Mordred turned to look at Nyneve. Her burning gaze was locked in the direction Merlin had gone. The power of her unbound magic pulsed, palpable as a stormfront. Could he not have waited a day? Simply one more day, and then he would have seen how useless and dangerous it was to confess he had defied his nature and fallen in love with her. But now it was too late. He could not take it back.
And selfishly, no matter how terrible their world became, he was not sure he wanted to.
“Arthur, I am begging you,” Guinevere pleaded, reaching across his desk to take his hand. “You must reconsider.”
Mordred looked on with despair. He was surprised Arthur had permitted them into his study at all, particularly without his sorcerer present.
“I know this is all very frightening,” Arthur said, refusing to look at either of them. “But we cannot keep limping onward, can we? Something must change.”
“Will it be worth it?” Mordred asked from beside the hearth, his arms crossed. “Will it be worth what you have done to Elaine?” He fought the sorrow that clawed at his intestines. Perhaps if he knew what Arthur was planning, he might come to agree that if Elaine were already dead, sacrificing her memory was better than some dark alternative. But Mordred did not know, because for the first time, Arthur had shut him out.
When the king did not respond to Mordred’s query, Guinevere got down on her knees in front of him. Mordred averted his eyes; she should not have to prostrate herself for the likes of the Pendragon heir, not as a descendant of Boudicca on her mother’s side, Iceni blood in her veins, her father’s side a long line of great sultans. She was the progeny of storied regents. She should not kneel.
“No, we cannot,” she murmured. “I know the men tire of peace. I know they yearn for the conquest of our darker years. I know a kingdom must always expand, or it shrinks. I know all of this, Arthur.”
Mordred swallowed hard, glancing back toward the king and queen. Arthur was finally looking at Guinevere, at the very least.
“And yet I still cannot see howthisis the way,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“A unified religion,” Arthur said, grasping her hands, “is the best banner to ride beneath.”
That made Mordred straighten. “So you do not believe any of this?”
Arthur looked toward him and raised his eyebrows. “Oh gods, of course not,” he said with a forced laugh, glancing back at his wife. “Please, I thought you two knew me better than that. No, I do not place my heart in the hands of this Resurrected God, much as I never worshiped any of the gods my forefathers brought to this land, nor the ones already here. But it is an excellent tool.”
Mordred’s head spun, and he steadied himself against the mantel’s edge. He wondered if Arthur’s lack of belief made everything better or much, much worse.
“Take up the Christian faith for your banner,” Guinevere said imploringly. “But not Merlin. Please.NeverMerlin.”
Arthur’s gaze drifted toward Mordred. He found an unsettling answer in the king’s gaze: Arthur felt he had no other choice.
Mordred half-closed his eyes, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. How could he argue against the very same thing that drove his own actions more than he cared to admit?
“Merlin has seen more of this world than all three of us combined,” Arthur said quietly. “How else to build an empire but with his power?”
“Is that what you want, Arthur?” Guinevere asked quietly, looking up at him. “Anempire? We have hardly perfected a citadel.”
He withdrew his hands from the queen’s and stepped back. Mordred wanted to support Guinevere, but he had a terrible, sinking feeling in his stomach that he should not be here in this study with the two of them. Not right now, though he could not simply turn and go without being offered permission.
“Of course I want an empire,” Arthur laughed. He stared at his queen in a way that Mordred could not rectify with the man he thought he knew. “Is that not what we have always strived for? A united kingdom, banding together these lands of violent warlords and petty kings into something grander?”
Guinevere said nothing, getting to her feet. When she stood up straight, she was the same height as Arthur, which was why she almost never did in his presence. “That is not the same as an empire,” she said softly, tipping her chin up. “I want what we have always wanted. What we have always said we would build together. We could not have love between us, not like the poemsspeak of, and the world did not see fit to grant us children, either, but we did have Camelot. We had this dream of a united land.”
She stepped forward, examining Arthur for a long moment. Sunlight broke through the clouds, haloing the queen in gold. Not for the first time, Mordred fervently wished she were the king of this place. “That is still our future,” Guinevere said in her rich voice. “A united land. Andyouare that future, Arthur. Not Merlin. You. You are the man that your people, myself included, agreed to follow.”
Mordred’s heart raced as he watched Arthur soften, a more familiar expression coming across the king’s face. Suddenly,therewas the man he had ridden into battle beside. The man he had watched sit with knights as they died in some godsforsaken tent pitched in a distant field of mud. The man who had invited his bastard son prophesied to end everything to court, because he believed everyone deserved a chance. The man Mordred had gone to war with and laughed over meals with and who had made him think that this world might be worth saving. The man he had driven back the Anglo-Saxons beside. The mortal man who had unwittingly convinced the faerie changeling that there had to be more options than complete and total annihilation.
Arthur opened his mouth to speak, his eyes shining with what might have been unshed tears. Then his study doors opened, and Merlin strode in unannounced. The clouds devoured the sun once more. By the time Mordred turned back to the king at his battered old table, there was no trace of that man who had made him rethink so many things.
“I appreciate your counsel, Guin,” Arthur said without looking at his queen. “I’ll see you at supper, yes?”
Guinevere shot Merlin a look so full of blatant hatred that Mordred thought the sorcerer might lunge for her. But then she gathered up her skirts and headed toward the study doorswithout a word. Mordred followed her like a shadow. He turned, just for a second, to look at Arthur and Merlin.
On the very same day that Mordred had been created, he had also been doomed. And though that inevitability clung to him, the changeling had never truly felt the full brunt of certain ruin.
Not until now.
Chapter Thirty-Five
