Free For Camelot's Honor by Sarah Zettel Page B

Now.”
    She barely heard him. Her head was too full of other sounds. It should have been quiet in this house, but it was not. She heard the echoes of the shouts, the screams, the laughter of neighbors turned marauders. They emanated from the stones. They reverberated in the scent of blood and death that was everywhere. She inhaled them with every breath. They filled mouth, throat and lungs. She absorbed them through her skin. They would never leave her, anymore than the sight of her dead would. She knew that with dreadful certainty, because they were all calling out for her.
    Where were you?
the dead wailed. They screamed, they pleaded, they cursed and they cried.
Where were you when we needed you?
    Their voices were so loud, she barely heard the scrape of bootsoles against the floor.
    â€œThere you are, Elen. I wondered when you would return to us.”
    Rage burned hard in her veins. Elen laid her mother’s hand gently down, and she stood, turning slowly to see Urien standing behind her, his sword held casually in his fist.
    Nor was he alone. Three of his men had come with him to see the bloodied children steal back into their ruined home. Yestin, white with his fury watched those three, wondering, Elen knew, how many he could kill before he died himself.
    â€œGet out, Elen!” cried Yestin, but Elen could not make herself move.
    â€œI would have spared you this sight.” Urien spread his hands in a dreadful parody of an apology. “But your mother left me no choice. She would not say where you had gone, and your brother …” he grinned in mockery at Yestin. “Well, I would have said he was too clever to be caught, but he too has come back, hasn’t he?”
    A trap. They’d threatened desecration as a trap, so Yestin would come back, and so, if all went well, would she. They meant to end the line of Pont Cymryd, here in the house it had built.
    Elen’s mouth was dry and filled with the taste of blood and ash. Her mind was too full of red rage to think clearly. “Why?” she croaked. “Why?”
    â€œI could not let Adara bring the invaders into our lands,” he said flatly. “I could not stand by while she betrayed her own for the outlanders and opened the way for them to take the rest of us.”
    Elen felt her jaw go slack. The bridge. Her family had been destroyed for the bridge.
    â€œCome now, girl.” Urien held out his hand.
    To her dismay, Elen laughed, a high, bubbling hysterical noise. “You think I’d go willingly with the one who murdered my mother?”
    Urien shook his head. “Your mother taught you to be sensible. This place is mine now.
You’re
mine now and there’re uses for you alive yet.” He took a step toward her, his hand still out.
    Elen drew herself up tall. She stood in the home of her ancestors, annointed with the blood of the fae and of her family. What made him think he could touch her here?
    â€œWhat do you know of my mother’s teaching?” she asked, coldly. “Her curse is on you as her blood is on my hands!” Elen lifted her hands spreading her fingers, letting him see what he had done, what he called down. “Thunder and lightning take you Urien! Earth open where you stand! Night itself hunt you down and swallow you whole!”
    She felt each word she spoke resonate in her bones and echo down into the earth. The air grew thick and heavy with her words. The smoke grew dense and pulled close, blocking the sun, bringing down the night to cloak the daytime sky. Before her, Urien grew pale. The hand that held his short sword that had drunk so deeply of her family’s blood trembled. His men backed uneasily away. Elen felt her power swell, felt her words become stone, become truth. She felt eyes on her, watching, measuring, judging. What did they see, those eyes? The thought was gone almost as it formed. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Urien before her now and the