I found Merlin in his observatory at the top of the north tower, where he could usually be found.
When I walked in, I wasn’t sure if he heard me because he didn’t turn from where he stood with his back to the door, bent over a table that was scattered with star charts. His white hair caught the blue light that was bleeding through the window: that permanent, sourceless dusk that clung to Caer Gwyll.
“Corvin.” He wasn’t surprised. He was never surprised.
My temper broke.
“This is your fault.” My voice came out quieter than I intended and was somehow worse for it.
He turned then, but his face gave nothing away. Of course, it never did. It just seemed to exist the way the moon exists in thesky: as an ancient face with pale eyes that had watched centuries accumulate the way other men watched the weather.
“Sit—”
“—I have no interest in sitting.” I took a breath. “Don’t attempt to manage me right now.”
At the raw, unfiltered edge of fury bleeding through every syllable I’d just spoken, Merlin went still. And it was the kind of stillness that suggested I’d just stepped over a line. It was one I’d never crossed before, not in all the years I’d known him and served as his closest advisor.
Well, fuck it.
I was angry.
“I ran protection for her since she arrived here.” I didn’t have to sayhername for him to know who I was talking about. “For three years I’ve put myself between that girl and everything that might hurt her, between her and the men here who obviously coveted her beauty, between her and the nightmares that plagued her almost nightly.” I let that sink in for a second, but when he made no motion to comment, I continued. “I made decisions in the dark, Merlin. Calls I had no business making with the limited information you gave me.”
“I told you—”
“—all you ever told me was that she wasyour ward. Your most important ward, yes, but a ward, all the same.” I took a breath. “I had to find out the truth of her parentage from her. Shortly after she did.”
“I—”
“—I’m not finished.” There was an expression of surprise in his old eyes. “I built my entire operational posture around protectinga ward.” Never mind the fact that Guin had always been far more to me than my student. But Merlin didn’t need to know my true feelings toward her. “You never once told me the truth: that she was your fucking daughter! Instead, you let mebelieve she was nothing more to you than a valued asset. That she was a weapon.”
“This is old news, Corvin.”
That made me almost angrier because it was true. I remembered the moment Guin had contacted Merlin to tell him she’d discovered the truth. It was just a coincidence that I’d happened to be there. If I hadn’t been? I imagined I still wouldn’t know the truth. And even if Merlin was correct in his comment that this was something I’d learned weeks ago, it had taken me almost that long to process it. And in processing it, the anger was now hitting me like a tornado.
“How could you send your only daughter,your blood, to Camelot, to the lion’s den? You knew the chances of her getting found out were beyond high! How could you not only have allowed it but orchestrated it?”
The echo of the question I’d asked myself a million times sounded beneath: how hadIallowed it? Yes, I’d argued against the idea until I was blue in the face, but neither of them had listened to me. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more I could have done.
“I...” But his voice failed him. It was something I’d never experienced from the old wizard before. But rather than appearing regretful or ashamed, he wore the expression of a man who had never had to justify himself to anyone and was clearly uncomfortable being put into that position now.
“Did you ever even love her?”
“Of course I did... I do still.”
I looked at him.
“Then why?”
The shadows in the room moved. I felt them before I saw them: a slow darkening at the edges of the chamber, tendrils of black bleeding up the stone walls. They were my shadows, a sign that my emotions were getting the best of me. My magic,both older and stranger than I cared to admit, was responding to the emotion flowing through me, emotion I could no longer suppress.
Merlin watched the room dim around me, but he said nothing.
“You sent her into Camelot,” I continued, “without telling her who and what she was. Without tellingmewhat she was.”
“Yes.”
That single word, with no apology threaded through it, nearly undid me. The shadows pooled deeper at the corners of the room as a candle across the table guttered and died.
