Page 26 of Queen Takes Camelot: Gwen
He had the claws. All I had were antlers and hooves, neither of which were useful to attack an enemy from the rear. The best I could do was to pound his face a few times, increasingly frantic as he tightened the headlock and throttled me.
As I lost the ability to breathe…
I lost myself.
Maybe it was only the childhood trauma creeping back in to fuck with my head, but I’d come to accept it over the centuries. I’d even decided that I’d drowned that first time as a child—because this was what I needed most of all.
Ineededto drown.
I needed to sink beneath the waters and into cold, empty darkness. Nothing mattered here except the urge to fight and drive toward the light. If I managed to break free and swim to the light, then I would live again. I had to fight to live. I had to fight to breathe.
That fight reminded me every single day why I was still here. Why I kept returning lifetime after lifetime, always searching. Always drowning.
Lance had always been the light for me. The most gallant knight. Round Table hero. Queen’s champion. I couldn’t remember the years we must have spent together growing up with the Lady of the Lake, but it was his face I searched for as soon as I remembered what and who I was.
Not my brother’s. Never my king’s.
I’d always known that if I could get to Lance, I might live to see our queen again. He was my only hope. Without him…
I would die before I could ever drown in our queen’s love again.
I thrashed against him. I choked. I wheezed. I dug ineffective nails into his flesh and tried to gouge out his eyes. I would have howled and screamed if I could get any air into my lungs.
He waited until I was frothing at the mouth like a rabid wolf, completely consumed with my fight to breathe. Then he shoved his dick into me, skewering me until he was balls deep. Only then did he loosen his grip on my throat enough to let me gulp for air.
Though he immediately tightened his arm again. Darkness hovered, black spots swelling and dancing in my vision. I couldn’t do anything but hang in his grasp and wait desperately for him to decide when I would breathe again. A quick gulp. A choking gasp. Then darkness. Again. While he drove into me mercilessly.
He was the dark water taking me under. The sweet promise of death and peace in the end. It was a lie. We both knew it. Guinevere’s knights would never have peace until we broke Arthur’s curse. Even if it took another thousand years.
The curse would go on and on like this endless ocean of pain and darkness and misery. Until Lance let another crack of hope pour into my lungs. Until a speck of light filtered down through millions of miles of agony to show me the way back to the surface.
Back to our queen.
The blackness faded enough that I could see her face. She glided down through the waters, floating closer. Shining like a captured star. Soft, pearly white flowed around her in the water. Clothes, maybe. Her power. I wasn’t sure. But it looked like wings. Flowing gossamer wings of dreams and love and hope. So perfect. So beautiful.
I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell her that I loved her. More than anything. More than my life. More, even, than Lance’s life. Because if we lost her…
I would lose him. Again.
And I didn’t know how many more times I could endure such loss without giving up and letting the cold darkness claim me at last.
Her lips pressed to mine. Searing hot against the cold. Bright against the dark. She breathed for me. She hoped. She loved. For me.
Shebledfor me. I could see the red spreading in the water. I breathed her in. Letting the taste of her fill me. Crystal moonlight. White lilies. Seductive and graceful, seemingly delicate and fragile. Though I had enough wits about me to know that was a lie too.
Nothing fragile would have survived all these centuries just to hold us again, even if only for a short while.
A crushing weight drove me down, deeper into darkness. I went willingly, letting Lance carry me down. Because our queen floated with me. Her hands on my face. Her blood on my tongue. Her love shining inside me.
Forever.
* * *
GWEN
Ifought back tears, because I didn’t want to upset either of them. My tears carried regret and sadness and pain.
But only because we had lost so much. They’d endured so much. For so long.
