Wicked Games (21 page)

Mordred, surprisingly, didn't take the opportunity to run for his life. Arthur might have raised a lying traitor, but at least he wasn't a coward. The bastard's eyes were wide in the Y-slit of his visor, but they narrowed as Arthur gathered himself to spring.

“I always said you were a beast.” He snatched up someone's forgotten spear out of an obvious desire to kill the king from as great a distance as possible. “I didn't realize you consorted with devils.”

As he snarled at his son, a too-familiar voice shouted, “Arthur!”

Gwen!

Horrified, Arthur jerked toward the direction of her voice—to freeze, staring in gaping astonishment. Even Mordred gasped.

His queen was mounted on a horse of fire.

Flames leaped and licked around her, a cool, unearthly blue brighter than the moonlight, illuminating the desperation on her face as she rode. Flames danced along the great sword she held in one hand as her horse charged across the battlefield at a full gallop. Men dove out of her way, clearing a path for her with panicked howls.

Arthur had never seen such a blade. It was so long and broad he was surprised his wife could heft it. Then he remembered that hers was no longer a woman's strength—as she, Lance, Merlin, and half the court had been trying to tell him. Now he could see it, just as he finally realized her strength was more than physical. She was charging through blood and gore and death—all the things he'd feared would haunt her—and all he saw in her eyes was a fiery determination to get to him. It was time for him to pull his head out of his arse and start to see her as a ruler in her own right.

“Arthur!” She hurled the sword at him like a spear.
“Excalibur
,
”
she told him in the Truebond.
“Her name is Excalibur.”

For a moment, it seemed everyone, foes and friends alike, watched the great blade's glittering flight through the moonlight. There was no way a woman could throw such a weapon so far. Hell, he doubted any man could do it. And yet the sword flew toward him in a high, flashing arc he knew had to be propelled by Gwen's magic.

Hands!
He needed hands. Arthur shifted to human and flung up his right arm, magically garbed again in his armor. As if guided by God's own hand, the hilt of the sword slapped into his gloved palm hard enough to sting.

Whereupon the weapon almost knocked him right off his feet. Not from the impact, but the sheer boiling force of the magic that infused the great blade.

Steadying himself, Arthur spun—right into Mordred's attack. Excalibur struck the bastard's sword in midarc, cutting it in two like a sheet of parchment. The rebel jerked back just enough, and what should have been a mortal blow instead caught his throat with its razor point instead of the edge. He went down in an arcing spray of blood.

For a moment, Arthur felt a bitter relief as he looked down at the sprawled body, thinking his bastard was dead at last.

That hope died as Mordred grabbed his throat with both hands, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Arthur silently cursed, tensing for another attack. Arthur was bitterly aware of the way the scene echoed his previous defeat of his son all those months ago. This time, though, there would be no mercy for the treacherous little fuck. He'd learned his lesson.

Gwen slid her burning mare to a halt on the hilltop, now almost deserted save for Arthur, Mordred, Lance, and the dead. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, but Lance is hurt,” he snapped. “See what you can do for him.” Then he turned to deal with the bastard he'd only wounded.

Again.

Arthur was not surprised to see Mordred had once more shed his helm, normally something no knight with any sense would willingly do. Wounded, but with all the cunning of a viper, Mordred wanted his father to see his lying eyes.

Not this time, boy
. Arthur braced his booted feet apart and steeled himself. Ordinarily, he'd offer quarter; killing a wounded man like this was a little too close to murder. But quarter demanded an opponent willing to abide by the rule of honor, and Mordred had demonstrated no such rule bound him.

Not honor, love, or loyalty. There's nothing in him but the scheming ambition to steal a kingdom he'd done nothing to build.

His son stared up at him, both hands fruitlessly gripping his throat. Blood streamed from between his fingers—but, curse it, not enough to kill him. Arthur was going to have to finish him off. The king raised Excalibur, preparing to drive it downward and spit the traitor like a chicken.

“No, Father!” Mordred pleaded in a cracked, broken voice. “Please, I beg your forgiveness!” Tears tracked streaks in the battle dust caking his face.

A dark-haired boy laughed as his father tickled him into kicking squeals, green eyes crinkled in merriment
. The memory stabbed Arthur like a dirk in the ribs, a bitter, grinding pain that made him ache all the way to the soul.

