The Phantom Queen Awakes (3 page)

She took a step toward him, her eyes shining
bright with tears. “They are ― all of them ― mine.”

Dear gods, she was so beautiful.

She walked up to him boldly, her face tipped
up, the gentle curve limned by silver moonlight. “Do you want to
kiss me?”

Severus blinked. “I don’t deserve a
kiss.”

Her face drifted closer to his. “I didn’t ask
whether or not you deserved a kiss. I asked if you wanted
one.”

He hesitated only a moment, his mind filling
with thoughts of his wife. Sweet Aelia with her hair so long and
thick like honey, her eyes such a pleasing, light shade of blue.
Physically she looked nothing like this woman, yet they shared a
strong common quality. It was almost as if he faced Aelia on this
river’s shore. This woman seemed suddenly like home. Like
everything he wanted and needed. He melted into her presence the
way he would melt into his wife’s, took comfort in it.

Her lips touched his and brushed. She didn’t
seem to care that he was covered with other men’s blood, perhaps
even her kin’s. Instead, she seemed to revel in the taste of it on
his lips, running her tongue slowly over his mouth. In acceptance
of him. In his head it was like forgiveness.

Absolution.

He needed more. Making a low sound in the back
of his throat, he pulled the woman against him. Crushing his mouth
to hers, he forced her lips to part and slid his tongue within. He
wanted to drink her, consume her, take all she offered him and then
more. He wanted to sink himself into the feel and taste of her and
forget the events of the day. She was seductive darkness, the kind
he could lose himself in ― dangerously addictive, but hopelessly
alluring.

If he could, Severus would have lowered her to
the icy bank of the river, lifted her skirts and lost himself even
further. He would have slaked his guilt between her pale thighs and
spilled his sorrow within her womb.

Instead, she pushed away from him.

Shadows hid her expression. Severus could only
see her mouth. A smear of blood from his kiss marked her lower lip.
“You are one of mine too, warrior.”

The woman turned and scooped up her laundry.
On the top of the pile Severus glimpsed a muddy colored
lacerna
that looked familiar to him. If the woman came from
one of the local tribes, what was she doing with a Roman soldier’s
cloak?

Especially one that looked like it belonged to
Paetus.

She could not have plucked it like a vulture
from the dead man on the battlefield since Paetus had not perished
in the day’s fighting. Severus had seen him in the camp before he’d
left for the river.

Severus started toward her as she disappeared
past the tree line, but by the time he reached it, she was already
gone. Only the night misted through the leafless trees.

****

Severus stayed closer to Paetus than usual as
they entered the fray. A damp chill had clung to him ever since
he’d glimpsed his friend’s
lacerna
by the riverside.
Foolishness on his part, surely. The constant battles were finally
breaking through the iron-strong grip he’d kept on his emotions,
that was certain enough.

Still, he had an uneasy feeling about the
skirmish today and the fate of his friend in it. Severus would stay
close to his comrade and watch out for him, as Paetus had always
done for Severus. It was what brothers did.

The hooves of his new mount pounded the ground
as they entered on the second wave of the attack, battling Britons
that seemed to never give up and never seemed to dwindle in number.
They were less numerous than the Romans, yet they fought with a
passion that made up for the difference. Never in Severus’ life had
he met an opponent as worthy as these uncivilized people and that
earned them his grudging respect.

Paetus’ blade soared through the air in a
bloody arc out of the corner of Severus’ eye. Together they cut
through the foot soldiers, taking down one after another. The
Britons had charged their chariots through the cavalry line,
leaving behind a cluttered mess of overturned and half-shattered
vehicles that Severus’ horse danced to avoid.

“Watch out!” Severus yelled as Paetus’ mount
backed into the broken end of a spear lodged in the
ground.

His friend’s horse bolted, throwing Paetus to
the ground. He let loose his shield and it rolled away, though he
kept a tight grip on his sword handle. Not far away, a Briton
spotted Severus’ brother. The barbarian ran toward him, arms
flailing and a cry tearing from his throat.

Severus leapt from his mount, scooping another
shield as he did so, and stopped the man with a heavy clang of
blade on blade. The lengths of metal kissed and locked at the grip.
Severus swung his shield around and took the man in the head with
the edge. He fell to the ground with a yell of pain.

By then Paetus was up, but they were quickly
surrounded in a pocket devoid of Romans. His sword swinging hard to
the right, Severus connected with a heavy bearded Briton, catching
him in the stomach with the tip of his blade and spraying blood.
Pivoting on his foot, he blocked another blow, the force of the hit
reverberating down his arm and through his armored
chest.

Sweat pooled in Severus’ navel and coated his
face and neck under his helmet as he and Paetus took on the
barbarians around them while standing back-to-back. Three Britons
approached from their right, hands tight on their sword grips and
ready to strike.

Paetus let out a roar and attacked, sword and
shield flashing in the sunlight. One of the Briton’s launched
toward Severus, who slashed downward, penetrating the barbarian’s
thigh, before pivoting to meet the next-comer. A tall, well-muscled
Briton struck Severus’ shield, clashed with his blade, and then
pushed him back.

Severus stumbled, tripped over a body and went
down hard. The Briton loomed over him. Then Paetus was there,
beating the Briton back before he could pounce. The Briton pivoted
at a crucial moment, and went for the unprotected area of Paetus’
neck, where his helmet did not touch his cuirass.

“No!”

Severus lunged to his feet and speared the
barbarian in the stomach. But it was too late. Just as the
barbarian fell, so too did Paetus, his eyes wide and surprised as
blood poured forth like the dark waters of the river, over his
hands and down his chest.

