Thup. Thup Thup. Haden, who she’d known as Galahad long ago, tapped his pen against his leg in unison with the rapid beating of her heart, the inconsequential sound registering in the harsh silence following the glass table basically exploding.
Sasha sat immobile, with shattered glass across her lap, a small piece of it sparkling at her from where it’d lodged in her braid, her thoughts equally as shattered as the table now in pieces around her feet.
That burst had come from Derek. She was sure of it. Who or what was he?
The Immortality Stone she’d been seeking now lay on the floor amid the rubble.
It had glowed.
The way the seven owners huddled together, the rapid whispering going on between them as they pointed not at the shattered glass but at the rock indicated they’d seen the stone glow too. What did it mean?
Through her own shock, she couldn’t get a read on their reactions.
She hadn’t seen all of them together since coming to work for Chevalier, and their appearances were greatly altered since last she’d known them, fifteen hundred years ago. But she still recognized each of the seven for who he’d once been—those men she’d watched from afar.
The Knights of the Round Table.
Other than Arthur, with whom she’d grown up, her father had refused to allow her to interact with the court directly. He’d never given a reason. Instead, he’d allowed her to watch events unfold from a small cottage in the country, outside the walls of the city, with the help of an enchanted looking glass that was stolen the day Morgan Le Fay killed Arthur and her father, and cursed her and Arthur’s knights.
She’d disobeyed her father’s rules and snuck into the palace only twice. The first time she’d tried to save Arthur the pain of discovering Lancelot and Guinevere’s betrayal, but she’d been too late. The second time she’d regret to her dying day.
Had her father known? He’d sometimes possessed the ability to see future outcomes. Not well enough or he wouldn’t have had to sacrifice himself, but still.
Sasha shook her head, trying to untangle jumbled thoughts.
In a delayed reaction, Derek leapt to his feet, toppling his chair. The dwarves all snapped their gazes to him. Sasha’s reaction time was slower. The stone was right there for her to take, but she’d never escape the room with it. God, she still needed to work out how to destroy the thing. If it had survived the blast of electricity from Derek, how was she going to shatter it and end this blasted curse?
Derek didn’t say anything, his dark gaze taking in the destroyed table, the stone, the rubble, her, and the dwarves.
She had to give the man props. Most non-magical, non-immortal humans would be in shock or freaking out. However, his military training ensured a cool head even in the most dire of circumstances. Besides, he wasn’t a mere human, was he? He couldn’t be with that power.
Derek crossed his arms, feet planted wide. “Someone better start explaining.”
The dwarves exchanged brief glances. Eddie, the man who’d originally hired her, broke away from the group. “The table must’ve had an unseen crack. It never has this many people using it at once. The weight or pressure from the stone must’ve collapsed it.”
Eddie, once called Sir Bedivere, didn’t even glance Sasha’s way as the lie slipped from his lips.
“And the magically disappearing gem? And the glowing stone?” Derek looked pointedly at the rock, now innocuous and cold, on the floor. The glass shards sparkled more than the rock.
Lance and his remaining brothers-in-arms faced them squarely. “Magic isn’t the culprit here. There’s not some boogeyman trailing you. Your failed security is the issue. I want to know how you’re going to fix it.”
The two men stared each other down in a silent battle of wills. The bulb in the overhead light flickered. Derek’s fists clenched, his jaw locked, and his face went stony.
She’d seen that look before. The one that said the man standing before her hovered somewhere between furious and out of control.
“Right,” Derek practically growled. “I’d better get to work then.”
He was across the room and out the door before anyone could speak.
She couldn’t get his expression out of her mind. She couldn’t ignore the similarity with another man. One who’d always come to her for comfort when he crept toward the edge of losing control.
The memory drove her out of her chair and out the door, halting outside when conversation started back up in the room. Hmmm, chase Derek or find out more about the Immortality Stone? Derek would be okay for a couple of minutes.
“Way to go, Lance,” Tristain, once one of Arthur’s best fighters, stated.
“Shut up.”
Tristain didn’t let up. “You know Derek’s security isn’t the problem. It’s—”
“We don’t know who took the stone,” Lance insisted.
“You can’t be serious. Of course, Morgan is behind this.” Gareth, Waine’s brother and the quietest of the bunch, spoke up.
Wait. Morgan was still alive? Sasha had kept loose tabs on the dwarves through the centuries, mostly to avoid them, but she’d no inkling of what had happened to the woman who cursed them all. She had hoped Morgan died long ago. Was she immortal too? Was Morgan after the Immortality Stone? Why would she want it?
Another memory tickled her mind. An argument she’d overheard between Father and Morgan. Morgan yelling that Merlin had stolen magic from her and she wouldn’t rest until she found it. Sasha’s father stating that Morgan would never recover what he’d taken from her. That he’d put it where it would be safe, and in the end, Camelot would rise, despite her.
