Free Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer by Lucy Weston Page B

weakly.
    “Will have to be postponed,” Kat declares. “Her Majesty must have complete rest, after which, no doubt, she will be perfectly fine.”
    Cecil, who has only just then been readmitted, bends close to me and whispers, “Was it Mordred in the gallery? Was that what happened?”
    I nod and grip his hand. “Tell Dee he is not wrong, Morgaine’s power is real, but it has left me sorely drained.”
    A flash of relief darts across Cecil’s face but hard on it falls the shadow of dread. Truly, we both know that the power of which I speak is beyond the ken of mortal men and women.
    “Then rest,” my faithful Spirit says, “and do not fear, I will see that no one makes too much of this. As soon as you are able, send word and I will bring Dee to you.”
    “And Robin, as well. He knows more of this than any of us realized.”
    Clearly, Cecil is not pleased. I know that he considers my feelings for Robin a bar to the royal marriage that everyone, including my Spirit, assumes I will have to make. But he acquiesces all the same, rightly judging that he has no choice.
    “As you say, Majesty. There is also someone else I would like you to meet, a man I believe can be useful to us. I will bring him as well, with your permission.”
    I nod but weakly for I am scarcely awake. Cecil’s voice fades as I drift into a dreamworld at once hauntingly familiar and unknown. Gilded rooms form and shift around me, filled with mist concealing whatever is occurring within. Shapes move but darkly, without sufficient form for me to recognize them. I hear voices but only one is familiar—my mother’s, Anne’s. I cannot make out her words no matter how I strain to do so but I sense urgency in her tone.
    I am still trying to listen to her when a light tapping at my door returns me to this world.

 
    The scheming, ungrateful creature! How dare she pit herself against me! I, who offered her the world? So great was my disappointment that I could think of nothing save to regain the manor and hide myself away in the chamber beyond the library where not even Blanche was permitted to enter. Too frustrated to even consider feeding, I lay on my velvet-draped bier, contemplating what had happened.
    Anne would never have been able to attack me so boldly. What power she had from Morgaine’s line was only enough to make her of potential use to me, nothing more. I had assumed it would be the same with Elizabeth, but now seemingly disconnected events compelled me to consider a far different possibility.
    A queen choosing to die by the sword when she could have saved herself by allying with me. The arcane signs and symbols protecting her motherless daughter. Dee’s prattling about a conjunction of the stars that comes only once in a millennium. The light rising from the grave. The smell of roses.
    Anne loved roses. But so did Morgaine, who wore them as her emblem. Her power surpassed any that I had managed to acquire over all the centuries, even to the extent of granting her glimpses of the future. Had she seen where three slain queens would be buried? Where they could serve as a conduit for her own power to return into the world with the coming of her one, true heir?
    Did she lie there, too, all this time? Waiting?
    If my fevered musings had any foundation at all, I faced a vastlymore serious danger than I could have imagined, yet with it came the chance to undo at last the loss that still haunted me.
    Morgaine, alive again in Elizabeth! My love returned to me, but this time as my true companion and ally. I must win her to my side. Enraged though I was by her effrontery, the potential rewards of forbearance proved too great a temptation to resist. I would wait, giving her time and opportunity to see the error of her ways. When she did—
    I imagined her in my arms, beneath my touch, her taste forever on my lips, the sweetness of her surrender made all the more piercing by the challenge she presented. The sensation filled me with almost unbearable