Page 19 of Queen Takes Camelot: Gwen
Spinning his chair away from the monitors to face me, Mordred grinned. “I work quickly, my queen.”
“So I see. What’s all this for?”
Bors grunted as he leaned back against the wall by the door. “Goddess, here we go. Time for a technology lesson.”
Mordred’s golden eyes gleamed with mischievous anticipation, a light that drew me inexorably closer. I curled my hand around his neck, stroking my fingertips over his tight curls. “Actually, I’m prepared to give a mythology and history lesson.”
Bors sighed dramatically. “Even better. Maybe I should go patrol the tower instead.”
I didn’t heave a sigh, but I wasn’t too eager for a long lecture either. My nerves were drawn tight, simmering with pent-up magic. Every cell in my body screamed with urgency. I had to get Merlin. Now. I needed to act. I needed to make a move before Elaine checkmated me.
But if I’d learned anything in the last few decades serving my former queen, Keisha Skye, it was the importance of the long game. She’d been willing to set a geas on House Zaniyah and wait forty years for their queen to fall. Shara Isador’s mother had been an even greater master of the game, moving pieces across the board more than a century before she’d been ready to deliver her heir and disappear without a trace to protect her.
I couldn’t afford a single mistake. Not in this game. Like it or not, Elaine had started this game nearly four hundred years ago when she’d gained my aunt’s allegiance. I’d managed to stay alive, and Lance had stayed free, against all odds. I couldn’t throw all that away on a knee-jerk move that would get us all killed.
Lance stepped out of the room a moment, surprising me. Until he returned with one of the padded chairs for me to sit in. Evidently this really was going to be a lengthy discussion. I sat down facing Mordred, and Lance’s hand settled on my right shoulder. A phantom memory flickered through me. One of Guinevere’s memories, not mine, but incredibly real.
The pleasant weight of his bare hand on my shoulder. The faintest brush of his finger on the bare skin of my throat. A quick, indulgent stroke in open court while our lord and my husband, King Arthur, argued with a group of ambassadors. It had been such a small touch, certainly nothing to remark about. He hadn’t groped me blatantly or acted disrespectful in any way.
Yet Arthur had seen that tender touch that spoke of intimacy and yearning. His eyes had narrowed into burning slits, revealing the rabid dragon smoldering inside him.
:He couldn’t bear to share one moment of your love.:Even in our bond, Lance’s voice broke with sorrow.:Even if that meant destroying us all.:
I reached up and closed my fingers around his, both to make sure he didn’t withdraw, and also to openly affirm and welcome his touch. Even here, in complete privacy in my quarters, I felt centuries of lingering formality and chivalry that had been bred into his very bones.
My knight put my safety first. Always.
A guard was no guard if he was too busy loving his queen to be aware of approaching danger. He’d fought against betraying our love for far too long to openly indulge in open affection like this—unless I made sure to encourage it.
:All my love is yours,:I replied in our bond, making sure to radiate those thoughts to all of my Blood.:We have no need to hide our love any longer, my knights.:
I gave a nod to Mordred to continue his lesson.
“I’ve made use of these past centuries, my queen. With computers such as these, containing vast databases and libraries more massive than anything Merlin himself could have ever acquired, I’ve researched Avalon and your history, hoping to find a way to help you break the curse.”
I leaned forward slightly, hope stirring in my heart. “And?”
“You need a way to Avalon that doesn’t alertherof your presence, right? What if I tell you that I don’t believe Merlin is in Avalon at all? Or at the very least, he’s locked beyond our world in a more encompassing place than a singular island.”
“But he is in Avalon. She told me so. Standing at the edge of that well, I could feel something beyond the water, as if it was just a thin veil separating our world from beyond.”
Mordred nodded eagerly. “Exactly. That veil is mentioned over and over in all of the ancient legends. ‘Beyond the veil’ could mean many things. Avalon, certainly, but it could also refer to the generic Otherworld. There are many such parallel universes described in the ancient legends. I’ve read every treatise on Arthurian literature from Tennyson to Chrétien de Troyes and even back to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Over the years, many stories have changed to reflect the times in which they were told, but there’s a fairytale aspect to them that never changes. For example, who supposedly made Excalibur? Who raised Lancelot du Lac?”
“Morgan.” Lance replied. “Or sometimes a more generic Lady of the Lake, but it’s not clear if they’re the same woman. No one ever really knew who Morgan was.”
“Morganle Fay,” Mordred said. “The fairy. Some stories even described her as more of a goddess. Some say she was Arthur’s elder stepsister, but that she was supernatural in some way. Others say she was an enchantress. But the name implies something magical. Otherworldly.
“Which led me exploring other tales. Did you know that the Tuatha dé Danann—Irish fairies—were also descended from gods and goddesses, much the same as we Aima are? Their Otherworld, Tír na nÓg, is also an island. The Welsh underworld is another mystical island, Annwn. There are so many similarities and overlaps between Celtic and Irish folklore and Arthurian stories. Maybe the lines were blurred for a reason.”
It actually made a strange kind of sense. The only bedtime stories older than vampires were fairy tales. “So you think all of these mystical islands are actually the same place, just different names?”
“Exactly, and each name is associated with different passageways. Sometimes it was a fairy mound. For other cultures, it was a burial mound. Some still believe that Stonehenge might have been some kind of portal to the Otherworld. The names of the Otherworld might have differed, but the ways to them always involved some kind of portal that pierced the veil between the two worlds.”
The wordwayskept echoing in my head. Maybe because I had just returned through Shara’s heart tree in the basement. In a few steps, I’d gone from her tower here in New York City to Eureka Springs and then back again. The actual passage had taken less than five minutes.
She’d told me that I would be able to travel to England much the same way, though the portals might not be trees for me. The new tree in the basement could take me to Eureka Springs, or England, or anywhere.
So why not Avalon?
