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“He had a whole kingdom to care about. ’Twas easier to replace one knight than to mollify his sorceress of a half sister. She would have wreaked havoc did he not side with her. Besides, more than a few knights were happy to see me go. More wenches for them, you see. They championed her cause.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Morgana found me weeks later, homeless and wandering. She swore if I came back to her bed, she would return me to Arthur’s good graces.”
“You refused?”
“I laughed. She was the source of my misfortune. I trusted her not—with good reason. She was the last woman I ever wanted to touch again. When I told her as much, she opened that damn book and cursed me. In that instant, I became immortal and incapable of obtaining sexual satisfaction. Until now. Until you.”
My jaw drops. “No.”
“Aye. I have told you all I know, and all I have told you is true.”
It sounds crazy. Then again, this whole situation is. “That was the first orgasm you’ve had in…?
“A millennium and a half.”
And I was the woman to satisfy him? My knee-jerk reaction is ridiculous, but I’m stupidly giddy. Little unwanted me gave the big, bad warrior the ultimate pleasure? Maybe I’m not as ugly as Mom said.
“Why could you…um, have them tonight?”
“’Twould be more accurate to ask why I could have them with you, methinks. The answer is, I know not. I suspect it’s about our…connection.”
Yeah, that inexplicable something that makes me feel like I belong with him, to him. Despite the fact he’s saying fantastical stuff, I can’t deny feeling this bizarre closeness.
“I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Nor do I.”
I blow out a breath and keep going. “Okay, so…after you realized Morgana had cursed you, what happened?”
“Beyond a great deal of swearing and teeth gnashing? Eventually, I paid her serving wench handsomely to steal the book and bring it here for me. Morgana damned me by writing in it, so I believed I could uncurse myself thus. But no matter how I tried, nothing made me mortal.”
The story just gets weirder and weirder. “That’s…wow. But you seem pretty detached now. She cursed you!”
“Anger burned out long ago. Centuries of it is draining.” He grunts. “Anyway, decades passed. As Camelot was falling, Merlin tricked Morgana into exile. I thought that might release me, but nay.”
“Exile?”
“Another realm as I understand it. Merlin created a dimension—another time? Another space?—for her.”
“He could do that?”
Marrok smirks. “Merlin could do anything he set his mind to. Think you it was a small feat to transform Uther Pendragon into the recently deceased Duke of Cornwall so that he might lie with the widow Igraine and fill her belly with Arthur?”
“That really happened?”
“’Twas before my birth, but according to all I know, aye. Much of the rest of Arthurian legend is bollocks.”
“I have to sit down. This is too crazy.” I wilt onto the edge of Marrok’s bed, my mind spinning. “And I thought I had a weird upbringing. Wow… And you’ve been dealing with this for centuries?”
He nods.
“So…after Merlin exiled Morgana, she what, disappeared?”
“I wish. For too long, she amused herself by tormenting me with dreams of whatever she thought would crush me. First, she taunted me with the deaths of all those I cared for. She showed me Arthur’s slaying, my sister’s demise in childbirth.” He chokes out the last words, then swallows past rage. “I saw these events as they happened—and I could do naught but hear them scream and watch them suffer. Then she delighted in showing me the warrior who occupied my lands after Arthur’s fall, followed by the ale he drank, the battles he won, and the women he tupped—symbols of the power and freedom I would never have again.”
“So torture was Morgana’s idea of a good time?”
