Avalon Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

it’s caught up to me. My father glances about, as though expecting perhaps a nosy stable boy eavesdropping. But we’re alone. “I cannot bear to worry about your safety here. A fortnight past, I sent for an aeroship. It’ll arrive in the morning. You’ll go to be with Guinevere until the others return.”
    The others. My father’s name for those who left the kingdom for safer grounds and who haven’t returned. To go to the same northern nunnery Guinevere fled to after Morgan’s war would save my reputation once Camelot is a united kingdom again. Certainly a more ideal option than to be found as the only lady in these ruins for six months. Quite possibly I could be married off by the time Camelot is rebuilt.
    To speak higher than a whisper might mean a scream of protest. “You would have me leave my home all because Sir Kay didn’t like how a handmaid argued with him?”
    My father’s gaze is not one of anger at my words, but one of pity. Of perhaps wishing I could have instead been born a boy to follow in his political footsteps. “You would have done well as an advisor.”
    I scoff, wishing away the lump of sadness in my throat.
    My father could rebuke me for that, but he finds patience somehow. “The world we live in is unkind, even here, in a place that should have been paradise.” He sets his hands on my shoulders so that I look at him. “It won’t be this way forever. Our allies in España, Caledonia, and the Druid lands are helping us search for … for them. It won’t be much longer now.”
    I feel my eyes well, but not because of what being sent away would mean for Marcus and me. But because there is no argument I could give my father that would change his mind, regardless of whether it could save his only son. The morning is only hours away. I could be on the northern shores by the next nightfall.
    “Please don’t ask me to do this,” I whisper.
    My father touches my cheek in a tender way. “It’s for the best. You don’t belong up there.” His eyes shoot up at the clock tower, but he’ll never say the words himself. “Let Lancelot deal with Owen and the … ” He trails off, and I wonder if he and Lancelot have spoken much about Marcus’s affection for me. “He’s a knight now, and he was only a serf. Please, Vivienne. You’ll thank me one day.”
    I want to speak up, to defy him, to tell him I won’t live a life decided for me, but the words are lost on my lips, and all I can manage is a bitter response. “No. I’ll never forgive you.”
    My father straightens, guarding himself from my words, though certain I won’t leave the castle. And so there’s no reason to keep tight to my arm: no one in this wretched place would accompany me should I try to escape anyway. I run through the snow to Merlin’s tower before my father can see me cry and know that perhaps he was right in believing this skeleton of a kingdom is no place for a girl.
    Night is descending, and Camelot will grow colder. Irrelevant—I must leave tonight, before the aeroship my father sent for arrives. For that, I’ll need jaseemat . And a hell of a lot of it.
    According to my specifications, only jaseemat as sophisticated as Azur’s can power my own aeroship to fly high enough to kiss the heavens, fast enough to chase Apollo across dawn’s sky. To reach Avalon. When Merlin and I used the alchemic powder as blood in the copper veins of Victor, it rendered much power. To hell with waiting for a signal from the Lady of the Lake. I need to find Marcus and Owen or I’ll be sent away at the first sight of dawn. A month missing without returning to Camelot? Marcus wouldn’t do that. He’d find a way to send word.
    In the clock tower, the wind blasts a tornado around me, its voice taunting me that it might already be too late. I ignore it for the scattered journals and leaves of parchment on Merlin’s desk, scanning the alchemic incantations I’ve come to memorize. But I’ve already gone through these volumes.