Cards of Love by Sierra Simone

Author:Sierra Simone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sierra Simone

7

You were born fifteen hundred years ago to a queen and her consort in a place called Ynys Witrin, and you were born a princess, but also a priestess, because your mother was no ordinary queen.

And Ynys Witrin was no ordinary place.

Nyneve was the Lady of the Lake, and Ynys Witrin was the Isle of Avalon, and she guarded both mortal and immortal realms from that place. She watched over the kingship of Britain and signaled her favor to worthy rulers by passing the sword of Excalibur. She gave her wisdom and advice to those same rulers when needed. And she also tended to the sanctuary of worship that was the isle itself. All gods and goddesses, the gods of old and Christ, had their temples and shrines there.

All were welcome and worshipped on Avalon. For a time, it was beautiful.

Your mother had two daughters of her body—yourself, of course, and your older sister, Vivienne. Some say it was because of Vivienne that she began to change and harden, but I’ve seen nothing in my visions to think that’s true. I think she began to change the way people often change as they grow older. They forget what it’s like to learn, they forget how to change. They forget their own part in their unhappiness and begin to suspect other people are to blame.

What is certain is this: the custom was for the Queen of Avalon to have only one daughter. Sons were tolerated, she might have many of those, but once she had a living daughter, she would use her knowledge and magic to make sure she conceived no more. (There was a time, not so far removed from Arthur’s, but far enough, when her consort would be killed after the birth of her daughter, as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, but even in my time, this practice was considered horrifying beyond measure. Barely spoken of, and only in hushed, fearful tones.)

But Queen Nyneve, for reasons we’ll never know, decided not to use her proficiency with herbs and plants to keep herself from conceiving a second daughter, and so she had you. None would gainsay her to her face, but the scandal of it rippled through every kingdom in the isles and all the holy places from Ireland to Armorica in Gaul. Her transgression was compounded by the mounting proof that your older sister, Vivienne, was without magic—though terrifically intelligent and already wielding a sharp political acumen for such a young age.

And you?

You were so full of magic that on the night you were born, two hundred miles away, a ten-year-old boy woke from a dead sleep to find himself cloaked in a silver fall of moonlight that whispered his name. When he fell back asleep, he dreamt of the woman he was fated to love.

Now he knows that the moonlight whispered his name in your voice.

But back to the queen and our story.

Nyneve had broken with the tradition of having only one heir—one daughter who held both magic and earthly power inside her—and now she had two heirs.

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