“Oh, my love...my love...!” She was crying out for him, abandoning herself utterly to rapture and release, entrusting herself utterly to his keeping.
Beneath his codpiece, his aching balls tightened and clenched. The shuddering force of his own release roared through him. Beltran flung back his head and groaned her name as his seed spurted. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to God the moment would never end.
* * *
The moment had the feel of farewell. After the dizzying rush of orgasm left them both spent and trembling, Rhiannon had gathered her wits and restored her clothing without a word. It had taken him another long moment to realize the echo of chanting had faded into silence. The world waited for them to complete their journey.
While he stepped aside to attend his own necessary business, she waited for him as calmly as though she’d never writhed beneath his touch, never shattered in his arms or cried his name in passion.
My dearest love, she’d called him. And his world had turned sideways.
Could she possibly have meant it? Surely she was a woman, of all women living, who knew what love meant, both the joy and the pain of it.
Now Rhiannon glanced toward him as though she would speak, a tangle of emotions he couldn’t decipher flickering across her winsome features. He waited, breath hitching in his lungs.
Would she admit she loved him? He mustn’t hope for it, not when he wasn’t free to return the sentiment, not while he was promised to God. And yet...
Instead she sighed and waded through the knee-length grasses toward the vault. Silently he stalked after her, calling upon all his hard-won discipline to put their extraordinary encounter behind them and focus on the business at hand.
But he was acutely conscious of the empty sheath strapped across his back.
At first she seemed hesitant, steps tentative as she entered the standing stones. Now her stride quickened as though she squared herself for what lay ahead. Resolutely she mounted the cracked marble steps and crossed the portico.
Beyond, the temple was open to the elements, rows of pillars holding aloft the carved roof. In the center reared the massive bulk of a sarcophagus, its four corners guarded by tall black candles that flickered with flames no mortal hand had lit. The lid lay propped against its side, exposing whatever lay within to the open air.
“Beltran.” Her warm hand stole into his, and he squeezed to comfort her. “I have not visited this place for many lifetimes of men. But one truth I know has not changed. Whatever thou may see here, whatever may befall, I beseech thee not to invoke thy God, nor make any Christian sign or symbol. It would be sacrilege in this place, which is sacred to the Goddess.”
So she’d strip his greatest weapon—the power of prayer—from him. He didn’t like the edict, but she knew what to fear in this place. Hell, he hardly knew what he expected to find. Not Excalibur, surely?
Curtly he nodded. “I swear it.”
Her throat rippled as she swallowed. Gently she tugged him forward. He sensed her apprehension. Somehow, this serene sanctuary posed a painful ordeal for her. She was trembling, but his touch seemed to lend her strength.
She squared her slim shoulders and marched ahead, until they could see into the tomb.
In the vault, a knight lay sleeping.
Scaled armor of steel and silver encased his chest and shoulders, glittering as if alive. A double circlet of gold and silver banded his high brow, long fair locks streaming beneath. A gray-threaded beard shadowed his gaunt face. Folded over his chest, his gauntleted hands gripped the hilt of his greatsword, sheathed in a scabbard of crimson velvet stitched with gold and silver runes.
A sword made for a king, no doubt of it.
Nobility rested on his brow like a second crown. Unearthly peace shone like a white light from his still face. But the mailed chest rose and sank slowly, so slowly, with the rhythm of slumber.
Rhiannon clutched Beltran’s hand as though she were drowning, her entire body trembling as she stared down on the vault.
“Behold the Dreaming King,” she whispered. “He who sleeps until the trumpet winds and the land has need of him once again.” Her fingers tightened. “Behold my father.”
A gulf yawned beneath his feet. Beltran gripped the tomb to anchor himself. Hoarsely he spoke a single word.
“Arthur.”
Sadly she smiled. “Yes, I am his, though I’ve never seen him move nor speak. I was but an infant when my brother Mordred waged war against him. Their armies fought on the shore of the Summer Sea, and each of them struck a mortal blow.
“Mordred went...to another place, and Morrigan was banished from the mortal realm for aiding him. Queene Maeve kept her throne but worked a great magick, summoning the Veil to protect the realm of Faerie. As for Arthur, she wove a spell to protect him from death until England’s need should summon once more.”
“She loved your father then?” The word love caught strangely in his throat.
“Aye, she loved him. But as the Faerie Queene, she may never wed, except for the sacred marriage with the Horned God she makes each year to bless the land. For a time, she made it with Arthur. When he fell, his sacrifice ended the last Convergence, a thousand years past.”
She paused, her voice thickening. “Often I’ve wondered whether this new Convergence means my father will waken. Will he open his eyes and look upon my face? Will he recognize me as his—the child of his love for the Faerie Queene?”
Beltran wrenched his eyes from Arthur, the Dreaming King, whose high bones were indeed a faded mirror of Rhiannon’s. A sparkling tear spilled over her pale cheek. A great shuddering tenderness for her squeezed his chest.
