Read Ruins of Camelot for Free Online Page A

sconces all along the angled transept walls.  Darrick stood in front of his family alcove, his face solemn, the incense stick in his hand extinguished but still trailing a thread of smoke.  His hood had been pushed back, revealing his unruly dark hair.  Even when he was trying to look sombre, Gabriella noticed, a smile seemed to play on the corners of his mouth.  His eyes met hers, and the hidden smile deepened a little.
    Rhyss stood further on, next to Constance, her second cousin .  Gabriella passed them and approached the very centre of the transept.  The royal candle alcove stood above the others, immediately below the enormous stained-glass window.  Gabriella stopped there and looked at the rows of candles.  Most were lit, but a few were dark, their wicks blackened and cold.  In the very front row, one candle was unlit but clean, its wick white and straight.  This was her candle.  She gazed at it for a long moment, wondering about it, wondering what the candle of her life held for her.
    Finally, she raised the incense stick.  She touched its smouldering tip to the unburnt wick, watched it flare to life, and then stood back.  Her candle burnt brightly, its flame tall and straight.  It was good.  Gabriella nodded at it, and then snuffed out the incense stick between her gloved fingers.  She pushed her hood back with her right hand, a sign that her schooling was officially complete.  Finally, she turned to face the crowded cathedral, keeping her back straight and her face sober despite the excitement she felt in her breast, glowing much like the flame on the candle behind her.
    There were very few students left.  Most now stood gathered around their family alcoves, their own candles lit, their incense sticks extinguished in their hands.  Dimly, Gabriella realised that Goethe was not present.  She wondered about it, but only for a moment.  Perhaps he had been expelled for his treachery in the dueling theatre.  Perhaps he did not care about the graduation ceremony, especially with his father unable to attend, still locked in the castle dungeons.
    Perhaps he simply had better things to do.
    For the moment, Gabriella had the luxury not to care.  Already, the incident with the hidden dagger on the battle floor seemed small and unimportant.  She was of age now.  Her whole life was stretched out before her, humming with anticipation, bursting with the promise of good things yet to come.
    Outside, the sunset burnt deep red over the mountains, fading upwards to purple and deepest blue.  The twilight stars twinkled.
    It was the first day of the last glorious spring of the age of Camelot.

Chapter 2
     
    A s it turned out, the wedding ceremony was to take place in the castle.
    Gabriella awoke at dawn and found herself completely unable to get back to sleep.  She rolled over and blinked slowly at the linen curtains that surrounded her bed, glowing pink with the day's first light.
    This is my last night in the bed I grew up in, she thought to herself.  It seemed ridiculous and absurd, and yet she knew it was the truth.  She imagined Darrick lying awake in his parents' cottage on the other side of the village, imagined him thinking of her, and felt a tremor of nervous exhilaration.
    Gabriella was a sensible girl.  She knew that marriage did not usually mean happily ever after, regardless of what the fairy books said.  She'd been around enough married people to know that even the best relationships were often fraught with challenges, disagreements, and even that most poisonous of all marital realities, boredom.  She was not like Constance, who had grown up to be rather vain and silly, convinced that matrimony was the cure for all ills.  She, Gabriella, knew that after the thrill of the honeymoon wore off, the work of marriage would occasionally be difficult.
    And yet she also knew that, for reasons she did not fully comprehend, she had been granted a luxury not afforded to many princesses: she had been