Chapter Thirty-Seven
T he castle dungeon was colder than anything I had ever felt before. Water dripped from above at random, making it hard for me to avoid as I pressed my back against the cool stone wall at the rear of the little cell I had been shoved into and wrapped the sheet tighter around my body.
I didn’t know where they had taken Lancelot, but other than the single guard posted in front of the barred door, I was completely alone.
All I wanted to do was cry. Everything had changed in the blink of an eye in a way that I didn’t know how to fix.
The servants all around me seemed to be of the same mind as Arthur—spitting at me in the hallway as they glared at me with the same glazed over eyes that Arthur had. He had kept calling Morgana his sister earlier, something he would never have been caught dead doing of his own free will.
Merlin had once mentioned that the magic Morgana specialized in was that of the mind, but as long as he was around Morgana’s hold could not take hold of the castle residents or Arthur.
But Merlin was also nowhere to be found, a fact that did not bode well for my fate.
Where had the wizard gone and what had happened out in the hills surrounding Camelot to change things so drastically? In one night it felt as if I had lost everything.
Gently bumping my head repeatedly on the wall behind me, I tried to force myself to come up with an answer.
Come on, Gwen, I thought to myself, think. How can you fix this?
There were only a few iterations of the legend that did not end with Arthur forming the first pack in the British Isles. In those iterations, Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot’s affair had ended with both being put to death, though in some, Guinevere was let off to live the rest of her life in confinement while Lancelot was banished from Camelot and history.
And if that was our best case scenario, I was pretty sure we were fucked.
Merlin wouldn’t have let this happen if he knew, but where the hell was he?
I tried to remember all of the different versions of the story that my mother had told me as a child, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that, at some point, Merlin disappeared from the story every time, never to be heard from again.
Had he died? The very thought sent a chill down my spine.
Normally, Arthur would never let anything happen to his oldest friend and closest advisor, but the Arthur upstairs was a far cry from his usual self.
I needed to find him. Every single instinct I possessed told me that Merlin would be able to solve our problem and break whatever magical hold Morgana had over Arthur and the rest of the castle.
Groaning a little bit as another heat cramp twisted through my body with no relief in sight. I forced myself to ignore it—to push down my misery and focus on a solution.
My heat would have to wait.
Closing my eyes, I reached for my magical core and smiled when it rose easily to the surface. At least that seemed to be working.
I wasn’t sure if I could use my water magic for anything useful down here in the dungeon, but I could use it to find Merlin.
He had shown me how to send magical threads out into the land around me, using the lakes and the rivers that webbed out from it to see more of Logres than I had been able to on the journey here. He taught me how to let the magic of the land empower me and I did that now, searching for his distinct magical signature.
“Where are you, Merlin?” I mumbled under my breath, my brows pinched in concentration.
Through the lake, I followed each river as it branched out to creeks and streams, searching for my wizard.
They could not have gone far after they had left seeing as Arthur had returned in a little over twelve hours and I tried to remember the direction in which Bedivere told me they had gone to fend off the Saxons. The very same Saxons that had now invaded our castle and my new home.
This was not in any of the myths. Castle Camelot had never been overtaken in any iteration that I could remember, so while my general outlook was bleak at the moment, it still lit that tiny kernel of my desire to change our fates for the better.
Then, as if my determination had conjured him, I felt Merlin’s magic. It was weak—almost as if it had been caged—but when I reached out with my own magical threads it grasped on for the lifeline.
Guinevere ! Merlin’s voice echoed loudly in my head, making my already pounding headache worse.
Quieter please, Merlin, I told him, my tone weary even when not spoken out loud. I have the worst headache and I am currently sitting in a very damp dungeon. You don’t need to shout .
My words were terse, but I hoped he could hear the sheer level of my relief at being able to connect with him.
Apologies, Merlin hurried to say, his volume dropping as he continued. I have been shouting into the void for hours hoping you would remember our earlier lessons .
What the hell happened? I asked, pulling the linen sheet tighter around my shoulders and gritting my teeth as a fresh wave of fire began to lick its way up my body.
We were ambushed. They—the Saxons—had a contraption with runes scribed all over it. It looked like a massive clamshell and before I knew what was occurring, it had snapped me up into its depths. I cannot use my magic except for the tiniest bit here and even that will not last forever. Merlin was trying to keep his voice level and calm, but even I could hear the panic in his tone.
You aren’t usually so easily trappable, I pointed out softly, wondering just what had occurred to make Merlin drop his guard.
Merlin’s sigh was heavy on the other end of our magical connection. Morgana surprised us all. I never considered that she would actively work with the Saxons and the gods had never shown me such a thing either—at least they had yet to.
I frowned. What do you mean? Have they shown you something now?
There was a long pause, and for a moment, I was scared I had lost him, but then he spoke again. I am meant to remain here forever, Gwen, it is what the gods have shown me. Do you remember what happens when the portents that they have shown me come to pass or are about to?
I nodded even though I knew he couldn’t see me. Merlin had told me about the buzzing in his chest as if he was meant to bear witness to whatever the gods wanted him to see.
The buzzing, Merlin continued, was the true distraction once the battle had begun. I watched Morgana sneak up behind Arthur as he was fighting one of the Saxon invaders and put her hands on his temples. When I moved to stop it, my magic triggered the trap. The gods sent their message: I am to remain here.
That’s bullshit, I snapped disbelievingly. Your purpose is not done yet and I will be damned if I let you live in a magical clamshell for the rest of your life .
