Chapter Forty-Five
I had done this, I realized as I felt one of my bonds snap like a rubber band that had been pulled too tight.
It was my strongest bond. My first bond.
Of course it only made sense that Arthur would fall first for his men. I could see him a few feet in front of me, still swinging his sword as the rest of his men tried to push the small figure off of him.
With horror, I realized that it was Mordred, the implications of the action were clear. Mordred was the one wielding the blade that would fell the king of kings. Just as it had always been meant to be.
In the stories, Mordred—Arthur’s nephew—had dealt the final blow on his uncle after being refused the throne of Camelot. They had always made the princeling seem much older than the teenage boy of thirteen who now stood back still gripping his too-small sword with a dumbstruck expression and the glowing purple magic that seemed to hover around his small form.
He was too young to be fighting a battle like this, I thought as I tumbled from my horse and practically crawled to Arthur. Mordred was here because of the selfishness of a woman who did not deign to come and battle herself.
Arthur’s eyes were still open by the time I made it to him, his gaze growing more and more faint as his heartbeat began to slow—finally out of time with the rhythm that had matched mine since the night of our wedding.
“No, no, no,” I chanted fiercely as I called as much magic as I could muster and tried to close the wound, but even I knew it was too late. He had been stabbed in the exact wrong spot—an artery I vaguely realized as I stared down at his face.
Was this truly supposed to be how everything ended?
The fighting continued around me despite the rain pouring heavily around us, half-ice, half-water.
They were winning. The Saxons were going to win and I was going to lose them all.
Then I felt it. Another bond pulled taut.
My head whirled around as if I could sense where it was coming from and I found Bedivere falling from his horse to the ground, one of the Saxon’s swords embedded into his shoulder.
Bedivere’s silver eyes met mine as pain flowed down the stretched bond before he cut me off from him—one last gift for me—before the bond snapped away entirely.
I held Arthur to me, wanting to pull Bedivere in as well and try to save him. To save them all.
“Guinevere!” I heard Lancelot roar from somewhere and I turned to find him trying to fight to get to where I was knelt on the ground with Arthur. But there were too many even for the warrior alpha.
His bond pulled taut and I had to look away as it broke.
There was one left. I couldn’t even see where Gawain was, and that was almost worse as I could feel his pain but I couldn’t actually witness his death.
Like the others, Gawain’s bond shattered, telling me he was gone and suddenly I was all alone.
The only heartbeat I felt roaring in my ears was my own and it was absolutely devastating.
In all of the stories, Queen Guinevere had stood alone on that stupid hilltop, her sobs of despair causing the rivers to flood and wash away all of her pain.
But me?
All I felt was rage.
As I looked down at Arthur’s open eyes and thought about my other alphas who were lying close by, I felt anger for the people who dared to take them away from me.
I wanted them all gone .
“Guinevere,” a familiar voice said as hands cupped my face.
I looked up to find a pair of sad, glowing green eyes staring into my own.
“Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked, my voice ragged as I tried to suck in a breath of air and failed utterly. It was like the walls were closing in on me and there was no way out.
Merlin’s smile was sad. “If I had, I would have tried to stop it all.”
“But what about the gods?” I asked, my voice a whisper. “What about fate?”
“Fate is overrated, Guinevere,” he said, repeating the words that I had said to him weeks ago, as the battle continued to rage around us.
Then he leaned in, pressing his lips to my forehead. “Let it all out, Guinevere, and I will fix everything from there. I promise you.”
His words were a trigger.
I opened my mouth and screamed, letting every piece of anger—of rage that had been boiling in my chest at the absence of my bonds with my alphas—pour out of me.
In the stories, the rivers and the lake had risen and drowned all of the Saxons.
In reality it was much faster than that.
Water whooshed around us, cutting off the Saxon’s screams as Arthur’s body was yanked from my arms in the whirlpool vortex that had been created by my magic.
Finally, all was silent as I squeezed my eyes shut, welcoming the suffocation and the death that I was sure would follow.
