• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She held the table with both hands now, the room spinning around her.

“You see, you have exerted yourself entirely too much. Let me help you to your chambers—” He waved off the anxious guards. “No, no, it’s quite all right. I can carry her easily.”

And indeed, he bent a little and scooped her up as if she had been a child. He was much, much stronger than he looked. And by now, she couldn’t even push him away. Her arms and legs didn’t seem to want to work at all, and she was so dizzy that she couldn’t even get her eyes to focus.

Her head lolled against his shoulder, and she hated, hated, the foul, possessive way his arms tightened around her. She tried to speak, but nothing would come out.

Once more she crossed the end of the courtyard, but this time, even though she wanted to squirm out of Medraut’s arms and run away, she had to close her eyes against the way the heavens swung wildly about.

The chill air didn’t help, and the warmth that enveloped her once they got to her rooms only made things worse. She wanted to scream in protest as he invaded her very bedchamber, but her voice wouldn’t work. “Go get her women,” Medraut ordered the single servant, as he laid her down on her bed.

“That didn’t take long at all.”

That was a voice . . . a voice she should know. But it wasn’t one of her women. Gwen stared up at Medraut, and at the woman who had come to join him. A woman wearing her dress. A woman that was so like her, that Gwen seemed to be looking into a mirror. For a moment she thought, magic.

And then her mind finally presented her with the right answer. “Hello, sister mine,” Gwenhwyfach said, and giggled, looking down at her. “What? No words of greeting?”

Gwen’s throat worked, but nothing came out.

“My potions have always been effective,” Medraut replied. “Because I take more care with them than my sister does.”

“But your sister has other talents.” Gwenhwyfach reached up with a proprietary hand and smoothed Medraut’s black hair, and for one moment, his eyes flashed annoyance. She was looking at Gwen, however, and didn’t see it. “I have the cart all ready, my love. We only need to roll her up in the blankets and have your man carry her out.”

“Good.” Medraut reached down and tilted Gwen’s chin so she was looking directly at him. “You see, dear sister, I could not take the chance that any woman the High King married actually might manage to breed Arthur an heir. I must have put together a dozen plans, depending on how important the woman was. The worst would have been one of the Ladies . . .” He made a sour face.

Gwenhwyfach laughed. “There is no chance one of them would have given up her Power to come here!”

“True enough.” Medraut looked down at Gwen, and she wanted to shudder at the expression in his eyes. “But when he decided to marry you, I knew I had the easiest and most elegant—and least risky—solution in my own two hands. My Gwen becomes the queen she has always wanted to be and makes sure Arthur dies childless. You will be taken away.”

His wife interrupted him, glancing with some concern between herself and Gwenwhyfar. “Do you think that anyone will notice that she was wearing those—things—and I am wearing her gown?”

Medraut shook his head. “Only the guards and the servant saw her. Besides, she can always say that she changed her clothing after her spell of illness. I dismissed the servant that dressed her to the kitchens, and no man ever remembers what a woman is wearing.”

“Only what she isn’t.” Gwenhwyfach said mockingly, and Gwen felt chilled to hear her own laugh coming from her sister’s throat. “Oh, I am looking forward to this. You may be sure I will well bewitch the High King, my love. Arthur will have such a greeting when he returns as will make him never want to leave my bed again. I will use every wile your mother ever taught me.”

“It would greatly please me if you managed to dispose of him there, my love,” Medraut smiled. Incredibly, he was not the least bit disturbed at hearing