Tried and a little feverish from the thorns, she tried to get more comfortable. “You have an awful lot to say about the people you betrayed.”
As expected, Kel didn’t take the bait.
Greedy fingers of exhaustion plucked at her, but weak or not, she couldn’t let herself fall asleep. Kel hadn’t made a secret of wanting to see her torn apart, and she’d rather not make herself an easy target.
Rising on shaking legs, she made it high enough to sit on the chunk of stone nearby, then finally stood. The small flame near Kel’s feet cast dancing shadows on the wall.
“This wasn’t here before, was it?” She would have noticed the mural very different from the one Vaughn had foolishly touched.
Kel followed her gaze. “A lot of things weren’t here before.”
Too preoccupied with studying the mural, she didn’t read into Kel’s statement. Careful not to touch the hieroglyphics, she took in the image of the sun with human-like qualities and the nine people below it. Three groups of three. One woman and two men.
The gods?
Three symbols—Rhiannon’s, the Gauntlet’s and one she didn’t recognize—were lined up beneath each threesome. Below that were depictions of battles between the nine. The first Campaigns?
In the last one, a woman with Rhiannon’s mark fought a man bearing the symbol of the Gauntlet on his chest. She’d buried a sword in his chest.
Blinking to clear her foggy vision, she inched a little closer. “That looks like…Excalibur?” She turned toward Kel. “Could there have three swords, three Excaliburs?” She scanned the images, trying to figure out what she was missing.
Kel dragged himself to his feet but thankfully didn’t get too close to her. “No.” He pointed to the one in the man’s hand in the last image she kept returning to. “That isn’t Excalibur, but I’ve seen it before.” He met her gaze. “Mordred used it to kill Arthur.”
The collapsed wall behind them shook, and she would have brushed up against the mural if Kel didn’t steady her.
“It’s time to go.” Lucan took solid form in front of them. “I don’t know how long we’ll have before the whole chamber collapses.”
Something burst through the wall, opening a passageway, and Briana braced herself to fight off more vines. Instead the vegetation twisted up the walls, crisscrossing over the ceiling to hold the roof up.
“The Fae,” Lucan explained, reading the confusion on her face. He swept her up, into his arms and rushed into the newly formed tunnel. The ceiling and walls were still shaking when they emerged on the other side, Kel right on their heels.
“What happened to Graegor?”
Lucan nodded to where another section of the chamber had collapsed and the man’s legs peeked out from under the debris.
“And the others?”
“Gone,” the Fae answered, falling into step next to them.
She rested her head on Lucan’s shoulder. She struggled to keep her eyes open, barely catching Lucan thrusting something at the Fae.
The scroll?
“Lucan, don’t.” Her voice was gone, the words little more than a squeak that sucked the last of her strength. There was something she wanted to tell him, but the fuzzy details slipped away. Her head lolled forward and she seemed to drop in and out of consciousness until they reached the entrance to the catacombs. Through slitted lashes she watched Bran unravel the scroll, and then darkness snatched her away.
Lucan knew the second Briana lost consciousness, her arm slipping off his shoulder.
“Briana?”
He never should have taken her blood. He could have found another way instead of drinking from her, his thirst sated in a way he’d never felt before, and at a cost he wasn’t prepared to pay.
He smoothed her tangled hair back from her face, her body fragile looking in the ripped and stained shirt that didn’t even reach her knees.
Briana had a mate.
His mind continued to reel from that revelation. It explained why she’d wanted to keep her distance after the last of the enchantress’s spell had worn off.
The walls inside the entrance continued to rumble, but no longer threatened to cave in.
“What does it say?” Kel demanded, leaning against the outside wall. His limp and the pain creasing the dragon’s face in tight lines, kept him from lunging past Lucan to snatch the scroll from the Fae’s hand.
Refusing to trust Kel not to hurt Briana in the time it would take to reach the entrance, he’d sacrificed a win in favor of making a bargain. Lucan had promised the scroll to Bran if he freed Briana, half hoping the tunnel wouldn’t hold long enough for Kel to escape as well. The dragon needed more than a few minutes to face the consequences of what he’d done to Arthur—to all of them—when he’d deserted them.
He could almost hear Briana’s diplomatic voice in his head, insisting more than one man’s decisions had been responsible for what happened at Camlann. With her lying broken and so still in his arms, he didn’t care about anything but making things right between them—and getting her back to her mate.
Like he’d been stabbed by a dozen spears, he clenched his jaw at the thought of her with anyone else. He’d made his peace with it centuries ago—when he’d been promised to Gwen—or so he thought.
For the first time, the violent need to lash out was his own and not the wraith’s.
Bran frowned at the opened scroll. “It’s a map.” His eyes widened.
A burst of light exploded from the entrance to the catacombs, and Lucan turned, shielding Briana. When he lifted his head, they stood in the courtyard. The scroll had disappeared from the Fae’s hand.
Briana moaned in his arms, finally stirring, though she didn’t open her eyes.
“What did you do to her?” Covered in dirt and blood, Vaughn stalked toward them.
The wraith snarled, something reflecting in his eyes that gave the wolf pause.
“She’s down a few pints of O-Neg. Get over it.” Kel limped away.
Elena crouched on the ground next to Nessa. She glanced at Vaughn. “Give me a hand with her.”
He pointed to the jagged tear along his shoulder blade. “Your huntress friend tried to decapitate me. You’re on your own, sweetheart.”
If looks could decapitate, Elena’s would have ripped Vaughn’s head from his shoulders. The Fae helped her with Nessa, the huntress’s eyes opening before Lucan carried Briana past them and inside.
Upstairs, he laid her on the bed then set about cleaning her up. Once that was finished and he made sure her wounds were closing on their own, he wrapped her in a robe and tucked her in bed.
Leaving her wasn’t an option. Listening for her, he cleaned himself up, wrapped himself in a towel and stretched out on the bed next to her, watching her sleep. Every once in a while her brow creased, and he would run his fingers along her cheek, unable to resist.
She wouldn’t like that, and neither would the mate who’d somehow earned the right—through fate, biological compatibility, attraction, whatever—to call Briana his.
But it wasn’t her mate who watched over her now, determined to protect her, even if it was for someone else.
He rolled on to his back, staring at the ceiling. How was it that centuries of accepting the life Rhiannon had cursed him with could be so easily undone by the woman next to him?
Although Briana’s blood had given him the strength to take his phantom shape and speed up the sluggish healing of his wounds, Lucan knew he needed rest as much as she did. The next challenge could be days away or only hours and they both needed to be ready for it.
Edging as close as he could without disturbing her, he closed his eyes and welcomed sleep.