He hadn’t been referring to the Immortality Stone, had he? Was that the magic the stone held? Morgan’s magic?
So many unanswered questions, but it was imperative that Sasha get the stone before Morgan, even if it had nothing to do with the long-ago argument. From her knowledge of Arthur’s sister, nothing good would come of it if she possessed the stone. Evil was the only notion the woman knew, so twisted was her soul.
“We haven’t seen her since she cursed us,” Lance insisted.
Gareth huffed out a breath. “Which doesn’t mean she hasn’t been here. If it’s her, nothing Derek does will keep her out.”
Silence greeted Gareth’s statement. “She must be here for the stone,” Lance finally acknowledged.
The man who’d once been Arthur’s best friend, before he’d stolen his wife, blew out a frustrated breath. Since Arthur had died, he’d been the one to lead the men, to protect them. Now, suspicion controlled Lance’s thoughts, making him unable to trust anyone but the six other men in the room. For a brief instant, she felt sorry for the once-famous knight, but only for a flicker.
It was all Lance’s fault she was in her current situation. Arthur and his knights had merely refused to recognize Morgan for what she was, fooled by beauty and artful deception only a woman could render. Lancelot, however, was guilty of betraying his king and his friend in the worst possible way.
“I was going to suggest giving the stone to Sasha and having Derek guard her,” Lance mused.
Sasha’s heart leapt to her throat. Was Lance going to just hand over the stone? Was it going to be that easy to get it in her possession?
“But if Morgan’s involved, that’s out,” Tristain argued.
Damn. That would’ve been too perfect.
Waine, once called Gawain, a legend in Camelot even among the other knights, cleared his throat. “Could Sasha be one of our—?”
“They’re all dead,” Lance cut the question off.
One of their what?
“What if they’re not dead?” Waine fired back. “We all saw that stone glow. If she is . . . we have to protect her.”
The silence lengthened. They weren’t going to say anything more, and she needed to find Derek. They were going to protect her? What a laugh. They’d damn well failed to do so before. Hell, they’d been unable to see Morgan Le Fay’s evil in time to protect themselves or anyone else in Camelot.
They shouldn’t worry about protecting her anyway. Arthur had insisted on teaching her to fight. She’d kept it up over time with physical training, mostly in self-defense.
The Chevaliers should be worried about what she planned to do to them.
Dammit, she was going to get her hands on that stone and put an end to this crap. The question was how to work it?
Staying close to the dwarves, pretending ignorance, was the only path she could see, which meant maintaining the role she’d already been playing. She would need to keep Derek close. The electricity burst that had shattered the table had tingled through her nerve endings. The man would be a mass of jumbled emotions after what had happened. She had to find him before he did something more than shatter a table.
Locating Derek wasn’t difficult. All she had to do was follow the flickering lights. The trail led her back down to the basement car park, where Derek was about to get into his Land Rover.
“Derek?”
He froze, hand on the door, but didn’t turn. A fluorescent light at the end of the row of parking spaces popped, turning the far end of the garage ominously dark. “Go away, Sasha.”
“No.”
He faced her. “I can’t deal with you right now.”
She ignored him, moving closer. “I used to have . . . panic attacks, too. Let me help.”
Another light went out. “This isn’t a fucking panic attack.”
Rather than run from the snarl in his words or the glower, Sasha grasped him by the arms. She ignored the fresh, piney scent of his body and the fizzing sensation that passed through her fingertips, as though an electric current were running over his skin. Though, for the briefest, inappropriate second, she wondered what that sensation might feel like in the throes of passion. Would it enhance sex?
So not going there. She shifted her attention to Derek. If he went any stiffer under her touch, he’d turn into granite.
“Look at me.” She kept her voice low and soft, the way she’d talk to a spooked animal.
He shook his head, looking anywhere but at her. Another light died. Now they stood in half-darkness, with the buzzing of the remaining lights filling the silence.
She released one arm to cup his jaw. “Look at me.”
He dropped his dark gaze to hers. The confusion and pain in his eyes touched a part of her she long thought dead. The part that only came alive for a man who had died long ago. Arthur.
Had her love been real?
She stroked his cheek in encouragement, trying to ignore the scratch of his scruff against her skin and the intimacy this touch engendered. “That’s it. Just look at me. And breathe.”
Derek stared at her with fathomless eyes for a long beat . . . the same way Arthur used to. Then his shoulders dropped a fraction, and his chest rose and fell with a few deep breaths.
The oxygen left her body in a whoosh. The same sensation she used to experience when Arthur would pin her with his blue-eyed gaze, as though the world narrowed and only the two of them existed.
Sasha centered on why she’d come down here.
