Air: Merlin's Chalice (The Children of Avalon Book 1) (26 page)

Chapter Thirty Four

N
imuë paced back and forth in her room. It still amazed her that those children had managed to escape. At least now there was a good chance they would be caught once again. Now, she had not only Lord Lefevre’s men out looking for them, but also the men of all of the nobles in the country.

They couldn’t escape now. Within no time, they would be out of her way, burned at the stake for being witches.

What was odd was that she had not spoken to her sister since the day the trio had escaped her. It was unlike Morgan not to gloat just a little and point out Nimuë’s failures to her. Oh yes, she always said she did so in order for Nimuë to learn a lesson, but honestly, who could believe such nonsense? No, her sister thought herself better and loved to rub it in. Nimuë would have done the same thing had their positions been reversed. The children would soon be caught and killed, however, and then she would not have to hear from her sister again for another two hundred years, at least.

She turned to her silver bowl. Blowing gently onto the water, she willed it to show her the trio again. For the past two days she had left them alone, but now it was time to find where they were and make sure they were stopped—now that they were far enough away so no blame for their deaths could fall on to Father du Lac.

The water showed them in a forest, but it was impossible to judge where. Nimuë’s eyes skimmed the background looking for clues, but there were none.

Nothing but trees.

She watched as Sir Dagonet looked up at the sun.

“Continue heading north, sir?” Dylan asked the old man.

“Er, yes. North. Need to turn to the west in a bit—or is that east? First east and then west? Er, one of the two, but not quite yet, don’t you know. Soon, but not…quite…yet. Don’t worry,” the old man said. “We’ll find it, no doubt about that, wot?”

He did not sound so sure of his directions, Nimuë thought with a laugh.

Where in the world was he leading them? She began to think seriously about this. Where
would
that old buffoon take those children?

Nimuë gripped the edge of the table. There was only one answer.

He knew where the chalice was. He was taking them there.

“You are deep in thought,” Morgan’s voice startled Nimuë, but only for a moment.

“It is time,” Nimuë answered.

Morgan went still for a moment. “Time for what?”

“Time those children were killed. Dagonet is leading them to the chalice. They must die before they get there.”

“Nimuë, you cannot kill them.” Her sister’s voice had an urgency to it that Nimuë had not heard before.

“Do not worry so, dear sister,” Nimuë purred. “I will take care of this. And the prophecy is clear—I am, after all, just following what Merlin foretold would come to pass.”

“He spoke of your downfall.”

“Unless the children died first. Now which do you think I would choose?”

“Nimuë,” her sister said with a sigh. “Do you not understand? The children must live. We have got to see to that.”

“I do not see anything of the sort.” And frankly, Nimuë was getting tired of this argument.

“If you do not see it, then I do. And I—”

“You will do nothing!” Nimuë said, losing patience altogether. “You leave this to me, Morgan. This is my fight. My life. My—”

“Your death,” Morgan said with finality.

Nimuë was stunned. She could not say a word.

Morgan sighed. “Nimuë, the Children of Avalon are the future, do you not see that? They are the future. We are the past. We must let go.”

“I will let go of nothing!”

“I know that. Which is why I have to do everything in my power to pry you away. I am sorry, Nimuë, truly I am. But if I have to step in here, I will. In the interest of the future.”

Chapter Thirty Five

D
ylan looked back at Sir Dagonet. Muttering under his breath, he turned us around to rejoin the old knight and Bridget riding with him. Sir Dagonet was either unwilling or unable to travel any faster while Dylan was eager to move—perhaps too eager.

“I don’t understand why he’s so very slow,” Dylan complained, as we rode back.

“He’s old, Dylan…”

“Yes, I know,” he interrupted me with a sigh.

Dylan had been doing this a lot over the past two days—riding forward and then coming back. He seemed tense and anxious. The others didn’t notice. I did, but I was beginning to think that I had become particularly sensitive to him and his moods.

I was, therefore, not at all surprised when I awoke in the middle of the night to find Dylan sitting up, staring into the fire. Pulling my blanket around my shoulders, I wordlessly settled myself next to him.

