“Catriona Deverell…” he breathed. “Alive.”
He trailed the backs of his fingers softly down the side of my face, his eyes lingering, studying every feature. Catriona Deverell. That was my name. It rolled around inside me, lighting me up. That was who I really was.
His face was inches from mine. At this distance, I could see through the ordinarily impenetrable mask with which Gideon faced the world. Behind that granite wall, he was considerably shaken by his discovery. Everything in his world would change when the news was revealed.
I exhaled shakily.
“Cassandra,” Marcus’s voice called to me from the other side of the room. He was sitting up in the bed, his eyes as wide as mine no doubt were. I stood up warily and made my way back to his side, taking the hand he offered.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. His fingers tightened on mine.
“We’ll figure it out,” he reassured me. I didn’t need reassurance though. I needed time. Time to understand what all of this meant.
If what Gideon said was true then I was the Lady of the Lake. It felt true. I kept seeing the woman I glimpsed in that vision. The devastation in the very earth as she had fallen to the ground. Her love for the baby in her arms… me. I had been loved so very much. Why had she been so near Londinium? How had the Britons managed to hide her death all this time?
“What does this mean?” I asked. Gideon was still frozen in position by the fire.
Finally, he took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair.
“Right now, not very much.” He shrugged. “We still need to keep ahead of those cursed hounds. And we need to keep ahead of York. They want their prince back, but if they could lay their hands on both of you…”
He trailed off.
“Well, that would be a lot of power to control,” he finished.
He stood and pulled on his trousers, which could hardly be dry. “We need to ride. The sooner we get you to Carlisle, the safer we’ll all be.”
“You will take us to Devyn’s father’s castle?” I don’t know why I needed confirmation. He served Mercia, he had said he would meet Bronwyn… Where else would he take us?
He nodded curtly.
“And then north to Carlisle?
Gideon smiled broadly.
“Nothing would give me more pleasure.”
We ate a sombre breakfast in the common room of the inn. Unused to visitors, the barkeep and the serving girl attempted to engage us in conversation to hear what news we had of the wider world.
I was too inside my head to do more than spoon the salted porridge into my mouth, swallow, and repeat as their mellifluous voices rippled around the room. Marcus was his usual charming self but had little to offer in the type of news that would pass as typical in this remote town. Unsure of what to say, he opted for saying very little.
They didn’t try too hard with the stern-faced warrior who sat silently waiting for us to finish our meal, eager to be on the road.
I chose to ride with Marcus, allowing myself to sink into the false security and feeling of home offered by the handfast cuff. Mostly, it made me feel tethered to a lie. The lie that the Empire was my home, that Marcus was my mate, that I belonged to someone and something as I had been raised to believe, that the handfast bound me to something real.
None of it was real though. All of it was a lie built to fence me in, to control me. Well, built initially to fence in Marcus’s ancestor, the princess who had been given to the city to seal the truce by marrying a man she must have detested to the core of her being.
The truth of who I really was washed through me, like waves rolling against the shore, inevitable and repeated, crashing on arrival each and every time.
This was why Devyn had come to the city, and why he had wanted me to leave with him. Not because he wanted me, but because others did. My brother. His sworn lord.
This was why he couldn’t be with me. The Lady of the Lake was a being of legend, a keeper of magic, the source of power among the Britons. Devyn wasn’t just any personal guard; he was sworn to protect the Lady of the Lake. His line was hated because their one purpose was to protect her, and they had failed.
Devyn had told me that his family were in disgrace, that he was seen by many as unfit to breathe the same air. It was no longer a question of being allowed to be together, but whether he would even be allowed near me once he had delivered me to the Mercians in Carlisle.
Home. I supposed it would be. A brother awaited – the tall golden masked prince of the Britons who prevented Devyn from revealing himself the night of the masquerade ball in Londinium.
Devyn had known then that I stood within touching distance, no, that I danced in the arms of my own full-blood brother. And he said nothing. My better self conceded that to have revealed who I was then not only would have started a war that would have consumed us on the spot, but I wasn’t sure anyone would have believed him – least of all me. I had only just started to accept that I was a Briton and not a citizen. That I was the heir to the Lady of the Lake? The very idea would have been laughable.
What had she been doing in the borderlands? I chewed on my lip as the thought hit me anew. Why would the most protected person on the island have been riding with her sole protector and two children so close to the city? They hadn’t expected to be attacked. But why were they there in the first place?
We stopped briefly to eat
