“Corrupted souls?” I asked incredulously. “Have you lost your mind?”
Arthur tossed a sheet over my naked body. “Take the queen down to the dungeons and take herloveras well.”
“Arthur,” I tried, softening my voice as I stared at my husband as if I had never seen him before. Something was clearly very, very wrong with him. If I could just try to reach out and feel with my magic…
But then Arthur turned to me again and I saw a flash of something in his eyes, almost like recognition, before the blue depths glowed a purple color and his expression twisted into hate.
“I loathe a whore,” he spat as I was lifted to my feet by the men in green livery and barely given enough time to wrap the sheetaround myself before I was dragged from the room and away from my husband who clearly was under some sort of magic spell.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The men were in good spirits as we rode away from the castle, chatting amongst themselves as I stared off into the horizon.
Something deep in my chest felt off about the entire affair. As we drew closer the same buzzing sensation I always felt when a portent was about to become true grew more and more steady as we found the river and began to follow it in the direction in which the Saxons had last been spotted.
“Merlin, are you well?” Arthur asked as he pulled his stallion, Llamarei, up beside my own horse. The alpha seemed unperturbed by the events unfolding before us—far more comfortable than he usually was before riding into battle.
“I…” I trailed off, unsure of what to say. Normally when I felt such a buzzing, I knew what event the gods were trying to steer me to focus towards. But I had no inkling of what they wantedme to experience here. Never before had I seen this stretch of river, nor had I seen any of the events leading up to it.
It was all very strange and I was used to being the strange thing—not the other way around.
In a way it felt as if we were riding blindly to a fate I could not understand.
“I am wary of this, Arthur,” I finally admitted to him as I stared off into the horizon. It was a beautiful day in Logres which provided a stark contrast to the potential battle that was about to occur. “It feels as if I am meant to know something, but I find myself in the dark.”
Arthur nodded as if he understood. “This has been foretold before,” he said mysteriously.
I frowned at him, wanting to ask what he had meant by that. I knew he had dreams at times of the future thanks to the touch of magic in his soul that allowed him to wieldExcalibur, but more often than not the king refused outright to speak of them.
“Does this have to do with your dreams?” I asked outright, feeling slightly offended that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me what to expect.
This must be how everyone else feels,a quiet voice in my head whispered, reminding me that I had done very much the same the night I had left the castle in a flurry to begin my attempts to pull an omega through time.
Arthur never responded to me, the tendon in his jaw tightening as he looked ahead to the horizon where the path began to veer upwards into the foothills that surrounded the territory of Camelot.
“Arthur?” I prodded, the buzzing in my chest growing with intensity as we neared.
“Promise me something, Merlin,” Arthur said suddenly, turning to face me as we approached what looked to be a gully with high stone walls on either side. Normally, Arthur wouldnever lead his men into such an obvious trap, but he made no move to stop his men and instead allowed Llamarei to continue on.
“Anything,” I told him seriously, my heart hammering in my chest as I wished that the gods had seen fit to show me what was about to occur so that I could be ready for it.
Arthur pulled Excalibur from its sheath, the sound echoing off of the stone surrounding us. “Protect Guinevere. Even if it is from me.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he had turned to the men following us. “It is an ambush!”
His bellow seemed to bring them from the sky as men began to rain down around us, their swords already drawn.
The sounds of battle began almost immediately as my horse grew spooked and forced me to either get off or be dragged along as it fled.
My feet hit the dirt and I was immediately surrounded by the cacophony.
It was more intense than any of the small skirmishes we had faced traveling back to Castle Camelot after Arthur and Guinevere’s weddings. Men surrounded us from all sides and it quickly became clear to me that it was not just the brown-liveried Saxons that were amongst our enemies.
The bright green dress of the King of Lothian was mixed in. We had been betrayed and much earlier than the gods had originally shown me.
Morgana was always supposed to turn on Arthur in a bid to take over his throne for her son, Mordred, but that happened much later.
Something was afoot here, but I did not know what.
