Frida fell and broke away. Camelee stopped and tried to pull her up but she cried out. Her ankle had snapped.
“Go!” Frida screamed, pushing her and Hild away. “Take her and run!”
Camelee did just that. She turned, took a step, and entered a hall, cut from faceted glass…maybe diamonds. Hild was screaming in her arms, but not because they had enteredsomeplace else.
“Mumma! Mumma!”
Camelee’s heart broke for her.
“Let us take her,” said a beautiful woman who appeared by her side. “We will comfort her.”
“No!” Camelee pulled back. “I will. She’s mine.”
The woman smiled at a handsome man sitting in a large, glass chair at the front of the grand hall. “She has picked up much from them already.”
“Mumma!” Hild wailed.
Camelee looked around. “Where are we? How did we get here? There were men about to…her mother…”
“They are gone,” said the woman.
“Gone where?” Was everyone from back there gone? What about Wolf and Genevra? “Where are they!” she shouted. Her voice blended with Hild’s, echoing in the cavernous hall.
The woman placed her hand on Camelee’s arm and patted it. “There now, little one. All will be well.”
Camelee and Hild stopped crying.
“What did you do?” Camelee asked her.
The woman looked familiar. She had jet black hair, striped with gray, that draped her shoulders and fell to her waist. It was held away from her fathomless, violet eyes by a bronze circlet around her brow.
“I comforted you,” the woman replied.
“Who are you?”
“I am called Viviane. That man is Arthur, King of Camelot, and your father.”
Her what? Camelee blinked and felt laughter bubbling up inside. “I don’t know what you did to me, Lady, but this is serious stuff.” She looked down at Hild, calm and quiet in her arms. “How do you know you didn’t give her too much?”
Viviane smiled and for a minute Camelee thought light came from her and bounced off the glass.
“Daughter.”
Camelee turned and looked at the man from the chair. Now, he was standing in front of her. King Arthur. He was tall and very handsome with gray hair at his temples and dark everywhere else.
“Hiding is over,” he said quietly, his eyes warm with tenderness mixed with warning. “She is loose. We must band together.”
“What are you talking about? Where are my friends?”
“They are in their time. Nothing has changed for them, save that you are no longer there.”
She thought of Wolf. He loved her. “Then everything has changed for one of them. What is happening? Will they remember me?”
“Yes. I cannot tamper with memories again.”
“Right,” Camelee scoffed. “King Arthur is fictional. Am I dreaming you?”
He shook his head slowly. “I am real, so is Morgan, an evil sorceress bent on destroying me and taking away everyone I love.”
