Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Biography
Legend’s Fall
Monica Corwin
Breathless Press
Calgary, Alberta
www.breathlesspress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Legend’s Fall
Copyright © 2013 Monica Corwin
ISBN: 978-1-77101-987-3
Cover Artist: Victoria Miller
Editor: Tasha Taylor
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Breathless Press
www.breathlesspress.com
Dedication
To the father of my baby girl.
Chapter One
Maggie sat on the floor, covered in dust, casting evil glances at the ripped up pieces of cardboard near her legs and the step stool in front of her. The poor books were everywhere and lying at odd angles like washed up pieces of driftwood.
She climbed to her feet, the metal of her ID tags clanking together as she brushed the grime from her jeans. Wearing them had become a habit she had yet to break. Changing before interviewing employees later was now priority number one.
I might as well try to get some more work done while I’m dirty. She bent down to start retrieving her fallen merchandise and instantly the sharp pulling pain in her hip reminded her of the scar’s existence. Straightening with a huff, she clutched her side. This was getting old, quick.
“Screw it,” she said, as she decided to focus on another task.
She grabbed the stack of books from the glass counter top and moved toward the back of the store. For the D.C. area this place was a book lover’s paradise—if only more people knew it existed. A handful of her mother’s loyal customers had stopped by since she reopened, but the customer flow was nothing like what the place needed. A nagging suspicion that she wouldn’t be able to keep it afloat scratched at the back of her mind every minute of every day. The last six years of her life had been spent fighting in battles, not freshening up on the Dewey decimal system.
She placed the books on a teetering stack and surveyed the mess. The money she saved while overseas was allocated for sprucing up the place, but it was a much larger job than anticipated. The edge of the stack was off and she straightened it before grabbing spare books that customers had misplaced on shelves.
After trying and failing to organize the chaos, Maggie decided to get cleaned up. The interviewees should be showing up anytime and she was not the picture of a business owner, not that she ever was. She cast a final glance at all the books that needed to be moved and straightened before beginning the slow process of climbing the flight of stairs to her loft.
The doctor told her the scar tissue would need to finish healing and then she could work on de-sensitizing and stretching the skin to a normal shape. As of right now it was a constant pain in the ass, literally. The scars tracked from the side of her knee to halfway up her waist and were still raw and tender. After the IED attack and resulting explosion, she spent a couple of months in the hospital until one day, medical discharge paperwork showed up. It was a private who delivered it. The military couldn’t even spare an officer to thank her for her service and dismiss her.
Swallowing back her frustration at being useless to everyone and anyone, she continued to climb. Her heart broke when they booted her out. She loved her soldiers, her team, she loved everything about the Army, and the one time she needed them, it didn’t matter.
Three minutes later, although it felt more like twenty, she made it up the stairs and to the shower. As she turned on the faucet and waited for the old brownstone’s pipes to heat the water, her mind started to tick off books she wanted to dig out downstairs to add to her personal library.
Finally, after a too-cold shower, a bright yellow sundress, and her favorite green high-top converse shoes, she slowly lumbered back down the staircase. Light streamed in the glass front windows and cast the shadow of dust mites across the floor. Dusting: she added yet another item to her mental to-do list. She thought managing a used book store in a D.C. suburb would be easy but she had underestimated how long her mother was truly ill.
The store had fallen into disrepair with no one to keep the place up. A pang of guilt rose up before she quickly pushed the gut wrench down with the rest of her pent-up emotions. She ran her fingers over her bun before she continued her mission to collect all the homeless books, adding titles to the various stacks in the back of the shop, and starting new stacks as each of the previous ones began to teeter precariously. She kept skirting the remains of the box that had fallen on her earlier, but every time she passed by it grated on her nerves even more; as did every other box on top of the shelves she couldn’t touch at the moment.
She glanced at the book she just grabbed off a higher shelf. Return of the King. She flipped the book over and decided it was either something to add to her own library or some sort of Lord of the Rings fan fiction. She opened the cover and it took a moment for her eyes and brain to link what she was seeing.
On the title page was one of the most beautiful and intricate depictions of Excalibur she had ever seen. The detail in the picture alone looked hand-drawn and was awe-inspiring. She gently ran her fingers over the page, trying to memorize every detail, every swirl of ink. The word Excalibur was written in stunningly artistic calligraphy at the bottom of the page. She stood entranced by the picture until a passing pedestrian broke the light shining through the window. Maggie shook herself and moved to the chair behind the cash register, the springs squeaking as it took her weight.
