Read Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) for Free Online Page B

challenging Ireland, I have to concede that God—not him—granted his champion victory over my brother. Duty slew Marhaus. Not Cornwall. Not Mark. My brother was a sacrifice too.” Her voice grew heavy. “It seems some families are just doomed to that role.”
    We continued on to my room in silence where we sat on the bed together after Mother lit the brazier herself. I knew she had been bargained to my father, but she’d never spoken of her struggles. She’d always been, I thought, the epitome of mother, wife and queen. She’d seemed happy, content. We’d laughed much together as she taught me her talent with herbs and potions, creating medicants and gentle spells to heal both bodies and souls. I had never gained her mastery, but she hadn’t forced me to love her craft the way she did either. She had always been happy to let her fledgling flit where my heart directed.
    “Do you love him?” I finally asked.
    “The king?”
    Not even my husband or your father .
    I nodded.
    “When I was your age, I thought love was strict in its simplicity. You either loved a thing or not. Wisdom and experience have since taught me that everything is complicated, inextricably tied to one another as all things are. The world seems harsh in its contradictions—life and death, love and hate, despair and joy. But we need each contradiction to appreciate its opposite. And some contradictions can even reside within the same emotion. I can hate the circumstances that brought Anguish and I together. I can hate what he’s doing to you now. I can disagree with him on how he runs his House or the decisions he makes for Ireland. But I can also appreciate the difficulties he faces. I can forgive his mistakes, knowing we must all make them. And I can love the gentleness and patience he has always had with you. And,” she blushed a bit, “I can love the way he holds me at night when we are made one.
    “I never felt the intensity of heartsong for him the harpers sing of. I do sorrow that I missed that passion completely. But there are many degrees of love; having missed out on one doesn’t mean you miss out on love completely.”
    “Father was young, too, when you were given to him.”
    “Yes. Strong, fair to look upon, with prowess on the field, in his court… and in the bedchamber.”
    We both blushed at that.
    My tears were drying listening to things Mother and I had never spoken of, that I had never guessed. But I was still pitying myself. “King Mark is old.”
    Mother’s lips eased into a gentle smile. “Not so old as Methuselah, no. But he is older than your father, yes, and last I heard his beard is gray.”
    I shuddered, my thoughts skittering to Drustan’s hard but supple body pliant beneath my hands as I tended his wound and to the radiance that passed as Palomides’ mortal face.
    Mother wrapped her arms around me. “It’s not his age that frightens you, Yseult. It’s the unknown. I was frightened beyond measure too.”
    “How long—” I gulped in air to give myself courage to finish the question—“how long till I must leave?”
    “After the tourney,” she said, her voice coming from far away. “Whitehaven’s champion will have the pleasure of escorting you.”
    Too soon! I wailed inside. But I knew the date mattered not. Whatever the appointed day, it would be far, far too soon for me.

CHAPTER NINE

TRISTAN
    From the moment I saw the messenger from Cornwall I knew there would be something of grave importance to the feast. No simple serf this, chosen to carry a missive with the king’s seal. The man with the full red-blond beard was not only a baron but Mark’s nephew—my cousin. And as well as I knew him by face so he knew me. So I sat with my back to the king’s high table and hid my harp away in a corner of the hall so none might spontaneously ask me to play.
    I was neither coward nor fool to announce my presence here.
    The evening proved full of surprises. Shortly after Yseult had put Palomides into my