Preview: Born of Magic
Excerpt:
If you had told Gwen, ten years previously, of her current life, she would have called you a wonderful story teller and then suggested that you cease drinking quite so heavily.
She would never, for a start, have realistically envisioned children.
Not that she didn’t want them - she did. She liked children. She had sometimes thought, distantly, of what it would be like to cradle little sleeping bundles, and chase little feet around a small, comfortable home and dress little arms and legs in little shirts and breeches. Comb little heads of hair - sooth little nightmares. But children required a husband, and Gwen was so entirely married to Morgana that such a situation seemed far beyond her grasp.
What time was there to find a nice, decent man willing to settle down in a nice, decent home to have three (four? Five?) babies with, when she had her mistress to attend to?
The more realistic option lay with the idea that Morgana would marry, and Morgana would have children, and Gwen would get to raise those ones. Morgana herself, though she liked children well enough, had not expressed much interest in actually having any. Gwen knew the woman would be at a loss as to what to do with a fussy, needy little infant, for all she would certainly love her own offspring. But Morgana, being a noblewoman and a valuable asset to Uther, would eventually have to marry - and children were an inevitable bi-product of such situations.
When that happened, Gwen would be with her, and she would help Morgana care for them, and they would call her ‘Auntie Gwen’ and that would be all well and good.
So there were still days when Gwen cradled her youngest son to her breast and felt total shock that she should be able to do such a thing. That she was holding in her arms an infant who was not only her own flesh and blood - healthy and strong and beautiful - but a prince; a little boy who stood to become the second most influential man in the entire of Camelot upon the advent of his maturity.
The boy who stood to become the most influential man in Camelot was currently face down and fast asleep in her and Arthur’s bed, soft toy duck (laboriously constructed by Merlin out of the blanket he’d been wrapped in as a baby) firmly sandwiched between his cheek and the pillow. He, too, was Gwen’s son - her only-just-four year old - and he too still shocked her by his very existence.
Maidservants and blacksmith’s daughters were just not meant to be the wives of kings and the mothers of princes. They were certainly not meant to be queens.
And yet, here Gwen was, crowned queen of Camelot; beloved wife of King Arthur Pendragon; celebrated mother of two royal heirs. She had servants - lady’s maids for her and nurses for her children. She had duties and responsibilities far beyond what state Morgana’s hair was in or whether or not her bed sheets needed turning down. She had a kingdom to run alongside her husband. She had foreign dignitaries to entertain and banquets that she was expected to make run smoothly.
And she did not have Morgana.
Of all the things that Gwen could not have envisaged - from marrying Arthur Pendragon to baring two sons - the fact that Morgana was no longer a part of her life was probably the most wildly unpredictable. Never, ever in a million years could she have envisioned a future that did not contain her mistress - her closest friend - in some shape or form.
But Morgana was gone. Had been gone for nearly eight years now.
Uther had given her a choice, upon discovering her practising magic in her room late one night - get out of Camelot or face execution the following day.
Morgana had left, without warning or protest, the same night she had been discovered.