And then he was gone and I was alone in my head again.
“Your majesty, are you well?” Gawain asked suddenly, shaking me out of my inner-reverie.
I turned to look at him over my shoulder, finding his brow wrinkled with concern.
“It’s Gwen,” I told him again.
Gawain pursed his lips, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“Gwen,” he amended slowly, my name coming out awkward like it went against everything the knight stood for. “Are you well?”
I wondered how honest I could be with the man behind me.
Sure, some prophecy had foretold that we would become packmates and lovers—but I didn’t actually know anything about Gawain.
Combing through my memories, I tried to conjure up any information about the man that I had learned from my mother’s vast knowledge of King Arthur memorabilia and came up with a hazy blank.
Frowning, I tried to shake off the feeling of forgetting. I could recall everything else about the future with crisp clarity, but I’d started to notice when I would sit and try to think about the King Arthur myths the information was growing steadily more obscure to me.
“I’m…” I began, trying to snap myself out of my thoughts. “Anxious—I think.”
That was the only word that could maybe describe the swirl of odd emotions twisting around in my chest at the moment.
“Whatever for?”
I shrugged my shoulders, my fingers sliding along the shiny leather pommel in front of me. “I don’t know what to expect.”
“Do you not? You are from the future after all,” Gawain pointed out as if it was obvious.
The steady trot of Gawain’s horse was starting to make me feel drowsy and I yawned, covering my mouth with a hand as I tried to figure out how to explain that I didn’t know King Arthur’s story—at least not in any way that could help me.
I wasn’t sure, even if Icouldremember all of the iterations that my mother had been obsessed with, never mind which one was even the correct one.
“The story I know,” I said slowly, worried the gods would give me a gut-punch for revealing anything about Arthur’s story to one of the characters in it. “Might not be the one we are living currently.”
No gut punch came and I found myself yawning again like some unseen force wanted me badly to go to sleep.
I could almost feel Gawain frowning at the back of my head, but I was suddenly too tired to keep my eyes open anymore.
Gawain’s sigh was heavy against my back. “Get some rest, your majesty—”
I opened my mouth to correct him again but he was already hurrying to do it for me.
“Gwen. Get some rest, Gwen, I will wake you when it is time to make camp.”
I nodded and let myself slump back into his warm chest, the scent of musky sage filling my nose as I drifted off underneath the afternoon sunlight.
***
“She is not much to look at is she?” The booming voice of someone filled my ears, making me want to cover them to protect them from the sheer bass of it.
“Hush, Bran, she looks lovely,” another voice chastised the first. “Besides, it matters not what she looks like but whether or not she can fulfill her role.”
“Can she? She looks scrawny, and those alphas are not falling at her feet as that wizard of yours said they would.”
“Are you saying that my creation, formed of my own flesh, is incorrect, Bran?” A third, much cooler voice asked.
“Of course I would never, Arianhrod! Tell her, Rhiannon!” the first voice hurried to placate the third while calling on the second to back him up.
