Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) (27 page)

“Are those memories of me so painful?”

“To the contrary, my Lady. I’d be comparing any future love, future happiness to the unattainable that is you the rest of my life. And fae live so very long. What humanity has taught me is vulnerability and how much your shorter life gives cause to praise its every moment. I’ve already buried my love in you. Curse or no, indulge this human flesh once more. I beg you.”

Trembling with my need of her, I surrendered myself to her command.

Ah, Des. To throw temptation at me now. Though, to be fair, there was no day together he did not tempt. No time together when my body did not recall his tender prowess and long for his singular touch.

It was never a question of Tris being able to satisfy me. We slaked and sated ourselves daily. Exhausted ourselves in satisfaction. And still one smoldering look from him or the brush of his hand on mine could ignite my heart. Even when he was being a stupid, stubborn, and selfish fool, blinded by love, my body delighted in his and could not be swayed from its love.

With no Des in the world, Tris would happily be my all—my sun by day and my moon at night.

With no Des in the world, there would be no hollow in my heart nor ache in my loins that Tris did not fill fully, boldly and more than satisfactorily.

But with Des… It was not that I loved Tris less or found flaw in his touch. It was as though Des expanded my heart, found love for me to give that was not there before him. In that same way, my body found new need in his presence.

And now here he was before me, begging my help to make him whole. Asking to embrace that hollow of my heart and that piece of my desire that were his irrevocably.

How could I say no?

I met his supplication with open arms. “Come,” I whispered. “Let us make you fae once more.”

I traced my memories of him with breath and hand and tongue. He rewarded me with sweet groans and a risen staff that quivered with anticipation. It was a slow hurry we indulged in, not knowing when Tris might return. But when Des kissed me
there
, I arched against him and cried out with desperate need. “Now. Please,” I begged him, pulling him up, lips to mine.

He took my wrists and held them to the cave floor as he poised above me. He was longer than Tris and not so thick, but my body remembered, accepting him with delight. My breath shuddered and my eyes closed as I approached the peak.

“Look at me.” The soft command dragged my eyes to his. In their emerald depths I saw a soul laid bare, filled with a history of anguish and joy and the purity of love. Briefly I wondered what my eyes revealed to him. Then I was lost to thought completely as all of heaven shattered within me.

By sheer will I kept my eyes open, gifting Des with the honesty of the moment, of me.

Then the radiance of his smile poured over me, blinding in its intensity. Only then did I shut my eyes, even as he collapsed over me and held me in his arms.

What seemed an eternity later but in truth could not have been more than a few moments, I found my voice to ask, “What of the curse?”

“It holds true.” Regret nearly broke him.

“I love you,” I insisted.

“I know,” he said and his gentle touch as he brushed back a strand of hair from my eye only deepened that love. He repeated my mantra back to me. “Just not enough.”

~ ~ ~

We had only finished dressing when Fallax thundered up, Tris throwing himself from the saddle and storming into the cave. His hard gaze swept from me to Des and back again. I could almost taste his disappointment at finding us clothed and out of each other’s arms.

“An unsuccessful hunt, was it?” Des asked

I struggled to hide my smile, and Des and I exchanged a look of secret laughter, pity, guilt.

Tris, of course, had every right to fear betrayal. It was just the manner of his current madness that went beyond the pale.

“What troubles you, my Lord?” I ran my palm across his brow in a futile attempt to calm him. I would have had as much luck trying to calm a storm-torn sea.

He guessed at the truth, whether by his own delusions or the easy and intimate looks Des and I exchanged. Grabbing my wrist, he twisted it back. There was anger enough within him to snap it, but he only held it captive.

“I ask again,
my Lady
, have you been unfaithful?”

“The fae remains a man. Is that not proof enough?”

Obvious to Des, it wasn’t, but I was reluctant to lie outright to Tris. Not when the truth was many-layered.

Some instinct kept his guard up. Maybe it was the slightest sheen of sweat on Des and I in the cool of the cave. Maybe he caught the subtle scent of our morning labor. “I wish it were enough.”

“Then what
will
be enough?” I threw back at him. “Will only Des’ death satisfy you? Or your death if you thought this through with your head and not that cod of yours . Is your conviction of his guilt so great it blinds you and saps all sense away? When God upholds his innocence, Des will best you, perhaps slay you. Dead, you cannot love me, and if you’re willing to risk my love in battle, perhaps you don’t love me so deeply as you love the thought of love. Or maybe you don’t love at all save for what the spell commands. Maybe you will insist on fighting Des because death by his hand is an honorable way to quit the spell and be done with the distasteful love it forces on you.”

I was mindful still of my fragile wrist in his powerful hand as I stirred him to wrath.

Des laid his hand over ours, a protective gesture that ignited some deep emotion in all of us at the touch. It fled quickly, but I saw wist and regret flit across Tris’ otherwise stony face.

Des must have seen it too, for he lifted his other hand. At this point it could have as easily gone to the hilt of the sword Des has so hastily belted on. Instead, it alit on the burl of Tris’ shoulder while a trailing finger stroked his bearded cheek in passing.

“Perhaps, Your Grace,” Des said, “it’s time you asked whether
Tris
has been unfaithful to
you
.”

