Believe by Victoria Alexander

strode toward the stables. Oh, in spite of her advanced years, Tessa would make a fine mate for any man. Strong and determined with an intelligence rare among most women of his acquaintance, she would be a match well worth making. He’d watched her sleep these pastdays, studying the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blankets, wondering at the vulnerability revealed by slumber, a defenselessness hidden when awake by the fire in her eyes. Although not a great beauty she was indeed lovely, with a fine, ripe figure. He couldn’t suppress a smile at the memory: a form well made for pleasure.
    Galahad nodded at a stable lad and the boy jumped to saddle the knight’s horse. The huge, black palfrey pawed the ground, as if as impatient as his master to race across the countryside. Within moments Galahad was astride the powerful beast and headed out the castle gates.
    He wielded the horse away from the town and toward the meadow and the woods beyond. Galahad spurred his mount and the animal shot forward, eager for the release promised by the vast stretch of gently sloping fields. They passed within inches of the only tree to break the expanse of meadow, a scant third of the way to the forest. The young oak had marked the finish line for foot races and the target for archery contests and had served the various and sundry other uses imaginative boys could devise for as long as he could remember.
    Man and beast melded as one and thundered across the verdant pastures. The fresh scent of spring and promise of summer yet to come filled Galahad’s senses, as always cleansing his demons and renewing the life surging through his veins.
    He gave the stallion his head until they were nearly upon the line of trees that marked the boundary between the sunlit grasses and the shadowed forest. Galahad pulled sharply on the reins and slowed theanimal to a walk. There was no need to guide the horse. He knew, as well as his master, the way.
    They wandered for long moments, each step deeper into the serenity of the woods leaving the bustle of Camelot behind, little more than a distant memory. At last they stepped into a slight clearing. A sparkling stream splashed into a small pool. Galahad slipped from his horse and breathed deeply.
    Calm poured over him. He’d discovered this spot as a lad and had claimed it for his own. Through the years it had never failed to imbue him with a sense of peace. He’d wondered, in his more fanciful moments, if this tiny glen was a place of magic. It had always soothed his soul. When he was a boy and longed for affection from a father too busy with his own concerns as friend and companion to the king to heed the needs of a child. Or when he was a man seeking to understand the death of a son never known, and the devastating loss of a love. And countless times in between.
    He settled himself on a rock overhanging the pool, the stone contours fitting to him like the welcome of an old friend. And indeed it was this very rock that had borne witness to his frustration at the hard, demanding training of knighthood or his confusion at the vagaries of the minds of women or his contemplation of the stars that danced above him in the heavens. Merlin had long ago shown him the constellations, and the mystic lights in the night sky captured his heart as nothing else ever had.
    Except for Dindrane.
    Had it been ten years since his wife’s death? Absently, he twisted the ring on the smallest of his fingers. How swiftly the days had vanished. The stabof sorrow her name had once brought to his heart had dimmed with the passage of time. He had left Camelot when she had left this earth asking, nay, demanding of the king the most perilous missions, the most treacherous tasks. He had executed Arthur’s business for two years when his father had joined him and together they’d done the king’s bidding, in the process braving adventure and saving each other’s necks more than once. It was the irony of his life that in losing one