Fairest of Them All (Once Upon A Time #3)
Prologue
PROLOGUE
WALES 518 A.D.
His body burned for her. Burned with a flame hotter and brighter than the lust for victory that had consumed him as he faced his mortal foe on the battlefield. His hauberk was spattered with the rust of blood, yet the satisfaction of a battle well fought, an enemy well slain, eluded him. His loins still surged with the same rhythmic thunder as the beast clasped between his legs. The beast that would carry him home to her arms.
Rhiannon .
Sinuous and sweet. Sly and tender. Mocking and irresistible.
He had found her in an ancient forest much like the one he drove his mount through now. A fey creature, darting from birch to willow, her hair glimmering in a snarl of spun gold. She had taunted him, teased him, enticed him to pursue her until he thought he would go mad for want of her. Only when he’d stumbled and fallen heavily to his knees, only when he’d buried his face in his hands in dark despair, had she come to him.
She had threaded her fingers tenderly through his hair and pressed his bearded face to her naked breasts, crooning his name, fierce and sweet. He had never dared ask her how she had known his name. Known his heart. Known his very soul. His braies had fallen away beneath the coaxing of her fingertips, and she had straddled his rigid staff, mating him with inhuman abandon until the roar of her name from his lips resounded like thunder through the forest.
Rhiannon .
He spurred the stallion onward, indifferent to its heaving flanks, the sweat lathering its neck, the gouts of steam puffing from its flared nostrils. He would drive both himself and the beast beyond endurance and let kingdoms fall for nothing more than a taste of his Rhiannon’s lips.
As he topped the crest of a steep hill furred with conifers, the thatched roof of a cottage came into view. The cottage where he and his mysterious lady had frolicked naked for a fortnight like naughty children enslaved by some sensual spell, indulging every appetite, both natural and unnatural, until they lay exhausted, but never sated, in the cocoon of each other’s arms.
A glimpse of gold through the cone-laden boughs whetted his eagerness. The men he commanded would have never recognized the joyous smile that split his dark visage. That smile faded as the trees parted, giving him a stark view of the clearing below.
Rhiannon standing in the embrace of another man. Rhiannon, her head thrown back, the crystalline chimes of her laughter wafting on the wind. That innocent tableau distorted itself in his mind. He saw pale, naked limbs spread upon the grass; faces contorted with unholy pleasure; Rhiannon mounting a stranger, her generous body milking the seed from a staff as swollen and bewitched by her charms as his own had been.
Without slowing, without thinking, without counting the cost of this madness to his soul, he drew his sword from its scabbard and raised it high over his head. Through the haze of blood in his eyes, he caught a glimpse of a man’s shocked eyes, a swirl of gold around a woman’s face bleached of both color and hope. The man sought to shove her behind him, but she resisted with inhuman strength, throwing herself in front of him, her arms outflung as if to plead for mercy.
An unearthly roar of rage and betrayal shook the clearing as he brought the sword down, plunging it through her treacherous heart, impaling both she and her lover upon its blade with a single mighty blow. Blood gushed from her snowy breast as they fell as one into the grass.
He wheeled the rearing horse around at the edge of the clearing, an icy chill seizing his heart as he realized what he had done. Clenching his teeth against a spasm of grief, he slid off the horse and walked back to where they had fallen, each footfall a whisper of dread in the unnatural silence.
A man lay crumpled in the grass, a sword protruding from the narrow cavity of his chest. No, not a man—a boy, his whiskerless jaw still bearing a hint of baby fat, the fine gold of his hair now pale and lank around his lifeless face.
The voice came from behind him, a virulent hiss ripe with contempt. “My brother, you faithless fool. My mortal brother.”
He spun around. Rhiannon stood a few feet away, garbed in robes of shimmering white, her breast unblemished by the kiss of death.
“Mortal?” he croaked.
“Aye, for I am faerie. And you, sir, are a murdering bastard.”
A gust of warm wind whipped through the clearing.
He took a step toward her. If he could only touch her. If he could only stroke the wheaten silk of her hair, bury his lips against the satin of her throat, beg on bended knee for her forgiveness. He stretched out his hands, beseeching her silently.
“No!”
Her scream excoriated him. He fell back with a bellow of terror. The wind gathered force, whipping the writhing tendrils of her hair away to reveal a face as terrible and beautiful as God’s, yet utterly without mercy.
She lifted her arms as if to bestow upon him an unholy benediction. Her chiming voice swelled with a grim finality that mocked the paltry rage of man with the damning wrath of a woman wronged. “You sought to bind with your blade what I would give you freely. My heart. My loyalty. My love. May God curse your soul, Arthur of Gavenmore, and the souls of all your descendants. From this day forward, let love be your mortal weakness and beauty your eternal doom.”
With a final surge of desperation, he lunged for her, preferring eternal damnation to the unthinkable prospect of never holding her in his arms again. Never drinking the honeyed nectar of her lips or hearing the husky velvet of her voice ripple across his skin in the darkness of night.
His grasping hands sought the softness of her flesh, but closed on naught but air. Last to fade were the mocking notes of her laughter, tinkling like invisible shards of glass in his ears.
Desolation buffeted him. He fell to his knees, this Arthur of Gavenmore who would someday rule all of Britain until a beautiful queen would prove his doom, buried his face in his hands and wept like a baby.