Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) (28 page)

“It burns!” I cried. Panic tore at my voice. Terror gripped me. One moment I was a man accepting the burden of my fate, accepting the division of my heart. The next I was fae, and Yseult and Tris, unafraid, captured me in their arms, murmuring words of concern drowned by the roar of blood pounding in my ears.

Then I heard them, smelled them, sensed them. Others. “Men!”

A stallion’s bugle punctuated my cry of alarm. A second then a third horse answered.

Tris shoved us further into the cave, out of the light at its mouth, and kicked at the fire.

“Take my sword,” I whispered urgently. It was useless to me now. I couldn’t bear its touch for long, the iron in its steel anathema to me again.

He grabbed its hilt and stripped it from its scabbard just as I stripped myself bare in the shadows.

“You will sing in my heart, always and forever,” I swore to them both.

I shifted then. Of my own choosing once more. Where before hound and man had been as two, this hound was no less me than the fae who a moment before had stood naked before them.

Tris gripped my sword and a different kind of madness lighted his eyes.

Yseult behind, Tris to one side and I to the other, with nowhere to run, we waited for the men without to enter.

Six men, seven, eight—Mark’s men—they swarmed in with swords at the ready, their number giving them confidence none would have alone.

I snarled and Tris leveled my sword at the men who threatened. We would die here, but not without a fight.

But we had not considered the even greater threat that appeared from behind. Looking every bit the queen she was, even in her ragged shift and unbrushed hair, Yseult fearlessly stepped forward, laying her hand over the blade’s bare edge.

“I told you I would not watch you die,” she said, and the calm of her voice chilled through me. Then it dropped to an urgent whisper. “My freedom is forfeit. Now both of you, fly!”

She stumbled, apparently half-fainting, into the path of the two nearest knights, blocking their swords as they moved instinctively to catch her. I launched myself at a third, ripping at his blade arm then turned for the throat of a fourth equally unprepared to deal with the likes of me.

A man of lesser strength and power could never have forced his way past the four who still had chance to stop him. Tris blustered at them, beating back their blades, the trap of the small cave working to his advantage.

I lunged toward the knot of men who momentarily held Tris at bay. A backward blow from the flat of a blade caught me and tumbled me away. That distraction was all Tris needed to batter through the last of them. Free he might still could help Yseult where dead he never could.

I heard him sprinting for Fallax. No knight’s horse was built for speed, but as man and horse thundered their escape over the rocky cliff, I knew only my own horse could ever hope to catch them, though three knights rode after him to try.

Three knights gone after Tris. The knight with the bloodied arm who was wrapping the neck of a fifth knight who would likely bleed his life out before noon. One knight holding Yseult. That left only two to deal with, and I was already grotto-side of one of them

I could have followed Tris. I could have fled Cornwall altogether. Left these men to their game and returned once more to my own kith and kin.

I saw my chance to run, fae and hound tempted by the freedom offered.

But my heart was shackled still to the woman who stood defiantly in the hard grip of a Cornish knight, the storm in her eyes raging, her chin lifted in pride.

Tris was yet free to find a way to rescue her, and this time I would not abandon her.

So I growled warning at those last two knights.

“Call off your dog,” one of them commanded Yseult.

“Quiet!” she ordered, her expression, directed toward me, stern and accusing. I obeyed. “Go!” she ordered next. Though I had no intention of leaving her altogether, I skulked from the cave, making certain she saw I did not leave the grotto but waited there as the knights mounted up and one placed her on his horse’s withers before the saddle and held her there with an intimate arm.

I growled again.

“Control him,” the knight in the saddle behind Yseult said, as a second knight drew bow and arrow.

There was nothing of the queen in her voice when Yseult begged me, “Please.”

I melted out of bow range, but not out of sight. I wanted Yseult to know that man or fae or hound, it didn’t matter. I loved her as all of them. And I would stay by her.

My only regret as we ran back to Tintagel and Tris galloped to parts unknown was that I had failed to give either Tris or Yseult the gift of my trust, the power of my soul.

One day soon, I swore, when this was done and we were together once more, I would gift them with the last secret I held from them: my true name.

Mark looked on me with weary eyes. “What do I do with you now, Yseult?”

“I am yet your wife and queen. Forgive, and I will rule by your side.”

“Forgive? And what exactly would you have me forgive? That you’ve made a cuckold of me and Cornwall both? Or that after God Himself exonerated you, you turned around and did it all again? I’m no seventh son of some serf working in the fields that you can trifle with. You escaped once—though I think now it must have been Satan The Deceiver that called his Hell Hounds upon us and not God who delivered you. You shall not be delivered so again.”

“You mistake, Your Grace, if you believe I trifle.”

“And yet I hear no denials.”

“The miracle of The Wild Hunt spoke for me.”

“And of the time since?”

“Will I stand accused each night I do not spend in your bed? How many miracles will satisfy you?”

