Goddess (Starcrossed)

golden-haired invader from a faraway land. And they desperately hoped he liked the gift—because if he didn’t, this King Arthur just might slaughter them all.
    Guinevere knew her father loved her in his gruff way. He couldn’t know that he was sending his favorite child to her death. He wasn’t like these men from the east or like her late mother had been. Clan leader or not, her father was just a normal mortal, and he believed he was honoring his daughter above all others by giving her to the new, young, and, by all accounts, handsome High King. Guinevere had no defensible reason to object. Her father had every right to marry her off to whomever he chose, and unless she was ready to reveal her secret, and her late mother’s secret, she had to go along with it.
    Tears of rage and frustration brimmed in Guinevere’s eyes. Helen remembered Guinevere’s feeling of desperation in this impossible situation distinctly, because once it had been her own.
    “You didn’t answer my question,” Lancelot yelled stubbornly at the closed window. “You’ve been shut up in there for over a day now. Do you need to relieve yourself, Princess?”
    Guinevere proudly dashed the tears from her eyes, smoothed her mussed hair, and pulled open the window. “No!” she howled, and slammed the window shut again.
    Lancelot barked once with surprised laughter. A few moments of tense indecision passed. His black charger pranced anxiously outside Guinevere’s barred window as if he were reluctant to leave her. Finally, he clucked his tongue at his Goliath of a mount and thundered away.
    Guinevere dropped her head onto her folded arms and tried not to think of how much she needed to relieve herself.
    Moments later, she lifted her head in alarm. Shouts were coming from the back of the wedding train—shouts and strange yelps. Someone screamed in agony. Guinevere leapt to her feet and pulled out her dagger, snarling like the heathen she was.
    Her carriage lurched to a stop, and Helen could hear men shouting all around. Something jolted the side of the halted carriage, sending Guinevere sprawling against the wall of her cage. She steadied herself on her knees as another great shove knocked the carriage over onto its side—the window side facing down. The inside of the carriage went completely dark as the only escape was pushed into the earth.
    “To the princess!” commanded Lancelot’s voice from a distance. “Surround the carriage!”
    There was a great rustling of leaves, and the sound of many men moving into position around her. Guinevere listened to the clanging of metal on metal, and the pounding of feet running over her carriage. There were men grunting, shouting, screaming, and dying in every direction. The dull thud of bodies hitting the carriage and the ground was coupled with the last rattling breaths of dying men.
    Guinevere repeatedly slammed her shoulder into the side of the carriage, trying to tip it over and expose the window, but she did little more than rock the massive iron-and-oak enclosure back and forth. She let out a moan of frustration.
    “Lady Guinevere! Are you injured?” Lancelot said in a strident voice from outside the wall of her knocked-over prison.
    “No,” Guinevere said back firmly. “Let me out so I can fight.”
    Lancelot made a frustrated sound. “They’ve taken to the trees.”
    “Picts?” Guinevere guessed. There was no sound from Lancelot, probably because he didn’t know who their attackers were and couldn’t answer her. “They’ll be back with more warriors after dusk,” she promised him. “Please believe me—you may have pushed them back for now, but they are not gone .”
    “I know. I can’t see them in the trees, but I can still smell them.”
    “You must let me out of here!” Guinevere pleaded. “They want me , not the riches we carry in this party.”
    “How do you know that?” Lancelot asked, like he suspected she was telling the truth.
    “The Picts are one of the oldest clans. They’ve handed down ancient stories about our kind—yours and mine, Sir Lancelot. They know better than to fight me, or you, head-on. Instead, they will try to lure you away, and they will leave me in this prison to starve. They’ll wait until I’m too weak with hunger and thirst to stop them. They don’t want to kill me. They want to . . .” She stopped here and struggled for a moment. “They want children from me. To strengthen their clan.”
    Lancelot uttered a foul curse.