Chapter Text
In the land of Camelot, a land of myth in a time of magic, on a day atypical to most others in the castle, King Arthur made three unfortunate decisions.
The first was that he wore a truly stifling jacket for a long day of formal meetings. Camelot never truly got cold, even in the deepest of the winter months, but this summer had been one of the worst in memory. The entire countryside was dried brown and gold, and even the deep water stores of the castle were depleted to worrying levels. Arthur had known it to be a mistake the minute he’d seen the jacket laid out for him that morning, of course, but there was little else that would send George into an outright panic more quickly and thoroughly than a last minute change in the wardrobe Arthur’s manservant had already prepared.
With the entirety of George’s mental well-being in his hands, he had donned the jacket and sat through hours of discussion on the latest issues with half a mind wondering if his ministers would truly object to moving the entire proceedings to the dungeons, which would at least provide some break in the late summer heat.
His second mistake was agreeing with Agravaine’s suggestion that his knights not be allowed to attend his other meeting as his guard. They argued, of course – indeed, with more insistence than his ministers had thought proper – but his knights had always cared more about his life than propriety.
However, Agravaine pointed out that the vital meeting would never take place if there was even a chance it could be viewed as a trap. He turned his back to Arthur’s knights to face Arthur alone as he spoke. “You know how much of Camelot’s security rests upon your shoulders and this meeting,” he reminded his nephew. “Can you really place their paranoid worrying over the safety of your kingdom?”
“Our worries are for the safety of our king,” Leon argued, his tone even with court training.
“As are mine,” Agravaine allowed, smiling slightly. “And though magic is an insidious enemy, sometimes wise men must put aside our fears and distaste in order to rule. It is not something a soldier must often deal with.”
Leon opened his mouth, but Arthur held up a hand to halt the discussions. He was distracted and uncomfortable, and though he knew his knights’ concerns were valid, he could not turn away from the logic of Agravaine’s suggestions. No matter how he distrusted his guest and the magic she wielded, he could not allow his people to suffer for concerns of his own safety. Besides, Arthur understood his guest’s paranoia. As an enemy of the crown, because of her magic and because of her crimes, she had every reason to fear the justice of Arthur’s knights.
“Agravaine is right,” he said. His knights would have continued their arguments –all at once, if the angry way they all opened their mouths was any indicator – but he stopped them with a stern look.
“She is to arrive soon?” he asked Agravaine. His uncle nodded. “Then there is no more time to argue. Camelot comes before any one person. Even me. Wait here,” he said to Leon, standing. The ministers and his knights rose with him. “I will return once the meeting is done.”
His tone told everyone that the conversation was done. They bowed him from the room.
He walked into the corridor, and Agravaine followed him. “Just a moment more of your time, Sire?” he asked.
“Of course, Uncle.”
“I wanted to give you this, before you go to your meeting.” It was a golden bracelet, its clasp and main ornamentation a yellow jade oval framed by two feathered wings. “It will protect you,” Agravaine continued.
Arthur had been reaching out to accept the gift, but drew his hand back sharply at those words. “Magic?” he asked sharply, cutting his gaze up at his uncle.
“No, no,” Agravaine said quickly. “Would I ever be associated with such a thing? No, it will simply remind your guest of your position and how unwise it would be to stand against you, Sire.”
Arthur smiled privately. Agravaine had obviously never met her, but Arthur was not going to insult him by refusing the gift. It was attached to his wrist with a sharp click, and then Arthur clasped his hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “Thank you. I’ll see you once this is done.”
“Before I see you, I suspect,” Agravaine agreed with a smile.
And so, Arthur continued to his meeting and thus (and this was his third mistake), Arthur allowed Morgana Le Fay, the so-called Witch of the Waste and his father’s daughter, into his palace.
It was this last, of course, that was probably the most serious in hindsight. If he had spent more time that morning considering it, and ignoring the way sweat dripped uncomfortably down his back, the entire episode that followed may have been avoided.
Though, perhaps not. It wasn’t as though he was rife with options. When he had been crowned King in the days following his father’s death, he had stepped into a truly venomous pit of vipers. War was brewing: the northern horizon growing dark with warships and distemper. Rumours of Cenred’s ill will toward Camelot had been brought to Uther’s ear for years, but the warlord to the north had always been frightened of Uther Pendragon. Not so his young, untested son. There would be war within the year, and though Arthur had faith in Camelot’s armies, he could not face an outside enemy while his country was not strong within.
And it was not; all had not been well within Camelot’s borders for many years. The numbers of those dreaded sorcerers were diminished and all of the people corrupted by magic were hunted, cornered in traps of Uther’s devising, but after ten years of persecution they were proving willing to fight back in deviously deadly ways. Magical assassins attacked Arthur with disturbing regularity, while conjurings and beasts terrorized his villages and lurked in his forests. The Wastes were the remnants of this battle between Camelot and the evil of magic, stripped of gentle life and poisoned with dark powers. It was said only the most powerful and corrupted wandered there anymore.
Even Arthur’s own household wasn’t safe from the problems that plagued Camelot: Morgana had always been as dear to him as a sister, but neither of them had known it was truth. Arthur thought it was his father’s lies as much as her growing power that had driven her from Camelot and into the Wastes, and the woman who reappeared trailing black gossamer and smirking with blood-red lips had nothing left of the Morgana he had known.
