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“How?” I choked out. “How can you know that? Look at what Arthur has become. Maybe it would have been better if...”
I couldn’t finish that sentence.
“No,” Merlin said firmly. “You were both children when your father died.” She was careful not to say “when you killed him.”
She placed her hands on my arms. “No one could have known what Arthur would become, Morgan.”
“But you just said...” I protested. “You said it was foreseen.”
“‘Foreseen’ is not the same as ‘came to pass,’” she said, releasing me. “Predictions were made about futures that were more or less likely. It is a tragedy, really, that this is the one that has played out.” She raised a hand and touched my cheek gently. “Two children. Both raised in violence and blood with a cruel father. Who could have said which one would nurture the violence they had borne and which one would repel it?”
I was shocked. “Do you mean there were prophecies and predictions about me as well as about Arthur? That I might have been the one to go down a dark path?”
“There are those in the temple who peered down every path,” she said carefully. “It was their task to do so.”
“Who? Who looked? Was it you?”
“Tyre was one such.” She smiled faintly at my expression which must have been one of stark surprise. “He is older than he may look. As am I. As for the foretellings, well, there were many prophecies made when you were born—and when your brother was born. Some have come true. Some have come close to true. And others will never come to pass.”
She looked at me carefully. “I tell you this here, in this space where to speak of such things is safe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Tyre and I have warded the temple and placed any who will come across you and the others under seals of silence. They cannot speak of what they know, even should they wish to.” She smiled faintly. “Your uncle is not the only one who possesses such talents.”
“I see,” I said. “I had no idea you could do such things.” I looked at her pointedly.
“No, I never wished for you to know. There was no need. We had hoped there never would be.”
“And if Arthur had known that those who served in the temple were capable of more than he thought, he would have been certain to use you however he could,” I concluded. “He would have conscripted you, demanded you do his bidding. I understand.”
“I thought you would. I make no apologies for keeping these things from the king. Such matters are deeper and more significant than one man alone.”
She was leading me into a different part of the temple. We passed along a covered walkway and through a garden where clusters of fruit trees and an herb garden lay surrounded by low stone walls and arched pillars.
Then we were back under the dome of the temple. I followed her through the purification room and into the room where I had once watched her pour a libation offering, my senses prickling with anticipation.
She pushed open a door on the far side of the sacred room, and I gasped. Just as I had the first time I had seen it.
I stood within the arched corridor lined with fantastical mosaics once more. On either side of me, the fae were depicted. To my left, the fae were beautiful and regal. To my right were fearsome fae of tooth and claw.
And in the center of the passage, beneath the ceiling lined with precious jewels and costly stones that glowed with a life of their own, stood my uncle, Caspar Starweaver.
