The Forever Queen (Pendragon Book 2)

by Nicola S. Dorrington

  My smile widened slightly, then I grew a little more serious again. “But what will it be like? What will we do?”

  His chuckle reverberated through his chest. “I can’t answer that. I’ve never been. But for me, it’s better than the alternative. I don’t want to simply fade away with the magic here in this world. It will be a different kind of life there – but it will be a life. Though, I doubt it’s much different to how this world was back in my time.”

  For a long moment Percy and I stood looking out at the dark garden. The very eastern edge of the horizon was growing lighter, just by a fraction. Dawn was coming and it was time to leave.

  Dad refused to come with us to the stone circle. He wanted to say his goodbyes there in private and the others allowed us that, slipping out into the still dark front drive to wait for Mum and me.

  Mum and Dad whispered soft words and exchanged gentle touches, but I knew that in a way losing Mum wouldn’t be all that hard on him. After all, he had said goodbye to her almost five years ago. He still missed her, I knew that, but he had moved on. He’d never confided in me, but I knew he’d been on a few dates in the last year or so. He was happy to see her well again, but the love that had once been between them had faded over the years.

  She kissed him softly on the cheek and turned away, her eyes sparkling with tears. She touched my shoulder with one finger as she passed, leaving us alone.

  “Dad-“

  “Don’t try and change my mind, Cara.”

  I sighed. I had thought it might be worth one last push. “But, Dad, won’t you miss me?”

  He let out a low, pained gasp and pulled me into his arms. “Oh, sweetheart, I will miss you every day for the rest of my life, don’t think for one second that I won’t. But a parent always knows that one day their child will grow up and have a life of their own. You’re just doing it a bit sooner than I’d like, and – further away. I want you to be happy, and safe. I would rather have you there and safe, than here never knowing what trouble you’re going to get yourself into next.”

  I tightened my arms around his middle, wishing for a moment that I never had to let go.

  “Make sure that you look after your mother. And – just be happy, Caronwyn.”

  I tipped my head back to see the tears rolling down my father’s cheeks and my own fell then too. We stared at each other as long as we could. I wanted to memorise every line in his face, every quirk and flaw. I wanted to imprint it on my memory so that no matter what happened, how many years I lived I would never, ever forget my father’s face.

  He drew me in again and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

  “I love you, Caronwyn. Never forget that.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t, Dad. I love you too.”

  Wyn cleared his throat from the doorway. “I hate to do this, but Cara, we need to go.”

  I gave Dad one last tight, desperate hug and turned away. I wouldn’t say goodbye. Goodbye was too final, after all there was always a chance, one day, that I would see him again.

  At the door I turned back for one last look. He had turned away, his shoulders shaking. I drank in that last sight of him, and followed Wyn out of the door.

  The tears didn’t stop until we reached the stone circle. Mum sat in the back of the jeep with me and held my hand, her own tears dripping down into her lap. I hated that she had just come back to him, and now she was leaving him again. But I knew that in the end Avalon was the right place for her, just as it was for me.

  We were the last Pendragons, our blood was touched by the magic of the Fair Folk, and we didn’t belong in this world any more than the dragon did. I could admit that to myself now.

  Sam had said it best. Even as a child, before the nightmares and the visions, and Lancelot, I had never seemed to fit in. I had always been slightly out of place. Perhaps in Avalon I would find my true home.

  A thick mist hung over the moors, lying low enough that we had to slow to a crawl as we topped the hill coming towards the stone circle.

  I saw him before I saw the stones. His bronze scales glistened with dew and he looked like some glorious bronze sculpture until he lifted his head at the sound of the car. He was too big to fit inside the small stone circle, instead he had curled himself around the outer edge.

  The mist wreathed around him, and for a moment I forgot how dangerous he was, he was simply beautiful.

  We rumbled to a halt a short distance from the stones and walked the rest of the way up the hill. A small river blocked our way, but we managed to get across. It was that or walk a few miles around to the nearest bridge. The water was icy cold, but there were enough stepping stones to keep our feet mostly dry.

  Mum nearly slipped once, but Percy was there before she could fall, standing calf deep in the water as he helped her across. He reached back to help me across the last big gap and as I reached the shore I turned back. Wyn was carrying Sam across, an oddly tender look on his face as he waded across. I felt a little stab of sadness, and wished, not for the first time, that Sam could come with us.

  The dragon watched us approach and as we got close enough he stretched and stood up, unfurling his wings and shaking off the dew.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it, Pendragon.” He craned his neck to look around at us all. “Though it seems you brought a whole party with you.”

  “I was never going to go through alone.”

  For a moment I saw a sadness so deep and dark in the dragon’s eyes that it took my breath away, and I wondered, for the briefest of moments whether it would be kinder to kill him. Rather than force him to live on so incredibly lonely. But then I thought of the idea of a world without a single dragon, and it made me sad. He was too beautiful, too incredible to simply let him go. Even if he terrified me at the same time.

  It was time. The sun was on the edge of the horizon and we needed to get this done before there was too much chance of us being seen.

