Her thoughts wandered as if having a will of their own, to the memory of another child. Younger. Wrapped in a blanket and set in a basket. Genevra had wept so much she was sure she would wither and die as she gave up her children…her babies! She never saw them again. She hadn’t remembered them.
She shook her head. What was she thinking? Was she possessed by some kind of devil?
Camelee.They had named her Camelee hoping that should one of them meet her, her name might pull up a memory of Camelot. It hadn’t. She had no idea who Camelot was. She remembered the name though. These tattered memories invaded her mind, and she was completely powerless to stop them.
Camelee. Her daughter. Her baby. She had left her. It had been raining. Cars’ tires crunched over wet blacktop—cars? She, and a faceless man had dropped the baby off at an orphanage in a basket with a blanket and a piece of paper with her name on it. Camelee Pendrey.
Genevra stood from her chair. She couldn’t sit. Where was her daughter? Who was Camelee’s father? Was she mad?
She saw Odger and pulled him close by his sleeve. “Where is the chief?”
“He has gone off to find his servant.”
“She is more than a slave,” she told him.She is a princess.
Genevra shook. Her blood felt frozen. How could her daughter be a princess? That would make her a queen. She would have laughed, but she felt this was real…somehow. “We have to find them.”
“That is what the chief is trying to do.”
She spotted Fin returning with some of the men. What was he doing back here? She ran to him. He would help. They were good friends. “Fin why have your returned already? What have you found?”
“Him,” Fin stated and tilted his head to a body draped over a horse. It was Alric.
“Oh, Alric!” she cried and turned back to Fin. “Is he dead?” She didn’t want to know the answer. Had he been with Camelee and Hild?
“No,” he told her, relieving her. “But he’s close. He needs attention. Where should I bring him?”
“To my room!” She clapped her hands together to hurry the men lifting him. “Softly! Gently!” she demanded at the same time.
“Is there no sign of Camelee or Hild?” she asked Fin as they hurried to her chambers.
“Not yet,” Fin answered. He echoed the words, this time more somberly. “Not yet. Wolf rode north toward Mercia, but my men found Alric in a forest three leagues south of here.”
“So, he is likely going the wrong way,” she surmised with a sinking heart.
“Likely,” Fin agreed. “We must get Alric to talk to me. Tell me what he knows, so I know which way to go to get word to my brother.”
“Aye. You are correct,’ she told him. There was no time to worry about her sanity now. She had to save Alric. She cared for the boy. She knew Camelee did, too.
Camelee.
She didn’t want a mother. She had made that very clear from the beginning. She’d been adopted—Genevra had set the babe down in her basket and left her at the orphanage. Left her to be raised by people who did not show their love for her, people who had abandoned her to her nannies. Genevra’s decision that day ruined Camelee’s life and crushed her heart under the weight of mistrust.
What about Michael?
How could Genevra tell her—tell her what? That she was having dreams while she was awake? That those dreams were about her being Camelee’s mother? But how could she be her mother when they were born a thousand years apart? But…the basket, the orphanage, the memory ofcarsthat moved around her on four wheels and with no horses were not a part of this eleventh-century world.
“Gen, are you ill?”
She blinked up at Fin—no, it was another man. He was handsome, with dark lush waves falling around his beautiful blue eyes. But he was faceless. He called her Guin.
“Genevra?” Fin reached out and gave her a little shake. “Are you ill? Hurt?”
“No. No, forgive me,” she reassured him and hurried forward to catch up with the men carrying Alric to her room. She forbade herself to think on anything but what Alric needed. She hovered over him while they lay him in Wolf’s bed.
She was no doctor but—doctor? What a strange word to come into her head.
Upon careful examination, she discovered that Alric had been shot with an arrow in his side and had, at some point, pulled the arrow out. He had also been stabbed twice. Both times in his legs.
