CHAPTER ONE #2
And I definitely wasn’t the most obedient. I was dangerous, yes—but so were the others. Merlin had trained us to be exactly what we were—weapons. But he definitely had sharper blades in his arsenal.
"You underestimate yourself."
"No. You overestimate me."
His voice was careful. Measured. "You’ve trained with me for three years. Your magic is… more than I've seen in any one pupil. It's potent. It allows you to move between realms. That makes you rare. Valuable."
I wasn't convinced.
In the early days of Annwyn's founding, Merlin had created the Standing Stones with his own blood. He'd carved runes into ancient rock and bound them with his life essence, creating a demarcation between Logres and Annwyn. But the stones served another purpose beyond mere boundary.
They were a beacon. A promise.
To those who disagreed with Arthur and his brutal outlawing of magic, the Standing Stones stood as a herald of hope.
They were a message carved in ancient rock and sealed in a sorcerer's blood: flee Arthur's tyranny and find shelter here.
Cross into Annwyn and discover a realm where magic still breathed freely, where practitioners weren't hunted like animals, where power didn't mean persecution.
Those with power and the foresight to do so had fled across the border in droves.
They'd passed through the Standing Stones and found sanctuary in Annwyn.
But everything changed when Arthur sent his own forces through the stones, intending to destroy Merlin's hope for a new realm before it ever started.
In response, Merlin was forced to create the exact type of spell he abhorred—death magic.
The stones didn't just repel intruders anymore.
They killed them. Instantly. Completely.
It was the only way to stop Arthur's forces from overwhelming his fledgling realm. Soon, Arthur's forces stopped coming. The king's armies turned back, unwilling to test a border that promised nothing but annihilation.
Once the exodus stopped, Annwyn's population was set. It had become home to a strange collection of souls. Our numbers barely scraped three hundred, a far cry from the bustling cities of Logres. But what we lacked in quantity, we made up for in... uniqueness.
The Twilight Wardens formed the backbone of our defense.
Roughly sixty of them patrolled Annwyn's borders, their tall, lithe forms moving through shadow and mist like wraiths.
Merlin had struck a bargain with them years before my arrival: protection against Arthur's inevitable invasion in exchange for their service as his soldiers.
The Wardens were native to this realm, ancient as the twilight itself, and they had accepted his terms.
Then there were the forty-five of us—Merlin's "magical elite," or so he had termed us.
We had been handpicked, trained, and honed into weapons.
Some possessed elemental affinities like mine.
Others wielded stranger gifts—shadow walking, blood magic, dream weaving.
The rest were ordinary people: farmers, merchants, craftsmen—anyone who had fled Arthur's tightening noose and sought sanctuary in Merlin's realm.
They kept our small society functioning, grew our food, maintained our structures, and raised their children in the hope that someday they might return home.
If there was ever a home left to return to.
"You are the only one who came through the stones after the barrier went up," Merlin said, returning to our discussion.
I looked up at him and frowned. "And you still haven't explained how I survived it."
"No. For I don't know."
Merlin turned back to his star chart, dismissing the subject with his silence. But I caught the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers stilled against the glowing constellations.
He knew. Of course he knew. But he didn't want to tell me. It wasn't a surprise. Merlin was a secretive son of a bitch.
I let the matter drop. For now.
Pushing Merlin never got me anywhere. He would simply close ranks, retreat behind that impenetrable wall of secrets and half-truths he had spent forever perfecting. Better to pick my battles.
Besides, he was right about one thing—I needed to focus.
A knock came sharp and precise—three measured raps that echoed through the chamber. Merlin glanced up, and in response, the door swung inward without anyone touching it.
Corvin filled the doorway, his eyes—amber, intense, and as handsome as the man himself—finding mine.
He was the kind of man the bards tried to capture in song but never quite managed—too tall, too broad-shouldered, too effortlessly commanding to be reduced to verse.
His height alone set him apart, but it was the way he carried it that arrested attention: a spine straight as a spear haft, shoulders relaxed in a way that suggested confidence, though not arrogance.
