[This post is from Cameron’s point of view.]
“Really?” he asked, brow furrowing slightly. There was a light in her eyes that he’d seen only rarely, one that made his heart soar. “Magic how?”
“Well, the metal, for one,” she said softly. She settled in, body relaxing even as his arm tightened more securely around her shoulders. In her arms, Anne yawned, eyelids drooping. It wouldn’t be long before their daughter was asleep, though Artorius didn’t seem to be ready to join his twin in dreamland anytime soon. “There’s something special about it, beyond the surface and the tale behind how it was found.”
“Noble sons and daughters of the Aes Dana finding the ore in a pond,” Cameron said, resting his cheek against Neve’s hair as she looked down, adjusting Anne’s swaddle as the infant drifted closer to sleep. “Because the story of the metal that made the sword needs to be more special than that?”
Neve nudged him, laughing at the humor in his tone. “Stop, I’m serious. It’s said that a thousand smiths couldn’t melt that stuff down, and they were ordered to try. They couldn’t do it, though men and women from far and wide tried. It wasn’t until the forges at Avalon were built that we discovered how to do it.”
“What was so special about it?” he asked, his tone tempered now, less teasing. He could still feel a hum of excitement, his heart beating a little faster than it had been before. His thoughts raced—a thousand smiths? Was it hyperbole, a storyteller’s device, or could it have been true? Though his modern mind screamed that he should doubt that it ever could have been true, his gut said something far different.
He believed that not only could it have been true, but it probably was.
But then why were they able to smelt the metal at Avalon, but not anywhere else?
The ghost of a smile curving Neve’s lips told him he’d soon find out.
