Lancelot, on the other hand, was already stepping in between his father and what must have been his sister, shielding her.
I couldn’t tell if he was protecting her from King Ban or from me.
Discontent filled me at that and I felt Arthur faintly tug on the bond, feeling the sudden dip in my mood.
“Hello, your majesty, Queen Guinevere,” King Ban greeted, giving me a dip of his chin. I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do in return was, so I just copied what he did, making a note to ask Andrivete about it later.
The man frowned, telling me that I had probably made afaux pas, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I had clocked him in one glance with the way the girl seemed to shrink in his very presence. In my time he would be the kind of man that didn’t believe women should have credit cards and that they were inferior in every single way.
My mother did not raise me to take that sort of shit from men—in any timeline—so since I was already batting a thousand on my diplomacy efforts, I chose to ignore the man that was the physical embodiment of a chauvinistic caricature and turned my attention to the girl.
“Hi there,” I said, trying to keep my voice bright. “I’m Queen Guinevere and you must be Princess Vivienne.”
A face peeked around Lancelot and I was having trouble figuring out the resemblance between the two. Where Lancelot was dark and broody, the girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old looked as if she had come straight out of a fairytale. Hell, she even smelled like cotton candy, or whatever the 6th century equivalent to it was.
Her cheeks were still childishly rounded and big brown eyes stared at me curiously if not a little cautiously, as if I could reach out at any moment and eat her alive.
I had not seen many other omegas during my time in the past—I knew they existed of course—but my maids and everyone around me had been a beta or an alpha.
In the future, though, I interacted with omegas every day and while the descenting spray and suppressants helped to quell the somewhat territorial urge we sometimes felt… I had no desire to attack someone so young whose perfume had barely just come in.
“Hello, your majesty,” the girl said, stepping out from behind her brother and dipping into a curtsey.
She was adorable and I was, as always, easily charmed.
“What was this about her becoming a lady-in-waiting?” I asked, stepping in closer and trying not to take it personally when Lancelot’s expression tightened like I would reach out at any moment in order to smack his sister for daring to encroach on my territory.
“It was nothing, your majesty,” Lancelot hurried to say, glaring at his father. “His majesty, King Ban, was just stopping through to rest on his way back to hisownterritory.”
There was so much venom in Lancelot’s words that it made me realize that his tone when he spoke to me was nowhere near the same.
Was it a little fucked up that that fact flattered me? Maybe. Was I still going to let it give me little itty bitty butterflies in my stomach as I watched what amounted to a pre-Medieval Kardashian family beef unfold before my eyes? 100%.
What can I say? I was a woman with simple, if not questionable tastes.
Ban’s eyes narrowed at his son. “That is not quite the reason, your majesty, Queen Guinevere.”
“Oh?” I asked, bemused by the man’s audacity. I may not know much about the machinations of polite society in this day and age, but I did know that foisting your child on someone was bad manners in any time period.
Not that I would have minded the young woman being foisted on me as a lady-in-waiting. She was adorable and I was, at the end of the day, a giant softie.
“My daughter,” Ban gestured to the teenage girl still peeking out from behind Lancelot’s elbow. “Princess Vivienne of Benoic. I would like for you to take her under your wing as a lady-in-waiting. Train her in the ways of a queen as she will be one someday.”
“And where, pray,” I started slowly, measuring my words. “Will Princess Vivienne be queen?”
All eyes turned sharply to the man, Lancelot’s jaw tightening so hard that I was sure if I put my ear up to it I would be able to hear popping.
“The princess is already betrothed to my son, Prince Mordred,” Morgana’s voice cut through the courtyard and the small crowd that had gathered whirled to find the queen standing at the main gate to the castle with her son and an older man who I recognized from his presence at my wedding to Arthur. King Lot looked nothing like Gawain—his hair nearly completely gray and thinning on all sides and his skin was marked with liver spots from age.
But it wasn’t his clear age difference with his wife that was the most shocking, but instead the completely glazed over expression in his blue eyes.
Confused whispers filled the courtyard and I felt Gawain stiffen at my side.
Agravaine—Gawain’s oldest brother and one of Arthur’s most trusted knights—stepped forward, his face twisting into a frown as he stared at the king. “I fear there may be amisunderstanding, your majesty King Ban, as I am my father’s heir. Not Mordred.”
The temperature dropped around us and I found myself stepping back into Gawain’s sturdy warmth.
King Lot stepped forward, summoning a louder voice than I thought possible from such a man, and addressed the crowd as if he was the king of Camelot and not my husband. “I have decided that, upon my death and as the only child of a living wife, I wish for Mordred to take over as my heir.”
