“I don’t want to take any more from you,” she says. “Not until I know all of what’s happened between us, including the parts I can’t remember.”
I hesitate. It’s a hard story to tell, even not suspended between two vulgar delights as I am.
“Please,” she says softly. “Tell me what happened to make you resent me.”
I try to speak, but she gently presses her forehead to my temple to silence me. “I see it in the way you look at me sometimes, Merlin. I know you love me, I know by some incredible design you’ve only ever loved me, but I know you resent me sometimes too. That you’re afraid of me. And I think you’ve always been, ever since we first met…in this life.”
“You’re different than you were then,” I murmur. The feel of her forehead warm on my temple is almost better than a kiss. It’s reassuring, patient, close. “Maybe then doesn’t matter now. Not if you’re different.”
“I still need to know. And I can’t do it by taking more magic from you—at least, I can’t take any more from you until I know the truth. Please.”
I take in a deep breath, feeling cool air rush between my stomach and the lounge as I do. “Okay,” I agree. “I’ll tell you.”
She pulls out but stays where she’s at on top of me, as if she knows I need some reprieve if I’m to manage words, but as if she’s also loath to break the visceral connection between us.
I’m loath too. It’s a hard story to tell, and having my body thoroughly possessed by her as I tell it might make it easier.
I kiss her fingers where they curl over my bicep and begin.
7
You were born fifteen hundred years ago to a queen and her consort in a place called Ynys Witrin, and you were born a princess, but also a priestess, because your mother was no ordinary queen.
And Ynys Witrin was no ordinary place.
Nyneve was the Lady of the Lake, and Ynys Witrin was the Isle of Avalon, and she guarded both mortal and immortal realms from that place. She watched over the kingship of Britain and signaled her favor to worthy rulers by passing the sword of Excalibur. She gave her wisdom and advice to those same rulers when needed. And she also tended to the sanctuary of worship that was the isle itself. All gods and goddesses, the gods of old and Christ, had their temples and shrines there.
All were welcome and worshipped on Avalon. For a time, it was beautiful.
Your mother had two daughters of her body—yourself, of course, and your older sister, Vivienne. Some say it was because of Vivienne that she began to change and harden, but I’ve seen nothing in my visions to think that’s true. I think she began to change the way people often change as they grow older. They forget what it’s like to learn, they forget how to change. They forget their own part in their unhappiness and begin to suspect other people are to blame.
What is certain is this: the custom was for the Queen of Avalon to have only one daughter. Sons were tolerated, she might have many of those, but once she had a living daughter, she would use her knowledge and magic to make sure she conceived no more. (There was a time, not so far removed from Arthur’s, but far enough, when her consort would be killed after the birth of her daughter, as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, but even in my time, this practice was considered horrifying beyond measure. Barely spoken of, and only in hushed, fearful tones.)
But Queen Nyneve, for reasons we’ll never know, decided not to use her proficiency with herbs and plants to keep herself from conceiving a second daughter, and so she had you. None would gainsay her to her face, but the scandal of it rippled through every kingdom in the isles and all the holy places from Ireland to Armorica in Gaul. Her transgression was compounded by the mounting proof that your older sister, Vivienne, was without magic—though terrifically intelligent and already wielding a sharp political acumen for such a young age.
And you?
You were so full of magic that on the night you were born, two hundred miles away, a ten-year-old boy woke from a dead sleep to find himself cloaked in a silver fall of moonlight that whispered his name. When he fell back asleep, he dreamt of the woman he was fated to love.
Now he knows that the moonlight whispered his name in your voice.
But back to the queen and our story.
Nyneve had broken with the tradition of having only one heir—one daughter who held both magic and earthly power inside her—and now she had two heirs. The power of Avalon was split.
I’m not sure how she came to decide that it was my fault, but it must have been around the time she sent you and your sister to Tintagel, where Uther Pendragon was holding his court at the time. She never liked me—I came from my own holy island, you see, and dared to advise the king of Britain apart from her—but when she heard from Vivienne precisely how close I was with the king…the things I had done in his service and outside it in order to steer the fate of our nation, I believe that dislike crystalized into something worse.
I was innocent of this knowledge at the time, veiled from seeing it, and so I only knew that there was a new young woman at court, more beautiful than any I’d ever seen. You were fourteen and so merry and joyful that you could even make the old and grizzled Uther smile. You’d sing for us in the hall on the winter nights, lovely, lilting tunes that made even the coldest corners feel warm, and your laughter often echoed throughout the large rooms of the keep before it was snatched away by the sea’s greedy wind.
Had I just been a young warrior, a loyal soldier to my king with land and value attached to my name, I would have found a way to beg Uther for your hand. Even the Queen of Avalon would be hard-pressed to deny the king if he wished to tie his court to hers in that way, and I was utterly besotted by you, as young as you were.
I would have recognized your voice anywhere, you see. And I didn’t yet know what the future held for me. I thought only I’d been lucky enough to find the love fate had set apart for me.
But I didn’t have land or value, and I wasn’t a warrior. I worked in the shadows, I worked with a very different kind of danger, and I had nothing to offer a young bride. And anyway, my work was only just beginning.
The next time I saw you, we had a new king. He’d been blessed by your mother and was building a new court very close to Avalon. You were seventeen now, and certainly of marriageable age, and I knew if I asked Arthur, he would do everything in his power to help me wed you. If you wanted, of course, and that was the tricky thing. Did you want me? Did you care for me as I did you? Did you sense, as I did, that silver band of moonlight pulling us together through the mist and fog?
But perhaps I’d been too busy, away too often at Arthur’s side as he fought his famous battles, and when we finally settled into the new court at Camelot, I came to learn that you were betrothed to another. Pelleas, a young knight with all the things I didn’t have—money, land, battle scars. He was from Avalon itself, and so a great favorite of your mother’s.
