Holding outExcalibur, I waited for him to take it before giving him a swift bow that I felt Gawain mimic at my side.
“Looks good,” Arthur complimented gruffly as he examined the blade. After nearly fifteen years as king he was finally able to put on the mask in public. We had been practically raised together, but just like Sir Kay, his foster-brother, we were still his knights and he was still our lord and in public spaces such as this that was all we were. “Bedivere, Gawain, take a turn around the grounds with me.”
Leodegrance and his steward moved away to continue their plans, giving us as much privacy as we could manage in a castle that was not our own.
To my surprise, Lancelot was waiting outside for us, leaning against the wide stone doorway that led out into the expansive castle grounds. To no one’s surprise, he was still wearing his typically grave expression.
While I hadn’t seen much of the strange omega princess who had appeared out of thin air, I had seen even less than Arthur’sright hand. The man had made his presence scarce—most likely in an attempt to avoid his father’s machinations.
It was no secret that King Ban desired Arthur’s throne, even if the only path to it was through his young daughter.
“Look, Bedivere,” Gawain said, giving my sleeve a cheeky tug. “It seems as if this castle’s specter has finally come out—and during midday no less! We must shield him before the sun withers him away completely!”
Lancelot, as always, was not amused by Gawain’s antics.
“I called on him,” Arthur told us, giving Lancelot a nod before he started off on the gravel path that lined the grounds, stopping just before the dense forest.
On the south side of the grounds, the lake that Carmeliad shared with Camelot glittered in the sunlight. Lohegal had been right. The lake would be the perfect backdrop for Arthur’s nuptials. Bards would be writing songs about their wedding for years to come—the king of kings and his blushing bride—without any inkling of what had occurred behind it all, including the meddling of gods.
“The wedding will take place in two days,” Arthur finally began after we’d walked in silence for what seemed like forever. “We will return to Camelot the day after. I received a message from Kay and Andrivete this morning, the Saxons have been moving in the hills and I worry they will try to attack one of the villages in the glens surrounding Camelot.”
“They would be foolish to attempt that knowing you are not far,” I murmured, mostly to myself. News of Arthur’s bridal competition had already spread far and there would be no doubt that, by the end of the fortnight, all of Logres would know that he had taken a bride and who that bride was.
That made Princess Guinevere a target, a fact that made my long-dormant alpha instincts revolt in a protective horror.
“I can ride back to Camelot immediately,” Lancelot offered and it was clear that he was itching for a chance to leave the castle as quickly as possible, but Arthur shook his head before he could finish.
“No, I need you to remain here as the princess’ bodyguard.”
“Me?” Lancelot asked incredulously, glancing over at me as if I could step in between him and the command.
“Yes,” Arthur told him, though he looked reluctant to say it at all. “You and Bedivere.”
Surprise filled me with his words. “What protection could I provide the princess?”
“None,” Arthur said, pausing as I flinched away from the brutality of his honesty, “but only you can help prepare her for the role she must take. She needs an advisor—and if Merlin has his way she will need you more than that.”
“Are you just going to allow the wizard to rule your life, your majesty?” Lancelot asked incredulously, his dark brows drawing together with confusion as he dropped all pretenses of his dislike for his place in this situation.
Arthur leveled his icy gaze in the other alpha’s direction. “I have been having dreams again.”
That made us all pause.
All of us but Gawain.
“Dreams?” Gawain asked, being the only one not privy to this long-kept secret. “What sorts of dreams?”
Lancelot did not seem as if he was going to answer the younger knight’s question, leaving it to me as always to bridge the gap for him. “Our king sometimes has…propheticdreams.”
“Like Merlin does?”
Arthur shook his head. “No, Merlin is shown what he knows by the gods. Mine are much more… jagged. I have only had thesedreamsa few times in my life.”
I still remembered the first time he’d woken up in a fright—a young king of ten and eight—he’d called for myself and Merlin and no one else and yet still refused to tell us what had shaken him so visibly.
The next month, the little hamlet that Sir Ector had retired to with his omega, Lady Anne, had been attacked by a rogue alpha.
Both had been brutally slain in what we could only surmise was a territorial dispute over Ector’s beloved wife. Both Arthur and Sir Kay had warned their parents that living so far out on their own was dangerous, but Ector had sworn that he could protect his wife as he’d done for the near twenty years that they had been bonded.
