The Immortal Series
Автор
Jennie Bradley-Smith
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Chapter 1
Book 1: The Last Pendragon
MORGANA
That’s the thing about living forever: it makes you into a total bitch.
It’s not like it’s my fault. I didn’t ask for this. Yet here I am again, torturing myself.
People who know me well, which is not many, often ask why I read so many books about Arthurian legends and culture.
They want to know why I’m obsessed with both the laughable historical accuracy and the interesting “myths” that surround Britain in the early sixth century.
Why am I so interested in King Arthur and his oh-so-fabulous knights of the round, bloody table?
It’s obvious to me. I was there.
I was a major player in the politics of the time. That’s not even bragging; it’s just fact. Most women weren’t, but I was.
True, I wasn’t always as helpful as I could have been, and I made some rather poor decisions, but nothing to warrant this.
This was not fair.
I’m swaying slightly as I stand in the darkness. The wind blows gently around me and it smells like it’s nearing midnight. Midnight has its own particular smell, like the night sky is collecting itself to become something else.
Trees, earth, midnight, and my annoyance.
Sometimes being me isn’t all bad. I’m still the most powerful sorceress on the planet. sorceress, mind you, not witch. I still have all that power, however tethered up I am.
I sigh, because don’t all stories just start the same bloody way, but there was this guy.
Most people have heard of him, but they’ve heard the wrong stories.
And ‘us’, well there wasn’t an us. But he thought there was. As usual, the audacity of men leads to a lifetime of unhappy women.
He cursed me, twice, because I didn’t love him,
Most people wouldn’t call immortality a curse, but that’s because they’re not stuck with it, so what do they know.
He wanted us to be immortal so that we could be together forever. If he’d actually talked to me about it, I would have carefully explained that I didn’t want to be with him forever. Or at all.
But he made me immortal as a gift. Then, when I rejected him, there was a big old magical battle, he cursed me again, and I murdered him.
Which is why I’m currently standing alone in the middle of a forest in western France at midnight, holding a mostly empty bottle of bourbon. The stones before me mark what is believed to be his grave.
He’s not in there, but hell will freeze over before I tell anybody where the pieces of him actually are. But the tourists like it here. And we must keep up appearances, mustn’t we.
I raise the bottle in a toast to the stones before me. “Rot in hell, Merlin, You thrice-damned son of a bitch.”
I pour the rest of the alcohol at my feet, and trying to step away from it and my heel sinks into a patch of mud. I struggle with it a little pathetically but my sense of balance is terrible at the moment.
I could pull it out, but then I’d fall over.
There are simpler solutions.
I focus for a second, which my brain doesn’t like, and lock onto him. With a distinct effort, and a flare of yellow magic from the Rainbow Curse, I pull him to me.
There’s a flash of light and I know it worked. I go back to trying to wiggle my foot free.
There’s a deep sigh behind me, along with the scent of his cologne, cardamom and something woodsy, it mingles with the smells from the forest around me.
I create a little light, just a dim glow, and point at my foot.
“Of course.” His voice is deep and melodic, and betrays annoyance.
I point again.
“It’s the middle of the night, in gods alone know where and you drag me out here because you don’t want to get muddy.”
It’s not a question. It’s just the truth.
“I’m drunk.” I give a shrug in response.
“Oh, because usually you have much more respect for the life I lead when it doesn’t involve you.”
The sarcasm is not appreciated.
“Help me and I’ll get you out of here.”
Grumbling quietly to himself, he bends down and I put my hands on his shoulder to try and not fall down. He digs around my heel with his fingers for a few seconds before he extricates it from the earth.
I try to step back from him, worrying that his general support of me could become something more, but the alcohol spins my brain around and, despite the illegal magic and dragging someone away from their everyday life, I end up flat on my arse on the dewy grass.
“Bollocks.” I mutter to myself.
He laughs as he brushes himself down and stands up. He puts out a hand to pull me to my feet.
I take it and he hauls me to my feet. These shoes were a bad idea.
“James,” I say, a little groggily, “take me home.”
“You never tell me where you live.”
“Obviously. Take me to your home.”
“I don’t know where we are.”
I let out a groan grab his elbow. I’d already done illegal magic anyway, a bit more won’t hurt. Though it won’t help the hangover.
“I’m taking your bed. You can be a gentleman and sleep on the couch.” I try to grin at him but I’m too sleepy.
As the light flashes when we disappear, for a moment I think I can see a shadow of a person in the trees.
Was I followed? There aren’t many people both powerful and dumb enough to try.
But it’s too late to tell. The darkness of alcohol and sorrow shuts my brain off and I sink into the darkness.
I’m over fifteen hundred years old, and I just want to die.
I’m the most powerful being on earth, and I’m frightened of a dead man.
I’ve drunk three bottles of bourbon, and I can’t remember where I live.
My name is Morgana Le Fay.