  I placed the Silver Bough between the two largest rocks and stepped back. It would have been easier to do it at Stonehenge, where the magic lingered strongest, and the barriers were weakest, but any fairy circle would work. Any place where they had crossed back and forth between the two worlds.

  I didn’t know the proper magic, and I wasn’t opening a gateway as such. This was a one way trip. Nothing would be able to come the other way, and once we had passed through it would seal behind us. The gateways would never be reopened.

  Instead I used the only kind of magic I knew. I unsheathed Excalibur and drew the blade across the palm of my hand. It cut smoothly, and the pain came late, almost like a delayed reaction. I squeezed my hand into a fist over the bough and the blood dripped out, landing on the wood.

  A few drops was all it took. The bough began to glow, a silvery light that shimmered and moved, and began to grow brighter and brighter until I had to look away. When I looked back the bough was gone, and between the stones was a doorway cut into the air. Beyond it the mist was gone, it was a bright summer’s day, scudding clouds moving across a periwinkle blue sky.

  I felt the others around me as I began to move towards the light of Avalon. The dragon was keeping a steady pace with me.

  Someone was missing. I turned back.

  “Wyn?”

  He stood on the outside of the circle smiling. “I’m not coming.”

  “What?” I took a step back towards him. “But the magic will fade eventually. You’ll die.”

  The familiar devilish smile curled his lips. “Hey, who wants to live forever, right?” He winked. “Go, Cara. I’ll be fine here. This world has so much to offer, so much to see and do.” His grin widened. “I’m thinking of getting a motorbike…” He grew a little more serious and glanced over his shoulder at Sam. “And – well – I think you know the other reason.”

  I stared at him, standing tall and impossibly strong in the misty morning light. Whilst Lance had been gone he’d been my rock, the one person who’d kept me going. Tears burned my eyes.

/>   “But, I’ll never – we won’t-“

  His smile turned sad. He strode towards me and dropped to one knee, taking my hand. He pressed his lips to Lance’s ring.

  “You will forever be my Queen, Caronwyn Pendragon. And I wish that I could serve you all the days of my life. But I have already lived one lifetime of quests, battles and magic. I’m ready for something a little different now.” He stood up and swept me into one final great bear hug, lifting me off the ground.

  “Be happy, Cara.”

  The tears spilled unabashed down my cheeks as he stepped back and through the haze I thought I saw his eyes glistening too.

  Percy touched my arm. “We need to go, Cara.”

  I took one last long look at Wyn and Sam stood on the grass. I smiled when I saw Wyn’s fingers link through hers and I turned away.

  Between the stones it was all sunlight and blue skies. And him.

  Stepping into view from behind a stone Lance grinned at me. He hadn’t changed. Not one little bit. His curly hair still fell into his eyes, tossed in every direction by the breeze. His eyes were still impossibly blue, and framed by the darkest lashes. He wore breeches and a tooled leather jerkin that served only to emphasise the solidness of his body, all hard muscle and sinew. My favourite crooked smile, the one that only turned up one corner of his mouth, appeared on his lips. Somehow he knew. He knew we weren’t just sending the dragon through, he knew the deal I had made.

  “Well.” He beckoned me with one finger. “Are you coming then?”

  My mother stepped up to my right, her eyes full of wonder and almost childlike excitement. On my left Percy looked down at me with a bright grin.

  “After you, my lady.”

  I took one last, deep shuddering breath of the air of the world I had grown up in, and stepped into the world I had been waiting for all my life.

  Epilogue

  Tiny cotton wool ball clouds scud across the sky as I lie on my back in the cool, soft grass. I watch as little shapes form and disperse over and over. The peace and quiet is broken as footsteps reverberate through the ground under my head and I push up onto my elbows.

  I can’t help the smile that instantly appears on my face. Lancelot walks towards me, the breeze tossing his dark curls.

  It doesn’t matter how many days seem to pass in Avalon, I will never get used to how perfect he is here. Somehow he fits here, in a way he never did back in my world.

  My world. It feels strange to think of it that way. It’s impossible to really know how many days or weeks or even years have passed in Avalon. Time is flexible. There seems to be no fixed length to a day or a night. But I know I haven’t been gone that long. Not quite a year yet. But time passes differently, and that one year could have been ten, or a hundred, or even a thousand. Somehow my world feels like a dream to me now. I still remember my father and Sam, and I grieve for them, but it feels like another life. Distant and hazy.

  “What are you up to?”

  Lancelot reaches me and smiles down, his lips quirked in a small, half smile. I grab his hand and pull him down beside me. He drops with a laugh and quite suddenly has rolled us both so that I am on top of him. He pulls my hair into one hand and holds it behind my head to stop it tickling his face as he tugs me down for a kiss.

  “I missed you.”

  I giggle. “You and Percy have been gone less than half a day.”

  They had gone hunting with Arthur, to the far side of the valley, looking for something to roast for the evening. There was to be a feast. I’d tried to talk them out of it.

  “I know. But it’s your birthday.”

  I roll my eyes. “We don’t know that for sure. Merlin is only guessing.”

  He sits up so that we are nose to nose. “Guessing or not, we can’t just ignore it. You’re eighteen today.”