But it never came.
Instead I was still floating… and yet somehow also breathing?
“You may wake up child,” a familiar voice called to me softly.
I opened my eyes, looking around at my surroundings in confusion. It was vividly black—kind of like that day so long ago when I had fallen through time, only this time I wasn’t falling at all.
In front of me sat a group of beings that looked human, but instinctually I knew that they weren’t.
They looked far too perfect—far too beautiful to be any sort of human I had ever seen.
The person in the center must have been the one who had spoken because she smiled at me softly.
“I have wondered when we would finally be able to speak face-to-face, Guinevere,” she said, though her smile turned sad as she continued. “I do wish it had been under better circumstances.”
“Give them back,” I said, my voice raw from screaming. “Give them all back to me.”
Another one of the gods—a man this time—made a rude noise under his breath. “She dares demand such things from us? A mere human?”
“Bran, you must understand her reasons,” the woman chastised softly. The tone of her voice triggered the memory of the dream I had had before we were ambushed in the village the day after my wedding.
“It was you all who were talking in my dreams that day,” I said out loud, mostly to myself as my brain tried to catch up with how preposterous it all was.
“Bran, this business has little to do with you,” another woman said, her eyes obscured by a hood. “So I must suggest you step back.”
“But Arianrhod!” Bran began to protest, but one look from the first woman seemed to quell the man’s urge to shout.
“Now,” the first woman said, offering me a smile that I wished I could wipe off of her face. It was her fault that I felt so alone. It was all of their faults that my fate always seemed to end with me losing the ones I loved the most. “My name is Rhiannon and I am here to offer you a choice.”
“A choice?” I repeated, sounding stupid.
Rhiannon nodded, glancing over at the hooded woman. “Arianrhod?”
The hooded woman lifted her hands and they began to glow then, in a flash, Merlin’s body appeared. He floated in front of the gods, his eyes closed as if he was just asleep.
“What did you do to him?” I gasped, trying to move forward to touch him but found my feet seemed to be glued in place, keeping me right where I was.
“We have done nothing, Guinevere,” Arianhrod said, her voice echoing as if many voices were speaking. “He has done this. This is my creation—a vehicle with which we moved fate forward in order to create the true king of kings.”
“How are you supposed to create a king of kings if Arthur is dead?” I asked, my voice sharp as I thought about Arthur’s lifeless eyes again.
“Patience,” Rhiannon told me softly. “Arianhrod has a story to tell.”
“I created Merlin from my own flesh,” Arianhrod continued as if none of us had spoken. “He is as much my child as any of my creations, though it took him a long time to fit in amongst the humans. He was tasked with bringing you to the past and creating a space for your pack to form with your alphas.”
These were all things I already knew, but I held my tongue, waiting for the woman to go on.
“But what even my eyes could not see, was that he had become more and more human as time went on. He experienced a new life through the eyes of the omegas he pulled first and began to yearn for more,” Arianhrod said, sounding suddenly sad. “He was meant to return to me once his task was complete, but I fear that may no longer be possible.”
“Why?” I asked, wishing I could touch him and bring him close to protect him from the will of the gods—whatever that may be.
“He has chosen to cleave his soul in half, Guinevere,” Rhiannon said, staring fondly down at Merlin. “To give you back your pack, and costing him everything.”
“But I never asked him to do that!” I gasped, my fists clenched as I realized where they were going with this conversation. “He shouldn’t do that for me!”
“I am inclined to agree, so I shall give you a choice,” Rhiannon began. “You may either keep Merlin and his soul intact and whole—or you may have your pack returned to you.”
“I want both,” I said without needing to think about it. “I am so tired of you gods trying to rule my life and the life of those around us. I want both—no I demand both after all the bullshit you’ve put me through.”
Rhiannon’s pale brows lifted. “Bold words from a human at our mercy.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, calling their bullshit. These were gods, so I didn’t have to choose and they could figure it out. “You wouldn’t have pulled me here in the first place if you didn’t need something from me.”
