Nyneve stared up at Morgana. The sorceress looked more peaceful than she ever had in the moons Nyneve had known her. That ever-present torment behind her eyes was gone. Nyneve still began to weep. She would never be strong enough to watch Mordred die like this. She would never be strong enough to let him go like this, not even if he begged.
“This woman is the cause of today’s horrors!” Bedwyr shouted into the small crowd, mostly guards and servants with soot-stained faces, though Nyneve saw a few noblemen and women, their fine clothes torn. “We have reason to believe she helped corrupt Elaine of Astolat as well. She let the Host ride into your home!”
“That is nonsense!” Nyneve screamed, her throat raw, though the crowd had broken into chaos, and she wasn’t sure if anyone even heard her. She turned on her heel, looking around desperately, but all she saw were the haunted, hollow faces of people who had just lost everything and wanted someone to blame.
A commotion on the rickety stairs built up the side of the pyre drew Nyneve’s attention. A flash of white hair made her stomach sink. Galen was arguing with Bedwyr. The fire took with a sudden whoosh, the first true inhale of an empire built on blood.
“Galen!” Nyneve shouted, pushing through the crowd. She fought her way through just in time to watch the physician shove Bedwyr. The knight, taken by surprise, stumbled. Galen rushed past him, holding his hands out to the flame in a familiar movement. His lips began to move, and because Nyneve knew those charms by heart, she knew exactly what magic he was working.
This entire time. Galen. A Druid.
Something like hope surged through her, and she ran toward the bottom of the stairs, calling to her own magic, which was significantly weakened in these days of so little rain. Just as her Threads reached for Galen’s to create a stronger working, Bedwyr climbed to his feet, drew his shortsword, and slammed it into Galen’s chest. His strike was all cold efficiency, angling his blade so it tore through Galen’s body and into his heart. The fire devoured Nyneve’s screams as it consumed Morgana.
She began to climb the stairs as Bedwyr pushed Galen’s body to the side, letting the physician tumble to the ground below. Her throat sore, Nyneve stumbled back down the steps and tripped, sprawling on the cobblestones. The smell of burning hair filled her nose. She retched, her vision blurry. Galen was dead, she knew, but she crawled to him anyway.
“No, no, no, no,” she sobbed, once more placing her hands over a wound she could not heal. A cry tore through her chest as she cradled the physician’s head in her lap, staring down into his empty eyes. Her baneful magic, so much stronger than her goodness, begged to kill every monk in sight. There was no one left who she needed to look at her and see something other than a dark, terrible beast.
So maybe Nyneve would finally just be a monster.
But then a hand touched her cheek with such gentleness that she scrambled halfway to her feet in shock, reaching for her dagger.
It was the Morrigan who stood there beside the pyre, Her outline wavering in the heat of the blaze. Her heavy hood was thrown back as She regarded Nyneve with what might have been tenderness.
“Little witch,” the goddess sighed, “I am so sorry for all you must suffer.”
“So fix it,” Nyneve begged, her words somewhere between a scream and a sob. She crawled forward and snatched the hem of the Morrigan’s feathered gown with bloody hands.
“That,” the goddess whispered, “is precisely what I am trying to do.”
Epilogue
Mordred
Mordred blinked into the sun. The trees circling the meadow were damp with the early morning rain. Piskys fluttered at the edges of his vision. Past the tree line, a nymph braided her hair beside a running stream, the surface of the water sparkling like gemstones.
Morgana was dead. Galen was dead. And yet here he was in a beautiful fucking meadow, his eyes burning in the sunlight, Nyneve and Guinevere mute at his side. The quilt they had spread out on the wet grass was getting damp, but no one seemed inclined to move.
In the distance, the sun shone down on Camelot, smoke and wreckage marring its southern side. The keep stood proudly, mostly intact, the Pendragon flags snapping in the wind. The drought had broken. They had not found Ragrshydan, but every single knight had survived the hunt.
Upon their return, Arthur had been shocked and then furious about Morgana’s murder. Bedwyr was confined, set to be sentenced in the evening. Merlin disavowed the knight’s claims about his involvement, and even after everything, Arthur seemed inclined to believe him, or at least playact as ifhe believed him. Everything was dangerous and terrible, and Mordred did not see a way out.
“Are we going to read them?” Guinevere asked, pulling Mordred from his thoughts.
Wrapped in waxed cotton at the edge of the quilt were five letters: four addressed, respectively, to Guinevere, Mordred, Nyneve, and Arthur, the fifth unmarked and unsealed. When Mordred had pushed the door to his chambers open a few hours prior after the longest night of his life, he had not actually been surprised to find three traveling trunks lined up neatly along the far wall, just as Galen had told Nyneve.
Oh,Galen.
“I think this one is first,” Nyneve murmured, shoving away tears with the back of her hand and reaching forward to grab the unaddressed letter. “It was resting on top of all the books in the first trunk.”
Mordred pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, fighting off tears. All three of the trunks had been painted with a beautiful seascape. He had immediately recognized it as Tintagel, Morgana’s ancestral home and the very place she had raised him.
He had been such a discontented child, as most changelings were, furious to be locked in a magical tower with one of the best mortal sorceresses to ever live. He had hated the tidal pools and their walks along the bluff. He hated the falcons she kept and the curving walls of her grand library.
The summer breeze ruffled Mordred’s hair as he slumped forward and cradled his head in his hands, thinking about Tintagel’s cliffs. He would give anything to take one more walk with Morgana. She could tell him the names of all the creatures in the tide pools for the hundredth time. Perhaps he would finally commit them to memory.
Guinevere, crying in that silent, regal way that all good queens do, handed Mordred the unsealed letter. The three of them exchanged a look. The meadow went utterly silent, save for a shrike’s warning call to one of the kestrels circling overhead. With shaking hands, Mordred picked it up and straightened, folding his legs. He looked down at the parchment, snow-bright in the sunshine. Then, clearing his throat, he read aloud from his aunt’s spidery, elegant handwriting.
My dearest ones,
