But I didn’t.
Not even remotely.
CHAPTER ONE
-GUIN-
Merlin had warned me the day would come when he’d call in the favor I owed him.
Today was that day.
I stared into the scrying pool. My reflection rippled, but it wasn’t the surface that made me uneasy. My white hair still fell in soft waves around my shoulders. My violet eyes remained unchanged. But the woman staring back had become a stranger.
Three years in Annwyn had changed me—sharpenedme. The scared girl who had fled Logres had become something colder. Stronger. A weapon.
"You're distracted," Merlin said.
His voice always cut like a blade.
He stood on the opposite side of the massive oak table, his imposing figure draped in flowing robes of vermilion. The fabric seemed alive with movement—constellations embroidered across the material twinkled and shifted like real stars. Occasionally, a silver thread would trace the path of a comet across his chest, or a cluster of tiny crystals woven into the sleeves would blink with soft light.
The sight never failed to remind me that I was in the presence of the most powerful sorcerer in the realm.
His long fingers traced the lines of Camelot’s map like he might rearrange the city by sheer will.
"I'm focused," I lied.
He raised one eyebrow. “Your thoughts cling to the past, girl. That’s dangerous.”
I bit back a retort. The Twilight Sovereign had an infuriating habit of always knowing everything. "No. I’m just... thinking about my disguise."
He narrowed his eyes. "Your illusion is flawless. No one will see past Sir Lioran unless you allow it."
Sir Lioran was my disguise—my assumed persona—the masculine warrior whose name and face I would be adopting in order to compete in Arthur's Shadow Trials.
My fingers brushed the edge of the scrying pool, disturbing my reflection. The truth was more complicated than Merlin wanted to acknowledge.
My water magic naturally wanted to reveal rather than conceal. Unlike shadow or illusion magic that thrived on deception, water existed to reveal—to reflect truth, cleanse impurities, expose what lurked beneath surfaces. Every stream showed an honest mirror. Every puddle held reality without filter. The essence of water was clarity, purity, truth itself.
Which meant my own magic would work against me where this disguise was concerned. Each day I maintained it, my power would press against the deception like fingers testing a locked door. The danger wasn't that the illusion would fail—it was that my magic would try tofixit. It would try to fix me. Because water seeks truth, if I wore Lioran's face too long without shedding it, my power would eventually decide the disguise was meant to be real. It would begin reshaping my actual features to match themasculine jaw, the broader shoulders, the heavier build. Slowly. Permanently.
So, I had to return to myself each night, or risk losing Guinevere forever.
"It’s not the magic that concerns me."
"Then what does concern you?"
I walked over to the table and, reaching over it, traced a route across the castle’s inner ring with my eyes. "It's one thing to look like a male knight. It's another to act like him, move like him,thinklike him, and another thing entirely to convince other men I'm the same as them."
"Identity is a blade." His tone remained completely unconcerned as he continued tracing patterns across the map's surface, leaving glittering magical dust in his wake. "Sometimes it serves as a shield. Other times, it becomes a scalpel—precise, cutting. The key is knowing which tool the moment requires and wielding it with absolute conviction."
I lifted my eyes from the map to meet his penetrating gaze directly, feeling the familiar weight of his scrutiny. "Easy counsel for someone who has never had to walk into the heart of enemy territory and pretend to be something he fundamentally is not." My voice carried more edge than I'd intended. Merlin frowned, but the heat within me wouldn't be so easily dispelled.
His storm-gray eyes darkened, and for a moment, I caught a glimpse of something ancient and weary flickering beneath their surface. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of centuries.
"You think I haven't worn masks, girl? You believe deception is foreign to me?"
Something flickered in his expression then—beyond the irritation that I was arguing with him again. Pain? Regret? Whatever it was, it vanished as quickly as it came.