Rhiannon opened her mouth to speak, but Arianhrod put a hand on her arm. “Child, you are as precocious as you are brave. Very well, we will take your desires into consideration, but you must do something for me.”
“What is it?” I asked, frowning as Merlin’s body disappeared completely.
“Find Merlin and send the pieces of my magic that still exist within him back to me.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” I asked incredulously, wondering if I wasn’t about to be sent on another wild goose chase by these gods that loved to play too many games.
Rhiannon’s laugh was soft and almost mocking. “Have you never wondered why it is that your magic connects so well with Merlin’s? It is not a coincidence, Guinevere Ramos.”
The hair on my arms seemed to stand up at her words as a sense of awareness filled me. “What do you mean?”
“Adelaide Ramos and Adelaide, Queen of Cameliard, did you not think it odd that the woman seemed to be the same?”
I had thought it was weird, but I always assumed it was a part of the gods’ magic, creating a backstory to explain why I was in the past in the first place.
“Much like Merlin,” Arianhrod cut in amidst my thoughts. “Adelaide was taken from my body—from the wheels of fate if you will—and half of her soul remained here in the past while the other half, the half you knew as your mother, was sent to the future.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, taken aback by her words even if they did make total sense. Why else would my mom have been so obsessed with the King Arthur myth if not for the gods willing it to be so. It was like every piece of my life had been orchestrated by the people in front of me and if I wasn’t so focused on getting my pack back, I definitely would have started to spiral.
But my existential crisis would have to wait for another day.
“You had need of a magical spark in your soul—a connection to Merlin that could not be mistaken for anything but pure power—though I did not foresee your, ah , romantic intentions with each other,” the goddess said, seeming to smile for the first time since I had opened my eyes.
“And where is she now?” I asked hesitantly. “My mom, I mean.”
Arianhrod pressed a hand to her heart. “Her soul has returned to me now that it has fulfilled its purpose.”
They kept talking about a purpose but I couldn’t understand what kind of a purpose allowing Arthur and the rest to die would serve.
“What is going to happen to Camelot now? Your prophecy you gave to Merlin said he would be helping the ‘king of kings,’ but Arthur is dead.” My voice cracked on that last word, like saying it out loud made it even more real.
“Fate is mysterious,” Arianhrod said in an equally mysterious tone. “Oftentimes it goes in ways that we least expect. You and Merlin believed that in protecting Arthur, you were protecting a legacy. Little did you know that sometimes it is the smallest acts that have the most profound effect.”
“You are speaking in riddles again, Arianhrod,” Bran, who had been sitting quietly behind the two women cut in. “You know I hate it when you do such things. It was never about Arthur, child, it was about a little boy whose bloodline would foster the kings that turn Logres into the England you know today. You saved a young boy’s life and in doing so you fulfilled your purpose.”
I gaped at him. “This was about Henry ?”
“Yes,” Bran said, sounding pleased with himself. “And what an ironic name you gave him now that you think of it, yes?”
My head spun with the new information as Arianhrod gently shoved the god out of the way.
“It is fate that Henry was saved by you, this is true Guinevere, but because you gave him a place to stay he will be able to grow old and have many children who will eventually come to rule over Logres as it turns into England.”
“Impossible, how can fate be so simple?” I asked myself as the air around me began to shift, as if it was trying to suck me down. I stared down at my feet as a small hole formed beneath them. “What—?”
“I fear our time is up,” Rhiannon told me brightly. “You will no longer be able to talk to us once you leave here—I do hope your search for the wizard Merlin is fruitful and thank you for fulfilling your fate!”
I was quickly coming to realize that, while the gods were all-powerful, they were also quite immature and fickle, especially when it came to matters of fate.
“Wait!” I said as I was sucked down into the dark hole, the familiar sensation of falling filling me as I realized I had never gotten the chance to ask them where Merlin would be—or where the rest of my pack would be for that matter.
Then everything went black.