It took either a hero or a fool to knowingly provoke an angry bear, and both Des and I were doing our best to anger it more. My eyes widened, not so much at what this bear might do but at what Des was implying. “You and he?”

“In this very cave.” He stared only at Tris, gaze and voice both soft. Without seeming to move at all, suddenly he was head by head with Tris, his breath close enough to caress the other man’s ear. “Do you remember how we took comfort in each other, pleasured one another? I remember every plane of you, every peak, every moan, every thrill of you.” He moved closer still, till his lips were nearly on Tris. “Do you remember me?”

Tris swallowed hard and my heart beat fast.

“No betrayal,” Tris groaned. “Yseult was always there between us. Never did my heart betray.”

“Do you not love him?” I asked.

“No!”

Des didn’t flinch, merely crossed the final space between and captured Tris’ protest on his lips.

I watched with fascination, my wrist still in Tris’ hard grip. I waited for any spark of jealousy to engulf me. There was none. Not even in knowing they had shared the same bed as Des and I, Tris and I. I felt no threat in their lust for one another knowing it was I who had their hearts.

“Not every act of love is a betrayal,” I whispered.

Tris pulled back his head, but he didn’t pull away. “Then you and Des have not betrayed me?” It was still a challenge, but this time tempered with an unspoken plea that craved the accusation to be a lie.

“I am no less innocent than you,” Des said.

My heart stopped. The sun stopped. No one of us was innocent yet no one of us had betrayed another. Not in the ways that mattered most. But if Des were to confess the cave’s other secrets—those between him and me—what might Tris in his madness do?

“Nine days ago you asked if I had betrayed you,” Des continued. “My answer then was I had not. That I had never lain with Yseult, our queen. By that claim I stand.”

I approved. It was truth precise. We had not lain together between the time I’d become queen and nine days ago when Tris had issued challenge. It was a claim he and I could both swear before God.

“Will you not put aside this foolish trial?” I demanded. “I said before I would not watch you die. Nor would I see your friendship put asunder. Spelled or no, I love you, Tris, though I hate what jealousy has made you become. And Des, although I hate what circumstance has forced on you, I love you as well. As friend and confidante and more. As one who can chase away the terrors of the night when I am otherwise alone. To both of you I give my heart, in different size and different ways. Even to Mark I must cede a piece because duty, too, is a form of love. It matters not what Heaven or Avalon or the courts of men decide. Truth is that which we find deepest within our hearts.”

Neither Tris nor Des had moved in all this time. Breathspace close still they stood. I stepped into the hollow beside them, our breaths mingled now as one.

“Look past jealousies and spells and curses. Look into your hearts. What song does your heart sing? Mine has many parts and many refrains. For family parted. For Brangien, lost. For Mark, honored. For Des, revered. And for Tris, all else. No part may be silenced without this song becoming another, one less lovely, less harmonious.”

Grief now filled the space in Tris’ eyes where madness once had been. It was not denials of our betrayal but affirmations of our love that would heal him.

“Mark was as a father to you. Des as a brother. Do you love them any less?”

Tris shook his head.

Des lifted his hand then from shoulder to cheek. “Nor have
we
stopped loving
you
.”

How strange was it to see the man who would be fae professing that enduring love. Accepting…

I inhaled sharply, the healer at last seeing yet another way to heal.

Tris wasn’t the only one touched by madness here.

I laid my free hand over Des’ heart, our little circle now complete.

Startled, wary, as if I he knew what I would say, Des flicked his gaze to me.

With all gentleness I asked him, “Did you ever stop loving Brinn?”

“Yes!”

My answer came without thought. Of course I had. I stopped loving Brinn the day she rode off with Pel and Alaine and abandoned me. And if not that day, then the day I laid eyes on Yseult. And if not that day, then the first time I lay with Yseult and my heart began to sing another harmony… And if not then…

“No. I only stopped loving what I thought she’d become. She sings within me still. Quieter now and without the strains of desire that once reverberated so loudly as to drown all but the drum of my father and the songs of my pack. But Brinn’s song, for all its pain, is still one of joy and hope.”

“Why?” Yseult pressed.

“Because she is…
happy
.”

With a sigh, I closed my eyes. It had been a journey of many months to understand that love was never selfish. That love had to be free to find its course. And that love wasn’t finite—that it grew to encompass everything, and everyone, we were destined to love, no matter their form, their heritage, or their sex.

My head bowed in acceptance. This curse would be mine for eternity. I could never give Yseult all my love, for I would never stop loving Brinn. Or Tris.

Because love at its best was never pure. It was colored with all the loves of our life.

Yseult’s hand rose to cup my chin. I felt her gentle lips on mine as she boldly took them not a handspan from Tris’ own. “Know you always sing in my heart too.”

I surrendered then to Yseult, to Tris, to Brinn, to Fate.

Because love also demanded sacrifice and pain.

I felt heat at my hip then, running down the length of my leg, up to my waist, my chest.

Desperately I clung to Yseult and Tris, their eyes wide with question as my grip on them tightened painfully. I clung to their love, their humanity, their hearts. Clung until the heat grew to an inferno, unbearable against my flesh.

Shoving my way from them, I stripped away belt and sword and scabbard, flinging them across the cave.