My hand strayed to Arthur’s side, where the wound had been. “Ye fare well? No lingering effects from yer injury?”
“I am as healthy as I’ve ever been.”
“Good.” My voice tightened. “We couldn’t do this without ye. I couldn’t—”
Arthur cut off my words with a kiss then, wrapping one arm around my waist, the other around my shoulders. His lips danced across mine—his body an anchor, grounding me to the earth. He was warmth and comfort, and I drank greedily, savoring the taste of him, the feel of being folded within his arms.
It was he who pulled away, but to lay feather-light kisses on the tip of my nose and forehead before pressing me close to him once more.
I leaned my head against the hard planes of his chest with a sigh.
“You go to see Merlin?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling pleasantly against me.
“Aye. I thought . . . I need to talk to him about my past. Perhaps we can discover something.”
“He thinks I need to return to the Otherworld.”
I pulled back, gaping at him in the dark. “Now? With an army sailing for Caerleon?”
“Yes, that’s what he advised. I don’t know. I must think on it. Now, you should not tarry any longer. Perhaps Merlin can discover all your secrets this night.” He touched his lips softly to mine.
“Can’t wait,” I said dryly as I pushed away, letting his fingers trail mine as I continued down the hill toward the Usk River and Merlin’s cave.
My gaze remained on the windy footpath, but I could feel the caress of Arthur’s eyes upon my back. I sighed, reveling in the sensations fluttering through me, even as I approached the cave’s entrance. One kiss from Arthur was enough to turn my legs weak with need. From any of my knights, really. But for now, I needed to focus.
“Merlin?” I picked my way carefully over the rocky ground and moved deeper into his cave. “It’s Fionna.”
The druid appeared suddenly in front of me and I halted my steps with a sharp inhale.
“There ye are,” I said, shoving down my annoyance. I swear, sometimes he popped out like that just to seem more mysterious!
“To what do I owe this rare honor?” Merlin asked, ushering me into the main cavern with a welcoming hand.
“I need to tell ye something,” I admitted.
“Very well,” Merlin said, crossing to sit in one of the chairs in front of the fire. I took the other.
“The night of the faerie wine,” I began, words tumbling forth before my nerves got the better of me, “I drank the wine. But it didn’t affect me. Not like it did the others.”
Merlin studied me, blinking, his eyes glowing with magic. “Interesting,” he finally said.
“I thought perhaps this necklace affected how I felt the wine,” I said, picking up the delicate lily pendant that hung from my neck. “A gift from Morgana and her sisters, from the night of the feast.”
Merlin leaned forward and picked the pendant up off my breastbone, leaning in to examine the details. This close, he smelled of spices—clove and dried sage and . . . ale? An unexpected scent that was strangely comforting.
He dropped the necklace and leaned back. “There is an enchantment of sorts on the necklace. But I do not think the magic is harmful. It’s . . .” he furrowed his brow. “As if the magic is outward facing, rather than affecting the wearer. I will research the origins of such a necklace. But I do not think this piece of enchanted jewelry is what protected you from the faerie wine’s effects.”
“All right, sure,” I said. “Do ye know what did, then?”
Merlin tilted his head and considered me a moment. “I think you have fae heritage somewhere in your family tree,” he said. “But the power is blocked somehow. Suppressed.”
“So, I’m . . . defective?” I whispered, examining my fingernails instead of acknowledging the piteous look in Merlin’s hawk-eyed gaze. I had always been different than my father and Aideen, but I had found my place within my family, the clann. Made my way as a warrior. It was all I had needed. But now, that reality seemed lacking.
“No,” Merlin said kindly. “Your magic was suppressed on purpose.”
I looked up sharply. “What do ye mean?”
“I sense there is an enchantment over you. Of a kind I cannot see or recognize. And that makes me think the magic is fae born.”
“There is a faerie enchantment on me?” I jumped to my feet, my heart in my throat. “Well, get it off!”
“It’s not that simple. The one who put the géis on you is also the one who will need to remove it. And do not be so alarmed. If the enchantment protected you from the wine, then perhaps this magic is benevolent.” He paused a beat, the gold ring around his eyes flashing. “A ward against the evil eye.”
