to think about what he did. If anyone other than Richard could take the sword away from him, it would no longer be his, his tenure as a knight ended.
“Darling, give me the weapon you possess,” she purred. “It is time for me to understand what it means to be you.”
The same compelling force rose again, fighting his will.
He wanted to make love to her.
He needed to do all things for her.
The warning in his heart disappeared, and he brought his hand up to call the weapon that bound him in knighthood.
But as he began to bridge the worlds to call it, the face of another Elizabeth superimposed itself over the heat and need of the Elizabeth sitting next to him. The new Elizabeth had the same eyes, but they were loving and lacked the passionate fire that accosted him. Somewhere in his depths, the memory of a girl teasingly smiling at him amidst hundreds of stacked books on her day off coalesced and woke a part of him that had been swept away.
None of the avarice or commanding nature pummeled him; she was pure and clean and everything he remembered about her.
Remembered? Past tense? But she is right here.
“Elizabeth?” he murmured.
Grasping onto the more real image of Elizabeth like a safety line, the life Richard had forgotten came swirling into him with painful clarity. He fought against the stirrings of his blood, awakening to what had been done to him; he wondered for a second why he sat in Pioneer Park with Elizabeth as a rising past threatened to tear him apart. Then it all came flooding back—his quest in Annwn, Bran Ardall and the Dark Thorn, the Queen Morrigan and her war, the dragons, the fairy, Philip and John Lewis Hugo.
The death of Elizabeth.
“I want you,” Elizabeth said from the bench. “Give me your knight’s weapon so I may understand your work better.”
Anger like a flooding fire burned away any confusion that remained. Arondight flared to life in his hands. Lusty greed filled Elizabeth’s eyes at sight of the blade, a dark need he had never seen her have in the time he had known her. All of the people around him ignored the sword as if it didn’t exist.
“No,” he defied.
Her blue eyes, once so inviting, turned as hard as stone.
“Give it to me,” she commanded.
Richard stood, lifting the weapon once ordained to him but no longer his. He did not hesitate. As part of him screamed resistance, a scene he had replayed over and over in his mind for years but had never come to terms with came to the fore, falling out in agonizing slow motion.
Not again!
Elizabeth grabbed for the hilt of Arondight.
Richard reacted on instinct.
Rage at what had been done to his mind drove him as he plunged the long blade deep into her chest, all of his strength and weight behind it.
Shock fell over Elizabeth as Arondight disappeared into her body, driven deep by righteous wrath—the hilt coming to rest against her breast, the blade exiting her back, slicked in crimson.
Pioneer Park and Seattle wavered like a mirage and vanished.
The light in the blue eyes he had loved so much grew dark, changing to emerald and elongating to a foreign facsimile of the woman he had loved, even as the Caer Llion dungeon became clear, cold, and real. Arondight changed to the Dark Thorn, which lay driven through the dead body of a thin korrigan in simple green forest garb, the staff’s light accenting the battered iron shackles that chained his wrists and ankles to the stone of the castle in which he was imprisoned.
“Witch,” an unseen man growled.
The Cailleach, who had also been similarly hidden next to a lone Fomorian giant, placed her spotted hands to the stone of the wall, mumbling archaic words Richard could only guess at.
The walls of the cell glimmered white.
The Dark Thorn disappeared instantly from his grasp.
“The tablet is restored,” the Cailleach muttered.
“Leave us,” John Lewis Hugo ordered, stepping from the shadows. The ancient witch frowned darkly before giving Richard a lurid wink. She left through the cell door.
“I told Philip you would not submit,” John Lewis Hugo said, his ruined face glimmering red in the wavering torchlight. “Told him you would not succumb to the wiles and illusions.”
“Give the staff back,” Richard said. “And I’ll prove you wrong one more time.” “You are not worthy,” John Lewis Hugo snickered. “Have never been worthy.”
Richard hung from his chains. “You think I don’t know that.”