He met his son's gaze with an emotionless stare. Mordred was not the only one who could act as well as any traveling player. “I can smell your traitor's deception hanging over you like the reek of shit. Even if I couldn't, I'm not stupid enough to believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth.” Coldly, Arthur eyed his bastard, ignoring the ache in his chest. “When did my son die? When did you kill my child?”

Mordred's face twisted in thwarted rage. “
You
killed him, Father! You killed him with your endless old-man droning about honor and duty!” Surging upward like a striking snake, he grabbed a sword from some dead man's hand and drove it at his father's groin in a murderous blur of steel and fury.

Arthur twisted aside and ran him through.

Excalibur sliced through Mordred's chain mail hauberk in one smooth stroke, pinning him in the mud. He dropped his sword, gasping, eyes wide and surprised as he stared at the great blade in his heart. His gaze went fixed, and he slumped back into the muck.

Dead.

The king jerked Excalibur from Mordred's chest, flicked off the blood with a practiced snap, and slid it into the empty scabbard at his hip. The blade was inches too long for it; the scabbard had been made for a shorter sword, and the weapon's width split the leather. He'd have to have the armorer make a new one. Arthur turned away, leaving Mordred dead and staring in the mud.
Damned if I'll grieve.

In midstep, he stopped to stare in shock. His numb agony burst into flaming rage.

Lancelot lay with his dark head in his wife's lap, drinking from her wrist.

A
rthur's hand curled around Excalibur's hilt, prepared to draw it. Prepared for one insane moment to kill them both, even knowing that because of the Truebond, he'd share Gwen's death. Just then, that was exactly the way he wanted it.

She looked up at him, her lovely face serene in the light of the moon. Showing no fear, though she knew full well what he could do—what he had done just now to his own child.

Why am I surprised? Gwen has never been afraid of me, even when my own knights flinch.

“
I don't fear you because I know you, Arthur Pendragon,
”
she told him in the Truebond
. “Just as you know me.”

And he did. His rage drained away, his hand relaxing its grip on Excalibur's hilt. Had it not been for Merlin's spell and his own cowardly abandonment, he knew Gwen would never have betrayed him with Lancelot, just as Lancelot would never have betrayed his king and childhood friend.

Mordred had just demonstrated what it felt like to truly be betrayed by someone you loved. Gwen and Lancelot had never done that.

Blowing out a breath, Arthur frowned, again becoming aware that the cries of battle had become a shrieking chorus of “Demons!” and “Fiends of hell!”

The king scanned the battlefield from his hilltop vantage point, and didn't much like what he saw. “
That's going to be a problem
,” he told Gwen in the Truebond.
“The Pope's going to excommunicate me. Again.”

“But he may mean it this time
,” Gwen thought, and he knew it was not something she'd intended to share with him.

He started to reply, but a cold, pure voice interrupted, ringing across the battlefield like cathedral bells. “Hold! Hold and heed me, thou faithless traitors to thy anointed king!”

Startled, Gwen and Arthur glanced around to see the voice's cry. The fleeing mob halted in their tracks to stare in a terror that quickly turned to wonder.

The angel's great wings spread wide as her robes whipped in the wind of her glowing horse's passage. Her halo blazed with a radiance that seared tearing eyes. “Heed me!” she thundered as her shining horse reared, dancing on powerful hind legs. “Heed me, oath-breakers and traitors! You dare make war on Arthur Pendragon, anointed of the Lord, thy God! You imperil your souls!”

Men cried out, falling to their knees in fear and wonder.

Arthur, gooseflesh spilling across his skin, damned near joined them. Could the Lord have actually chosen him in truth . . . ?

“
It's Morgana, Arthur
,” Gwen told him in the Truebond.

He blinked and looked again, finally seeing the healer's features in the angel's blinding face.
“It's a trick. She's playing on their belief.”
He recoiled, years of priestly exhortations ringing in his ears.
“Blasphemy . . .”

“Perhaps, but if it saves Britain from war with the Pope, it's worth the price.”

“Aye.”
He snorted.
“I suppose I'll just have to spend the rest of the night on my face on the cold chapel floor praying for forgiveness
.
”

“
Or perhaps God really does favor us
,” Gwen told him in their bond.
“You just overcame the worst odds seen in combat in hundreds of years. Perhaps God's hand truly is upon us
.
”

Mounted on her glowing horse, Morgana made sure the rebels quit the field, the Knights of the Round Table providing steely encouragement to speed any stragglers along. Playing her role to the hilt, the Druid “angel” adjured them to pray for forgiveness for their treasonous sins. Hopefully all that prayer would keep the lot of them from considering rebellion for a very long time.