“Keep breathing. Listen to my voice.” She continued to murmur words, none of which mattered, simply filling the silence and surrounding Derek with a peaceful sound. A trick she’d mastered ages ago, lifetimes ago, with a different man who’d needed her. Even if he never would admit it.
She glanced up as the lights overhead stabilized and his shoulders dropped a hair more.
“Good.” Still she didn’t remove her hands from his face and his arm. “How long has this been happening to you?”
“Since I was a kid.” Huh? Wasn’t he supposed to deny it a few times before she dug it out of him?
“What is it?”
“Who the hell knows? Some kind of electric current. I’ve never affected a non-electrical object like a table before, though.” His brows drew down over his eyes, but his breathing remained steady and the lights remained on. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
She tipped her head. “The lights go berserk around you too often for me not to believe you.”
And I’m the daughter of a powerful wizard, so I’ve seen a helluva lot. She kept that tidbit to herself or he’d think she was crazy.
Derek huffed a laugh. A positive sign. “Do you think they noticed?”
She knew for a fact the dwarves hadn’t noticed how the surge came from Derek. Or at least they had attributed the events to her. She grimaced. “A table shattered, which is hard to miss. However, I don’t think they realize the reason has anything to do with you.”
A nod. “That’s something, I guess. I’ll plead ignorance if they ask more questions.”
She smiled. “I think you’re doing better now.”
Sasha went to pull her hand away, but Derek moved quicker, grabbing her wrist to keep it on his cheek.
“Are you some kind of witch?” he murmured. “With the power to calm.”
Sasha’s heart beat a tattoo at his touch, at his stare, now so full of hot need. An answering heat, shocking in its intensity, flooded her body, pooling low. “Usually calm is not the effect I have on you.”
With a tug, he pulled her closer, wrapping his other hand around her waist. And she went, her body overriding her logic. Maybe his electric charge had short-circuited her brain, because suddenly all she could focus on were his lips, so close to hers, his fresh, woodsy scent, and his heat surrounding her.
“No,” he murmured, voice hoarse. “Calm is not how you affect me.”
Sasha licked her suddenly dry lips. “No?” The word escaped as a whisper.
“No.”
Heat seared through her, desire fizzing through her blood. With a soft moan, she opened to him, letting him claim her mouth with his lips, his tongue. His strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer. Through the loose material of his gi, she could feel the hard evidence of his desire pulsing against her belly, and an answering need burst through her. God, she wanted this man.
She’d never felt such need, such heaven from one simple kiss. Not since the one time Arthur had . . .
With a gasp, Sasha wrenched her lips away from Derek’s. What was she doing? This man stood in the way of her finally putting an end to her agonizingly long life. How had she lost sight of that?
She swallowed and stepped back, tugging away from his lingering grasp as she did. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have done that.”
The heat in his eyes banked, turning from smoky to cold in a heartbeat. “You’re right. Bad idea. It won’t happen again.”
Hey, he could’ve argued a little bit.
But she didn’t speak that ridiculous thought. Instead, she tipped her head at the lift. “We should go back up and work with them.”
Derek scowled, and she held up a hand. “If having you constantly underfoot has taught me anything, it’s that you’re stubborn but also determined to do your job. I’m guessing you’ve already come up with ideas on how to address this.”
She’d gained his trust now. If he remained involved, she’d be able to help him, not only with his power, but with getting closer to the stone so she could come up with an effective way to destroy it.
Derek folded his arms over his chest, widening his stance. A fighter. A sexy fighter.
Not sexy. Dammit. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t afford to find him sexy, though the heat still coursing through her from his kiss belied that thought. Something she refused to acknowledge in any way, shape, or form.
“You must be a witch,” he muttered. He moved toward the lift. “That, or I’m definitely crazy to keep this job.”
He didn’t mean it. The honor ingrained in him meant he would never just give up. Even on relatively short acquaintance, she knew that much about him.
On the other hand, she was probably crazy to stick around. With the dwarves watching her more closely and the fucking sorceress who put them all here possibly involved, Sasha should cut her losses and run.
She for damn sure wasn’t whom the dwarves suspected her to be. Oh, she’d heard all about the legend, had practically been raised on it. No way could she be one of the fated women destined to love them, to fulfill the prophecy that made the Knights the powerful men they were, thus realizing the promise of Camelot. Something they’d come painfully close to fully achieving, until Arthur and Lancelot couldn’t agree as to whom Guinevere was fated to belong. If Sasha were supposed to be one of their fated loves, they would’ve figured it out fifteen hundred years ago.
She couldn’t run now. Not when she was so close to ending the continual loop of living a solitary life. There were only so many shows on Netflix she could binge on. Who knew what state the world would be in in five years’ time, let alone another hundred. She could only endure so much, and fifteen centuries was more than enough.
If she wanted this nightmare of a life to end, she needed to destroy that stone, before Morgan could lay claim to it.