I looked to Lancelot who was kneeling in front of the royals, still shirtless as he stared at me with desperate eyes.
He had woken up part of the way through being dragged out of the dungeons and had tried to fight, but all it took was one fist to his wounded back and the alpha’s legs had crumbled beneath him.
“Guinevere!” he bellowed once more, pulling against the guards who flanked him on either side.
I could feel the sheer level of his emotions through our freshly minted bond and it made a lump rise in my throat.
The typically broody alpha seemed to be feeling every emotion under the sun and I just wished I had been able to experience itmore. Underneath his rough exterior the alpha seemed to bleed with it all in a dizzying array.
I wanted to call out to him, to tell him everything would be okay, but I wasn’t sure it would be.
The sun was high in the sky above our heads now and Bedivere and Gawain should have returned with reinforcements long ago.
My execution was moments away and there was neither hide nor hair of my other alphas and the only thing I could feel down their end of the bond was a sense of hurried panic, telling me they were on their way but they may not make it in time.
Arthur stood to address the crowd.
“Mywife,” he began, his voice carrying, though it was not lost on me that Morgana’s lips seemed to be moving right along with his. It was like Arthur was a marionette and Morgana was holding all of the strings as his puppetmaster. “Has chosen to break our most sacred covenant.”
A chorus of boos that were far too in-sync to be normal filled my ears, sending a chill down my spine.
Why was Morgana going this far for what amounted to theater? There was no one here who was not under her spell.
I was just grateful she at least saw fit to give me a linen shift to cover myself with before they dragged me in front of so many people. At least I would die with some of my dignity still intact.
My heat seemed to have abated for now, my skin not feeling quite so itchy or hot. However, I was sure that was about to change as I watched Arthur grab a torch off of the metal holder it had been sitting in.
“And what do we do to those that sin in our hallowed halls?” he boomed.
“Burn them!” the crowd chanted, sounding more like a choir than individual voices. “Burn them, burn them, burn them!”
Morgana lifted a hand and the guards next to Lancelot pulled him up onto his feet and dragged him to my pyre.
He struggled against him as they tied him up behind me so that we were back-to-back as Arthur approached with the torch.
“Lancelot,” I said, wishing I could see his face. “I’m sosorry.”
My words hitched on a sob as Arthur slowly approached, looking nothing like the man I had fallen in love with and the crowd continued to chant.
“Do not apologize,” he said fiercely, his voice tight with emotion as his hands reached around the post to hold onto mine. “For I do not regret even a moment of our time together.”
“But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. This is allwrong!” I wailed, hoping my desperate cries would somehow reach my husband.
Arthur came to stand in front of me and I stared into his expression. I saw the hint of something deep in his eyes. Had that been panic? Or just a trick of the light?
“Arthur, please,” I said, my voice just above a whisper. “I love you. We all do. Don’t do this, don’t let her win.”
Another flicker, Arthur’s empty expression flinching for just a moment before he lifted the hand that was carrying the torch and let go of it finger-by-finger until it tumbled down onto the packed dry grass at the base of what was about to become a funeral pyre for me and Lancelot.
The heat was almost immediate as the timber caught on fire.
“Arthur!” I called after him as he turned on his heel and began to walk back in the direction of where Morgana and Mordred were sitting.
“Close your eyes, Guinevere,” Lancelot told me, his fingers squeezing mine tight as he began to cough.
Gray smoke filled my vision as the flames continued to lick higher and higher. I wanted so desperately to put the fire out and if not for the infernal collar around my neck I would have.
Squeezing my eyes shut from the world, I thought about my mom and the night that I had looked at her portrait with Arthur and I’d joked that he was going to get me burned at the stake.