Maggie sat the book flat on the glass countertop next to her antique cash register and gazed at the beautiful photo. Finally looking her fill, at least for the moment, she turned the page. Small masculine handwriting filled the entire sheet. It looked like Latin, but she wasn’t sure. She gently touched the words before turning the page. The masculine scrawl continued on the next two pages.
She knew in her very soul that this was a book she wanted to be able to read. She didn’t even know basic Latin. As she gazed at the page a heavy weight settled into her chest; this was her passion and here it was, sitting in front of her face, but she couldn’t read it.
She sighed in frustration and shoved the book forward, then let out a hiss of pain. She had caught her finger on the sharp metal edge of the broken counter frame. Blood welled, stark against her skin, and she watched it fall in slow motion as a single drop landed on the book.
She couldn’t help but stare for a moment, and then she jerked into action, searching frantically for the rag unde
r the counter to wipe off the blood. She straightened to wipe the paper but it was gone—no blood marred the perfect script. Maggie shook her head to clear it; her finger certainly hurt enough for her to know that what she had seen was real. Maggie licked her lips and cast her eyes across the counter; maybe she was more tired than she thought.
She carefully closed the cover of the book; it would make a beautiful addition to her personal library none-the-less. She smiled even as her finger throbbed with a dull ache. She contemplated how long it would take to learn Latin as she sat back down and put the rag away.
Chapter Two
Arthur paced back and forth in front of his balcony windows. The rubberized click of his canary-yellow converse shoes tapped in time as he moved. He was uncomfortable in his skin, itchy, like something was about to happen but he didn’t know what. Years of honed instinct hadn’t failed him yet. It was only a matter of when and what.
A soft knock at the door broke his train of thought. He rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Go away Gwen, I am not in the mood,” he called out to the visitor. Only two people ever dared knock.
“Sire, do you need anything today?” A faint voice whispered against the door. He had to strain his ears just to be sure she had spoken.
“No, leave me alone! And stop calling me sire!” he yelled back. He thought he heard a faint sob before the rustle of skirts moved away down the corridor.
Wonderful! Now he could feel bad for the rest of the day because he didn’t want to look at her. The restlessness continued to run along his spine. He needed something to happen, something different; he did the same exact thing every day. In fact, he should hear...a loud pounding on his door interrupted his pacing.
“Go-away!”
“Open the damn door, Arthur.” Lancelot yelled over his incessant pounding. Arthur ignored him, as usual.
“Open up! I am tired of the way you’re always treating her,” he growled through the wood as he rattled the door knob. Arthur stomped over to his door and jerked it open. Lancelot took a small step back in surprise.
“I may not be a king anymore but you both will stop harassing me every single day. I don’t want to see you!” The fleeting sense of fear in Lancelot’s eyes cleared.
“That’s what you don’t get! We still need you.”
Arthur let out a gust of air.
“The moment I lost control of my kingdom I no longer had the right to lead anyone,” he said, some of the anger leaking out of him at the memory. “How do you think I feel when I see you both every single day? I have to remember the pain, the betrayal, the humiliation. You didn’t need me when you decided to screw my wife,” Arthur said.
Lancelot stared at him, mouth hanging open. This was the most they had spoken since they arrived.
Lancelot retreated out the doorway with a slight bow.
“I’ll try to get her to stop.”
Arthur closed the door on Lancelot’s back and sat down on his bed. They had all been here so long, he could see it in their eyes, and they were all thinking he needed to get over it already. Arthur ran his hands across his head, the short strands bristling against his fingers. He had tried to get over it; he didn’t hate them all anymore, which had to count for something. He hardly knew the people he was trapped here with. Only small things came to him through his windows or from voices drifting past in the hallway.
Lance and Gwen still favored the clothes of the past. His knights still trained everyday under Lancelot’s guidance. He supposed it was the nature of the familiar that kept them going. For Arthur the summons kept him alive, gave him a reason to live.
The summons to another world. To anyone else it might sound crazy, and hell, maybe he had gone mad. He would have accepted that if it weren’t for the dreams of battle, a new modern age he longed to be a part of, or the gunshot scars he bore on his body.
The others had no interest in the world beyond this one. They didn’t care for the modern clothing and amenities the fairy realm provided. They didn’t read the books or eat the food either. Maybe they didn’t want to accept that the world was passing by without them. That it kept moving with no need for them. Arthur had known the feeling, until he was summoned. No one knew how long they had been on Avalon, his best guess at their location. Time just moved so differently here. What he did know was that he had been summoned to a new place a total of five times. Each time he was asked to lead men into battle, and each time everything was so different.
