Enchanted Guardian - Sharon Ashwood

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fingers slowed, meeting the kiss of cold stone inside the crate. It was here, literally in her hands. For a human, the moment would have brought triumph, hope or even anger, but Nim was fae. All she could manage was a muted shadow of feeling, for her people felt no love, no desire, none of the wild passions that had made the immortal fae what they were. Their vital fire was in ashes—unless they turned to utter and complete monsters, willing to commit any atrocity to regain what they had lost.

      Still, Nim had curiosity enough to quicken her movements, clearing the features she’d known so very well once upon a time. She leaned deeper into the crate, finding stone hands, a sword hilt that in life had been studded with rubies, and the curve of an arm. Bit by bit she uncovered a knight—her knight—frozen by Merlin into a stone effigy. Finally, she looked into the face of Lancelot du Lac.

      “Oh!” Her soft exclamation hung in the dark space, strangely forceful against the dusty silence. She hadn’t seen him since before the demon wars. Whatever she had expected, it hadn’t been this sudden compression of time, where the heartbroken woman she had been collided with the ruin she was now. And all these centuries, Lancelot had remained unchanged.

      His features had never been meant to be so still, so robbed of color. His hair had lingered between autumn brown and gold, changing with the seasons and the sun. A beautiful youth, he had matured into a sternly handsome man. The lean angles of his face were the same as she remembered, all aristocratic cheekbones and a long, straight nose. Lancelot was King Ban of Benoic’s son, from a bloodline as old and noble as it had been impoverished. What they had lacked in coin they had made up for in pride. She could see it in the cut of his lips and the clean angle of his jaw. The one thing that had softened his expression were his deep-set eyes. The darkest brown, they had shone with every impulse he’d ever had. It took a measure of innocence to be as noble as Lancelot had been when she’d first met him. She wondered if any shred of that boy had been left when he’d finally been turned to stone upon his empty grave.

      Despite herself, Nim traced Lancelot’s face, relearning the contours with her fingertips. His lids, the planes of his cheeks, the dip beneath the bow of his lower lip. In repose, his cheeks were smooth, but there were creases when he smiled. Once, he had smiled often.

      He’d been called Lancelot du Lac for her sake, for she was the Lady of the Lake. He had been her protégé, her lover and her champion before ambition had drawn him to Arthur’s side—and before the young queen, Guinevere, had stolen away his love. Before he betrayed... Nim’s breath hitched, snagged by memory, but the strange sensation didn’t last. It was only the echo of remembered jealousy—once fierce as a ravening tiger, now cold as grave dirt.

      And yet bitterness had a way of leaving its taste behind even now. How ironic that the man she’d loved so fiercely was before her and utterly at her mercy. Guinevere was long dead. Nim was at long last fully in control. She could shape their future together, remake everything exactly as she’d wanted—if only she wasn’t cold inside.

      If only he hadn’t stopped smiling long before he’d been turned to stone.

      Nim leaned down, balancing carefully so that only her lips brushed his. She exhaled, her warm breath bouncing back almost as if he’d sighed against her. But she was not fooled. The shape of his mouth was right, but there was none of the yielding pleasure of its soft touch. There was no demand, no promise. Nothing. He was as cold and stiff as a fae.

      Nim frowned. Like all her kind, she knew exactly what she’d lost. Without souls to leash their powerful natures, the fae could easily turn into nightmares. Of course, the queen was counting on that very quality to conquer the mortal realms. She’d honed the fae’s loss into a weapon.

      A few at a time, Nim’s people had returned from their home in the magical realm called the Hollow Hills. They infiltrated human cities in positions of influence where their grace and charisma—and lack of compassion—could do the most damage. When the queen was finally ready, the takeover of the mortal realms would be unstoppable. Brutal. Absolute.

      Nim was no warrior, but she could not watch her people transform into monsters for LaFaye’s pleasure. Nim still remembered who they’d been before confusion, fear and addiction had made them slaves to the queen.

      Blood dripped from her wound onto Lancelot’s cheek. She wiped it away, suddenly conscious the stone effigy was in truth a living man. Without taking her eyes from Lancelot’s face, she fished in her coat pocket for her phone, scrolled through her contacts and selected a number.

      Morgan LaFaye’s only real foe was her kinsman, Arthur Pendragon, who had become the king. The family tree was complicated, human, witch and fae families intermarrying until few could make sense of the bloodlines. LaFaye had always believed Arthur had stolen the crown of Camelot, but had never been able to seize it for herself—especially not after Nim had given Arthur the sword Excalibur, the one weapon that could kill the fae queen. If Nim wanted to fight LaFaye, her best bet was to help Camelot.

      That was why she was here in this warehouse. The one hundred and fifty tombs housing the Knights of the Round Table had been scattered. So far only a handful of knights had been awakened from the stone sleep—but now she’d located one more.

      Lancelot had always been Arthur’s champion, and that was, Nim told herself, the reason she’d worked so hard to find him. It had to be more than the need to see his face one more time, and to know that her heart was truly dead. Being a fae didn’t guarantee a fairy-tale ending.

      But now she was done, and it was time to seek help to disappear so completely that not even LaFaye’s assassins could find her.

      The phone rang twice before someone picked up.

      “Medievaland Theme Park,” said a deep male voice. “Come for the fantasy, stay for the feast.”

      Nim cleared her throat, her gaze inexorably returning to Lancelot’s face. With the merest whisper of magic, she disguised her voice and caller ID. “I have an anonymous tip for your king.”

      “Ugh,” said Gawain in disgust. “You’re barely two months out of your stone pajamas and you think you know how the modern world works.”

      “They hadn’t invented pajamas when Merlin turned us,” replied Lancelot du Lac to his fellow knight, “and all I’m saying is that I find it hard to believe we are breaking the law by patrolling the streets for murderous fae.”

      “The human authorities are particular about executions. They like to do it all themselves.”

      Dulac—he was Dulac among the men, never Lancelot—shook his head. He’d awakened to a drastically reduced Camelot in a new and strange world. “Then what are we supposed to do? Pat the fae on the head and tell him to run along back to his homicidal queen?”

      They were walking the night-dark streets of Carlyle. According to Gawain, it was unusually warm for this part of the world, and Dulac took his word for it. The heat had developed a second life as the sun sank like an exhausted balloon, leaving skin sticky and tempers short. The taverns promised iced drinks and easy laughter, but that would come later. Dulac and Gawain had work to do.

      “We do all our work in secret. The rules of lore and magic are...well, let’s just say people think everything we stand for belongs in books for wee kiddies.” Gawain’s Scottish accent deepened to a burr. “It’s demoralizing. Explaining that enchanted knights are waking up because Queen Morgan has mobilized revenge-happy faeries to attack and destroy the mortal realms—well, my lad, that’s a speedy trip to the madhouse.”

      “I’d already be there if it wasn’t for you and Arthur,” Dulac said honestly. “I don’t know how you managed when you were the first to wake up.”

      “It got better once I found Tamsin,” Gawain said, referring to the witch who was his lover—the same witch who had revived Dulac from the stone sleep. “Before her, I only had the spell to fall back on.”

      Merlin’s spell had provided a wealth of

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