A man who didn't need to prove anything—his presence did it for him. But it was his hair that was my favorite—a knight’s contradiction in itself: tamed for battle, yet always a little unruly, as though it refused to be anything but wild.
A few strands fell across his brow no matter how often he pushed them back.
"Shade is ready for the journey." His voice carried that measured calm that made me want to irritate him—just to get a rise out of him. And that wasn't difficult to do.
I nodded. "Thank you."
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with another subtle flex of magic.
Corvin was one of the original knights of the Round Table—one of the few who'd abandoned Arthur when the king's paranoia metastasized into tyranny.
He'd pledged himself to Merlin as soon as Merlin had left the king and Camelot.
Now Corvin acted as the primary instructor of bladework.
And I was sure that Merlin had privately commanded Corvin to serve as my custodian—something that was completely unnecessary and completely annoying.
Corvin's guardianship started the moment he walked in on Hardric, another of the "magical elite," and me in the training hall after midnight.
We'd been sparring—just sparring—until we started sparring in a different way—a carnal way.
Hardric's hands had slid beneath my tunic, while his tongue invaded my mouth with a hunger that matched my own.
Until Corvin walked in like a dark cloud and immediately put a stop to everything. The next morning, my bedchamber, which had been located in the training tower with all the others, was suddenly relocated to Merlin's tower. Prime location, technically. A sign of favor.
But I knew better.
My new chamber sat directly below Merlin's study and beside Corvin's. I had no evidence that Corvin had played the part of informant to Merlin, but beds didn't relocate themselves. From that day on, Corvin had become my permanent shadow, and I did everything in my power to infuriate said shadow.
"Is there something else?" I asked him when he didn't leave right away.
"Just making certain you're prepared."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm always prepared."
He raised a single brow like he always did to my plentiful boasts. "That remains to be seen."
"I survived your constant nagging, Corvin. That makes me prepared for anything."
It was the same as it always was with us—we bickered and sparred with words like schoolchildren fighting over the last sweet cake.
Our conversations inevitably devolved into these petty arguments about my training, my readiness, my supposed need for constant supervision.
Yet beneath every sharp retort and cutting glance, there was always this strange, electric tension crackling between us like lightning before a storm.
It wasn't tension born from irritation or genuine dislike, though I'd tried to convince myself otherwise countless times.
No, this was something else—something that made my pulse quicken whenever he stepped too close during training, something that turned his casual touches into burning brands against my skin.
The way his amber eyes would darken when I challenged him, the subtle tightening of his jaw when other men looked at me too long, the careful distance he maintained as if he didn't trust himself to come closer.
But, of course, he never had and never would act on his impulses because then he'd find himself in an unenviable position with Merlin.
And that was something Corvin would never risk.
"Guinevere, do not test Corvin's patience," Merlin said, not bothering to turn around to face either of us, instead keeping his attention on the star chart that hovered in the chamber's dim light.
"You're reprimanding me?" I nearly choked on my own indignation.
"Yes. I know how you insistently prey on Corvin."
The man in question gave me a snide smile, and I responded with a frown. Merlin, meanwhile, traced delicate adjustments to the glowing celestial bodies suspended in mid-air, each tiny movement causing ripples of light to ricochet through the miniature cosmos.
"As we were discussing," Merlin continued, "every single one of you is rare and valuable. But you are different."
He looked at me then and nodded, his hand hovering over a constellation before dropping it suddenly. The glowing stars dimmed momentarily, as if responding to his hesitation. His fingers trembled slightly—something I'd rarely witnessed from the usually composed Archmage.
"Yet you never explain how or why, just that I'm different."
I wondered if he had this conversation with all the trainees.
A shadow passed across Merlin's face, deepening the creases around his eyes. The constellation he'd been manipulating—one I recognized as the Weeping Sorceress—flickered and then stabilized, throwing blue patterns across the stone floor.
For a moment, Merlin seemed like he might have been on the verge of saying more, his expression unusually vulnerable.