Morgana.
Lucan knew Briana wasn’t dead.
He could have hurt her, maybe even killed her, but he hadn’t. She’d gotten away, saved by the last immortal Lucan would have ever expected.
Kel stood opposite him, bleeding all over the courtyard from the wounds the wraith had inflicted in Camelot’s dungeon only moments ago.
“Get out of my way,” Lucan snarled, having no problem taking another chunk out of the dragon he’d been fully prepared to kill the moment they’d been
“She’s gone.”
“No!”
Lucan whirled from the wall in the courtyard he’d been prepared to scale if that’s what it took to get back to Camelot. He refused to believe the competition was over, that Briana had been somehow left behind when Vaughn caught up with Treasach’s Moon and ended the round.
He faced Nessa. “We have to go back for her.” Lucan glared at the rest of the immortals watching him, waiting for one of them to so much as twitch…
The homicidal compulsion to kill Briana may have evaporated the moment the round ended, but not the urgency that continued to hammer him. He needed to find Briana. Now.
He thought he’d been prepared for the Korrigan when he stumbled across her cell, but he hadn’t been expecting Nessa. The huntress had been the first to fall prey to the manipulative bitch Morgana had locked in the dungeon. The Korrigan would still be locked up if Lucan had his way—or dead if the wraith had his—but like every other prize they’d retrieved, Treasach’s Moon had disappeared at the end of the round.
Just like Briana.
“You heard what Maeve said,” Nessa added, referring to the god’s dismissal of Briana’s disappearance as an
Ignoring the huntress, he stalked toward Vaughn. “You should have stayed with her.”
It took the wolf effort to climb to his feet, his hand still pressed to the wound left from the wraith’s claws. “I’m not the one who tried to kill her.”
The wraith snarled, knowing the gargoyle was right, and that only made the anger eating through Lucan a thousand times worse.
“She might be better off,” Elena began, falling silent the moment Lucan glared at her, unable to suppress the wraith’s certainty that Briana belonged with them. Always.
He shoved his hands through his hair. “There has to be a way.”
“Win the Gauntlet,” Vaughn drawled. “Barter the sword for her freedom.” He sat back down, sucking in a breath as he pulled his shirt away to check his wound.
“He can’t do that,” Nessa interrupted, crossing the courtyard to stand opposite Lucan. “That would mean betraying Arthur. You can’t do it.”
Fuck, they didn’t even know for sure the gods had Excalibur. “So I just leave her there?” Did the huntress even hear what she was saying?
Elena glanced from Vaughn to Lucan. “We freed one prisoner,” the sorceress reminded them. “We could do it again.”
“We?” Vaughn scoffed.
If the dragon hadn’t been between them, Lucan would have slaughtered the wolf.
“Unless Morgana allowed Treasach’s Moon to be taken.” Bran spoke up for the first time, saying what had already occurred to Lucan when he realized there hadn’t been a single guard watching over any of the prisoners.
Even Morgana wasn’t that cocky.
But none of that explained what the hell had happened to Briana. He knew he hadn’t hurt her, and the fact that the dragon had been the one protecting her was all that kept Lucan for lashing out when Kel eased back to lean against the wall and said, “All of this is assuming she’s still alive.”
“She is.” He knew that with a staggering certainty he clung to in the face of what that Korrigan might have compelled him to do. It didn’t even mattered that he hadn’t been with her during the competition. He’d still posed a threat to her.
Would always pose a threat.
Whatever it took, he would find a way to free her from Camelot—and then he’d free her from the mating bond.
He wouldn’t allow her to be hurt again because of him. She wouldn’t have been anywhere near Camelot if he hadn’t talked to her that night at the Wolf’s Den in Vegas. If he hadn’t gotten near the penthouse that night, half hoping for a glimpse of her, she would have escaped the gods notice.
At every turn he’d made the selfish decision where Briana was concerned, stealing another moment, drawing out their time together until she was the one to suffer over and over. He couldn’t do it again. Once freed from the mating bond, she would be happy and safe.
She had to be.
For once the wolf was right. Win the Gauntlet and win the kind of power that he could use to get Briana back.
And it would only cost him everything he’d once believed in.
Lucan eyed the wall again, vaguely aware of the others leaving. Everyone but Kel.
“She wouldn’t want you to risk it.”
The dragon was the last one who should care what happened to him or Briana. What was he after?
“If she’s still alive—”
Lucan snarled.
Kel sighed, pushing away from the wall. “Then it’s for a reason. It’s your job to keep your shit together until you figure out what that reason is.”
If he wasn’t still struggling to deal with the fact that they’d come back without Briana, his head just might have exploded at Kel’s unexpected advice. Lucan had been just as shocked as every other knight and gargoyle on the field the day Kel had deserted them, but he didn’t know what to do with this.
Kel shrugged as though it didn’t matter if Lucan understood his motives. “I get it, you know. She changes everything. Makes you feel like someone else, someone you used to be before you became the monster you hate more than everyone else.”
Lucan watched Kel look at the wall like the dragon had thought about climbing it more often than he had.
“She makes you almost believe,” Kel continued, “for just a minute, that if you can love her enough, maybe it will make up for your mistakes.” He met Lucan’s gaze. “And you’d do anything to make that minute last for an eternity.”
The unexpected exchange rattled around in Lucan’s head long after Kel had left him alone, the dragon’s insight hitting much too close to home.
Ignoring both the wraith and the gut-wrenching certainty that he’d never be able to let her go, Lucan forced himself to think about the final round of the competition, and eliminating every obstacle standing between him and winning.
“You didn’t eat your breakfast.”
Briana turned from the balcony that laid Camelot out before her, and faced the sorceress who had stunned her by putting her in a guest room instead of a cell.
Morgana took a taste of something on the platter that sat untouched on the table near the massive poster bed that could have slept half a dozen people. “I can see why.” Her nose shriveled up, the gesture not detracting from the face that would have been splashed across every woman’s magazine if the sorceress had craved a life on
