The Darkest Knight (Guardians of Camelot #3) - Victoria Sue Page 0,16

out.

“Then as my language translation won’t help, maybe I can put other skills to use and cook.” He walked into the kitchen, and Mel beamed at him.

“I’m starving. He made me go to the gym and hasn’t fed me.”

Lance arched an eyebrow. “You insist you want to remain physically fit, and I bought you a smoothie.”

Mel made theatrical gagging noises. “That was like drinking the liquid contents of a compost bin.”

“Perhaps bacon and pancakes,” Charles murmured, walking to the fridge.

Mel flattened his palms to his chest and glared at Lance. “You see? Someone loves me.”

Lance smirked. “I love you which is why I need you fit enough to stay safe.”

“But I’m immortal,” Mel wailed. “Doing crunches in whatever level of hell they were invented in should not be necessary.”

“And you are the one that insists on fighting,” Lance pointed out mildly. “Quick reactions may be the thing that saves you from an Ursus’s blade.”

“And yet nothing will ever save you from the cut of Mel’s tongue,” Lucan observed as he came into the kitchen with Tom.

Mel shot Lucan a look full of daggers, and Charles’s heart squeezed slightly. He had enjoyed this group’s interactions before and knew he had been welcome.

“Where’s Kay?” Lance said, looking straight at Charles.

Now? Not so much.

“He just left,” Charles replied levelly. “I don’t know where he is going.” Charles cracked some eggs in a dish while he let the awkward silence echo around the room.

“I—” Lance started, but Gawain’s voice from the office interrupted them.

“Lance? Can you come and look at this?”

Charles knew Gawain meant the sword, and as he made the batter, what memories he had filtered through his brain. He had walked to Tom’s parents’ church the first time from the foster home he had been in, and it had taken him over two hours, but he had seen Tom in the pew. Even as a toddler Tom had been still and quiet, not like the other children there. He had gone to services twice a week before he finally left school, and as a seeming devotee of their brand of religion, Tom’s parents had been eager to employ him on the pittance he was willing to work for.

And he hadn’t cared. He’d lived in a basement apartment with three other men that would have never passed whatever codes to be officially rented out, but he had fulfilled his duty. And he would complete this one as well much as it would pain him to do so.

He accepted suffering, His life wasn’t easy, but then neither were so many others’. He was healthy, well-fed, and not in immediate physical danger when there were so many people around the world that didn’t enjoy those basics.

So why did he feel that bit by bit a little of his soul was being chipped away? He accepted the discipline of his life, and in a lot of ways the loneliness. What he didn’t want to happen was have his choices make someone else suffer.

He would never forget the look on Kay’s face when he left the bedroom. How could he have been so blind not to have seen what was in his heart? Hurting Kay was like kicking a puppy. An adorable one that looked at you with soft brown eyes like you hung the moon. And whatever Charles was, he was man enough to wish he deserved to have Kay look at him like that.

After they had all eaten, Lance took Lucan and Ali to the shelter to do some task Father Joseph had requested. Tom excused himself to write some essay for school, and Gawain returned to the office. Unfortunately, Mel stayed where he was at the table, and Charles readied himself for the interrogation he was sure would follow as soon as they were alone.

“How do you know that Kay is your light?” As Mel’s opening gambit, Charles supposed it was a reasonable one.

“I wake up knowing.” Charles would repeat it as often as was needed.

“So you don’t ever remember the actual telling. Like someone explaining things.”

Charles opened his mouth, the denial on his lips, but then the echo of just such a voice entered his mind. He gazed at Mel suspiciously.

“You do, don’t you?” Mel pushed, lowering his voice. “What do you remember?”

Charles shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t know.”

“Then let’s back up a little,” Mel said. “Yesterday, Ali said when you appeared your sword was already raised. How were you not shocked? If I woke up in the middle of a