Cursing, he pulled her into his arms. Briefly she resisted, but lacked the will to fight him. Sighing, she turned her face into his shoulder.
He stroked her trembling back, pressed his chin to her crown to anchor her. His embrace sought to shelter her from everything that could ever hurt her.
“You long for him,” he said gruffly. “You must feel half an orphan.”
“Oh, I’m an orphan.” Her bitter voice was muffled in his doublet. “An orphan twice over, with both parents still breathing. My mother wanted a son who could wear the double crown and rule both realms, like Arthur. Or failing that, another great sorceress like Morrigan, who could queen it over the Fair Folk at least. I disappointed her on both counts. And my father never knew me as more than a mewling babe.”
“You called yourself an outcast, a misfit,” he recalled.
You were a misfit like I was at San Miguel. And like me, you rose beyond your origins by your own strength. Admiration for her courage swelled as he cradled her shaking frame in his arms. She was no less brave or determined than the legendary king who’d sired her.
How easily she could have grown bitter and cold and joyless, as he did. Yet she’d found room in her heart for compassion, for the tender care that healed others. She’d opened herself to the love that drew living things to her, as a flower turns to the life-giving sun.
Too soon she stirred in his arms, and abruptly he recalled their danger. Warily he scanned the empty porticoes and the rippling green summit. Alone, but for how long?
“The sword,” he said curtly. “Do I simply take it?”
The notion seemed like blasphemy—snatching that shining sword from the peaceful hands that gripped it, with the pettiness of robbing the dea
d thrown in. Nor did the task seem likely to prove simple, else the witch Morrigan would already have seized the precious blade.
Rhiannon shook her head. “There are powerful spells woven into the hollows. ’Tis death to touch them unprepared.”
“How then? Time is pressing.”
She hesitated. “It’s never been done before, Beltran. I’ve only instinct and half-remembered lore to go by. It’s said that when England’s need is greatest, Excalibur will return. If thou wish to wield it, even only to pass through the Veil, thou must petition its master.”
“Petition Arthur?” he asked, incredulous.
“Explain thy need, and ask him.”
Meeting his skeptical gaze, she shrugged, eyes flashing with mingled irritation and apology. “What harm will it do to address him? The worst that can happen is what’s happened all my life when I brought him my own fears and upsets—and that is nothing.”
His first impulse was to mock the mad, absurd, impossible notion. But he quashed it. Whether the sleeping king was Arthur of Camelot, whether this blade was the legendary Excalibur or a costly fraud he couldn’t say. But Rhiannon believed they needed the sword, and she’d proven a reliable ally.
He trusted her.
And she loved him.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he scrubbed a hand over his face. Good Christ, he must be wearing three days of stubble. They’d set forth from her cottage mere hours ago—no more than a day ago, surely? He cleared his thoughts and looked down at the sleeping king.
Was it his imagination, or did Arthur’s hands grip the hilt more loosely? He could almost have slid the sword free, except that Rhiannon said it meant death to touch it.
“Don’t question thyself,” she urged, standing close at his side. “My father was a godly man, crowned king in a Christian church. Excalibur is the sword of fire. If any creature can break the spell, surely the Flame of God has that power.”
Flame of God...
The phrase echoed oddly in his head, like the tolling of a great bell. Where had he heard those words?
His voice sounded strange in his ears. “Why do you call me this?”
She glanced at him askance, as if belatedly realizing what she’d said. A strange urgency seized him like a terrier shaking a rat.
“Rhiannon, I asked you a question. Tell me why you called me this.”
Her worried eyes surveyed him, then she gestured helplessly. “When thou were fevered and raving, thou said many strange things. I thought nothing of them until Zamiel appeared.”
“Zamiel?” Again the word tolled in his ear. That odd sense of familiarity...at least in this case, he recalled how he knew it. “In Bible lore, he’s a dark angel. He’s the Angel of Death. You’re saying you had a holy vision?”
Her stubborn chin tilted. “Not a vision. Zamiel appeared in the cottage while you were raving.”
“I must have been close to death indeed.” He tried to joke, but it fell flat. That strange urgency was mounting, his skin tightening with a rictus of anticipation and dread. “Did you wrestle with him as Jacob did?”
The mockery was a mistake. He saw her eyes turn mutinous. “He told me how to save thy life. He told me thy ravings were no mere fever-dream. Thou will scarcely heed it coming from my lips, but Goddess knows that is nothing new.”
She hurled the words at him like stones, color rising in her cheeks. “He said thou art an archangel, exiled from Heaven, cursed by thy Deity to a mortal life to learn mercy. Now thou may accuse me again of lying and heresy and witchcraft and all the rest.”
He barely heard her now, for the words she’d spoken drowned out all the rest. They vibrated through his skull like ripples in a barrel.
