Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  Legend of the Lakes

  The Once and Future Queen

  Clara O’Connor

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

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  Copyright © Clara O’Connor 2021

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  Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  Map © Laura Hall

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  Clara O’Connor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  * * *

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  * * *

  Source ISBN: 9780008407728

  Ebook Edition © June 2021 ISBN: 9780008407711

  Version: 2021-03-02

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part II

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part III

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  Author Q & A

  Exploring the World of The Once and Future Queen

  Thank you for reading…

  You will also love…

  About the Author

  Books by Clara O’Connor

  One More Chapter...

  About the Publisher

  For Mrs Fitzgerald, the first to suggest that one day I could do this

  * * *

  Ms Young, who lured it into being

  * * *

  And to all out there wondering if they can

  * * *

  Do it. One life to live.

  Part One

  Into the Abyss

  I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me…

  But there was time…

  And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,

  staring into the abyss.

  * * *

  I do not know how long…

  I could not count the hours, they ran so fast—

  Like little bare-foot urchins—shaking my hands away.

  But I remember

  Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein…

  And a wind came out of the grass,

  Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.

  — The Edge, Lola Ridge

  Chapter One

  Holy Isle, Anglesea

  * * *

  In the reign of Prince Llewelyn Glyndŵr of Gwynedd

  The sparks from the pyres were released into the night sky, hundreds of tiny embers drifting up in the still winter darkness. So many pyres. The destruction that the sentinels had left in their wake was total, the mistletoe supplies gone, the groves badly damaged. The druids and those who had served them shed their bodies as their spirits lifted into the darkness. With Devyn.

  He was gone. Here in his home, they had killed him.

  I stood and watched while the druids prepared him, removing his clothes, exposing the hole in his chest that had ended his life. The rose and lakes he had tattooed over his heart were marred for eternity, the emblem of the Lakelands, my brother’s sigil… My brother had never deserved him. On his upper arm were the meandering curves of the Tamesis, ending in a Celtic symbol, a symbol of us. I had traced it over and over again; we had lost and found each other on the banks of that river. There our story had ended and started again. Now it was over, there would be no more chances. I could not follow where he had gone, not yet. I stayed by his side all day as the survivors and my brother’s men bustled about building the pyres, tending the dead and the injured.

  Occasionally the moans of those who had survived the attack found their way to me, but mostly it was just Devyn and me. His dark curls hadn’t dried since he was pulled out of the waves. I tried to get the sand out but his locks had frozen, and my fingers didn’t have enough warmth in them to melt the ice after a while. They left him until last; I could feel them hovering, waiting to take him.

  “I don’t have a photo.”

  “What was that, lady?” came the tentative voice from behind me.

  It was hard to breathe through my mouth – my throat felt constricted. I drew a breath through my nose and exhaled, which only called attention to the pressing weight on my chest. I didn’t have a photo of him. I pushed my fists into my eyes. Behind my lids flickered Devyn’s face: his frown when I said something that annoyed him, his laughter over a cup of coffee back in Londinium, his serious expression cracking at my teasing of his indulgent citified tastes, his single-minded focus in all things, his frustration when I refused to let him push me away, his determination to see me back in the land of my birth; his eyes studying my reaction as I took in his Griffin tattoo the first time, the look that waited for me to appreciate and finally understand what the position meant to him. I would never see his eyes again – that dark warmth had faded. The intense gaze dimmed forever. And I would never see him again.

  Bloody Briton, why had he never let me take a photo? Not that I had a device to view it on out here in the Wilds anyway. I needed to take my fists out of my face. I was wasting precious time.

  My next inhale expanded the pained void within me. Pulling my hands away, I lifted my face to the sky as I attempted to pull in air and not scream at the same time. Someone hovered closer, reaching out but hesitating to actually intrude. The concerned face of the young druid was barely visible, backlit as she was by the burning funeral pyres.

