Albion's Legacy (Sons Of Camelot Book 3)

by Sarah Luddington

  “Boys, I’m going to be out of action for a bit,” Rhea said in warning. She threw her head back and white light poured from the dying body of the old guardian of Albion and into the new one. Rhea became a blaze of raw earth energy. Galahad grabbed hold of me and pulled me and his sister away from the Titan.

  The world continued to tremble, not so much an earthquake, more a shiver as if the entire world had that mysterious sensation akin to someone walking over your grave. The Lady dropped the body of Albion and I watched the old woman sink into the earth beneath her flesh and blood form.

  “What next, witch?” Lancelot asked his nemesis, Caliburn still in hand. “What game do you want to play?” his voice was more wolf growl than human.

  Those hard black eyes and red lips smiled. “I’ve missed you, Lancelot,” The Lady said.

  “I doubt that, bitch.” He stepped forward, forever protecting his family and wanting his own vengeance for the misery she inflicted on his wife, his son and his past.

  The Lady bared her teeth in a snarl and I no longer saw the elegant goddess to be – I saw the true monster. “Your son turned out to be a worse disappointment than even you managed to be. I thought with conditioning, rigorous and righteous training I could mould him into being a man to be proud of – but no. He was born to a whore and spawned by a bastard half-breed. I should have known there would be no redemption for him. I am sorry I wasted all those years on his education.”

  “My son is perfect,” Lancelot said, his pride no lie. I felt Galahad’s breath catch in his throat as he watched their exchange. “He is everything we could have hoped for and so much more. He is able to follow his heart, something you will never understand and that will be your undoing.”

  I thought about Lancelot’s choice of words. I glanced at my father and he nodded slightly toward me without taking his eyes off The Lady.

  My hand slipped inside my purse and I withdrew the amulet Morgana had given me. It shone weakly in my hand.

  My companion shifted in discomfort. “What?” Galahad’s eyes focused on me. “What’s that? I can feel it...”

  “It’s for you, from your mother. I was to keep it safe until the right moment. I think now is the moment. Now is the time for your freedom from The Lady,” I told him. My hand trembled as I offered the gift to Galahad du Lac and our destinies slid into their final resting place.

  He took hold of the amulet and the complex swirling patterns within its design came alive in his hand. The light, once feeble, sparked and shone brightly before morphing the two-dimensional object into something original. Galahad held the newly formed sphere in his cupped hands. It hovered, glowing and bouncing. The ever shifting complex pattern of knotwork and images flowing around each other in a dance of savage beauty.

  The Lady stepped forward. “No, he can’t have that. It should have died along with Balar. It shouldn’t work.” She frowned and the fear – obvious now – gave me courage we might actually live through this somehow.

  “My wife thought differently,” Lancelot said, his grin feral.

  “No...” The Lady took another stumbling step, confused and unable to understand how all her planning couldn’t stop this simple act of defiance against a goddess.

  “Yes,” Arthur said. “Give the gift back to its mother creator, son.”

  Galahad, without a moment’s hesitation walked from my side.

  My flash of optimism died. “No!” I cried out, trying to stop him, knowing in my soul this was the end of something not the beginning. I needed to think, I needed to talk, I needed just a little more time. I needed to find a way to kill The Lady without losing Galahad, without letting him close to the evil which had plagued his life...

  “You can’t stop this,” Morgan said, grabbing my arm. I half dragged her with me as I tried to reach for Galahad.

  The young King of Albion simply walked up to The Lady, cupping the glowing sphere of power in his hands, sword dropped. “I free myself from you,” he said. “I am not your creature.” He spoke so quietly, so gently and with a strange feeling of sad love in our bonding.

  “You are never going to win,” she snarled in rage. The absolute antipathy of his forgiveness. I watched the black blade she held push into his unprotected belly.