“Benevolent, evil eye, or no, I want this géis removed. This magic has something to do with why I couldn’t use the Grail, doesn’t it?”
“We must assume so,” Merlin said.
“So how in the hell do I find out who put a faerie charm on me?”
“I think this enchantment has been with you for many years. Perhaps since you were a babe. Your best chance of unraveling this mystery is to speak to the only other human who might have been there.”
My mind spun, and I fell back into the chair, lightheaded. “Ye mean my father.”
“I believe you are not the only Allán with secrets.”
“But my father is in enemy hands,” I protested. It was ironic. I spent years living under the same roof as my father, and never thought to ask him why I looked so different from Aideen. In truth, I had never wanted to know the answer. And now, when I was desperate for the truth, he was out of my reach.
“I suppose it is luck that the enemy is bringing him to us, then,” Merlin countered, bending to pick an Ur rune up off the rug before the hearth—a rune mark for heather.
“Yes,” I said slowly, a kernel of an idea blooming to life inside me. “Yes, luck indeed.”
LANCELOT LED CHEVAL onto the ferry, his stomach bobbing with the longboat. He was a man of one-and-twenty the last time he had set foot on the Isle of Man. Following that visit, he had sworn never to return. Now here he was, four years later, coming back with his tail tucked between his legs. A man of twenty-five years, crying to his foster mother for help.
The ferryman, a gruff little man—with a face covered in sharp, gray stubble, and a short reed sticking out from between yellowed teeth—secured the rope behind him. The ferry was an old, less-than-sturdy-looking clinker with red ochre paint, now chipped and faded from years of exposure. Luckily, the passage was short, and the craft was faerie enchanted to keep the boat from swamping—the only way Lancelot would even think to climb aboard this rotting pile of heap.
The night was dark and strangely cloying. A sickening sweet scent he normally associated with magic. Low clouds crowded out the sliver of moon while grasping fog swirled around the boat. It was always misty on the approach to Man. He wondered if the weather phenomena was just some strange quirk of geography, or if it was a spell cast by his foster mother to disquiet anyone who approached. Probably the latter. There was no such thing as coincidence when it came to the fae.
Lancelot stood by Cheval’s head, idly stroking his velvety neck, savoring the connection to something real. The mist seemed alive. And Lancelot swore he could see shapes materialize and dissipate. Figures. He left his horse and strode the short distance to the edge of the ferry and then peered out into the darkness.
“Careful,” the man said. “Folks always see strangeness in the fog. Don’t think the Lady likes visitors.”
“I’ll consider myself warned,” Lancelot murmured.
He pulled his black, woolen cloak tight against the wind, when a flicker of an image coalesced before him. He drew in a sharp breath as he beheld a vision of himself as a lad of eighteen, writhing atop a maiden behind a hay wagon during a Beltane feast. Shame heated his neck and face as he remembered ducking around the keep for weeks to avoid that same girl until she fi
nally understood his disinterest. What was her name?
The shape changed again, flashing images of him whispering into a lady’s ear in the Great Hall; his face pressed into a woman’s bosom in a dark hallway. That knight from Morganwgg whom he had shared a wild night with. Lancelot’s mouth went dry as he saw the man beneath him, Lancelot’s hand fisted in the knight’s blond locks. The images flashed faster now, and he wanted to turn away, to close his eyes against the assault. All he had ever done—those he had hurt—laid bare before him. The mist was accounting for his every misguided attempt to find connection. To numb the emptiness within him.
The fog flashed Fionna’s ethereal face now, sorrowful and tender. Even she could not fill this void, the gaping hole created by the two mothers who had abandoned him. He was a burden from his very first breath, even as he breathed now. On his ride north from Glastonbury Tor, Lancelot had thought long and hard. Picking apart his psyche piece by twisted piece, turning toward the darkness he normally shied away from. A shadow self he normally tried to hide. But he would do anything to be worthy of Fionna.
Even face his own demons.