He looked over, a little wisp of a smile playing on his lips. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No. I’m worried about you.”

“Worried about me? No one worries about me,” he said in such a matter of fact way I wished I could see his expression. He had turned back to the fire, though. All I could see was his profile, and it revealed nothing of what he might be thinking.

“Well, maybe it’s about time someone did,” I offered.

Dylan shook his head. “There’s no need.” He paused and turned toward me again.

His eyes softened, like liquid pools in the flickering firelight. He reached out and took my hand. “It’s very sweet of you think about me.”

“Of course I think about you. I care about you.”

“Do you?” He sounded surprised, but the rough pad of his thumb moving in circles around my palm was sending tingles through me, making it hard to concentrate on what we were saying.

“Yes, I do.” The words came out more softly than I had intended. Even my voice was being affected by his caress.

The little sounds of Bridget and Sir Dagonet sleeping nearby wove into the silence of the crackling fire.

Dylan moved his hand from mine to cup my face. I could only watch as his eyes came closer. The green of them was intense. Beautiful. His eyelids fluttered closed just as his lips met mine.

A gust of warmth blew through me, as hot as the sun on a midsummer’s day. His lips, though, were a soft, soothing counterpoint to the fury of heat and light. A tingling sensation spread from my mouth downward, waking up my whole body. At first I just thought it was the fact that I’d never been properly kissed, but then I realized that this wasn’t any ordinary kiss. This was magic.

Gently, Dylan nibbled at my lips until I parted them for him. A soft moaning sound vibrated through in my throat as his tongue danced around mine. He tasted so good. Slightly salty, but sweet as well.

A happiness such as I had never felt before washed over me. I was tumbling down a stream of joy, laughing, flowing with the water, flying through the air. I was a fish. I was a bird. I felt everything Dylan was feeling. Everything I felt, he experienced. Our emotions, our very senses, intermingled, even as our arms and bodies intertwined.

His hand ran down my back and another slid up my side. My skin came alive with every touch. One hand came around to cup my breast, and I gasped as heat shot down to a spot between my legs. Another moan vibrated through me, but this one might have come from Dylan.

He broke off his kiss just long enough to say, “You are so beautiful, Scai. I don’t know how I can keep my hands off of you.”

I giggled because he
wasn’t
keeping his hands off of me. In fact, they were everywhere. I gasped as his thumb caressed my taught nipple. “You aren’t,” I pointed out to him.

“No, but it’s been so hard having you so close and not touching you,” he answered, his voice little more than breath.

The hand on my back slipped away only to reappear a moment later sliding up my leg—under my dress!

His fingers reached higher even as his tongue swirled around mine, sending shivers of delight through me. But when his fingers came to the apex of my legs, I couldn’t suppress the shiver and moan that erupted from me.

Dylan’s lips left mine for a moment. “Shhhh.” I could feel his smile against my lips.

“Oh, Dylan, I…” But I didn’t know what I wanted. He was doing the most amazing things to me. I wanted to press myself against him. I wanted to touch him as he was touching me. I wanted to hold on to him, and never let go.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. As a tremor of pleasure shot through his body, I could feel it vibrating both inside and outside of my own.

I pried my fingers from his shoulder where I’d been holding on to him and let them trail down his chest and then back up again. Up and down my fingers skimmed, each time coming closer to his waistband where I knew, from his own feelings and thoughts, that his manhood was standing at attention, reaching for me.

I knew little of men but had some vague ideas, and I was eager to learn more.

His hand disappeared from my chest for a moment and then found my own. He guided it down to his manhood. Curling my fingers around it, he showed me how to caress him. He was hot and the sweet smell of his arousal had me moaning again into his mouth. I loved touching him and feeling how good it felt for him as well.

He guided my hand faster and faster, even while keeping his other fingers gently pressed against my most intimate place, only pausing once to flick and rub at me until I could barely keep still. The sensations were overwhelming, drawing me higher and higher, until I was sure I would explode.

