"I… Hesavedme. He taught me to use my magic when I had no one else."
Arthur’s eyes held mine. “Did he teach you to use your magic for yourself? Or forhim?”
Silence bloomed between us like a wound. I remembered the warmth of Merlin’s guidance, the gentle encouragement. But I also remembered the moments of control, the secrets, the times I hadn’t questioned him—because he hadn’t allowed room for questions.
"You are more than a blade to be wielded," Arthur said, his voice a low rumble. "But only if youchooseto be."
Beside him, the strange version of Merlin didn’t speak. He didn’tneedto. His presence alone—the visual embodiment of manipulation and fury—was enough.
"And I am not the man you believe me to be," Arthur continued.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Perhaps you didn't start as a tyrant, but you definitely became one."
He shook his head. "What you see are the choices I've made, the decisions that you deem wrong and tyrannical. But you have not dug deeply enough, Guinevere."
"What does that mean?"
He moved in, taking a deliberate step closer to me. With that simple motion, the younger version of him—full of naïveté and unrefined potential—started to dissolve, blurring at the edges until it fused seamlessly into the older version I was more familiar with. In that moment, the youthful charm and fervorgave way to the visage of the formidable king, a man carved from the stone of responsibility and burden. His face bore the lines of battle and the weight of a kingdom resting squarely on his shoulders.
"Do you know why I made the decisions I did?"
I nodded. "To rid Logres of magic."
He paused, and a small smile lit the corner of his lips. "And why should I want to do that?"
I paused because I didn't know why. Why had Arthur outlawed magic? He believed it evil, I supposed. But why? On this subject, I was stumped. I didn't know. Not that it mattered because the result was still the same.
Or did it matter?
All of a sudden, I saw the truth presented in the Labyrinth. This maze was designed to test the emotions I harbored—those negatives that existed within my personality. The guilt I'd felt over the death of my parents. The shame I harbored regarding my lustful feelings toward my enemy. And now the short-sighted conclusions I'd drawn before I had all the facts. The maze existed to display the looking glass's image—the opposite perspective.
As I watched, Arthur's face returned to that of his younger self, before he had made the decisions he had. The innocent Arthur, as I liked to think of this version of him. The Arthur who stood before me now wasn't the man who had threatened me at the lake while taking liberties with my body, nor the jaded king who ruled from Camelot’s marble throne with cold eyes and clenched fists. He was the idealisticboywho had once pulled a sword from stone with dreams of justice burning in his heart. And I wondered if he could be that boy again—if that child still existed somewhere within him.
"I saved you from certain death," said shadow-Merlin in an almost accusatory voice. "I trained you. I gave your power purpose. Your loyalty belongs to me by right and oath."
"And I offer more than vengeance," the younger Arthur countered, his tone clear and noble. "I offer you the chance to serve something greater than one man's grudge."
I studied them both, my heart pounding.
Yes, Merlin had offered me sanctuary. He had taught me. But he had also wielded silence as a tool and withheld truths like a man playing a long game with pieces he refused to name.
And Arthur? I didn’t know him. But was there something more beneath the fury, beneath the command and control? Was there more to the tyrant?
“You both speak in half-truths," I said finally, looking at them both. "You both speak of justice—but seek control in your own ways.”
The figures wavered, their outlines like reflections on broken water.
This wasn’t the real Arthur. Nor was it the real Merlin. These were projections—distillations of doubt, conjured by my own mind in order to test me. These were the doubts I held deep within myself. Questions that only I could resolve.
I looked between them then—Arthur and Merlin—seeing endless shades of gray. They were no longer simply black and white—the tyrant and the savior. They were both much more three-dimensional.
"I will find the truth for myself," I continued. "And I will decide which path to walk, not by oath or loyalty, not by prophecy or fear—but bychoice." I paused and breathed in deeply.
"Then who do you choose?" Merlin asked.
"Neither of you."
The moment I spoke those words, the two figures began to dissolve—first Merlin, his robes unraveling into shadow, then Arthur, his boyish face fragmenting into dust. The obsidian wallsof the dark chamber fractured like glass, the walls suddenly bleeding light.
