Page 57 of The White Enchantress

“Oh, my lady, this is delicious!”

“Right!?” It has been months since I have consumed a pizza. Being a girl from New Jersey, that’s a millennium without pizza. I savor each bite. Perfectly baked at a high temperature, it is a beautifully bubbly, chewy dough with a crispy crust. Faina cooked the mushrooms with the bacon, creating an explosion of flavor while the creaminess of the cheese cools my mouth. And the garlic. It fills my soul with an earthy aromatic, making me crave more. The squash doesn’t add or take anything away from the other flavors. Ijust always like to have a healthy ingredient on my pizza to balance it out.

I look down at the bench where we had been cutting up slices of pizza. It’s gone! “Did we just eat an entire pie?”

“It appears we have, my lady. We can make more.” Faina has the look of a mischievous creature about to devour a poor innocent lamb. I can’t contain my laughter.

“So you like the pizza then?”

“Like it? I will only be eating this pizza for the rest of my life.”

“I was told my wife was in the kitchens.” Lancelot walks in, covered in what appears to be shit. It certainly smells like it too. “Now, what is that incredible smell?”

“It’s definitely not you, my love,” I say, pinching my nose in disgust.

Faina shoos him away, throwing blasphemies at his back for walking into her kitchen with such filth on his person. Turning to me, she says, “You best make sure that man of yours is cleaned up for dinner. I will take care of the rest of the pies.”

“Yes, sir!” Before walking out the door, I turn around. “Taking care of the pies means baking them, not eating them all, right?”

“Shoo, shoo!”

I scamper down the hall in search of Lance. Though it isn’t a difficult task with the stench on him. As I reach the bottom of the staircase leading up to the sleeping quarters, I see him making his way to our bedroom. “Where do you think you are going?”

“I am in need of a bath.”

“Yes, you are. But not up there! To the sea with you!”

He makes his way back down the stairs swiftly, approaching me cautiously. “Only if you will be joining me, my lovely, beautiful wife.” Bending to kiss me, I push him away, careful not to touch any poop. He grabs my arm, attempting to throw me against his shit-covered body but I slip from his grasp.

“Ew, Lance!” I feign disgust even though I don’t mind the smell that much, as long as it is Lance underneath the muck.

“I was hoping you would join me.”

“Let me grab you a change of clothes. Faina is preparing a surprise for dinner. I do not want us to be late. But I will watch you bathe, my love.” I say this with a mischievous grin and a wink. Before he can respond, I sprint up the stairs to our bedroom.

Lance is already in the water when I arrive with a set of clean clothes for him. He scrubs his hair, water beading down his sculpted chest as the late afternoon sun shines against the droplets. He looks like a god being birthed by the sea. A gift sent to us lowly humans who walk among the mud.

And I can’t believe this man is mine. Strong, sexy, considerate, kind. He is every woman’s dream. I didn’t stand a chance of not falling for him. Even if I fought harder against my heart, I know I would have ended up where I am now regardless if I had married Arthur. I can’t resist his pull. The more I think about it, I am convinced this pull doesn’t actually come from Lance. It comes from something else. Perhaps Excalibur is the one throwing me into the fire.

There must be a reason. A reason why I’m here in the first place. I’ve asked myself this question over and over again since arriving in Avalon months ago. It wasn’t until Lancelot appeared at the lakeside, tearing my heart from my mind, that I began to believe I was the catalyst in the fall of Arthur. As Lancelot’s wife, I have prevented the inevitable. But have I changed the future by doing so? I don’t feel different.

Coming from the future, I thought I would have felt something. A shift in my memories or a change in the wind. I don’t know. Maybe all I did was create an alternate universe. All I know for sure is that I found happiness, I am in love, and I literally have the most amazing man a woman could ask for in sixth-century England.

Thinking of my life now, as a wife and a young woman in love, I can’t help but think about my mom. If this was how she felt for Ed, I don’t know how she could have walked away from him. How she survived the heartbreak of life without him. How it didn’t tear her to pieces.

Elvira Whitlock was one badass single mom. President of the PTA, softball coach, girl scout troop leader. Whatever I was interested in, she made sure I had the best experience I could possibly have. She wanted the world for me and she fought tooth and nail for me to have it. If she had to, she would have built our painted lady from the foundation up all on her own.

Her independence and determination to fill our lives with meaning and purpose were awe-inspiring. But I see now that it might have been a way for her to occupy herself with somethingother than the broken heart she must have felt every day of her life. How different would life be if my mom stayed with Ed? Would they still have loved each other if Ed had given up his inheritance? Would I have grown up in England? Would I have met Josh? Would I still have ended up here, on this beach in the northeast of England, married to Sir Lancelot, determined to live a long, happy life 1500 years in the past?

“Guin? My love, is something bothering you?”

I shake my head, bringing myself back to the present, to a very naked and very wet Lancelot with a look of concern on his gorgeous face. A man this beautiful shouldn’t have such worry lines. I jump up and run to him, throwing myself in his arms. “I love you, Lance.”

“And I, you, Guin.” His smile is radiant, bringing tears to my eyes at how brightly he shines. “What is this? Why are you crying? Please, tell me what is troubling you.”

“It’s nothing. I was just thinking about my mom and how different life would be if she stayed with my father.”

“Oh?”

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