Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) by Phoenix Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page B

and pulled her aside. “Tell your lady I will be forever grateful for her drawing the poison from me. If she desires entertainment to keep her spirits up, find me day or night—my harp and voice are hers whenever she wishes.”
    Brangien only returned me a wounded look and mumbled, “Gramercy,” before scurrying off to her duties.
    With a sigh I headed for the stables to find the horse master.
    “Another palfrey for you today, good sir? And will our Lady be joining you again?”
    I shook my head. “I’ve come to beg a favor, which needs your strictest silence. You can keep a confidence, can you not?”
    “If my Lady Yseult trusts you, so do I. And the horses have heard enough secrets to bring down the kingdom many times over. I’m sure they can bear another in silence.” The man’s tone, sincere and laced with warm humor, put me at ease right away. An effect I suspected he’d learned from the beasts in his charge.
    I drew him into a quiet corner. “As some here have already rightly guessed, I am not a simple harper but a knight of some renown. For reasons between myself and God alone, I elect to keep my name hidden. Still, I would participate in the coming tourney, but as I’ve arrived here without a mount, I need loan of an experienced charger.”
    The horse master stepped around me, eying me as critically as he would a promising colt new come into his care. ”You ride well?”
    “Expertly.”
    “Come.” He led me through a pasture and to a stallion barn with its stout stalls and stouter corrals. The first horse to sense us bugled an alarm that was echoed from horse to horse till two score of them had trumpeted their disapproval at our intrusion. Another score of stalls were empty, their occupants presumably out on business with their knights.
    We stopped before a courser with a great brute of a head and a coat as pure as night. I inhaled sharply at the sight. “Uncanny. He could be brother to my own.”
    “He’s green yet, but sensible enough for a youngster. Smart, too, though that means he’s a mischief-maker and always looking for a way to prove he’s the one in charge. He’ll carry you grandly so long as you keep a firm hand on his reins.”
    “You trained him then?”
    “Nah. He was given us by his dead knight’s widow. Sir Marhaus was training him up, but he took his senior mount to Cornwall.”
    “Sir Marhaus?” Coincidence? God’s jest?
    “The queen’s brother. The Morholt killed by Tristan. You’ve heard of him surely. The House still mourns and the tourney’s to be held in his honor.”
    “Yes, I’ve heard of him.”
    “The horse will suit you then?”
    “Aye. But I’ll need to work him in secret. Tell your stable hands only that someone will be training with him in the night.”
    “That I will. Otherwise, they’ll be saying it’s the fae stealing him to ride in The Wild Hunt.” He laughed at his little joke, but it sent the same chill through me as finding out this was The Morholt’s horse.
    “Does he have a name?”
    “Fallax. In the Latin tongue it means—”
    “—Deceit.” Of course.
    ~ ~ ~
    I returned at sunset with my sword, Curtana—mercy, its name meant—and a shield and lance borrowed from the armory. The rest of the day I’d spent constructing a quintain and laying out a practice field in a small clearing in the woods not far from where Palomides had found Yseult and me laughing on the bank of the stream.
    Fallax shifted with nervous energy as I led him, saddled, from his stall. I gave him rein to run a few furlongs in the twilit gloom, letting him work up a lather, tiring him so he’d pay attention to the work ahead.
    As we galloped into the low hills, beyond sight of the castle, a loud, clear belling broke the dusky night. I hauled Fallax to a halt at the clearing’s edge. He pricked his ears as the belling drew closer, then swiveled them back at my murmured, “Damn.” The last thing I needed was some hunter chasing his hound to chance upon