  Eighteen. It’s hard for me to believe. Seventeen feels like a lifetime ago. I can remember it so vividly. Visiting my mother at Snedham, meeting Lancelot for the very first time. So much has changed. I’ve changed.

  “I’ve got something for you.” Lancelot is smiling at me, an excited, boyish grin on his face.

  I can’t help but laugh. I will never get tired of this. Being with him every day.

  He opens his fingers and a silver chain tumbles down. At the end of it dangles a bright, sparkling ruby, surrounded by a perfectly engraved silver griffin. It takes me a moment to realise why it is so familiar. It is a perfect copy of Excalibur’s hilt.

  “Wow.” The word doesn’t seem enough but it’s all that I can manage. Lance smiles and slips his hands under my hair to secure the chain around my neck. It sits just about the hollow of my throat and I can’t help but lift my fingers to stroke it.

  “Where did you get it?”

  He smiled. “That would be telling. Do you like it though?”

  I nod, tears brimming in my eyes. I had returned Excalibur to Arthur when I’d arrived in Avalon, but somehow I still missed it. I think Lancelot knows that better than anyone.

  He catches my chin with two fingers, tipping my head back to look me in the eyes. “I know you think it’s silly, with time passing the way it does here, but it’s important to me to mark the years with you. Maybe once we get to a hundred, or a hundred and fifty I won’t be so worried. But until then –“ He laughs and kisses me.

  I kiss him back, tightening my arms around his neck and deepening the kiss. He sweeps us both over so that he lies over me, propped up on one elbow as the other pulls my hip against him. His touch is like fire on my skin, but I can’t get enough. I want him, more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

  He pulls back to look me in the eye. I know he wants to make sure it’s right. I can’t find the words to tell him just how right it is. Instead I simply kiss him, long and hard, and hope that everything I want, everything I need is laden in that kiss.

  It is.

  Sometime later, as we lay still entwined together on the damp grass, as the sun sets behind the mountains my thoughts can’t help but creep towards the real world. Merlin doesn’t know how long Wyn will last. He thinks there might be enough magic to keep him going for a while. A lifetime maybe. His sword will fade, and his armour too, but he’ll still be there. One last knight in an ever changing world, bringing a little excitement and danger into the lives of those he meets.

  Part of me wishes I could be there to see it. But my happy ending lies in Avalon, with my mother, Arthur and Percy. And with Lancelot. With Lance.

  The greatest knight who ever lived.

  But also just a boy, who literally changed my world.

  The End

  Author’s Note

  And so ends Cara and Lance’s story. It’s strange writing those words.

  Cara has been with me for over seven years now. Since she first appeared in my head as the vague idea of a girl who was tormented by dreams and memories that were not her own. Arthur, Wyn, Percy, and of course Lance, came later, when the time came to develop that vague idea into a story, but Cara was where it all started.

  I’ll miss her, in a strange way; she’s been a part of me for so long. It’s part of what made writing this book so difficult – I didn’t want it to end.

  But every story must come to an end. That’s not to say that there won’t be other stories from this world sometime in the future. I never say never. But Cara and Lance have their ‘Ever After’. I don’t think I want to ruin that for them by dragging them into another adventure.

  A quick note about the myths and legends in The Last Knight and The Forever Queen. They’re all true. All right – not true exactly – but they are real legends. The Silver Bough, the quest to rescue Guinevere, Dolorous Gard. I adapted them and played with them to make them fit my version of the King Arthur myth, but I didn’t make them up. Look them up – there’s far more to them than I could ever have hoped to include in these books and well worth a little ‘further reading’ – though just like Cara I struggled to find much about the Silver Bough. That one I really did
stretch quite a lot to fit my ideas.

  Like all my books there are acknowledgements to be made. I couldn’t write these books without a lot of help.

  My alpha reader (as I like to call her) Jo. Who always gets to see these things first. Even when I do send them to her with caveats like ‘be aware, there’s a big missing chunk in the middle that I haven’t quite got my head round yet’!

  My beta readers, Robert, and Kate Wrath (a very talented writer herself) both helped to make this book better with their suggestions and feedback.

  My family and friends who put up with me being a recluse a lot of the time, and when I’m not, let me go on and on about this Indie author malarkey.

  Particularly my Mum. I know she’s waiting eagerly to read this one. She’s always been my biggest fan.

  But lastly, my biggest acknowledgement goes out to the readers who’ve reached out to me over the (nearly) two years since The Last Knight was published. Who’ve left beautiful reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, or told their friends and family to pick up the book. You make it worthwhile. I hope you love Cara and Lance’s last story as much as I do.

  Additional note: Reviews are my lifeblood. It makes such a huge difference to me, and all Indie authors like me, when people leave reviews on our books, either on Goodreads or Amazon. So if you have a minute to write a quick review, or even leave a rating, it makes such a huge difference to me, and you get cookies. Virtual cookies.

  For updates on new releases or to simply find out more about me and my books you can follow me on twitter @NSDorrington or find my page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/NovelsByNsDorrington

  Other Books by Nicola S. Dorrington

  If you’ve enjoyed The Forever Queen, don’t hesitate to check out these other books by Nicola S. Dorrington. All available on Amazon.

  The Pendragon Series