“Morgan Le Fey?” Camelee asked, recalling the tales.
“She is known by many names.”
First the Vikings, now King Arthur? How much crazier could this get? “All right, well, I’ve heard enough. I want to go back now.”
The man in front of her gave her a solemn look. “You cannot go back. Neither to the eleventh century nor to the twenty-first. I’m sorry, Daughter.”
“Stop calling me that!” she hissed at him in an effort not to scream and frighten Hild. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I’m no longer participating. I’m not your daughter, and if I thought for one moment that you were my biological father, I’d slap you in your face.”
“Child, he is the king,” Viviane reminded her softly.
“I’m not a child. Please. Enough is enough. It’s cruel to pretend to be my father.”
“I’m not pretending,” he told her. “Your mother, who I intend to find, is Queen Guinevere. You have a brother named—”
“Stop!” Camelee cried out. She felt someone taking Hild out of her arms. She couldn’t do anything to stop it. She felt lightheaded. She swooned forward and fainted in the king’s strong arms.
*
She didn’t wakeup again until the next morning. When she did, she was in a bed in a private room. There was another woman with her, smiling like a painting of some beautiful enchantress come to life.
“I am Nimue.”
“Where am I?”
“Avalon.”
Camelee’s heart pounded. Avalon wasn’t real. That meant none of this was real. She couldn’t help it that her first concern was Wolf. Was he real? Would she ever see him again?
“He is real,” Nimue told her, leaning in. “He is rather wild though. He might change a bit of history with all the Saxons he is killing.
“I want to go back to him. Please.”
Nimue stared at her with wide leaf-green eyes. She appeared to be genuinely surprised. “Truly? You wish to go back to him?”
Camelee opened her mouth but then paused.
“You hesitate,” Nimue pointed out.
“No.”
“You did. You hesitated. But even if you didn’t, we cannot send you back. Too much has already changed.”
“Then bring him to me!”
“It does not operate that way.”
“Then how does it operate?” Camelee demanded. “And where is Hild?”
“She is with the other children in the apple grove. She is a wondrous child!” Nimue’s lips curled into a smile.
“I want her with me. I don’t know you people. You took her without my consent.”
Nimue’s smile faded. “We would never harm her.”
“That’s nice to hear but like I said, I don’t know any of you.”
Nimue tilted her head at her as if she were trying to read Camelee. “She is not your own child, yet you protect her as if she is.”