This place seemed governed by the Fey lands. Clothes magically appeared—books, whatever the person wanted, he got. So Arthur spent his time learning what he could about the outside world. His room was covered floor to ceiling with books from every era, on every subject. He needed to find a way out permanently and books were his only means to be close to the outside on a regular basis.
Arthur stood back up and continued to pace, his skin still humming. Maybe he could go groom his horse, but rethought that. He didn’t want to see Lance and the men out in the courtyard. He stretched out his legs and walked a circuit around his room, occasionally glancing out his balcony windows to the apple orchard below. A faint brush of sensation ran down his spine. He shivered and stretched the muscles in his shoulders while walking around his room to release the tension.
A light in the corner of his eye made him turn abruptly. The wall-length mirror beside his bed was shimmering. A thrill ran through his body. His head started to spin and he was pulled by an invisible force toward the mirror. His excitement swirled with a hint of dread. Where would he go this time, and who would he have to kill?
An acrid taste filled his mouth and made him stagger. He moved to the mirror and touched the quicksilver finish; it rippled under his fingertip. A chill ran through his body and then the whole world went black.
Chapter Three
Maggie checked the clock by the cash register one more time. She’d been waiting for people to come in for an interview but no one had shown up. Twenty minutes was too long to just sit and do nothing, especially when she had an entire shop to organize and clean.
She stood up and began to stretch her cramped muscles when the scent of apples slammed into her.
Maybe I am having a heart attack. She shook her left arm around just in case, but nothing happened. The Army First Aid Handbook definitely stated you might notice odd scents and feel tingling in the left arm. Where was it coming from?
She took a step from behind the counter and was blown flat on her back by a gust of air, followed by the sound of an explosion. Dust coated the entire store; books and shelves were toppled over every inch of the floor. The shelves lay together like the folds of an accordion, grotesquely littered with books torn from their homes. The smell of dust and dirt assaulted her senses first as she wondered if she was alive. She swallowed the bile clogging her throat as she stared at the ceiling, still unable to bring herself to move.
Her ears rang and she felt her head to see if she had hit it. Nothing on her scalp seemed hurt or bruised; she’d likely missed the counter by inches. The thought of dying from a blow to the head while in her bookstore was preposterous, and if she wasn’t already crying she might have laughed.
She sat up on her elbows, taking short breaths to remain calm. Nightmare after nightmare rolled through her mind so fast all she could do was breathe through the pain invading her body and the tears tracking through the dust on her cheeks. She pushed a long gust of air from her chest, and used the relaxation techniques she was taught to deal with her post-traumatic stress. Slowly, breath after breath, her heartbeat slowed and she felt more like herself.
She was ashamed that she hadn’t gotten through the worst of her nightmares; they could still follow her to this new life. As the color drained from her face she was happy she was alive, of course—and angry. She pushed some cardboard and books off her legs and out of the way so she could stand, unsteady on her feet. She straightened her dress and brushed some of the wetness from her cheeks. She bent over so she could peek around th
e corner of the counter, slowly coming out further to get a better view of where the explosion had come from. On the ground was a hand, palm facing her.
Maggie started to move toward the hand, being careful because whoever owned it had knocked over two bookcases, and now books flooded the floor in her path. She pushed through, slowly sliding them out of her way as she moved closer while looking around for...
Maggie reached down and grabbed a particularly large and scary edition of The Oxford Unabridged English Dictionary and held it up over her shoulder with both hands. She continued to inch toward the body. Finally her vision broke the edge of the last bookcase hiding him and all the air rushed out of her lungs. He was huge, large, ginormous, and every other large adjective she could think of.
He was also very naked.
She moved in further, against her better judgment; the instinct to make sure he was okay was more than she could resist. She scooted books out of the way with the toe of her shoe as she moved toward the man. He certainly wasn’t dead; she knew what death looked like, so she kept the book up in a throwing position. Finally close enough to check his pulse, she crouched down, much to her hip’s dismay, and felt the strong beat of his heart under her fingertips. He was alive, definitely alive, and his skin was so hot to the touch it almost burned.
It had been far too long since she had seen and appreciated a naked male body, and his was certainly something to appreciate. But obviously, she had to do a damage and injury check. She started at his feet and progressed upward until she got to his face, cradled by books, and found herself staring into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen in her life.
The eyes shifted from her face to the book. In a blur of movement, so fast she couldn’t react, he had the book in one of his hands, his body over hers and her wrists in his other hand. There was a stunned moment of stillness. They were both breathing heavily, chests rising and falling, touching where his body held hers to the ground. He was the first to recover, throwing the book at a nearby pile and reaching to grip a wrist in either hand.
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