Page 233 of The Daughters of Avalon
She choked past a sob. “Three days… three days and three nights…”
That was not what he wished to hear. “How long?”
There was so much to be done—and what of his son?
Nesta did not immediately reply.
Maelgwn closed his eyes.
“Mael,” she whispered, and Maelgwn tried hard to reopen his heavy lids. “My love,” she begged, and this time she shook him very gently, till his eyes again opened. But his vision remained hazed, so the figures standing before him morphed into caterwauling banshees, summoning him from his bed to the darkness beyond. “Mael,” she said, again, and the single word was so full of agony that it twisted his heart.
“Uther?” he asked weakly.
Nesta’s lips quivered with grief. “He and the mage have withdrawn from our halls till the day breaks on the morrow. His armies remain camped beyond our walls.”
“My son?”
Nesta shook her head with grief, and Maelgwn felt a sob well from his breast to his sore throat. Einion ap Maelgwn was his only true heir. If his son was… dead…
If Uther lay waiting…
“You are dying,” she confessed between tears. “And yet you do not have to.”
Nesta, sweet Nesta was a child of the Goddess, cauldron born, and cauldron raised. Her knowledge was the knowledge of the Ancients. He trusted her without fail.
“My love… you must agree to allow it…”
“Dearest,” Maelgwn said with regret, and he tried to lift a finger to her cheek, falling short of her face. It fell limp beside him on the bed. Indeed, he could feel his life slipping away… like sands in a glass.
“Mael!” she cried. “Only speak the word, and I shall gift you my life! True love’s tears might save you!”
Oh, yes…They would spend eternity together, he and his beauteous wife, whose glorious bosom was the pillow of his choice. He could learn to love her properly and give Nesta her heart’s desire—a prince of her womb. “You and I,” he said. “Forever… and ever… and ever…”
To bloody hell with thrones and crowns. So long as he had her love, he would be happy evermore.
“Yay,” he said weakly. “Yay…”
His wife rose at once, her tall, lithe body towering over him, her shining gold mane surrounding her like a halo. She spilled her tears into the palm of her hand, and then he heard her words and recognized the gleam and slash of her ceremonial blade. But even as she worked, he fell in and out of shadow, somewhere at the back of his mind, understanding the rite she was speaking…
Here, with my blade, I take your former life,
Here, with my art, I still your beating heart,
Eternal thy flame, Lord of Shadows thy name.
And then she knelt once more by his side and said her final good-bye.“Rest in shadow, my beloved, till you are once more summoned to the light.”
Invoked perhaps by the sultry nature of her words, shadow and light danced before his eyes like fornicating lovers.
Shadow and light converged, again and again, until, with a violent clap of thunder, a rush of wind rose from the casket of his body, and for the sweetest interminable moment—he and his wife were caught between worlds, their souls united as one, until the torrent died like a winterbourne in summer… devoid of life, but not quite dead.
At the end of her ritual, Nesta’s body lay lifeless on their chamber floor. Maelgwn could see it as though in a dream. Her maids lifted her up, then laid her beside the empty shell of her husband—his own body. When Uther arrived to claim the banner and crown, he was told the Dragon Lord’s queen ended her life with her husband’s last breath. No one noted the reliquary in the hand of her maid. She gave Uther the message with a nervous curtsy before quitting the chamber, rushing away with a heartfelt promise for the Lord of Shadows: “I shall keep you in secret till The One arrives, and someday, my lord, you must avenge my lady’s death! A pox on the house of Pendragon!”
Chapter
One
BLACKWOOD CASTLE, JULY 1153
