Page 235 of The Daughters of Avalon
And what had the Judas gone and done?
He’d settled himself on Cael’s throne, then eaten the meal from his larders.
The image sent a torrent of hatred rushing through his blood, for his true name was not Cael d’Lucy. He was Maelgwn ap Cadwallon, High King of Gwynedd, Dragon Lord of Anglesey. He wasnotthe cousin of some paltry English lord, but the firstborn son of Cadwallon Lawhir, great-grandson to Cunedda, who, by order of Governor Maximus, led the Votadini against the Pechts. And for his part in the campaign, his forebear had been awarded the entirety of Gwynedd—the Jewel of Wales, so ’twas written by a contemporary of Maelgwn’s time.
And the true Dragon Lord… felled by a creature with golden eyes and hair who’d cursed him with a yellow death.
He, who’d fought and won the dragon throne, only to lose it all… over what?
Lust for a sword?
Perhapsshewas not the sole heir to Blackwood; still she bore the blood of his nemeses in her veins. That alone should keep him from coddling her.
That alone should force him to remember.
Remember!
Fool. She’s not simply some hapless maid whose mother is cruel.
Unlike her sisters, she was not the progeny of a king. Hers was a… distinctly maculate conception, and her father was a reincarnation of the man by whose hand his life was taken—that druid who’d once called himself Merlin to Britain.
God’s blood, it galled him that she looked like him—all save for that wild, copper hair. She bore those same chiseled cheeks, the same fair skin, the same shape of her brows—perpetually arched, as though she alone were privy to the mystery of creation.
And, God’s blood, her eyes… blue and stormy as a winter sky, while Taliesin’s had been deepest amber, imbued with a cunning that few could forswear.
Not thatshewasn’t cunning, mind you.
She was certainly wily enough to sense every chink in Cael’s armor… and therefore, why should he care whether her hands were weighted with the burden of manacles?
Why should he care what became of her?
At least she still had lungs to breathe and hands to carry a child of her womb.
To the contrary, Nesta’s arms were empty in death, and he himself might never see an heir to his legacy—such as it was, a decrepit old castle in the Black Mountains, not at all the kingdom he’d been promised.
Certes not his beloved Anglesey…
And what now?
He would risk even this for a beauteous witch…
“Rhiannon,” he said aloud, testing the weight and feel of her name on his tongue.
Rhiannon.
He couldn’t help but remember the way she’d faced him the day he’d met her, straight from her prison tumbril… with her hair disheveled, and her dirt-stained cheeks, her shoulders back and high… like a witch queen in her own right.
Even then, she’d had a fire in her eyes that matched the flame of her hair.
But now… that blaze was diminishing day by day, and there was a joyless turn to her lips…
Still… he owed her mother.
He owed for his life… and if he did not keep his promises, Morwen would collect her due.
She was a necessary evil.
A means for revenge.
