THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) by Lavinia Collins

Author:Lavinia Collins [Collins, Lavinia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Not So Noble Books & The Book Folks
Published: 2014-06-16T22:00:00+00:00

I must have slept, though I did not remember falling asleep, because I woke with my cheek on my hand in the open window, aching from sleeping in the chair, to the sound of Kay’s voice.

“Guinevere?”

I turned. He was sitting up in the bed, his shirt thrown off showing a fair chest, almost hairless and more lightly muscled than Arthur’s. I tried not to look. He was twisting around to look at the spear-wound in his side, peeling away the bandage. It had healed fast overnight; the raw wound looked already to be closing, darkening from angry red to purple. He pressed his hand against it warily to test the pain, and seemed pleased. He looked around himself again then, and seemed to notice me for a second time. He was disorientated, like a man waking from a deep sleep. It had been a strong fever I had felt on him.

“I’m in Camelot.” He nodded slowly, as he remembered. “I was wounded. I –” He looked up at me again. I could feel the print of my knuckles on my cheek where I had slept, the heavy stickiness of having slept in my clothes. My head ached with tiredness and my eyes still hung heavy and half-closed, but the look he gave me touched me to the core. It was the look of someone who knows their life has been saved. It reminded me that there was a man to whom I owed that look. “You lay with me on the Round Table. I mean, beside me, I... I didn’t dream that.”

“You didn’t.”

“And you wished for my life.”

“I did.”

He nodded slowly, taking it in. I knew how it felt to go suddenly from being sure of one’s death, to life. I wondered what he had dreamed on the Round Table. I had not dreamed, but perhaps he had seen things as I lay there and wished for his life.

“I’ll have someone fetch you a hot bath,” I said, sliding from my chair. As I moved to go past the bed, he darted forward and grabbed my wrist. I saw the pain flicker across his face. I could tell that Kay never made a good invalid; he ignored his pain.

“Guinevere... thank you,” he said softly. It was strange to see the imp of a man who I had seen so often with a mischievous smile, dancing lightly through life, with solemnity in his eyes. I took his head in my hands and kissed him softly on the crown of his head, like a blessing, and left.

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