  “Lady, we need to—”

  “I know, I just want one more minute,” I cut across her. I traced my fingers along Devyn’s cheekbones, his arched brow, the peeking feathers of the eagle wings that spanned his back and curled slightly over his shoulders, not yet enclosed in the white cloth in which they had bound most of his body.

  Hands helped pull me up until, in spite of my stiffened joints, I was upright. I shrugged them off, curling my fingers into my palms so hard that I actually felt something through the cold that had stolen away all feeling hours ago.


  I felt lightheaded and too heavy to move as they wrapped him in the last strand of white cloth. Men stepped forward to lift him. I couldn’t see through the blur but I trailed after them. I needed another minute. Hands pulled me back as they lifted him onto the last remaining stack of wood and wrapped around me, keeping me upright. There was a keening sound that tore through the night as the torch touched the winter wood, and the fire blazed higher and faster than any of the others had.

  My knees were on the ground. That terrible howl finally stopped as my head was buried in wet unyielding leather. Sobs tore through me, doubling me over in their strength, and I was helpless against them. My mouth was torn wide by the raw pain that tried to escape in a never-ending gush.

  I won back control and struggled to my feet in the sand, pushing away the intruder in my space.

  Numbly, I watched the fire. The flames licked up into the sky, flickers of blue and green and orange. White smoke lifted into the night, obscuring the stars. The tang of sea salt mixed with woodsmoke as the flames consumed the bodies that had once held people we loved.

  The blaze mostly hid the shadow of the body contained within, and after a while it started to crumble in on itself. In Londinium, bodies were cremated in a building created for the purpose. When it was all done, a neat little box of ashes was issued to be disposed of as the family decided.

  What did they do out here in the Wilds once it was over? Did they just let the sea come in and take what was left? Was that why they built the pyres on the beach? Or should I take the ashes home to his father, or to Conwy or Carlisle? Where would he consider home? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. Devyn was the one who was supposed to guide me. He was the one who always explained how things worked out here beyond the walls. I should never have left. If I had stayed in Londinium, he would be alive. All these people would be alive. How would I tell Rhodri? His father had waited so long for Devyn to come home, had believed he was still alive long after everyone else had thought him dead… and now he was.

  The fire burned down lower and lower.

  Gideon ventured closer again. I flinched as his hand touched my shoulder. Everyone had gone inside, the pyres had burned down to glowing embers, but once I left this beach that would be it.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  I felt him leave. My brother sat waiting further up the beach, his heavy cloak drawn around him. He was watching me. He too had stayed by me all day – such a display of familial concern. Now he was worried, now he realised what Devyn had meant to me. Now, when it was all too late.

  “Come.” My brother’s voice disturbed the night. “It’s over.”

  I didn’t respond, didn’t have the energy.

  “It’s cold, you must come in,” he spoke again.

  What did I care? The heat from the pyre had long since faded.

  Firm hands took my shoulders and started to pull me up.

  “No.” I tugged away. Who was Rion Deverell to tell me what to do or where to go? I was done with being told what to do. All my life I had done what was asked of me, what my parents wanted, what my society wanted, what Devyn had wanted. Where had it got me? My parents weren’t even related to me and at the first sign of trouble had turned their backs on me; once I wasn’t their obedient step up into society, I was no longer their daughter. The society whose code I had followed, whose prince I had promised to marry, that society had had its own plan all along, had stolen me from my murdered mother in order to use my magic, abilities I didn’t even know I had until Devyn turned up. And Devyn, he had been the greatest liar of them all: he had fulfilled his destiny, lured me here with promises of love and family, and now I was alone. He was dead, dead because I had insisted he marry me despite the fact he had repeatedly pulled away from me. If Rion Deverell had just let us be, we would still be in Conwy, Devyn would still be alive, we wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be alone.

  “You did this,” I said, whirling out of his arms. “Get away from me.”

  Rion faced me in the night, his expression unreadable.

  “You must come in,” he repeated, ignoring my accusation.

  “No,” I said, turning back to the smoking embers on the sand.

  “Get up.”

  I ignored his order.

  He sighed deeply.