“As many as you give me reason to require. Do you think I
want
to see you die? Do you think I
want
all of Cornwall and Ireland and England and Wales too to know my beloved nephew has usurped me in my own bed?” He grabbed a breast through my thin shift and brazenly squeezed it in front of his knights. The hound at my side growled low. “I have missed you, Yseult.”

“I would never have been gone if you had not forced us both away.” Guilt now was my only weapon. Yet it had no effect.

Mark sighed, his thumb circling the peak of the breast he held trying to bring it to life. When it didn’t respond, he shifted to the other one. “So many lies you wish me to believe are truth. But you would run back to him—to Tristan—the first chance you get.”

“I demand trial,” I said quietly yet clearly. “No champion. Would you demand an ordeal? Another miracle? Then you shall have it. But only if you swear my fidelity shall never be in doubt again if God sees fit to absolve me.” The hound whimpered and nudged my palm.

At the word
God
, Mark’s hand on my breast quickly found its way to my cheek instead. “My oath, if God judges you innocent, neither I nor my knights nor my barons nor any others of my court shall have quarrel with you again over the matter of you and Tristan. You will be a queen, without peer and without suspicion.”

“And what of Tristan?” I pressed. “Will he walk under your protection as well?”

“Tristan is as my son. Prove beyond doubt your innocence and I shall restore him both to my heart and as heir to my throne, second in line only to the child you and I might conceive through God’s blessing.”

“Then I will submit myself to His judgment.”

Mark’s face tightened. “Which ordeal will be yours? Iron? Water?”

Thought of either—carrying a holy relic of iron heated till it glowed red and trusting my bare hands not to burn or of being tied about to a stone, thrown into the sea, and trusting to float upon the waves—held little appeal for me. It wasn’t that my faith in God was lacking, but that in this, my faith in Des was greater.

I pointed to the hound with the eyes that glimmered like fresh-cut emeralds. They knew it for a faery Hound, but no more than that. “Two days from now, with God’s assent, I will give this beast the power to understand and to obey all human speech, Your Grace to command him. If the beast fails me, I burn, no Wild Hunt to save me this time. Will that suffice?”

Mark looked down at the hound by my side who had twisted around to bite at a flea on his back leg.

“What say you, dog?” Mark asked.

The hound proceeded to lick himself, falling to his unwounded hip to gain better access. His cod protruded red and rude, pointing directly at Mark. My lips twitched, barely able to suppress a smile as I firmly swallowed my laughter.

The hound rolled back to his feet and shook himself.

“Agreed,” Mark said to my proposal, loudly enough for all to hear. Then he leaned in close to whisper, “And tonight you will share my bed.”

I nodded.

The crude beast at my side lifted his leg.

Sir Dinas escorted Yseult to Mark’s chamber, leaving a handmaid with her and posting a guard at the door. To them all I was simply an ill-tempered mystery dog with the same run of the castle most of the lap dogs enjoyed. The guard cared not if I came and went from the chamber, so I stayed with Yseult to keep her company while she ate the supper the handmaid brought, feeding me choice bits from the trencher, while waiting for Mark to come.

It was nearly midnight when he showed up. Mid-evening, around the Office of Compline as the church bells rang, Yseult had let the handmaid remove her overgown and light the braziers, then had dismissed the girl for the night. I shifted, vigilant for the creak of the opening door and making sure the shutters over the high window remained open. Even if there was a guard posted now in the courtyard below, the hound would be able to escape.

“You do realize it’s death if they find you here like…
that
?” Yseult said, her voice low.

“Death to us both, I would imagine. Would you rather I left?”

“No! Only…”

I arched a brow at her.

“Your presence is”—she dropped her gaze—“disturbing.”

I followed her stare. Already I was quivering, lengthening, rising. “For us both,” I agreed.

“You don’t seem… different.”

As fae she meant. I shook my head. “Not in most ways that you would see.” Nodding to my half-risen staff that caught the fireflame in its sheen, I added, “Nor in any ways that you would feel.”

“I still entice you?”

“My Lady—Your Grace—you madden my senses no less now than before. Your song in my heart is no less full.” I fell at her feet. “I am fae again because of you. My gratitude only amplifies my love.” I wrapped an arm around the curve of her calves and laid my head on her knees in helpless supplication.

She dared one hand to rest on the back of my head. “I still can’t love you.”

“And yet you do. Just as I yet love Tris and Brinn.” Ours was an old argument, yet I understood it more clearly now than ever. “I would have loved you curse or no. The curse only gave me… liberty… to love you more. Just as you would have loved Tris as madly as you do, philtre or no. Isolde’s potion only gave you liberty to choose his love and to certain your heart.”

I found her other hand clenched in her lap. Easing my fingers between hers, I opened her up, stroking the back of her hand with my thumb till she hooked her fingers around mine and held me too. “A wise woman once told me to embrace the love in my heart. To stop denying it. And when I did, a wonderful thing happened. You don’t need to protect me from your love any longer.”