by Lisa Cach
I held his spark of life and chanted the ancient spell, and found within myself the essence of Arthur, left there when we’d lain together that once. I brought up the feel of who he was, and tied the spark to it. Remember who you are. Remember all who need you. You cannot leave us alone.
In the depth of my womb, I felt a quick, sharp stab of pain, and for a brief moment I saw Arthur’s face, alive in wonder.
The chalice shattered.
I opened my eyes to find the bed surrounded by anxious faces, Terix among them. Pink shards of bloodied crystal lay scattered over me and Arthur. In my arms, his body lolled, his stained mouth sagging open in death.
“Did it work?” Terix said, asking the question hanging from all their hearts.
I laid my hand over my belly, and sensed the life that had attached itself there, forming a new body to bring it back into this world of sorrow. “Yes.”
Epilogue
“A year and a day,” Maerlin said. “You did as you promised.”
“This wasn’t exactly how you were expecting it to go, though, was it?” I slipped my hand into the crook of his arm. We’d re-formed our friendship over the past months of hardship and pain; there had been too much to worry about and work toward as Corinium sought new balance, for us to dwell on past grievances.
We stood on the shore of the small lake where I had, a little over a year ago, played the Lady of the Lake and drawn Skalibur from its recalcitrant depths. Pale spring sunlight warmed our winter-chilled flesh and brought small flowers blossoming among the grasses. A duck and her ducklings paddled along near the water’s shore, the downy chicks making soft, peeping whistles as they struggled to keep up with their mother.
“They’re a good family; they’ll take good care of him. He’ll be safer with them, and have a better childhood, than here amid this chaos.”
I squeezed his arm, appreciating the reassurance. “I know.”
The babe I had birthed some three months past was Arthur. My lover, my son . . . How did any woman come to terms with such a thing? Carrying him had been unlike my pregnancy with Theodoric, for I’d known in my blood that I was but a vessel for Arthur to come again into this world. I bore him, but he was not my son.
Nor could he ever again be my lover, unless I proved as immortal as Skalibur, and retained my youth when he once again became a man.
Not everyone believed that he was Arthur reborn, that he was their once and future leader. Why should they? How could they? Proving it would be a challenge for another day, another year . . . And Maerlin would be here to guide him through it.
“I think you should do it,” Maerlin said, handing me Skalibur. “She who giveth, taketh away.”
I took the sword, feeling its weight drag down my arm. The green translucent stone caught the light and for a moment I was underwater once again, eyes open in the sunlight-pierced murk, breathing through a reed as I shed the shining scales of my costume and watched them undulate to the lake bed like a dying fish. Grief washed over me, to think of all that had been at that moment, and all that could have been.
“Don’t,” Maerlin said softly, perceptive enough now that he caught my wave of sadness. “He lives. And who are we to say that this is not how it was meant to happen all along?”
It was something I’d thought about until I could think no more, over the past year.
Maerlin had been right, I’d finally had to admit to myself, about me and Arthur. To avoid hurting him, I would have had to deny a part of myself. Not only the part that accessed power through sex, but the part that still needed to fulfill my own destiny. I was not ready to be any man’s wife.
If anyone could have been the right man for me, understanding and supportive, it might have been Maerlin. But he became too possessive, manipulating me for his own needs, making decisions for me and for Arthur and all the while lying to himself about his motives.
I could only think that my fate would not have me stay here in Britannia. That I had come to play my role, but was meant to leave when it was finished, and follow my own path. The labyrinth: I would find it. And with it, I felt certain, I would find my mother.
Beyond that?
Maerlin’s idea of an island for the Phanne had taken root, though there was so much more I needed to accomplish before attempting to make that a reality. I had my own son, my true son, to reunite with. I needed, at some point, to face Clovis again.
And then?
My future was not mine to see. But I hoped there would be love in it.
“I’ll take good care of Una,” I said. “At least, as well as anyone can.”
“You’re certain she won’t be a burden?”
“Are you hoping I’ll make her stay? I think you’ve grown fond of her, despite yourself.”
“I see just enough of myself in her to make me worry.”
Una had insisted that she wanted to go with me, Terix, and Bone when we left on the morrow to go to the east coast of Britannia and find Jax. I’d managed at last to trace the thread of connection between myself and the pirate and I knew where we would find him in a few weeks’ time. My own personal Charon, ferrying me to the unknown.
I’d once thought that the only thing that was distracting me from discovering my powers was love. But I’d realized over this past year that love was the force that had guided me every step along the way: it was the force that had taught me, and the force that would lead me where I needed to go.
I walked away from Maerlin and took the hilt of Skalibur in both hands. With a twist of my body, I used all my slight weight to turn and fling the sword as high and as far as my strength would allow.
The blade flashed in the sun, spinning through the air as it had when seeking Arthur’s hand. It seemed to hang at the peak of its arc for one eternal moment, the sun flashing through the stone and turning both lake and sky to a solid flare of green.
And then it was tumbling, tumbling, back toward the water. With a soft splash it vanished.
One day, it would rise again.
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About the Author
Lisa Cach is the national bestselling, award-winning author of more than twenty books, including Great-Aunt Sophia’s Lessons for Bombshells, available from Gallery Books. She has taught creative writing aboard the ship MV Explorer from the Amazon River, to Morocco, to St. Petersburg, Russia. When not sailing the high seas she can be found digging for clams in the sandy mud of the Puget Sound or dealing cruelly with weeds and snails in her garden. She’s a two-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America, which doesn’t make it any easier to explain to her neighbors that she writes erotica. Visit her online at LisaCach.com.
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Also by Lisa Cach
Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel
Babe in Ghostland
Erotic Secrets of a French Maid
Great-Aunt Sophia’s Lessons for Bombshells
The 1,001 Erotic Nights Series
Slave Girl
Barbarian’s Concubine
Siren of Gaul
Warlord’s Captive
Pleasure’s Apprentice
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Cach
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition January 2016
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ISBN 978-1-5011-1018-4
