Enchanted Guardian. Sharon Ashwood
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“Prince Mordred enjoyed torture. For a moment, I remembered what it was to hate and now the Queen of Faery wants my head on a spike for betraying her son. So yes, I had an instant of caring. It will probably mean my death.”
Clearly troubled, he considered her for a long moment. “That’s why LaFaye sent Lightborn? Vengeance?”
“Yes.” Nim leaned against the desk, glad of the support of its heavy oak. The nausea that had plagued her earlier roared back with redoubled force. “I knew it was coming and planned to vanish. If I’d been quicker about it, you and I would never have met.”
The silence that followed pushed at her like a physical force. “You ran last night,” he finally said. “I could have helped you.”
“No,” she said again. “I didn’t stay the lonely fae woman you met at the edge of the lake. I don’t need you.” More to the point, she couldn’t depend on him. One day he’d leave again and the lack of a soul wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t survive it.
“Nimueh.” He reached for her, but she stepped back out of reach.
“Please go,” she said. “This discussion is pointless.”
A tiny claw seemed to catch at her voice, but not so much that the words sounded anything but cool reason. Confusion crossed Lancelot’s face, but it quickly froze into a mask she knew too well. She’d finally managed to push him away.
“Do you not trust me?” he asked, his voice gone hard.
“You would never betray me. It’s not in your nature,” she said, and then remembered Guinevere. There had been plenty of rumors about Lancelot and the queen. “I mean, you wouldn’t turn me over to LaFaye.”
The lines around his mouth deepened as if he’d read her thoughts. With a muttered curse, he turned and stalked to the door. Nim sagged against the bookcase, watching his broad, strong back. Unfamiliar tension crawled through her chest until she could not breathe. Lancelot had always pushed her to impossible places, good and bad.
He’d just reached for the handle when the door swung open from the other side.
* * *
In a temper, Dulac barely jerked to a stop before he mowed the newcomer down. The bride from the wedding stood in the doorway, wearing an expression no newlywed woman should ever wear. With a muttered apology, Dulac stepped aside. It spoiled his grand exit, but something had happened and intuition told him he needed to know what that was.
The bride glanced up at Lancelot, her blue eyes growing large before her gaze shifted to Nimueh. “I need to talk to you.”
“Antonia,” Nim said, a faint edge of surprise in her voice. “You should be leaving on your honeymoon.”
“I can’t.” The words were grim.
Dulac watched Nimueh’s reaction, struggling to be objective about what he saw. As with the other fae, her expression was oddly flat. The flow of normal emotion created thousands of barely seen muscle movements—ones that he’d only noticed now that they were missing. And yet, as she gave a slow nod to the bride, urging her to continue, he was certain Nim cared. He hadn’t lied about feeling the heat in her kiss.
“I can’t leave.” The bride—Antonia, he reminded himself—paced the small workroom, her arms hugging her chest. “My cousin Susan didn’t come home last night.”
“I spoke to her,” Nimueh replied. “She was the redhead with the violin.”
Dulac searched his memory, but found nothing. He’d only had eyes for Nimueh.
“Are you sure she’s not staying with a friend?” Nimueh asked.
“Susan’s not like that.” Antonia shoved a hand through her riot of fiery curls. “Not that she’s a saint, but she’s not stupid. She would have left a message if she went home with someone. The police told us it’s too soon to say she’s missing.”
Nimueh cast a glance at Dulac. He could tell she was making up her mind what to do. She’d always been elusive, a scholar more likely to retreat than engage in life’s battles, but people had always turned to her for thoughtful advice. Evidently, that at least hadn’t changed.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked. Whatever she said, he was still hers to command.
When Nim frowned but didn’t answer, he turned to Antonia. “Do you have any idea where Susan might be?”
“I talked to her friends already. After the wedding reception, the diehards went to the White Hart.”
“The bar downtown?” Nim asked.
Dulac frowned, remembering what Gawain had said. There had been problems there before.
“Susan’s bandmates saw her in the parking lot around two o’clock,” Antonia continued. “One moment she was there and the next she was gone. Her car is still there. She’d left her violin on the hood. That’s how we know something’s wrong. She’d never leave her instrument sitting out where it might be stolen. It’s her baby and the most expensive thing she owns.”
Dulac drew closer, folding his arms. He was next to Nimueh now, their shoulders nearly touching. “Go on.”
“Right before that she was talking to a pair of strange-looking young men.”
“What do you mean by strange?” Nimueh asked.
“Tall, with their hair bleached white.”
He exchanged a glance with Nimueh. Fae. He did a quick calculation. Tramar would have been dead by that time. This was a different pair and from the sound of it, they were hunting. A young, pretty human female would be a choice target—sport and a soul to drink in one convenient package.
Nimueh’s fist clenched in the fabric of Dulac’s sleeve. “Please give us a moment,” she said to Antonia in a voice that brooked no argument. “Wait for us downstairs.”
Confusion settled over Antonia’s features, but she left, closing the door behind her. Nimueh turned to Dulac. “You were leaving.”
“I was.”
She pressed her hands to her temples, as if her head was aching. “You should have left this room before Antonia came to me just now. I should have left Carlyle before you found me here. I desire nothing more than to disappear from sight, and yet at every turn I find you back at my side.”
He folded his arms. “The forces of lore and magic seem to want us together.”
She gave him a dry look. “Either that or you simply will not go away.”
“Admit that you need my sword. I’m a knight and there is a job to do.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. “I need your help. These hunters hurt my people.”
The words might have confused someone from the twenty-first century, but Dulac understood. The Lady of the Lake protected those who served her, no matter what century it was. Anyone who touched her staff or their families was asking for swift retribution. Beneath the disguise she wore—so plain, so banal, so human—he could see the shining creature she’d been, the sorceress and lady of a white stone castle deep in the Forest Sauvage.
Time meant nothing in that moment, and he was again the penniless young knight who had adventured from France into the wilds of the Western Isles. He’d been nothing—desperate to make his name and restore the honor of his family. His armor had been so dented and mismatched he’d been called “the ill-made knight.”
One day, he’d gone deep into the Forest Sauvage and there he’d found a lake as still as glass and crowned with mist. He had stood on the shore, his old horse cropping the long, lush grass, when a silver boat had come soundlessly across the water, barely a ripple creasing its surface. And then he had beheld the Lady of the Lake, sitting in the prow and wrapped in a cloak of gray, her