And he thought he finally understood. This mist, it too understood. The enchanted fog showed him exactly who he had been. Perhaps the price to return to Vivien’s kingdom was nothing less than brutal honesty as to the man he became, the people he hurt. He had been living a half-life—seeking comfort by filling his days with training and sex and even his friendship with Arthur. Being Arthur’s second-in-command had made him feel worthy—finally—but not deep down, where it mattered most. The twisted part of him knew, from the beginning, how he didn’t deserve such an esteemed responsibility over others. And so, he had sabotaged the honor, tarnishing his reputation and reliability time and again. But no more. He would find his way out of this dark place, no matter the cost. No matter how long it took. This was his new mission.
The ferry bumped against the dock and Lancelot blinked in surprise. They had already made the crossing?
He tossed the ferryman a coin and then led Cheval onto the creaking, log-hewn dock. The cool smell of the Isle of Man greeted him—the brine of the sea mingled with the sweet scent of gorse and blaeberry. He swung onto his horse, riding the familiar path through rocky outcroppings and tough, wild grasses to Vivien’s stone keep.
Two guards in Vivien’s blue and silver livery snapped to attention at the open gate, their delicate pointed ears and pale skin marking them fae. “Sir Lancelot here to see the Lady of the Lake,” Lancelot announced.
They nodded him through and Lancelot urged Cheval forward, his horse’s hooves resounding on the cobbled stones beneath his feet. At the keep’s entrance, Lancelot swung down and then strode inside, shivering from the dank, cold journey, all-the-while surveying the castle where he had grown up. He suppressed his nervousness as he walked toward the gathering hall where he suspected Vivien entertained.
Her main residence looked no different from his memories—fantastical trees and beasts adorning the stone walls in ornate carvings and tapestries, faerie nobles in strange finery who were wrapped around each other in dark alcoves, their cups of sweet wine forgotten. Human servants moving about, as if invisible—cringing when a faerie passed by. His mother didn’t mistreat her servants, but a faerie court still wasn’t the safest place to serve as a mortal. The fae turned from whimsical and lighthearted to cruel and manipulative in the blink of an eye. It was part of what made growing up here such a holy terror.
Music and light emanated from the end of the hallway—the sounds of laughter and chattering hanging on the air. Lancelot took a deep breath and then walked into the room, squinting at the brightness.
“Lancelot!” Vivien cried out when she sighted him, launching from her throne before flowing down the stairs toward him like a rushing river. Her dark brunette hair was arranged beneath a jeweled headdress he hadn’t seen until now, and her cerulean gown was also new. But everything else about her was just as he remembered. She was as smooth and cool as ice, lovely as a spring’s thaw—as unpredictable and deadly as one too.
“My son!” she reached him and placed one chilled hand upon his cheek, a rare smile gracing her lips. He almost flinched at her bright display of happiness. “To what do I owe this rare pleasure? I thought perhaps you were so secure in Caerleon, you would never again grace your poor foster mother with your presence.”
Lancelot’s eyes narrowed. She rarely used the word “mother” around him, let alone in front of an entire gathering. He peered over her shoulder and glimpsed a handsome man of obvious stature sitting near her throne, looking on. Men often crawled out of their gilded hovels for political favors from the legendary Lady of the Lake. Though, by her buoyant behavior, Lancelot guessed Vivien sought this man’s patronage. To increase her status and wealth among the human nobility and, thus, more influence and power within the faerie courts. Always scheming and maneuvering, his foster mother.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited in several years,” Lancelot replied with all the pleasantness he could muster. It was good to see her, in a strange way. She was familiar, if not exactly comforting.
“You are forgiven,” she said sweetly—too sweetly. “You must be hungry from your journey! Thirsty?” She gestured at a servant, who materialized at their side, a cup of wine on a tray before him.
Lancelot eyed the goblet. He was parched, but not parched enough for faerie wine, even from Vivien’s cellar. He waved away the cup and returned his focus back to his foster mother.
“I have a few questions for you.”
