“Uf! Uf!” Like a little drop from heaven sent to save him, Hild barreled into the hall with two other little girls. When she saw him and Genevra, she squealed with glee and ran into his arms first.
“Uf, you come back!”
He held her and closed his eyes. She’d lost her mother…twice. He couldn’t let her lose anyone else.
The two women watched, one with a smile curving her mouth, the other, wide-eyed, and looking like some sort of faerie with her hair cascading around her face.
“Aye, my lady. I told you, I will always come back.”
He smiled and kissed her head before he let her down to run to Genevra. He heard a sniffle and looked down to see Camelee wiping her eyes and smiling at her mother.
“Uf,” one of the women called out.
“Wolf,” he corrected and felt a glint of hope course through him when they both turned to Hild and smiled warmly at her.
“Explainhowyou tore through time.”
“I was fighting Saxons and felt my blade rip through something other than flesh. I swung again and again, seeing nothing but white fog or smoke, thinking of nothing but Camelee, and still I hacked my way through.”
Their dainty hands trembled. One of them covered her mouth and whispered to the other, whom Wolf suspected by now, was her sister.
“Queen Guinevere, please remove the children,” the other one asked.
“May I ask why?” the queen requested, squaring her shoulders.
“We must test his power.”
Test? Power? Wolf turned to Camelee, but she had no idea what was happening either.
He was grateful that they had thought of Hild and the other two girls and sent them way first. If they meant to harm him, they would have used his weakness against him. He would not have fought back in front of Hild.
When the children were gone, he turned to the sisters and drew his blade. They looked at each other. The king and Merlin looked wary and a little afraid.
Everyone else was still, breathless, waiting for what was to come. Camelee stepped out of the way.
The two women raised their hands and began a low chant.
Magic. He couldn’t fight magic.
As if reading his mind, the sisters turned their hands toward Camelee. The king leaped forward and was stopped with one swipe of a sister’s hand in his direction.
All right then, they did indeed try for his weakness. The air around their hands began to sparkle and billow outward toward Camelee. The first vaporous finger touched Camelee and wound around her wrists.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Wolf watched the next five fingers coming at her and put all his strength into a swipe of his blade. He felt the thickened, sparkling air and swung at it again. The vapors dropped to the floor and faded away.
The sisters gasped and sent more, but his blade sliced through all of them.
They stopped, released Camelee and the king with Wolf’s permission, and stared at him.
“I am Nimue of the Nine Sisters of Avalon,” said the short-haired woman. “This is Viviane, one of my sisters. Who are you?”
“Chief Ulf Kristiansen of the north, High Commander of King Cnut.”
“It is foretold,” Viviane told him and the rest, “a man would come and be able to leave and return at will, without using magic. His power comes from the Creator. His purpose is to stop others from changing the timeline from Avalon.”
“I know nothing about any of that,” he told them. “I came for her alone.”
