The Darkest Knight (Guardians of Camelot #3) - Victoria Sue Page 0,30
grossly unprepared for this.”
“But you went through it,” Lucan started.
“In nowhere near the same way,” Mel argued. “I didn’t have a family or a career. She has a whole life to reconcile. She has a sister and an extended family in Georgia, and she is expected there in another month for Thanksgiving. Ali says she is struggling, and I don’t know what to say to either of them,” Mel added, his worry obvious.
“Same with me,” Tom said. “But I was bought.” Charles watched as Lucan clasped Tom’s hand, and at the loving look they shared, he felt a pang of something that unsettled him even more.
They all ate sparingly. Just enough to fuel them but not enough to slow them down. Lucan drained his water and looked at Lance. “I question if there is any point patrolling at this stage. We know they will come, so what’s the use in just being outside for the sake of it?”
“They haven’t let up?” Charles asked. It was the first time he had spoken since coming into the kitchen.
“No,” Tom answered first. He tapped his finger on the edge of the table and seemed to study Charles. Lance directed a question at Lucan, and Charles was glad of the distraction. Gawain asked Mel if he could look at something he had seen in the notebooks, and they both filed out. “Charles, are you okay?”
Charles smiled. Tom had a good heart, and for a lot of years Charles had been his only protector. He opened his mouth to answer just as Kay left the room, and Charles felt him walk away in every cell of his body. “I’m not sure,” he said honestly. Tom wasn’t a boy to be placated; he had grown into his current maturity. Perhaps he had always had it.
“You are stuck between what you think you should do and what you actually want to do?”
Charles focused on the boy—no, man—before him. In a few words, Tom had summed up his difficulty exactly. Charles considered Tom’s question. “I don’t understand. I’m not even mortal, and by their own rules cannot be a Tresor.”
“Why wouldn’t you consider yourself mortal? You have aged unlike the knights.”
Charles gazed at Tom in surprise. “In this lifetime, yes, but I have lived many.”
Tom stared at Charles for what seemed an interminable moment. “How do you know?”
“I—” But Charles shut up. He couldn’t prove what Tom was asking. He just knew. He’d always known.
“Charles?” Mel appeared at the door looking troubled. Charles started to rise automatically. Had it been there he would have reached for his sword. “I think you ought to come and look at what we found.”
Tom followed Charles out but caught up with him before they went into the office and squeezed his hand briefly. “You know I will help in any way I can.” Charles returned the comforting gesture, but he wasn’t sure what anyone could do. The others were seated around the table, and there was a picture of a sword on the screen. Gawain pointed to it.
“Does this remind you of the one you were carrying?”
Charles looked at the screen. The sword looked very similar, could be the same, but as he’d barely looked at it last time, he wasn’t certain. “My memory isn’t as good as yours, but it seems pretty close.”
“It’s exactly as I remember,” Kay said in a strangled tone.
“Why is it significant?” Charles asked sharply and looked back at the screen.
Mel clutched his pendant. “Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father, had a sword like that. It should have been passed to Arthur, but it was stolen.”
“But I thought the sword Lance carries—”
“Is the Guardian Sword, yes,” Mel agreed. “The Guardian Sword was a gift presented to Arthur by his mother after he was crowned. Uther was carrying this sword at the Battle of Badon where the Anglo-Saxons were pushed back successfully by the Celtic Britons Uther led, but Uther was fatally wounded, and by the battle’s end, Arthur was king.”
“I thought Uther was killed by poison?” Charles flushed at his ill-thought words. “I suppose that’s television.”
“No,” Lance agreed. “Uther was killed by poison, but it was either administered to his wound after, or the arrow he was struck down with carried it. Badon was fought nearly twenty years before Camlaan, and I wasn’t even a knight at that time.”
“I wasn’t even born,” Kay said.
“And the sword was lost in the battle?” Then how was it possible he had it? But Charles didn’t ask.