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“Oh.” Merlin nodded. “Yes. Lancelet and her Guinevere.” She smiled fondly, then gestured for me to follow her down the hall.
“You will not have heard Guinevere’s sad story yet.” She kept her voice low.
Javer had been trailing me—I turned to him with a silent frown, and he scuttled in the opposite direction down the corridor. I had no idea where he planned to go, and I honestly didn’t care.
We passed a young acolyte with a gray hood pulled up over her head. She bobbed a curtsy, then hurried past, hardly sparing me a glance. I looked questioningly at Merlin.
“The novice? She will be discreet. Any who you meet in these halls are aware of who the four of you are and may be trusted.” She hesitated. “It’s been a long time since you and I walked through this temple alone together, Morgan.”
“It has,” I murmured.
“Perhaps you’ll recall that the last time you were here with me, I asked you about your own magic.”
For a moment, I was uncomfortable, wondering if she was about to ask me the same question. What a different answer I would have for her now, if I were to answer honestly.
But Merlin apparently had something else in mind.
“I was not... entirely forthcoming with you then,” she said. “About my own abilities.”
My heart sped up. “What do you mean?”
She hesitated. “For your own good, I allowed you to believe my abilities were as dormant as your own.”
Dormant. An excellent word choice. Did she know how apt it was?
She raised her eyes to mine. “But the truth is that there are those in the temple conclave who foresaw your brother’s actions a long time ago. Those who were prescient enough to realize that any son of Uther’s... Well...” She paused.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I said wryly. “I know only too well what he was like...” I stopped. Choked more like it, as memories came flooding back in a torrent.
“I saw your torment, Morgan.”
The words came as a shock.
“When you were a child. You and Arthur. We all saw the sort of father Uther was to you both.” Merlin’s face was full of regret. “No one dared step in. Oh, how I longed to. But I dared not. My place was so precarious. Uther... Well, he was not a friend to the temple. Not like kings and queens before him had been.”
My throat was dry. “I understand.” I forced myself to shrug. “My father died when I was quite young. I hardly think of him now.”
“Yes,” Merlin said quietly. “He did die. Very fortunately.”
Her eyes held mine. Intense and prodding. I looked away.
Did she know? Did she understand what had occurred that day? The day I’d believed Arthur was dead, killed in a violent fit of rage by our father, Uther?
Even now, the memory of Arthur’s small body lying on the ground as my father kicked him with a booted foot was enough to make the bile rise in my throat.
“My father killed my mother,” I said directly before I could stop myself. “He nearly killed Arthur.”
Merlin’s face remained unchanged. No shock. No surprise. “I believe you. And no one stepped in.”
“I was too young to step in when he hurt my mother.” The words were a rough rasp. “I hid under the bed. I couldn’t help her. I was too little. He didn’t know I was there.”
What was I doing? Why this sudden urge to confess?
“You were right. You did the right thing.”
The words kept coming. “Then, with Arthur. He nearly killed him. My brother. I tried to stop him then. I couldn’t let him kill Arthur, too.”
The sorrow and empathy in Merlin’s eyes became almost unbearable. “Of course you couldn’t, Morgan. Whatever you did, I know you did the right thing.”
