“The secrecy was not cruelty,” Merlin continued carefully. “If anyone had known Guinevere’s parentage: mine or her mother’s, she would have been hunted from birth. Not by Arthur alone, but by every faction with enough ambition and enough fear to want her destroyed before she came into her power.” He paused. “And one cannot protect a secret one consciously carries. If she had known who and what she was, that truth would have come out eventually. Instead, she needed to believe herself ordinary. So did everyone around her.”
“Including me.”
“Especiallyyou.” His voice wasn’t unkind. “You are many things, Corvin. But subtle is not one of them. Not where she is concerned.”
I let that land without answering it because he wasn’t wrong, and we both knew it. I just was... surprised he’d noticed that my feelings for Guin were as complicated as they were. But then I shouldn’t have been surprised because it seemed Merlin knew everything.
“Then tell me now,” I exhaled. “Tell me why it was so paramount to send her to Arthur’s court.” I took a breath. “And I don’t believe for a second that it was simply so she could act as your spy.”
“No. It was more than just that.”
Merlin was quiet for a long moment. So long that I wondered if he would tell me anything of substance or if he was searching for something else that might satiate me. But the only thing that would satiate me now was the truth. Anything else I’d consider a slap to my face.
“There is much I cannot say.” His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “I am bound.”
“By what?”
“Blodeuwyn’s magic.”
I frowned at him. “Blodeuwyn?”
He nodded. “Tell me, Corvin, what do you recall about the night Uther died?”
It was a night I had trouble recalling to memory, truth be told. “I remember Uther was raving mad. And we—Lance and I—carried him through the Whispering Wilds to Blodeuwyn. You were with us. As was Arthur.” Merlin nodded. “It was the dragon within Uther that had poisoned his mind. And it was the dragon that was killing him. He could no longer contain it.”
“Yes. And what more do you recall?”
I swallowed hard. “Arthur was meant to take Uther’s place. He was meant to be the vessel for the dragon. That was why we were there, why we were visiting the witch. She was meant to complete the spell.”
“And?”
“I admit I don’t recall much beyond that. For some reason, my mind is rather absent of the facts themselves.”
He nodded. “You and Lancelot were both spared from becoming full witnesses to the magic that ensued that night because you were not directly involved in the binding. What is more, you both lost consciousness. Thus your tongues did not need to be bound for you did not witness what I did.”
I frowned at him. “Are you saying you’re unable to...”
He nodded. “I cannot speak of it. The spell forbids me.”
“Forbids you from what exactly?”
“The binding prevents me from speaking directly of certain things. The nature of the b—” His tongue then pressed against the roof of his mouth, and his lips slammed shut. I assumed he’d been about to say the words: ‘the beast,’ but even those two small words wouldn’t make it past his lips. “I can speak only on the periphery, can tell you only the edge of it: those parts the binding permits.”
“Then tell me those parts.”
“Guinevere is meant to be the receptacle.”
The room went very still. Even the shadows I’d curled into the corners seemed to hold their breath, pressing flat against the stone as though they, too, felt the weight of what he’d just said. The candles on Merlin’s desk didn’t flicker, and the air didn’t move. Nothing moved.
I took a slow step toward him, then another, closing the distance between us until I could see every line carved into that ancient face, every secret he was still keeping behind those eyes.
My jaw was tight, and my hands remained at my sides, but only just. Whatever he meant by the word ‘receptacle,’ whatever dark, precise, deliberate meaning he’d packed into it, I didn’t accept it. Iwouldn’taccept it. The idea of her being made into a vessel for something, a container shaped to hold another’s purpose, another’s power, another’s destruction, sat in my chest like a coal I couldn’t swallow and couldn’t spit out.
“The receptacle for what?”
“You know what.” He held my gaze.
“The dragon.”
