Goddess (Starcrossed)

lust weighing down his eyelids. Guinevere’s lips parted with a dozen unsaid words as she stared into his eyes. Lancelot’s hips shifted closer to hers for one tense moment, and then he pulled himself away, releasing her entirely.
    “You shouldn’t have come to me tonight.”
    “But you brought me no word from my homeland in the Summer Country,” she replied, smiling up into his bright eyes as she closed the distance between them. “You told me you’d sit with my father and bring back a token of his remembrance of me.”
    Lancelot’s face went pale, his eyes widening with pity, and Guinevere knew.
    “It can’t be,” she said, her voice suddenly high and girlish.
    Her father was dead. That cantankerous, crafty, and surprisingly hilarious giant of a man couldn’t be dead. He was too stubborn to die. But Guinevere saw the truth written all over Lancelot’s face. The leader of her clan, her father, was dead.
    Sorrow swept over her. She lost control for a moment, and the room crackled with the white-blue light of her witch-fire.
    “I married Arthur so my father and our clan would be safe from the Barbarians.” She sobbed disbelievingly. “All this,” she said, gesturing with disgust to the jewels and the rich gown she wore now instead of humble homespun, “was to protect my father and my clan.”
    “I know,” Lancelot said, striding forward to take Guinevere’s hands. He jumped back involuntarily as her witch-fire coursed through him, but he schooled his pain and didn’t let her go. “Gwen,” he pleaded, gasping for breath. “It’s not Arthur’s fault. We fought and lost. I lost. Arthur wasn’t even there.”
    The room went dark as Guinevere got control over herself, and the white-blue fire extinguished.
    “But I married Arthur instead of you to save my clan,” she said. Her voice was shaky and reduced to a whisper. “I gave you up for my clan’s protection.”
    “And your clan is gone now.” Lancelot’s eyes darkened. “But not because of Arthur. Because of me.”
    Lancelot sat down on the floor of the turret in a heap and raked his hand through his hair. He told his story quickly and quietly, trying to keep his voice steady.
    The Summer Country had flooded, as it always did in the ebb and flow of the yearly tides. The roads were impassable, and a battle unthinkable in the bog-like terrain. With the women and children safe in their flooded homeland, most of the men had all left to join Arthur’s campaign against the Barbarians up north, as they always did at this time of year.
    Lancelot had stayed behind to learn how the women grew all kinds of crops in the water instead of in soil, and Arthur agreed that knowledge of that technique could be useful at Camelot.
    Lancelot was in the water fields with the women when he saw the dragon-crested ships sail right into the flood plains.
    “I stayed with the women in the fields instead of going to your father,” Lancelot rasped. “When I couldn’t fight anymore, I stole a ship and sent as many women and children as I could gather away from the slaughter. Your father was . . . He was killed.”
    Guinevere knew he had been about to say tortured. It didn’t matter how Lancelot tried to soften the blow for her. The damage was done. She’d allowed herself to be offered up in marriage to a man she didn’t love because she’d believed that by doing so, she could save her clan. But it hadn’t worked. Her father was dead, and her people was scattered. She’d married a man she didn’t love for nothing.
    “Thank you for saving what part of my clan you could,” she whispered. “I owe you my life for that. Again.”
    Lancelot looked at her with such open need and desperation that she reached out, cupping his face in her hands. “It’s my fault,” he said, his face hot.
    “No. I don’t blame you for the lives lost. I bless you for the lives you saved,” she said tenderly, meaning every word and hoping he believed her enough to forgive himself.
    “Gwen,” he breathed, and wound his arms around her tightly, his whole body pushing against hers in a wave of need.
    He pressed his mouth against hers, startling her. For all the whispered words and longing looks, he had never dared touch her. This was their first kiss—the first time they had crossed this line. Guinevere knew that Lancelot would suffer more for betraying Arthur, his cousin, king, and closest friend, more than she would because Lancelot loved Arthur, and she didn’t.