It is what the gods have decreed, Merlin said sadly, his voice starting to fade.
Anger filled me as I realized he was giving up. After spending ten years stuck in that damned cave looking for me he was resigning himself to a life locked in darkness—this time permanently. I don’t believe that for one damned minute, Merlin, the gods are not all-powerful and you are not disposable. Not to me .
Tell me then. In all of those versions of the story you knew about King Arthur and his round table—was Merlin the Wizard ever at the final battle? Merlin asked, his voice a mixture of anger and dismay.
I searched my memory, trying to find one version—just one—where Merlin still existed to the very end. But I came up empty.
Hearing my silence, Merlin left out a soft self-deprecating chuckle. I am not needed for this part of your fate, Gwen. Can’t you see? I let myself be sold on the idea of truly being a part of you all and the gods reminded me of my place. I am an observer, not a participant. You were meant to stand on your own at the penultimate battle.
His words hit me like a jolt of lightning. Everything that Merlin had told me about what he knew of the future had nothing to do with the final battle where Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain, and Bedivere were meant to die and leave me alone again.
How much of that do you know?
I have only seen flashes of a great battle and you standing on the top of a hill dressed in triumphant red , Merlin’s voice turned almost nostalgic even though the event had yet to come to pass.
But that’s not what— I began but the air in my lungs left me in a painful, wheezing, whoosh.
It had been so long since the gods had used their gag on me that it nearly made me vomit what little I had left in my stomach after not eating since breakfast the day before.
You should not try to tell me anything, Gwen, it will just hurt you more in the end, Merlin said, his words holding a double meaning.
He didn’t want me to try to tell him because he didn’t really want to know what was going to happen in a future without him there. He was playing a character—Merlin the Wizard. But I knew Merlin the man.
In the distance I heard the doors to the dungeon open and I realized I was running out of time.
We are going to find you, Merlin, and we are going to set you free, I hurried to say, and when we do you are going to be a part of my family forever. You are just as much a part of the pack as the rest of them .
Merlin said nothing and instead withdrew his magical threads, resigning himself to his fate and leaving me alone in my head again to face my own.
“Put him in the cell next to that one,” I heard a familiar female voice say as the cell door next to mine opened with a creak and a bloodied Lancelot was dropped unceremoniously to the floor.
Someone, at some point, must have given him a pair of trousers to wear, though that did little to hide the gashes and whip marks marring his back.
A strangled noise left my lips as my eyes surveyed my beaten and battered alpha. I couldn’t feel his pain and it made me realize he was shielding me from it, the stubborn ass. Even though it was my fault he was hurt in the first place.
If I hadn’t pushed so hard last night then this would have never happened.
“What did you do to him?” I asked with a hiss, my voice hoarse.
Morgana, who was dressed in a fine purple gown that I recognized as one of my own, and more nauseatingly, it was one of Arthur’s favorites for me to wear.
“I did nothing,” she said simply, shrugging one slender shoulder. “The king, however, was defending what is his, though I cannot fathom why. Must be the fickle pride of men.”
She looked me up and down as if I were a bug meant to be squashed.
I wasn’t sure if it was my heightened emotional state thanks to my heat or truly that I was a violent person at heart, but I wanted to kill her. I wanted to conjure up my water magic and pound it at her until she was a meaty pile on the floor.
She was doing this. Messing with my family and my people. For what, I didn’t know. I assumed it was something to do with her son becoming king—the iterations of the myths where Mordred suddenly teamed up with the Saxon army came to mind. But he was thirteen, so all of the stories showing him as an active participant must have been wrong.
“Oh my, that will not do,” Morgana tutted as if she was talking to a child.
I frowned, trying to understand her, when the water that had begun to float up around me splashed to the floor. I must have unconsciously pulled the moisture from the air as I thought about all of the ways I wanted to hurt the woman in front of me.
Morgana jerked her head to the side and Andrivete appeared at her side, a glazed expression on her face.
In the woman’s hands was what looked like a metal collar with runic etchings on it. I didn’t know what they said, but I definitely knew they couldn’t be anything good.
The door to my cell opened and two men in green livery entered.
I wanted to fight them off as they grabbed my arms, but I was too focused on keeping the sheet up over my naked body. Besides, there was no way I was about to overpower two men by myself while Lancelot was still unconscious in the cell next to me.
“Andrivete,” I tried softly as the woman who had been my friend since I arrived at Camelot and my biggest supporter clamped the collar around my neck and fastened the lock.
It was like someone dumped a bucket of cold water over me.
Any connection I had felt with the magic of the land was completely gone—like a piece of me had been scraped and hollowed out.
“What did you just put on me?” I gasped, trying not to gape at the woman who was enjoying my discomfort far too much.
But Morgana didn’t deign to answer my question and instead they shoved me back to the ground and left as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
Then I was alone again, save for Lancelot whose wounds looked like they were going to get infected if they weren’t treated soon.
I lifted a hand and tried to call my magic, knowing that it would be in vain, especially when nothing came. Not even a drop fell from the already damp ceiling of my cell.
Frustrated, I turned to look out of the little barred window that was set at the ground level of the castle. No human could fit through such a small hole, even if I could jiggle the bars out of place like I’d seen in the movies.
I needed a plan but I had nothing. I was, quite literally, naked and afraid and not for some reality TV show. This was very real, and if it went the way the legends did, I had a stake and some fire in my future.
Then, as if my desperate desire to be free had sent out a distress call like a beacon, I heard them.
“Guinevere,” Bedivere’s rough voice came from above, “are you in there?”