong and persistent. As he came down beside her on the bed, her lips grazed his torque, making it burn like fire. He pulled off his tunic, exposing his skin to the temperate air. She teased his nipples between her fingers; he would have groaned, but he could make no sound. Something sticky had sealed his lips together.
He tugged off his boots and peeled off his trews. Morgan reclined upon the bed, her hair a smear of ink across the pillows. She was naked except for the pendant she wore on a chain—a solid-gold bee with inlaid diamond wings. In the flickering candlelight, the bee’s wings appeared to move.
“Take me now,” she said.
When he bent to kiss her, his cock grazed the soft nest between her legs. Her thighs parted; damp and warmth greeted his touch as his hand moved down the curve of her pregnant belly to the inside of one leg. Grasping his beard, she turned his face to hers. Opening her legs wider, she raised her head to kiss him, her teeth grazing his lips. She pushed him down until his head was between her thighs. Raising her vulva to his lips, she offered herself to him like a chalice. Her flesh tasted of flowers. When she climaxed, thick, sticky fluid seeped from her like the sap of a sugar maple.
She cried out—a name, but not his, or any other he knew. Moving into position, he kissed her swollen belly, her full breasts, and her lush mouth. He gave her his tongue as he pushed his cock inside her. She was warm, wet, and verdant. Each thrust heightened his pleasure until, unable to hold back any longer, he spilled his seed inside her.
As he fell back on the pillow, spent and sated, she curled against him. For the longest time, he laid there, feeling as if he was drowning in a jar bated with sugar water.
Chapter 3
When Jenna awoke, it took her a few moments to recall where she was. Then, everything flooded back. Her broken engagement, her broken-down car, and the man she’d seen in the glen. She was on the sofa of the cottage she’d booked for her honeymoon, still fully dressed.