He looked around at the glittering nobles of Vivien’s court. Though they continued to chat and dance as if nothing had changed, he could feel their eyes on him. As a human foster son to a faerie, he had been an aberration when a boy—especially when titled “faerie prince.” But now, as the second-in-command to the High King of Briton . . . he garnered even more interest. Like the man who awaited Vivien’s company to negotiate political alliances with the Túatha dé Danann.
“Could we speak privately?”
“Of course,” Vivien said, threading her arm into his. “Come.”
They walked back up the steps of her raised dais and then through a door leading to Vivien’s private meeting room.
She settled herself behind a desk, one situated by an open window.
Lancelot shivered. “Mind if we sit by the fire?”
She let out a little annoyed laugh. “I forget how sensitive to hot and cold you mortals are,” she practically grumbled. Still, she stood and crossed to a chair beside the fire.
Lancelot stoked the low-burning flames, throwing on another log. “Just one of the many inconveniences of humanity.”
“Ask me your questions, dearest Lancelot. I’m dying to know why my princeling is here.”
“For court gossip, mother?”
“I will not spill a word of what you share without your permission, I swear it.”
Lancelot took a deep breath and plunged forward. “Do you know what has transpired between Morgana and Arthur? And . . . me?”
“I know I received a wedding invitation, and then another card soon after, expressing regrets for the cancellation.”
Lancelot grimaced. “Yes. Morgana didn’t . . . take the cancellation well. She and her sisters cursed Caerleon. And me.”
Vivien clucked her tongue. “Such children they are, those three, playing with curses and retribution. If you wronged her somehow, she should have just killed you.”
“Thanks,” he muttered dryly.
“Well, she obviously didn’t.” Vivien waved her hand. “You’re here for assistance to break the curse, I imagine?”
Lancelot nodded.
“Tell me of the magic’s nature.”
“The spell was more like a prophecy. Morgana declared that I would fall in love with a Gwenevere—”
“A Gwenevere?” Vivien’s head whipped up, her dark blue eyes widening.
“Yes. But if I lay with her, our joining would ruin all I love.”<
br />
Vivien laughed, full of innocent humor and black wickedness. “And do you deserve this . . . prophecy?”
He scowled. “Will you help or not?”
One delicate brow raised. “If you are here to break this curse, then it must also mean that you have found this ‘Gwenevere.’” She cocked her head in an inhuman, predatory way. “You honestly believe you have, don’t you dearest Lancelot?”
He clenched his jaw but remained silent.
“If this is so, then I’m afraid you have an even bigger problem.”
“What do you mean?” His heart sank into the churning, bubbling cauldron of his sickened stomach. They were already battling several fairly large problems.
“A Gwenevere, a white enchantress, only arises when the High King of Briton faces powerful, Otherworldly challengers to his throne, and thus needs more than a relic, like Excalibur, to claim and maintain his sovereignty. He needs a blessing from Danu herself, Mother Goddess and queen of the Túatha dé Danann. A Gwenevere is a direct conduit of power from Danu to physically marry a king to his land.”
“And the Gwenevere is this . . . blessing?”
Vivien leaned forward and placed her hands on either side of Lancelot’s face, gently cradling his face. And ignoring his question. Typical faerie. She closed her eyes, murmuring quietly in a language he didn’t understand.
Lancelot held his breath.
She opened her eyes, leaning back. “Whatever curse was upon you has lifted. You are clean of enchantments.”
“Truly?” Lancelot’s pulse leaped within his chest. Drinking from the Blessed Grail must have cleansed him of Morgana’s curse!
His foster mother dipped her head in a dignified nod. But he didn’t care about decorum. Instead, he whooped and then pulled her into an embrace, spinning her around, shouting, “Thank you!”
Vivien laughed, her head thrown back. Lancelot stared at the points of her canines as he set her gently down on her feet. As her giggles tapered, she ironed out invisible wrinkles over her gown with fluttering hands. Then she squared her shoulders and leveled a cool gaze—girlish whimsy out and scheming, maneuvering Vivien back in control. “Shall I take this to mean that you are in love with this woman? The one you suspect is the Gwenevere?”
Gwenevere's Knights- The Complete Knights of Caerleon Trilogy Page 42