Page 6 of A Crown So Cursed
He was so damned arrogant—so full of himself, so insufferably haughty, and perhaps it was all the worse because Gwendolyn had loved him from the very first, despite that he’d barely spared her a glance.
To her, he was no less than a god—every hair atop his head utterly divine.
But to him? She had been—at least so she’d believed—a burdensome task, foisted upon him by her father. The humiliation of it still burned in her chest. How furious she had been when her father demoted Bryn and assigned Málik in his stead. She’d sworn to show Málik no mercy, and yet, repeatedly, he’d bested her on the court, putting her flat on her back and leaving her a sweaty, unhappy mess—not that her misery could be blamed solely on the sparring. Even now, her pulse quickened as she recalled the way his lithe body moved, so graceful and sure, his bastard sword flickering like quicksilver beneath the afternoon sun. Even when she’d tried to convince herself she despised him—loathed him—she had been utterly captivated by the power and beauty of his form…
And all the while, she burned to defeat him.
To prove herself worthy of his notice.
To force him—if only for a moment—to see her.
It wasn’t until much later that she’d learned the truth of his feelings, and even now, she remembered the shock in hisicebourneeyes as he watched the snips of her hair tumble like golden leaves into her lap… eyes wide with mortification over what it revealed…
True love—the kind that transcends all.
And yet so much had happened since that day, and Gwendolyn feared the time they had spent apart. But she dared to hope…
Did he long for her as she did for him?
That day—so long ago now, it seemed another life—on the blood-soaked fields outside Lundinium, she had so much wished for him to turn, just once. To look back. And if he had—if he’d so much as glanced over his shoulder—she would have gone after him. Gods, she would have run. Crown be damned. Aisling be damned. But he never did. He rode away, and with him, took a piece of Gwendolyn’s heart. The memory of his back, his broad shoulders shrinking into the mist, haunted her even now—like a wound that never healed.
Perhaps in some secret place, she had longed to rip off her father’s crown and chase after him, to let the world burn for all she cared.
But queens did not chase lovers.
Not even be they kings.
So she had stood there, watching him go.
Alas…twenty-two years was a long time, and her face was no longer given to the bloom of youth. Her golden curls were not so bright and bore a few strands of gray. Her face was beginning to reveal lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and for all that she had lived, the wide-eyed wonder of her youth had long-since faded, replaced by a more thoughtful gaze.
Would he still find her lovely, as he’d once claimed?
Gwendolyn was not so vain, but she knew age would not have touched his face, and she wished so much that she could turn back time. Closing her eyes, she allowed the salt mist to spray her face as she whispered a fervent prayer to every god who would listen.
Please, please…do not let him forget me.
Gwendolyn no longer knew what she believed. So much of what she had learned though experience, gave lie to the Awenydds’tales.Andno matter that she herself had spent some time in the Underlands, the years now left her uncertain. Were it not for the cloak she wore and the Sword of Light she gave to Habren, she would have had nothing to prove her time in the Underlands was not simply a fevered dream.
Absently, her fingers stroked the threads of the Orb Weaver’s cloak, remembering the day Arachne had given it to her. The spider woman’s obsidian eyes had glittered with knowing as she’d pressed the coat into Gwendolyn’s hands—a cloak meant to shield her true form from the Fae king’s sight, and now she wondered…
Would it soften her age?
Would it allow him to see her as she once was? Or perhaps, would it reveal the truth of the years that had passed, the lines etched by worry and longing more than any physical aging?
The portal before her shimmered more vibrantly now, its edges blurring with the colors of dawn. A storm was brewing, and Manannán had already warned her that if they did not reach the portal in time, it would be another turning of the season before it would open again, but not to the place she most wished to go.
Four times every year, those portals appeared, each time to a different realm—once to the Isle of Mona, another to the Underlands, another to Hyperborea, and the ultimate time to the Lands of Eternal Winter. But though Manannán could command the portals, he could never pass through them himself. That was his curse. They were his to command, but never to traverse.
So he claimed, and so it was—every god held that power, or so they believed. Yet whether they themselves were welcome on the far side of the Veil was not for them to decide. That, he said, depended upon the hearts of those who dwelt within. The judgment belonged to them alone.
The sound of Manannán’s voice startled her from her reverie.
“We haven’t much time,” he said, approaching. “Art ready?”
“I am,” Gwendolyn replied, spinning to face him.
Theirs was a fledgling relationship, born of her desire to see Málik, but, to Gwendolyn’s surprise, Manannán was not what she had once supposed. A sea god he might be, but here and now, standing alongside her, she found his heart in his eyes.
