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Lancelot was suddenly seized by a tidal wave of fury.
“You’re a daft, mad…horse’s arse!” he shouted, struggling to find the worst curse he could think of.
“You could have been killed in those flames! You and that babe both! You have no sense! Your life—”
“My life is worth no less or more than that babe’s,” Arthur said quietly, calmly, in contrast to Lancelot’s frantic speech.
“I might have saved a future king. Maybe that mighty one you seem so determined to follow. Or I might have saved a hard-working farmer who would till this land for generations to come. If I gave my life so that he might live, it would have been well worth the giving.”
It was then that Lancelot knew with absolute certainty:
He would follow this man anywhere.
To forever and beyond.
Chapter Five
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Three weeks ago. London Mayfair.
Dinner was a stilted, awkward affair.
But Annie was determined to connect everyone with love and sunshine even if she had to fart it out of her ass.
Granted, the long plane ride across the Atlantic hadn’t been conducive to lively conversation, nor the quick lunch in the airport food court after they landed. But she’d seen plenty of other families or traveling companions chitchat easily by twisting around in their seats, or leaning over the aisle, or standing for a while next to their loved ones and friends.
Not so her new family. Which was to say—Red’s family.
Everyone stuck to their pairs and only interacted with each other. Except for Lance and Arthur. They always stuck together but didn’t interact. For two people so completely in tune with each other as they were, they might as well have dwelled on different planes of consciousness.
But otherwise, they were physically in sync. When one began to doze, they both soon fell asleep. When one stretched awake, they both became alert. When one’s stomach rumbled, the other’s did too.
It was bizarre how connected they were. Like twins or something. But on a deeper, more visceral level. With…a helluva lot of tension and heat between them.
Annie wasn’t blind. She didn’t think anyone else was either: Those two needed to fuck it out.
To her knowledge, neither man was “gay” per se. From what she gathered, Arthur had only had female consorts, and Lance not at all. Or if he did, then no one knew. There was the whole fiction around him and Guinevere if you relied on stories that had been passed down and romanticized by the French poet Chretien de Troyes, but Annie knew better than to trust stories.
Besides, historians unanimously agreed that Lancelot was an entirely fictional creation, and most of them would say the same about Arthur, though there were a few who believed that Arthur was a real man.
Well, as she could see for her own eyes, the two men were very real. And the sexual flames they were giving off were enough to singe people’s eyebrows off. Gave her hives. Made her itch.
Thankfully, she had her Red. And made great use of his big, scarred body for a couple of lascivious hours before supper. She had no doubt Rui did the same with Big Blue.
If Annie had an inkling either Arthur or Lance would be open to a conversation about the birds and the bees, she’d have blasted it to them through a fog horn. But as she’d learned over the years, the mind was a tricky thing. It could convince amputees that they still had all their limbs. It could make people with perfect vision feel as though they’re blind.
Like these two. Blind as bats to their own dynamic, they were.
Annie would be patient and let them figure out their own situation. But in the meantime, she fully intended to play matchmaker for the rest of this long-lost family.
And it was about damned time. She’d been long-distance with Merlin for as many months as his sons had been freed from the Celestial Realm. She’d wanted to give them space to get to know each other again, and to let Red figure out his own place in the modern world.
Plus, she had things to take care of in NYC. She wanted to have a plan that gave both of them maximum freedom to stretch their wings (literal and metaphorical) while being in a loving, nurturing relationship.
Finally, Red was ready for her, after six long months. Since reuniting, she vowed that they would never part again, unless one or both of them needed the distance to make the heart grow fonder. She thought they had a rhythm now. They were happy.
