Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer by Lucy Weston

Author:Lucy Weston [Weston, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery

Night, 19 January 1559

The mist dissolves and I am standing on a hilltop within sight of the river Thames. Tumbled walls covered in moss give way to fields running down to the water. A lovely woman is nearby. Her hair is black as a raven’s wing, her skin like cream kissed by the sun. She wears a crimson robe caught at her shoulder with a golden broach. The fabric presses against her as she moves, revealing a figure at once slim and strong. A bow and quill are hooked over her shoulder.

A moment ago, I knelt beside my mother’s grave in the chapel, praying that I would find a way to bridge the chasm across time. So swiftly my prayers have been answered! I am without breath, left gaping as the woman strides toward me.

“Elizabeth.” Her voice washes over me like fast-running water, exhilarating and daunting all at once. “At last we meet.”

“Morgaine?” I know who she is—as my mother said, in the way of dreams—yet the circumstances are so strange that I can scarcely believe it.

“I am she. The Slayer before you and the one who has awaited your coming all these years.”

A thousand years spent waiting … where? “What is this place?”

“My home.” With a graceful movement of her arm, she indicates the hill, the river, and the shore beyond. “Like everywhere else, it exists first and foremost in eternity. When I needed it, I found it there.”

“I was in the chapel a moment ago—”

“You are in a different moment now, a much longer one that beats to a time vastly greater than the flicker of a human life. But you have come here for a reason. Tell me what it is.”

So much draws me to her—my awakening beside my mother’s grave, Anne’s letter, the desperate struggle to save my realm. But even in that vast moment, urgency grips me.

“Mordred—”

At once, she nods. “Yes, of course, Mordred. He is at the center, after all, which I suppose you realize is where he was always determined to be.”

“I’m not sure that I do.” I am struggling to understand anything at all. What has happened to me in the past few days is beyond comprehension. By comparison, the rest of my life seems plain and ordinary.

“You, whose father exiled you into the darkness where you were left to wonder if every breath you took would be your last? You fought your way back to nothing less than the throne itself. What drives you drives him.”

The notion that Mordred and I are alike in some way offends me deeply. Far more important, the suspicion that it is true terrifies me.

“I was born to be Queen,” I say stiffly, “anointed before God for that purpose. How can you compare me to such a creature as—”

“But he wasn’t always,” Morgaine says. Sadness flits behind her eyes, so intense that it pierces my offended dignity. “He was a man and, before that, a child as innocent as any. Mordred chose the path of darkness for what he truly believes is the greater good.

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