The Guinevere Deception (Camelot Rising #1) - Kiersten White Page 0,3

her and oblivion.

And she had not yet taken even a step toward the river! This would all fail before she reached the king, because she could not get over this absurd fear. She hated herself, and she hated every choice that had brought her here.

“Come along.” Sir Bors’s words were clipped with impatience. “We are expected before nightfall. We must keep moving.”

Brangien tugged gently. One step, then another, then another.

The raft beneath her feet dipped and swayed. She turned to run back to the bank, but the men were there. They moved forward, a sea of broad chests and unyielding leather and metal. She stumbled, clinging to Brangien.

A sob escaped her. She was too afraid to be ashamed.

Brangien, the only solid thing in a world of turmoil and movement, held her. If she fell in, she knew—she knew—she would be unmade. The water would claim her. She would cease to exist. Sealed in her fear, the passage could have lasted minutes or hours. It was infinite.

“Help me,” Brangien said. “I cannot move, she clings so. I think she is insensible.”

“It is not right for us to touch her,” Sir Bors grumbled.

“God above,” Mordred said, “I will do it. If he wants to kill me for touching his bride, he is welcome to, so long as I get to sleep in my own bed one last time.” Arms lifted her, reaching beneath her knees and cradling her like a child. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in the scents of leather and cloth. Never had she been more grateful for something solid. For something real.

“My lady.” Mordred’s voice was as soft as his hair, which her fingers were tangled in like claws. “I deliver you safely to dry land. So brave in the forest—what is a stream to you?”

He set her down, hands lingering at her waist. She stumbled. Now that the threat was past, shame claimed her. How could she be strong, how could she complete her mission, if she could not so much as cross a river?

An apology bloomed on her lips. She plucked it and discarded it. Be what they expect.

She straightened carefully. Regally. “I do not like water.” She delivered it as a fact, not an apology. Then she accepted Brangien’s hand and remounted her horse. “Shall we move along?”

* * *

On her way to the convent she had seen castles of wood that grew from the ground like a perversion of a forest. Even one castle of stone. It was a squat, cross-looking building.

Nothing had prepared her for Camelot.

The land was tamed for miles around it. Fields divided the wild into orderly, neat rows, promising harvests and prosperity. In spite of the presence of more villages and small towns, they had seen no one. This did not inspire the same fear and wariness as the forest. Instead, the men around her grew both more relaxed and more agitated—but with excitement. And then she saw why. She removed her veil. They had arrived.

Camelot was a mountain. An actual mountain. A river had carved it free from the land. Over too many years for her mind to hold, the water had split itself, pushed past on either side, and worn away the land until only the center remained. It still cascaded violently on either side. Beneath Camelot, a great lake lurked, cold and unknowable, fed by the twin rivers and giving birth to a single great river on its far end.

On the mountain, surrounded on all sides by water, a fortress had been carved not by nature but by generations of hands. The gray rock had been chipped away to create fanciful shapes. Twists and knots, demon faces with windows for eyes, stairs curving along the outer edge with nothing but empty space on one side and castle on the other.

The city of Camelot clung to the steep slope beneath the castle. Most of the houses had been carved from the same rock, but some wooden structures intermingled with them. Streets wound through the buildings, veins and arteries all leading to and from the castle, the heart of Camelot. The roofs were not all of thatch, but mostly of slate, a dark blue mixed with thatch, so that the castle looked as though it were nestled into a patchwork quilt of stone and thatch and wood.

She had not thought men were capable of creating a city so magnificent.

“It is something, is it not?” Envy laced Mordred’s voice. He was jealous of his own city.