Lancelot groaned.

Arthur turned to watch as his friend realized whose lap lay beneath his head. Reddening, the champion scrambled to his feet, giving Gwen an uncharacteristically awkward bob of the head. “Thank you, my queen.”

“You're welcome,” Guinevere said, her tone desert dry.

Rolling his shoulders, Lance winced. “Sweet, infant Jesu, I felt like one of the queen's pincushions.”

“And well, you should,” Arthur told him tartly. “That was a fool's move—though I'd be dead now without it.” Reaching out a hand, he grabbed his champion's forearm in a warrior's grip. “Thank you, my Lord Lancelot.”

Lance gave him a tired smile. “Well, somebody has to run the country.” His gaze flicked toward Gwen, and just as quickly away again. Making a show of scanning the mud, he spotted his sword and shield and picked them up, then flicked each to rid them of clinging mud and gore. “I'd best go help the others encourage the rebels' retreat.” Turning, he strode off down the hill.

•   •   •

G
wen watched Arthur watch his champion walk away. The king's back was straight, his shoulders unbowed, but she could almost feel his pain. He'd won a great victory—
they
had won a great victory—but Arthur would do no celebrating.

He'd had to kill his son.

Never mind that it had been necessary. Never mind that Mordred had given him no choice, and would have killed him given the chance. Whether he wanted to or not, Arthur needed to mourn, even if it was only for the son Mordred had never been.

She knew that, though he'd blocked the Truebond again, as if to give himself privacy to grieve. Fortunately, there were ways for a woman to comfort her husband even without a magical mental link. Stepping up behind Arthur, Gwen slid her arms around him from behind. With a deep sigh, he turned in her arms and drew her close.

The smell of blood and death and battle sweat had ceased to bother Gwen almost two decades before; she scarcely noticed them now. Instead she stood on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his.

For a moment his lips felt sealed and cool against hers. Then he dragged her hard against his powerful body, and his mouth crushed over hers in fierce, anguished need. Gwen gave herself up to him, kissing him back with all the passion she had in her, opening herself in the Truebond, should he reach for the comfort she offered. Arching her breasts against his chest, she pressed close until there wasn't room for so much as an eyelash between them.

“
We won, Gwen
,” he told her in the Truebond.
“We won . . .”

Though to his heart, Gwen knew, it felt more like a defeat.

•   •   •

T
hey gathered on the hilltop—Arthur and his knights, Gwen and her ladies. The witches had burned the bodies of their fallen enemies with a spell that poured across the battlefield, wiping away all traces of blood and death.

The people of Camlann would be able to plant wheat in the spring.

Gwen watched Arthur with a wife's concern. He listened with apparent attention as Kay gave his report. The rebel lords were dead to a man, as were Varn and his lieutenants. There would be no more trouble from that quarter, particularly given Morgana's trick. Gwen suspected Kay did not entirely approve, but he wasn't about to argue with her success.

The Knights of the Round Table had made sure Arthur's loyalist lords had survived the battle, though more than one had suffered injuries that needed the healer's attention.

Now all that was left was mopping up, a routine familiar from countless other battles. Arthur would reward his loyal lords with the fiefdoms of the traitors, while granting knighthoods to those warriors whose bravery and service had been outstanding. Kay being Kay, he'd already compiled a list of names for the king's consideration.

Though Arthur seemed to be listening closely, Gwen sensed his seneschal had only half his attention. Opening herself in the Truebond, she could feel the weariness dragging at him. It was more than physical exhaustion; it was a deep ache of the soul.

And she had no idea what to do about it.

Glancing around the hilltop, Gwen saw she was not the only one paying close attention to one of the Knights of the Round Table. All of her ladies seemed intent on one or the other of them, cleaning the blood and sweat from weary Magi with a spell, or offering a cup of mead and the implied promise of a more intimate drink when they returned to Camelot.

She could see the deeper emotions that tied the Knights to the ladies, the bonds of more than blood that would potentially form over the years. If they were fortunate, perhaps some of them would find what she and Arthur had found.

The only exception to the mood of sensuality, it seemed, was Lancelot. He stood to one side, watching the byplay between the couples with a cynical twist to his mouth.

It struck Gwen yet again that she had done damage to the knight that would not easily heal. Unfortunately, she had done all she could; the rest was up to Lance himself.