Severus stared at the fallen body of his
friend, numb to the core of his bones, while the fighting raged on
around him. He plunged the tip of his sword into the ground beside
Paetus’ head and knelt beside his brother in the war-churned
earth.

Paetus’ black eyes stared at the sky, seeing
not clouds but the Afterlife.

****

Severus lurched toward a tree and rested
heavily against the trunk, bloody sword falling from his lax
fingers. He’d crashed through the forest to the river as soon he’d
returned from the battle. She was there, just as he’d known she
would be ― kneeling at the water’s edge and washing her
laundry.

Was he going insane? Had the battle finally
grasped him in its clutches and was it pushing him towards
madness?

Or maybe it wasn’t madness at all. Perhaps the
gods had sent him a messenger in the form of this woman. Perhaps he
was being punished for something.

“You!” He stumbled towards her and came down
heavily on his knees, ridges of frozen earth piercing through his
blood stained leather bracae. He couldn’t get the sweet, sick smell
of death to leave his nostrils, not even long draughts of the
frigid night air could banish it. “Tell me who you are.”

She only continued to dunk and scrub a tunic
under the swirling cold, black water.

He reached out to touch her shoulder, to whirl
her toward him so he could see her face, but some unknown impulse
stopped him. Like a primal instinct. Fear welled, as though it
wasn’t a simple woman kneeling before him, but a wolf.

In his mind, suddenly she was the warrior and
he was the prey.

He made a fist, the skin cracking, causing the
blood to well and drip to the shore of the river. “Please,” he
entreated, his voice a low rasp. “Tell me what you are.”

“I am nothing but a woman,” she answered,
continuing to wash the clothes that lay in a pile beside
her.

“You lie. You are more than that.”

“I am woman and I am everything you should
fear. I am fate. I am prophecy. I am war. I am destruction. And I
am death.”

Severus could feel that she spoke the
truth.

“He’s dead: the one who wore the woolen
lacerna
that you washed on this river bank last night. His
name was Paetus and he was a good man, a man with children and a
wife.”

“So many of them are good men, the ones who
fall.”

The incessant washing made anger pound in his
head in a low staccato. Still he didn’t touch her, every survival
instinct he had kept him from doing it. “Why did you kill
him?”

She stood and looked at him with eyes darker
than the cloudless skies above and just as cold and unreachable.
“Death is a part of life. Everything that is born and all that
thrives will one day pass away. It will go better for you if you
simply accept fate, Severus.” She looked down at her laundry and
his gaze followed.

There, in the cold black water, floated the
same tunic he wore. It had the same tears, the same rust-colored
stains. His blood icy and his limbs paralyzed, he watched it swirl
for a moment and then disappear, pulled under by the inexorable
current.

****

Afterword

I was immediately intrigued with the idea of
writing a story about the Morrigan, a figure in Irish myth that has
long captured my imagination. I have always seen the Morrigan as
having a lot in common with, say, the vulture. She’s doing a dark
job that needs to be done and she’s got a bad rep for doing it
well. I chose to depict her as the
Bean-nighe
― the washer
woman ― in my story, because I love the idea of her as a harbinger
of death, especially as it is such a seemingly innocuous
guise.

****

Biography

Anya Bast is the national bestselling author
of numerous works of romantic fiction, mostly all paranormal and
mostly all scorching hot. She lives in the country with her
husband, daughter, and an odd assortment of rescued animals. To
read more about Anya and to find out more information about her
books, please visit
http://www.anyabast.com/
.

****

Lynne Lumsden
Green

I Guard Your Death

Maiden

Hidden, Pwyll watched a young woman as she
washed clothes in the stream. Her hair was the color of a
newly-forged copper shield, with deep crimson shadows. Every time
she bent forward to scrub, her tunic gaped to reveal her perfect,
pink-tipped breasts. Her skin was a smooth, lustrous cream, and her
wet hair draped across her thighs, making the cloth
cling.

The singular beauty of the washerwoman stirred
his blood, tugging at him; he was the compass and she was the North
Star. Pwyll made certain the girl was alone before he stepped out
from behind the rock. The woman stopped scrubbing when his shadow
fell across her and she looked up, but her eyes held no fear. “Who
are you?” she asked.

Pwyll didn’t answer. Instead, he bent and
grabbed a double handful of her hair, pulling her to her feet. She
didn’t scream or struggle as he dragged her from the stream to a
grassy cleft. He nudged her behind the knees with his leg, while
pushing on her shoulders, and together they fell to the
ground.

With one hand firmly entangled in her hair,
Pwyll reached into her tunic and groped her breasts. Still, she
didn’t fight but remained strangely, regally calm. He shoved her
onto her back and slid her skirt up to her waist, and their eyes
met. For a moment Pwyll hesitated, for through her eyes he could
see past eternity and into the infinite. Momentarily dizzy, he
dropped his gaze and his desire was renewed.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she warned him.
Pwyll ignored her. Her thighs were as rounded and ripe as he had
imagined them and his need roared through him, stronger than
before.

“I warn you again; I am not what I seem.” Her
voice was low, and if he had been listening, he would have sensed
the impatience. He looked into her eyes and saw the skin around
them pulled tight by her trapped hair. Her expression was still
unreadable, but she remained limp. Somewhere, a less primal part of
his mind was disturbed by her lack of fear, but he could not focus
beyond her soft flesh. She drew in a breath as he forced his way
into her body, and remained motionless while he sought his moment
of ecstasy within her. Her flesh was very sweet.

Once spent, he collapsed on top of her,
crushing her. He tugged his hand from her hair, not caring that
strands of it came away with his fingers, not caring that he had
hurt her.