The Conqueror

He stared across the room. His men were dim bundled shapes stretched out in front of the fire. Rain slammed against the shutters.

“In you flows a thousand years of blood, Griffyn,” Alex replied quietly. “’Tis too weighty a thing to ignore. Your life is not your own.”

Griffyn’s fingers tightened on the mug. “My choices are.”

“You’re the Guardian, Griffyn,” Alex insisted in an urgent, low voice. “You must accept that.”

Griffyn looked over. “And you are a Watcher, Alex. Not my father.”

Alex’s face hardened. “Aye. I am a Watcher. I protect you. I do my duty.”

Griffyn’s face creaked into a smile. “Call it duty if you will, Alex; we all of us make choices.”

“And yours has been to reject this destiny since the day your father died. Do you think that will make it go away?”

“No,” Griffyn said dully. “Nothing will.”

Nothing would ever make the awful truth of whom he was destined to become go away. The treasure in Everoot’s vaults had a long legacy of destruction. Powerful enough to inspire quests and madness, holy enough to bring kings crashing to their knees, it had simply crushed his father and Ionnes de l’Ami under the weight of its want.

Its existence was barely breathed aloud in the secret councils of those who suspected, but the rumours persisted. In Egypt. The Languedoc. Jerusalem! No one knew for certain it even existed, let alone where it was.

No one supposed it was in a remote English donjon, stripped of any glory and even the light of day.

And Griffyn was its Guardian.

He stared at the curling burl lines of the wooden table, not seeing wood, but his father’s raging, wild face. He wanted to be nothing like Christian Sauvage. And, in his heart, he knew he could be nothing other.

Brutal, sinful, wasted and wrecked by greed. That was his destiny.

“Griffyn,” Alex’s soft voice intruded.

He snapped his gaze up and stared at his lifelong companion. Alex reached out and clamped his hand over Griffyn’s clenched one, which was fisted on the tabletop.

“I don’t know why you think it matters what we want, friend,” Alex said, almost sadly. “You are what you have been bred to be. Charlemagne’s heir. You carry the burden: Guardian of the Grail Hallows. And for good or for ill, Griffyn, our hope lies in you.”

He tore his hand free. “Call me Pagan when she is about.”

He grabbed his mug and walked out.

Chapter Fifteen

Ahh, had God created anything more perfect than a bath? Anything better than warm, scented steam rising from hot water, lapping at your chest and chin? Better than the feeling of being clean again?

Gwyn decided not. She leaned her head back against the tub and closed her eyes. The room was Pagan’s, without a doubt. It had his musky odour of maleness. The realisation that this was pleasing brought her eyes open again.

Why was she not frightened, lying in a tub in a strange man’s boarding room? The night was like

some strangely stretched version of reality that warped and shifted as she walked through it. Dowered. Saturated. Weeping with it.

But there was something about Pagan, something that seemed honourable, however his physical presence brought to mind granite cliffs. However his behaviour, prior to and following their strange passion-dance, sent her mind into dizzying spirals that spurned sense. In fact, he seemed—

He seemed to be coming up the stairs, if the sound of thumping boots reckoned rightly.

She scrambled naked out of the tub, dripping wet, and darted her gaze around the room. Her clothes, filthy, mangled, muddy, were near the door. If she ran for them, she’d be caught. What was she to wear?

Griffyn kicked the door open and stepped into the chamber with two flagons of ale atop a tray. Twenty minutes of grooming Noir had finally combed out the agitated remnants of his own tangled emotions following the conversation with Alex, and as he walked back through the lashing winds and rain, he’d realised all he wanted was to sit with Guinevere. Just sit with her. Forget about the world for awhile. Mayhap make her laugh.

He balanced the tray and peered around until he found her. Out of the tub, standing by the small table, avoiding his eye and fingering the edge of a red…a red…