Royal Enchantment. Sharon Ashwood
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Once upon a time, King Arthur of Camelot made an alliance with the fae and the witches to keep the mortal realms safe for all the free peoples. The world back then was filled with peril, with dragons and ogres and much, much worse lurking in the dark places. The greatest danger came from the demons who roamed the earth, causing suffering wherever they went. With the help of the enchanter, Merlin the Wise, the allies waged war upon the demons and succeeded in casting them back into the abyss.
At least, that’s what Queen Guinevere was told. Stuck in the castle with her ladies-in-waiting, all she heard was gossip and rumors and thirdhand accounts of how mighty Sir So-and-So had been that day. As a royal princess, her value was measured by the children she’d bear, not the strength of her sword arm—and certainly not by anything she had to say.
So she missed how Merlin’s final battle spells had stripped the fae of their souls—and how the Faery people blamed Camelot for the disaster—until an enraged party of wounded fae burst into the castle threatening to crush humanity to dust. That’s when fear rose from the soles of Guinevere’s slippers, creeping up her body in chill waves of foreboding. Something had gone horribly wrong for her husband and his friends—but, as usual, Arthur had failed to send her word, and so there was nothing Guinevere could do.
In the end, it was Merlin who gave her a full account of the disaster. He came to her sitting room, dusty and disheveled from the road and with his dark face tight with worry. She set down her embroidery and stood, feeling as if she needed to be on her feet for whatever he had to say.
And then he told her. The fae would indeed carry out their threat against the mortal realms, but no one knew which day, year or even century their attack would come. So Merlin had put the king and his knights into an enchanted sleep and, when the fae returned, the heroes of Camelot would arise once more. As Merlin spoke, the mighty warriors of the Round Table were already stretched out upon empty tombs, trapped as effigies made of stone. In that form they would wait out the ages. They had sacrificed everything—fame, wealth and their very futures to stand guard over humankind.
But Guinevere had been left behind. Again.
“Is this where you saw the beast?” asked Arthur Pendragon, High King of the Britons, as he slowed the Chevy SUV into the gravel beside a remote highway.
“Yes, about a half hour’s walk off the road.” His passenger was the dark-haired Scottish knight, Sir Gawain. “That’s a wee bit close for comfort.”
They were miles from civilization, but both men knew that meant nothing. A determined monster could find a town and crush it in the matter of an afternoon. Arthur parked and got out, a cold drop of rain making him look up. The October sky was baggy with clouds, promising a downpour.
Sir Gawain slammed the passenger door and walked around the front of the vehicle to stand beside him. The two men gazed toward the wild landscape of the inlet, a forest of cedars to their backs. Arthur glimpsed a distant sliver of water crowned with the ghostly outline of hills. The raw beauty of the place only darkened his mood. “Let’s gear up.”
They pulled weapons from the back of the SUV—swords, guns and knives—and buckled them on. Once armed, Gawain loped toward the forest at a speed that said much about the urgency of their hunt. He’d shrugged a leather jacket over a fleece hoodie and looked more like a local than a knight of Camelot. On the whole, he’d adapted to the twenty-first century with enviable ease.
Arthur followed, his heavy-soled boots sinking into the soft loam. Unlike Gawain, he’d spent his entire life as a king or preparing to be one, and blending in hadn’t been a necessary skill. Until now, anyway. Waking up in the modern world had changed more things than he could count—but not his duty to guard the mortal realms.
As they crossed the swath of scruffy grass between the road and the trees, Arthur saw the tracks. He immediately dropped to one knee. “Blood and thunder,” he cursed softly. The print was enormous, as big as a platter with three clawed toes pointed forward and a fourth behind. “Not to ask the obvious question, but what is a dragon doing in Washington State?”
“What’s Camelot doing here?” Gawain countered with a shrug.
“Are you saying there’s a connection?”
Gawain didn’t answer, and Arthur didn’t blame him. Sometimes there was no easy way to tell enchantment from sheer bad luck. As a case in point, after Merlin had sent the Knights of the Round Table into an enchanted sleep, an entrepreneur had moved the church and its contents—knights included—to the small town of Carlyle, Washington, to form the central feature of the Medievaland Theme Park. Arthur had gone to sleep in the south of England and awakened nearly a thousand years later as part of a tourist attraction in the US of A. After that, a fire-breathing monster hardly surprised him.
Arthur rose, dusting grit and pine needles from his hands. “A dragon can’t cross into the mortal realms on its own. It doesn’t have that kind of magic.”
“Then it had help,” Gawain muttered. “I suspect that’s your connection.”
Arthur shifted uneasily, the wind catching at the long skirts of his heavy leather coat. “So do we have a new enemy or an old one we’ve overlooked?” There were too many choices.
Gawain grabbed his arm in a bruising grip. “There!” He pointed, his hand steady but his face losing color.
Arthur sucked in his breath as a ripple of movement stirred the undergrowth. He reached for the hilt of his sword, Excalibur, but his fingers froze as the beast reared from the shaggy treetops. He was forced to tip his head back, and then tip it more as he looked up into a nightmare. “Bloody hell.”
The dragon’s green head was long and narrow with extravagant whiskers. Huge topaz eyes flared with menace, the slitted pupils widened as the beast caught sight of the two men. The eager expression in that gaze reminded Arthur of a cat spotting a wounded bird.
“I told you it was big,” said Gawain helpfully.
Arthur’s thoughts jammed like a rusted crossbow. The dragon was close enough that he could make out its scent—an odd mix of musk and cinders. Through the screen of trees, he could see a bony ridge of spikes descending from its humped back onto a long muscular tail that twitched with impatience. Or hunger.
“Ideas?” Gawain asked under his breath.
Arthur repressed a desperate urge to run. “Be charming. Maybe it will listen to reason.”
Gawain gave a strangled curse.
“Hello, mortal fleas,” the dragon boomed, its deep voice resonant with unpleasant