His mouth pressed harder against mine. I peaked with squeak, which would have been a scream if not for him. With his guidance I brought him to his peak. Shuddering against me, he let out only the quietest moan of satisfaction.

For a moment, he leaned his sweaty brow against my cheek as he got his breathing under control once again. “Oh, Scai.”

I just kissed his forehead in response and straightened my skirts.

As we lay there, the pull of sleep began to overtake me.

“I need to go,” Dylan whispered into my hair.

I roused myself enough to ask, “Go? Go where?”

“I need to find the chalice.”

That woke me.

“What? But that’s where we’re going.”

“No. I need to do this on my own. It’s my birthright. I am the sole heir of Merlin. I need to find the chalice, and I need to use it to get rid of Lady Nimuë once and for all.”

He lifted himself up on his elbow and looked me in the eye. “I feel this, Scai. I feel it deep in my soul. I never should have dragged you, Bridget, and Sir Dagonet into this. This is my quest, not yours.”

I shook my head, heat of another kind entirely beginning to pool inside of me. I tried my best to keep my anger to myself. “It may have
been
your quest, but it’s not any more. We’re all in this together, Dylan.”

He turned, staring at nothing. I wished he would look at me. I needed to see his what was going on in his eyes. He couldn’t honestly think to leave us behind—it wasn’t right. What had happened to the happiness at being together? It seemed to have cooled as quickly as the heat we’d generated together.

“You don’t understand,” he said, finally. “This is something I have been told about since I was a boy. I have worked toward this my whole life. I have trained for it. This is
my
quest,
my
legacy. I am Merlin’s heir, not you, not Bridget.”

The heat inside of me grew into small whirlwind in the pit of my stomach. “Well I
didn’t
grow up with this. I didn’t even know I was Vallen until Sir Dagonet told me so only a few weeks ago, but that doesn’t make me any less Vallen than you.”

“No, of course…” Dylan began, but I wasn’t done.

“And you may have always known your destiny, but that doesn’t mean that I am any less entitled to mine. And mine lies with that chalice just as much as yours does.”

“No, Scai, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m Merlin’s heir. It is his chalice that he left for his descendants. I am his only descendant. It’s mine.”

“He left it for the three of us. He practically names us in the prophecy.”

Dylan just shook his head. “You don’t understand. Please, don’t make me force you…”

“Force me?” I scooted away from him and sat up. “You mean like the way you nearly drowned me and Sir Dagonet? Like the way you tried to force us to turn around by alternately taking away our water and then making it pour for days on end so that Sir Dagonet became deathly ill? Is that what you want to do, Dylan? Is that what you are thinking? Because I’m going to tell you right now, no matter what you do, Bridget and I are not going to give this up. This is our legacy, our destiny—and you cannot stop us.”

I stood up and moved away, unable to be near him. I had thought he’d changed his mind. That he’d repented for his earlier behavior. That he understood now that we were all in this together.

I had thought I liked him and he liked me—after what we had just done.

Clearly, I was wrong.

I choked back an angry sob. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. We were all supposed to work together, and be together. I knew this for certain.

I heard Dylan moving behind me, gathering up his things. After a minute there was a silence. I could feel his presence behind me.

“I’ll leave you my horse,” he said quietly. “I’ll go into Stafford and buy myself another one there.”

I refused to say anything. I couldn’t, without giving away the fact that I was on the verge of crying.

“If it turns out that you’re right and I need you and Bridget in order to find the chalice, I’ll come back and find you.”

He would come back and find us?
If
he needed us? I couldn’t believe him! My anger rose up again, shoving past the deep hurt inside.

I heard him start to move away.

“Don’t bother,” I said, turning around and locking onto his eyes with my own.

He paused for a moment to look at me. I could see the hurt in his eyes, even in the dim dark of the night, but he said nothing more.

He just turned around and left.

<><><>

“Where’s Dylan? Have you seen him this morning, Scai?” Bridget asked as she was tying our bags onto the horses and getting ready to move on.