But as she watched, Morgana approached him. The healer laid a hand on the side of his face and sent a wave of magic across his skin, wiping away the blood, sweat, and dirt of his struggle to protect his king. She gave him a smile and offered him a cup of mead. He accepted it and drank, eyeing her with a familiar hunger. Yet the sense of distance lingered.
There'll be no bards singing sweet songs about that pair.

Still, Gwen was comforted that her friends would have each other tonight at least.

Morgana turned to create a gate with a gesture, then took Lancelot's hand to draw him through it.

“Let's go, my love,” Gwen told Arthur, as she conjured her own gate. She knew just where they needed to go—and it wasn't the fortress.

•   •   •

T
his
, Arthur thought as he stepped through Gwen's mystical doorway,
is definitely not Camelot.

Magic surrounded him, foaming over his skin, invigorating him when it had been all he could do to walk when he'd entered her gate. Arthur took a deep breath, feeling like a drowning man who had suddenly been granted a deep, life-giving breath. Strength flooded him, lifting the mood of despair that had almost sucked him down.

He glanced around. It was dark here, so much so even his normally acute night vision could make nothing out.

Gwen gestured. A fireball appeared in the air, shedding a golden glow over the soaring quartz walls of some kind of cave. The faceted stone threw back a thousand glittering points of reflection, illuminating the lake that dominated the cavern. A wide stone circle occupied its center, while a waterfall pattered at its other end.

God, Arthur longed to plunge under that inviting flow. “Where are we?”

His wife smiled, looking around the cavern in pleasure. “Nimue called it the Mageverse.”

As she went on to describe Excalibur's creation, Arthur remembered the pain he'd felt in the Truebond about the same time.
She paid the magical price to get me that weapon, just when I needed it so badly
.

As she spoke, Gwen began to play squire as she so often did after a battle, first pulling off his helm and gauntlets before reaching for the sword belt's knot. He stopped her with a gesture.

And drew Excalibur.

Driven by some deeper impulse he didn't really understand, Arthur strode to one of the great boulders that lined the cavern. Lifting the sword, he plunged it downward, though he half feared the blade would break at as it slammed into the rock. Instead, the enchanted steel bit into the crystal as if sinking into a ripe melon—and began to glow even brighter, as if it was drinking in the magic of the stone.

Arthur studied it with satisfaction. “Better than a torch.”

“What gave you that idea?” Gwen moved to join him.

Though in his human days, he'd have needed help to shrug out of the heavy chain mail hauberk, now he dragged it off over his head as if it weighed no more than a silk tunic. “Well, you did say it was unbreakable.”

“Yes, but how did you know it would glow?”

Arthur hesitated, before giving her a sheepish shrug. “I don't know. Somehow I just . . . knew. As if it told me, though I realize that sounds like bollocks.”

“Arthur, it's a magic sword. Who knows what it can do?” She gave him that cheeky grin. “Now, do you mean to get naked or not?”

Laughing, yet intensely aware of her admiring gaze, he pulled off the padded jacket, the boots, and the britches.

For a long moment, she did nothing, said nothing. Simply stared at his naked body while his cock rose under her passionate gaze. Not to mention the sight of her wearing that chain mail hauberk.

There was something about Gwen in armor that made him want to strip her out of it . . . and fuck until they both went blind.

Then he took a deep breath—and almost gagged at his own reek. God knew what had been in that mud. And yet she stood there and looked at him with huge pupils eating the light. He wondered what she was thinking. Though he had no desire to spill his dark mood on to her, Arthur opened himself in the Truebond. What he found in her mind made his heart beat faster.

Filthy or not, she loved the look of him. Reaching out, Gwen traced her fingers over the contours of his torso, the thick ripple of muscle and the jut of bone. Her gaze roamed his body, admiring and hungry.

She wanted him
. That alone was enough to make his cock thrust at her in silent demand.

Gwen began to undress.

She did it slowly, untying her belt and dropping it to the stone, then reaching for the hem of her hauberk and pulling it off by seductive inches before tossing it aside. It rang as it hit the stone floor with a heavy thump. The padded jacket was next; she drew that off even more slowly, revealing her slim, glorious body one delicate inch at a time. The shins, the knees, the thighs. By the time she reached her sex, he was as hard as Excalibur's blade.

Gwen smiled at him, Eve with an apple in her hand, and pulled the jacket higher, exposing her soft stomach, narrow waist . . . and finally, her breasts, full, pale, and round, with deliciously jutting nipples.