His honesty landed like a punch. Cold. Blunt. “You sent me here without telling me the truth about anything. You allowed me to believe lies all my life.”
“I wanted to protect you. From the burden of our legacy. From becoming a symbol before you became a person.”
“You don't protect someone by sending them to the lair of your enemy,” I hissed. “The truth is more along the lines that you wanted time to turn me into your dagger. And now that I’m sharp enough, you’ve finally seen fit to let the truth slip—only because the Riddle of Blood forced your hand.”
His silence was confirmation enough.
The water shimmered between us, holding Merlin’s image like a captured memory. His expression hardened slightly, but pain still flickered just beneath the surface. Still, Corvin didn't utter a word. He just watched everything passing between us silently.
"You speak as though you've been nothing but a tool to me," Merlin said quietly. "Have I not trained you personally? Protected you? Guided your magical development with more care than I’ve ever given another student?"
"As your daughter or as your agent?"
He paused, just long enough for the silence to ache. “Both.”
The weight of that admission strangely softened my anger but tangled it with something messier—confusion laced with bitterness laced with an incredible sadness, the likes of which I'd never felt before.
"Why did she hide me?" I asked, my voice lowering, fragile. "What happened between you and my mother?"
His gaze drifted, eyes distant, as if the memory itself were painful. "I knew she would always side with Arthur."
"Why?"
“She aligns herself with whoever pulls the sword from the stone—not by choice. The sword is ultimately her master.”
“So she hid me because she chose Arthur?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “She hid you because she feared what I might become. She feared what I alreadywas—driven, angry, consumed by my conflict with him. She feared I’d sway you with that hatred. And… she may have been correct.”
“When I pulled the sword,” I said slowly, “my mother was there. Nimue. She could have told me everything. But she didn’t.”
“She didn't know you, Guinevere."
I felt my eyebrows knitting. "How is that possible?"
"She only sees what the sword shows her. Perhaps it did not tell her who you were." He paused. "And that is how it should be. Had you known then that you were her daughter… perhaps you would’ve doubted your own merit where Excalibur was concerned. Perhaps you still do.”
I did. But I didn’t say as much.
“Your mother always had her reasons,” Merlin continued, his voice quieter now, as if speaking to himself as much as to me. “When she stole you away, when you were just a babe, she said she would protect you from Arthur’s fear… and from my ambition. She said you deserved a childhood free from the war that consumed us.”
So she hadn’t just feared Arthur. She’d fearedbothof them.
The truth settled in my chest like lead. My mother had seen something in both men that she couldn’t trust. Or maybe she'd simply wanted something better for me. Perhaps that was what true love looked like: not allegiance, butprotection. Even from the people you love.
"That night," Merlin continued, voice tight, “I lost not only my child… but my greatest love.”
I hadn’t even thought of themthatway—of what they must’ve meant to each other. What it must have cost him to leave her. What it must have cost her to let him go.
But I couldn’t linger there. Not now. The emotional toll was too much. I was already broken as it was.
“And the sword?” I asked, shifting back to the one piece of this that still didn’t make sense. “Didyouknow it would choose me?”
“No.” His answer was immediate. Honest. That… surprised me. But in hindsight, perhaps it shouldn’t have. "You carry both lineages—twilight magic from Annwyn and the legacy of Logres through Nimue. The sword responds to worthiness, yes… but it also seeks balance. And you, Guinevere,arebalance. Between worlds. Between truths. Between Arthur and me, and between your mother and me.”
I thought of the vision I’d seen in the Labyrinth—Arthur and Merlin, two forces at odds, and myself suspended in the space between. A third path. One neither of them had expected.
“What do you want from me now? Now that I know the truth?”