  “The blood of a king will mix with the blood of the land,” Galahad said, his voice straining because of the pain. He didn’t prevent the blade, didn’t step back, merely stood with his hot blood pouring into that of Albion’s.

  The pain washed through the bonding we shared and crashed into me. Morgan cried out, forced to hold me up as I watched Galahad push the circle of Morgana’s power mixed with The Lady’s into the body of our enemy, just as she’d pushed the blade into him.

  Once it touched its creator it shot sparks into her and outward but it didn’t penetrate her skin. I felt Galahad’s panic, the magic beginning to falter.

  “It’s not enough,” Lancelot cried out, trying to reach for his son but he and my father were fading. The Lady’s strength was surging forward and trying to banish her nemesis.

  The Lady crowed with delight. “I am too strong! I am beyond you all. I am beyond even the world of Albion. I am a true god.” She stepped back, the orb separating from her unmarred flesh, and Galahad dropped to one knee, still holding it up as if paying homage to the woman before him. I felt his despair and failure.

  “I don’t think I want that for my world,” Rhea announced, suddenly sweeping down from above. She flew straight into Galahad’s hands which still cradled the orb of light. Rhea took the sparking and straining ball of magic, drew her arm back and thrust it forward into The Lady’s chest.

  The pseudo-god’s laugh died. Galahad collapsed backward. I half rose and covered the distance between us, protecting him with my body.

  The shiver in the land of moments before now became a tumultuous shaking. “Albion will be free of the old gods and we shall rise anew without their shackles and burdens,” Rhea cried out.

  I felt Morgan bury herself under my protective arm and I made room for her as the world around us shifted and buckled.

  The world trembled but we remained safe, from that at least. I felt Galahad’s blood seeping through the fingers I pressed to his wound. When the world stopped I lifted my head. The table and benches of the old world fey were gone, destroyed and smashed to pieces. My father and Lancelot once more stood either side of their fallen children, Rhea at our head. Between them glowed a shell of energy protecting us from the falling rocks that littered the ground. We were the children of Albion and she had kept us safe.

  I looked down at Galahad. He was so pale. There was so much blood. So much blood. It leaked from his mouth. It flowed between our meshed fingers. It covered the earth surrounding us.

  He managed to smile at me. “I love you,” he mouthed more than spoke. “I have to die, Holt. I am so sorry. It is the only sacrifice we cannot fight and the only one which would win against her.”

  “Your blood and Albion’s?” I asked, tears staining my cheeks for all the time I’d wasted in this life. Time I would never have with Severus, the children of my sisters I’d never see grow. Time which was now denied me because I loved this man completely.

  “My blood and Albion’s,” Galahad confirmed. He tried to draw a clean breath but his lungs were flooded and he was choking, drowning. I looked up at his father with pleading eyes even as my own breath became hard to draw into tightening lungs.

  Lancelot knelt beside his dying son. “I can’t stop this, Holt.”

  “I can’t leave him,” I said. “We are bonded. I can’t stay here without him. I don’t want to. I want to leave with him.” The tears were hot on my cooling cheeks, my sentences were short. I felt Morgan being gently removed from our embrace by Rhea but I only had eyes for Lancelot and Arthur.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to, son,” my father said, now kneeling slightly behind me. I twisted and looked at him. He smiled at me, his blue eyes full of his love. “You are the bravest of us, you know that
don’t you?”

  “No,” I said, a grief in my heart unknown before. A grief based in the sadness I would give to those who loved me but would never see me again.

  I felt his fingers curl through my tangle of hair and knew Galahad was taking me with him because of our bonding. My hand, trembling, reached out to touch Morgan, her eyes on her brother and father.

  “I can’t... I can’t be the queen of Albion,” she whispered, looking at me for a moment.

  “You must,” I told her.

  “Holt...”

  “Tell Severus I am sorry and I loved him. Look after him and Camelot for me.” My words were softly spoken and truly meant.

  “Holt...” she begged in heartbroken sadness.

