Page 4 of Queen Takes Camelot: Gwen
But he never came. He couldn’t. None of them could.
I knew it was a dream, but I still couldn’t wake up. My eyes burned from the smoke. My skin charred, split, and tore away. My lungs throbbed with pain. The building slowly crumbled around me…
Wake up!
Panting, I jerked upright in bed.
I swallowed down the useless tears and frantic cries. The pleas for help. They’d done me no good then, and they certainly wouldn’t help me now.
I flipped on the bedside lamp, even though exhaustion ground through my body. I rarely slept because of the nightmare.
I remembered being burned alive—by my husband. Or rather, byherhusband, my cursed ancestor, Guinevere.
The man of legend, lauded for his honor, had murdered me. Everyone knew the story of King Arthur, the once and future king. They remembered Camelot, his knights of the Round Table, and how Queen Guinevere had destroyed it all with her adultery.
Unfortunately, everyone preferred to forget the earlier accounts of his story that had been quietly brushed away over the centuries. Like how he’d fathered a child on his sister, and then to hide his misdeeds, he’d murdered dozens of boys born on the same day as Mordred.
Or how he’d locked Guinevere in a tower and burned her alive.
People preferred to forget the atrocities a powerful man could do to a woman when he wasn’t well pleased with her.
I would never forget, and goddess help me, this time, I would have justice.
The memory of Guinevere’s death was engraved in my soul, even though it hadn’t happened to me. I was descended from the original Guinevere and cursed to relive her suffering until her tragic ending could be righted. Somewhere out in the world this very moment, the man who’d been King Arthur walked and breathed, looking for his lost queen, driven by his jealous rage to find me and claim me as his. I could only count myself lucky that in the last three hundred and seventy-three years, he hadn’t found me.
Or maybe he had found me years ago but had decided to wait until he could punish my lover too. Because Lancelot du Lac lived again. My destiny, the cruel love triangle I’d been relegated to live by history. Only there weren’t three sides to this love story. Guinevere had loved Arthur once upon a time, and she’d certainly loved Lancelot. But she’d also loved Merlin, and several of her king’s other knights as well.
She’d refused to give up Lancelot, or any of her knights, which was why Arthur had burned her in the tower. If he thought I would choose him over my knights, wherever they were…
I would kill him myself as soon as I laid eyes on the bastard.
My cellphone rang, jarring me so much I almost knocked it off the nightstand trying to grab it. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Gwen, are you alright?”
I recognized her voice, and now that I knew it was Shara Isador, my new queen, I felt her bond shimmering with concern inside me too. She was far to the west, headed back to her home in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. In a matter of days, she’d killed the former queen of New York City and then flown to Egypt to kill the sun god, Ra.
Leaving me in charge of the biggest city in America as her queen sibling, with hundreds of former Skye sibs to sort. That wasn’t a complaint. I was actually thrilled with the prospect of such an organizational challenge. “I’m fine. Are you home already?”
“Soon.” Her bond swelled inside me, and I braced for her to take control of me. She was the stronger queen. There was nothing I could do to hold her at bay if she truly wanted to push her way inside me. She’d know everything, see everything, feel everything.
I wasn’t trying to hide anything, and I was truly grateful for everything she’d already done for me. She was a saint compared to both of my former queens. Keisha Skye had tortured her alphas and made her entire court watch, and Elaine Shalott…
Just thinking of her made me quiver with rage.
Shara’s bond quieted inside me and she withdrew her power without forcing her way into my thoughts. “I felt your pain, and I was worried.”
Her compassion—not just for the pain she’d sensed, but for not forcing her way into my head—made my eyes fill with tears. “It’s only an old nightmare.”
“Only?” She asked doubtfully. “The pain was horrible. Not just the physical pain, but…” Her breath sighed out. “The betrayal.”
Oh yes. I knew betrayal all too well.
“How close is Lance?”
Relieved that she changed the subject, I concentrated on my approaching Blood. They burned like white-hot fires inside my mind, blazing light and love and urgency as they raced to me. I knew one of them was Lance, and that he had two others with him, but I couldn’t be sure who they were. Not yet.
If only I could feel Arthur the same way. If I could warn thembeforehe attacked. Or if I could be on the lookout myself. But I felt and saw nothing else amiss, even with the additional power Shara had given me with her blood.