  “Have sense. It’s the middle of winter, you’ll freeze out here.”

  “I don’t care.” I couldn’t feel the cold. I couldn’t feel anything right now. If I just left them to it, would he continue to have this conversation with this body? Could I just drift away to where people would stop bothering me?

  “Gods! Get up, girl, or so help me I will drag your arse inside.”

  The great Rion Deverell, faultless King of Mercia, swearing at a grieving girl. What would people say? I felt his hands take hold of my upper arms to carry out his threat.

  “Let go of me,” I uttered in a low voice, “or I will—”

  “What? What will you do?” he said tiredly. “What did you do today? Nothing. Heir to our mother’s power and you did nothing.”

  I had done nothing.

  When the sentinels had held Devyn and Matthias had killed him in front of me, I hadn’t done a thing. I was supposed to be powerful but I hadn’t been able to do anything. The drug had worn off now; I could sense that much. But even if my blood hadn’t been laced with the drug that suffocated my powers what could I really have done? It had all happened so fast. I hadn’t even thought to call it, had been frozen in fear, my only thought to get to him, to do as they asked… It had been over before I’d had time to think.

  They had sailed away unhindered while he was lying in my arms. Useless, I had been useless.

  I stared at Rion. Was this my fault? I had brought Devyn here and then I hadn’t been able to protect him. I should have been able to protect him.

  My brother lifted his hands out to me.

  “I’m sorry.” He paused. “I didn’t mean… just please come inside, for your baby’s sake if not for your own.”

  I nodded dumbly. I had forgotten about the baby inside me. Would the cold hurt her? The disconnection I felt, the pain that had clawed at me earlier, did she feel these things through me?

  “The ashes,” I said as I started toward him.

  “What?” he asked. Perhaps my voice was too low. My throat felt oddly raw.

  “I want to take his ashes home.” Wherever that was. The hollowness inside me grew.

  “I’ll see it done,” he promised, his hand going to the small of my back. I stepped away, beyond his reach, but followed as he led me to one of the houses still standing in the middle of the village.

  There were several people inside sitting around the empty wooden table: long-robed druids and leather-clad warriors, and Gideon in his stained Midwinter finery. They all looked up as we entered. The room felt warm, the fire in the hearth small compared to those that had blazed all evening out on the shore.

  Rion indicated a bed in the corner of the room before he spoke quietly to a warrior who exited to do his bidding. I didn’t want to sleep, but I didn’t want to speak with the sombre men and women who sat huddled around the table in the middle of the room.

  An older druid brought me a cup of something warm and set it beside the bed with a small nod. I didn’t want it. I felt heavy in the heated room, but it was too much effort to take off my cloak, so I lay down.

  Words drifted over from the occupied side of the simple dwelling. Worry over the mistletoe, loss of the dead, concern at the Empire travelling so deep into their territory, consternation that their weapons had worked so far north, basic tech though it had been. The words swirled around the room in a tangle, knotting around them all. So many threads around the golden-haired King of Mercia, to whom they all looked for answers. Gideon’s eyes came my way time and time again. What did he want? What did he see?

  I turned over, putting my back to them. I closed my eyes and saw Devyn’s face, the moment when Matthias struck him imprinted on my shuttered lids. He
had promised me he would always be here for me.

  I felt again his body growing cold in my arms, the draining away of his life as the druid spoke words releasing the spirit of the Griffin. I opened my eyes and stared at the dark shadows playing on the wall. The words being exchanged in the room washed over me. I couldn’t think about it yet. It was too much.

  “Without the mistletoe, many will die this season,” one of the druids was saying.

  “There are no reserves?”

  “Not here. Thankfully, half of it was sent to Conwy immediately after the harvest to be dispersed at Yuletide and there are other sites with some stores. That should last for some time, but after that we will need to source more until the next harvest.“

  “Why did they take it?”

  People were ill in Londinium too. It wasn’t just here in the Wilds that people had magic in their blood. In the city, too, people were sick and dying fast. Nothing and no one were able to prevent it, except for Marcus.