  “It’s time, Morgan. Let them go. You are now my Queen,” Rhea said. She forced Morgan back another step and separated her from her brothers. We were weakening and we were not to take Rhea’s Queen into the next world by accident. Rhea’s eyes were now deep golden brown and Morgan’s the bluest I’d ever seen. She was so beautiful and so strong.

  “I’ve lost count of the times we’ve defied death,” I told my bonded companion, his heartbeat weakening and mine matching it.

  “Too many times, Holt,” he whispered. “I am sorry to be taking you with me.” We held hands, our grip still tight despite it all.

  I smiled for him. “I’m not. We’ll ride together forever this way.”

  He managed a faint nod. “We shall, we shall always be together.”

  I bent down and kissed his cold lips, the blood was hot. We embraced slowly, time moving in fits and starts as we moved from one world and into another, more inescapable than any we’d visited before. We embraced and we kissed and we shared our final breath.

  We shared our final breath and rose from the mortal bodies we’d been given, to stand beside our fathers.

  “Farewell, Queen of Albion,” Lancelot said to Morgan, whilst holding the hand of his son for the first time since he was a small child.

  “Farewell, my beloved family. You will never be forgotten,” Morgan said, her eyes dry and those of a noble woman ready to face the challenges of her future.

  I felt my father’s fingers grip my hand as I held Galahad’s in the other. We turned and walked into the darkness, as a family. The destiny of the Pendragon and du Lac lines forever knotted together in a pattern as rich as the love we shared.

  EPILOGUE

  Morgan walked out of the tunnel she’d chosen to use to find her way back to her remaining family and discovered herself alone in the corridor outside her brother’s unused rooms.

  She sighed as she looked at the finely made door. The woman at her side held her hand. “Don’t, Morgan. Don’t grieve for them. Galahad is at peace,” Rhea said.

  “I know, I just... I wish we’d had more time together,” Morgan said. She squared her shoulders and buried the heartache. “Right, I had better talk to the others and find out how to run this bloody this country.”

  The two women, Rhea just a little shorter than Morgan, strode down the hallway to the twin’s rooms. Just as Morgan lifted her hand to knock on Nim’s door it opened.

  “Morgan?” Nim’s breathless question hung in the air. Morgan knew her name contained those of her brothers as well.

  Morgan silently shook her head.

  “Both?” Nim whispered, her eyes already full of tears.

  Morgan nodded and caught sight of Severus and Lance behind her sister.

  “I am sorry. The bonding took them both. It was peaceful in the end. Father... Our fathers,” she looked at Nim. “Our fathers were both there.”

  Nim took her sister’s hand and led her into the salon. Morgan, after a few stiff brandies, recounted the story while Rhea sat in silence beside her as if reluctant to leave her new scion.

  “I’ll leave to inform Camelot,” Lance said, rising but swaying, struck hard by the loss of his King.

  “I can send someone else, or go myself, which I think is best,” Morgan said. “You should be here with Nim.”

  “I think we should all go,” Nim said. “I think it is time we tried to build some constructive bridges with Isabel. Besides, she needs to know she’s going to be an aunt.”

  Morgan watched Nim’s hand stray to her belly. “Oh, sister...” They embraced with such love filling the room it tempered the anguish of death.

  “Life always finds a way of renewing itself,” Rhea murmured.

  “If it’s a boy we’ll name him Galahad,” Nim promised her sister.

  “And the next one Loholt?” Lance suggested, hugging his lover. They kissed and Morgan’s eyes strayed to Rhea, who gave her a smile meant only for the Queen of Albion.

  “I’ll need a consort,” Morgan said.

  “Not yet. I need time to sort everything out. For now I just want to work with you if that’s alright?” Rhea said.

  Morgan reached up and brushed a lock of hair away from Rhea’s golden eyes. “That sounds perfect. I think I’ve had enough of change for the moment.”

  THE END

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