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Helen ran to the bathroom, conniving to beat Ariadne and Andy to the shower before they got out of bed. She darted in before they’d even started scratching and shut the door behind her with a satisfied smile.
Helen turned on the tap and started pulling off her clothes, the memory of Lucas’s hand on her arm still burning bright. She showered quickly. While she toweled off, another chance encounter in another dark hallway, centuries ago, billowed up in Helen’s mind like the steam rising off the white tile.
Lancelot had been away from Camelot for many months.
The Barbarians—big, blond invaders from a land of ice—had kept the Knights of the Round Table busy. Guinevere’s father had fought the Barbarians his entire life, as her father’s father had fought before him. Now, with the marriage between Guinevere and Arthur finalized, the dragon and wolf worshippers from the world of snow were Arthur’s problem and, therefore, the problem of every knight sworn to him in Briton. If Guinevere’s island home was to survive, the Barbarian invasion must be stopped, or every Briton-born would be slaughtered before the year was done.
Arthur was not prepared for the Berserkers. His men were orderly soldiers, trained in the Roman fashion of warfare. They were not used to the drug-induced trances that the Barbarians employed to send their rabid hordes screaming down on men, woman, and children. The horrors they saw during these barbaric hit-and-run raids were taking a toll on all of Arthur’s men. The knights were outnumbered, and an all-out war was brewing.
Arthur was still on campaign in the north, trying to find a solution. Lancelot had returned to Camelot two days ago, but Guinevere had not seen him yet. He was avoiding being alone with her, and she suspected it was not just because Arthur was her husband, as they both knew far too well. There was something deeper there, hindering him. Something terrible had happened to him. Guinevere could see it in Lancelot’s eyes—they burned like two freshly blown-out candles. The color was still fierce, but all the heat was gone.
Guinevere knew she had to talk to Lancelot, set his feet right again, or he would spin away from both his duty and family. It was up to her to fix him, even if it broke her heart to be near him, to see the wounded look on his face as he imagined Arthur in her bed.
“Lancelot,” Guinevere called, touching his elbow in the dark hallway. She coaxed him gently to turn around and face her. “Please. Talk to me.”
“Gwen,” he breathed softly, pulling her closer to him. There was a lost look in his eyes, like a little boy. He tugged on her hand, and she followed without a word or thought of protest.
Lancelot led her away from the main walkway and down a turret alcove that overlooked the dark moors surrounding Camelot. Moonlight streamed into the cross-like shape of the arrow slit, giving enough light so she could see the heavy look of lust weighing down his eyelids. Guinevere’s lips parted with a dozen unsaid words as she stared into his eyes. Lancelot’s hips shifted closer to hers for one tense moment, and then he pulled himself away, releasing her entirely.
“You shouldn’t have come to me tonight.”
“But you brought me no word from my homeland in the Summer Country,” she replied, smiling up into his bright eyes as she closed the distance between them. “You told me you’d sit with my father and bring back a token of his remembrance of me.”
Lancelot’s face went pale, his eyes widening with pity, and Guinevere knew.
“It can’t be,” she said, her voice suddenly high and girlish.
Her father was dead. That cantankerous, crafty, and surprisingly hilarious giant of a man couldn’t be dead. He was too stubborn to die. But Guinevere saw the truth written all over Lancelot’s face. The leader of her clan, her father, was dead.
Sorrow swept over her. She lost control for a moment, and the room crackled with the white-blue light of her witch-fire.
“I married Arthur so my father and our clan would be safe from the Barbarians.” She sobbed disbelievingly. “All this,” she said, gesturing with disgust to the jewels and the rich gown she wore now instead of humble homespun, “was to protect my father and my clan.”
“I know,” Lancelot said, striding forward to take Guinevere’s hands. He jumped back involuntarily as her witch-fire coursed through him, but he schooled his pain and didn’t let her go. “Gwen,” he pleaded, gasping for breath. “It’s not Arthur’s fault. We fought and lost. I lost. Arthur wasn’t even there.”
The room went dark as Guinevere got control over herself, and the white-blue fire extinguished.
“But I married Arthur instead of you to save my clan,” she said. Her voice was shaky and reduced to a whisper. “I gave you up for my clan’s protection.”
“And your clan is gone now.” Lancelot’s eyes darkened. “But not because of Arthur. Because of me.”
Lancelot sat down on the floor of the turret in a heap and raked his hand through his hair. He told his story quickly and quietly, trying to keep his voice steady.
The Summer Country had flooded, as it always did in the ebb and flow of the yearly tides. The roads were impassable, and a battle unthinkable in the bog-like terrain. With the women and children safe in their flooded homeland, most of the m
en had all left to join Arthur’s campaign against the Barbarians up north, as they always did at this time of year.
Lancelot had stayed behind to learn how the women grew all kinds of crops in the water instead of in soil, and Arthur agreed that knowledge of that technique could be useful at Camelot.
Lancelot was in the water fields with the women when he saw the dragon-crested ships sail right into the flood plains.
“I stayed with the women in the fields instead of going to your father,” Lancelot rasped. “When I couldn’t fight anymore, I stole a ship and sent as many women and children as I could gather away from the slaughter. Your father was . . . He was killed.”
Guinevere knew he had been about to say tortured. It didn’t matter how Lancelot tried to soften the blow for her. The damage was done. She’d allowed herself to be offered up in marriage to a man she didn’t love because she’d believed that by doing so, she could save her clan. But it hadn’t worked. Her father was dead, and her people was scattered. She’d married a man she didn’t love for nothing.
“Thank you for saving what part of my clan you could,” she whispered. “I owe you my life for that. Again.”
Lancelot looked at her with such open need and desperation that she reached out, cupping his face in her hands. “It’s my fault,” he said, his face hot.