Thou art an archangel...cursed by thy Deity to a mortal life...
A hot tide of rage bubbled through his blood, turning his vision red. His killing fury was mounting, the outrage of insult spiked with the sharp sting of betrayal. Dimly he knew the woman before him must not be the target of that deadly rage.
His words scraped out as though gouged from his very bones, voice distorted by the growling prelude to his madness.
“Which angel am I supposed to be?” When she hesitated, he roared the words. “Tell me my name!”
She squared her shoulders and answered through gritted teeth. “Thy name is Uriel.”
Uriel.
The name blasted through him like a warhorn, like a thousand lifted trumpets that shredded his eardrums and deafened him.
Thy name is Uriel.
“Prince of Lights, Regent of the Sun, Destroyer of Hosts, Flame of God...I consign you, Vengeance, to a mortal life...”
Remnants of a dream flickered through his brain—the sickening sensation of falling, tumbling through a howling abyss, shredded wings fluttering useless in his wake. He was more than mortal, his malady more than human. And the God he’d devoted eternity to serving had betrayed him, betrayed him, betrayed him...
Uriel threw back his head and roared.
* * *
Rhiannon stumbled back from the tomb as the deafening blast of Beltran’s fury echoed through the vault. The pillars trembled and the earth pitched beneath her, sending her stumbling to her knees.
She scrambled back from the vision before her—the black-garbed figure with arms flung wide, back arched, face contorted in a paroxysm of rage. Where Beltran had stood, a fiery Being burst into existence, blinding bright. Crying out, she covered her eyes.
The afterimage seared across her brain—the towering form of Uriel, Angel of Vengeance, mighty jet-and-garnet wings outspread, silver hair streaming in the astral gale that howled around him. His flaming sword thrust into heaven as though to pierce the heart of God himself.
Goddess save me, and save Beltran from himself.
Skull splitting, white lights flaring before her eyes, Rhiannon pried her lids open and peered through her fingers. The Being lowered his head and looked straight at her.
Her heart nearly stopped.
His eyes were pools of rage, twin maelstroms of swirling cobalt with lightning flashing in their depths. His gaze transfixed her and pierced her soul.
No doubt of it, he saw her—Rhiannon—crouching terrified on the flagstones.
For a breath, the heart-stopping fury that froze his chiseled face seemed to soften. The lightning dimmed in his rage-filled eyes.
Then his terrifying gaze lifted toward Heaven, his head tilting, as though he heard the whisper of a distant call. That stern and beautiful countenance hardened. He roared words in an unknown language—a challenge toward the Christian God whose meaning she could well surmise.
The archangel hurtled into motion, earth quaking with every stride as he vaulted toward the open air. As soon as he cleared the portico, he launched into space, wings spreading to catch the air in a powerful downbeat. He soared aloft, tendrils of fire streaming in his wake.
She blinked, and he was gone.
The man she loved was gone, obliterated as if he’d never existed.
She fought to fill her lungs, lump swelling in her throat, tears burning in her light-stabbed eyes. Somehow she gathered her trembling limbs and struggled to her feet.
Gradually her vision cleared. As she stood shattered and raw in Arthur of Camelot’s vault, tears scalding her stricken face, she lifted h
er head and gasped.
Here in the temple between the worlds, she was no longer alone.
* * *
He’d been in this place before, surely, stumbling alone through the wilderness, blinded by tears of rage. Every muscle in his body screamed with familiar agony, a remnant of the holy madness. But something more was driving him.
He couldn’t wander forever through this desolate bog, soaked through and shivering in the thickening mist, staggering blindly through the shadows as he’d done for hours, days, a lifetime...
And he couldn’t soar free of the mist because he’d lost his wings again. Clearly God didn’t intend for him to keep them.
He inhabited a mortal body, however unwillingly. Beltran Nemesto, Blade of God, now recalled his exile from paradise with stunning clarity.
His Father had punished him merely for doing his job too well. And when the moment of discovery passed, that first dizzying rush of exultation faded, he found himself still locked in this mortal shell—alone and wandering through this God-cursed marsh. Unless he’d soared over the Summer Sea, which he greatly doubted, he was lost somewhere in the slough that linked the isle of Avalon with the mainland.
In his madness, he’d left Rhiannon behind at the temple. He must have been mad indeed to do that. Through the swirling chaos of images, he was haunted by her stricken face, upturned and bathed in glowing white light, tears streaking her lovely features.
He’d abandoned her, abandoned Excalibur, abandoned his duty to return to the world of men. Abandoned them all willfully, burning with the need to confront and defy the God who’d condemned him.
But no man could look upon the face of God. Encumbered by this mortal flesh, his wings had shredded and driven him to ground. Now Beltran found himself wingless and earthbound once more, condemned to a mortal life until this body failed him. Then would God judge him and determine his fate.
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