Tensions were mounting on all sides and Arthur had to do something to protect his people. Without a formal declaration of hostilities, which Cenred refused to give even while he prepared to attack, Arthur’s hands were tied. If Arthur could not stop that war, he would have to make Camelot a united front in order to weather it, but Arthur could trust no one with the taint of magic.
He would not trust her, not after her betrayals of him, but Morgana had the ear of the magical people. She was the only one with real power who had stood up for them while Uther reigned. Nimueh had been consumed by plots of revenge until the end of her days; High Priestess Morgause cared little for the common magician or sorcerer, spent her time pursuing her own power and arcane knowledge; Cornelius Sigan was concerned only by his own lust for power, until he was contained and destroyed; worst of all was the Wizard Merlin, who was said to emerge from the Wastes only to trap incautious townsfolk and devour their hearts. This left only Morgana to turn to as Arthur tried to bring peace to Camelot, no matter what trepidations he had on the matter. If he could convince her that the end of magical attacks were in the best interest of all of Camelot, perhaps they would survive Cenred’s ambitious, the good and the magic alike.
It didn’t mean it was a good idea but there was no time to change his mind. In between one paced length of the garden courtyard and the next, as Arthur turned on the cobbles, Morgana appeared at the entrance across from him. There was a small reflective pond between them, and Arthur moved around it to walk towards his sister. It was always a shock to see her, so different from the girl he’d grown up with. He could look back at their childhood, from this distance, and see that she’d never truly been the perfect noblewoman she had pretended to be. She had always had fire, and spirit, was never going to be happy contained in the space other people had made for her. She had always had anger. The kindness, though, that had tempered it, that had prompted her to fiercely protect those in her care, to befriend those who needed a friend, to always think of others before herself… that kindness was gone. The lack of it made her into a stranger.
“Hello, brother dearest,” Morgana drawled, stepping towards him. Her dark hair was wild about her face like a veil in wind. Her black gown revealed her neck and collarbones in a low, wide scoop, the material beneath clustered with ruffles and ties. The long sleeves gathered tightly at her biceps and then flared out, made of billowing sheer lace that was drawn tight again at her wrists. The black skirt of the dress fell to the courtyard floor and dragged there, a black puddle gathering on the stones, sliding like smoke as she stepped.
“Morgana.” Arthur’s reply was steady, impersonal. He had let go of trying to reach her years ago, after too many of her attempts on his father’s life and throne. “Thank you for speaking with me.”
“Oh, how could I turn down the chance?” she asked, touching a finger to one of the flowers growing on draping vines on the courtyard’s stone wall. Her finger caressed the red petals. “I hardly get to see you since I was forced to flee into the Wastes. And we are family, after all.” She turned back to him, head tilting to one side as she looked him over. “You look well, Arthur. Kingship agrees with you. You should have tried it years ago. Too bad Uther held on so long.”
Arthur felt anger burn hot inside his chest, he clenched his jaw. He had long been sure that Morgana had a hand in Uther’s death, and he knew she had hated him, but: “He was your father.”
Morgana’s mask slipped and she stepped forward, enraged, her eyes wide and wild. “He was never my father. He hunted my kind to extinction, forcing the last of us into the Wastes that his war on magic created. He would have killed me, had he known the kind of power I had.” She held out her hands, white-blue sparks shooting up into the air as liquid light gathered, building into a writhing white-light puddle which filled her cupped hands before tipping over her fingertips and flowing to the ground in bright, dangerous streams. Arthur flinched at the display before he could stop himself. “And so would you,” Morgana accused him, closing her fists. The light died. “You fear it just as much as he did. You fear it because it isn’t yours and you don’t understand it… and Pendragons destroy what they can’t have.”
Arthur bristled. “You would know,” he said. “You think I haven’t heard about what is going on in the Wastes? I know you’re looking for something, Morgana; a weapon you can use to destroy Camelot.” He paused, looking her over, seeing his father in the way her jaw jumped as she tried to hide how close to the truth Arthur had hit. “You are more Pendragon than you like to think.”
“I am nothing like him,” she hissed.
“Prove it. Help me stop this war between us.”
“To what end?” Morgana demanded.
“For both of us! To have Camelot united again.” He took a step toward her. “As long as they do not use their powers for ill, I will leave them be. We could live in peace again.”
“Aw, how sweet.” She tutted. She hit a single fingertip against her jaw, her head tilted as she considered it. “Peace… before you turn back to us with your swords bared the minute the northern borders are quiet again. How efficient. You’ll only have to wipe clean those blades of blood the once.” She curled her hand into a fist. “I am no idiot, brother. I don’t want your peace.”
“Then what do you want, Morgana?” Arthur asked, war-weary from the tension between them. “What can I do to prove to you that I want this to end?”
Morgana just watched him, dark eyes intent and that jester’s smirk gone from her lips. “There is nothing you can do, Arthur,” she said softly, showmanship gone to leave only naked hatred in her voice. “The only thing I want is to never look upon your face again.”
She turned then, and stalked from the courtyard, shoes clipping the stone. Arthur took a step forward to argue, or call her back perhaps, but he stumbled in a sudden burst of dizziness and when he recovered his vision from the mass of black specks, she was already gone. He looked around the now-empty courtyard. They would be facing the oncoming war with Camelot fighting itself. He took a deep breath, fighting against the urge to shout out his frustrations and worry; he had failed. The only thing changed from all of it was the flower Morgana had touched: the petals were now a sickly grey-black which dissolved into ash on the wind as he watched. Arthur sighed and squared his shoulders. There was no time to spend on his own concerns. He would bring the news of his failure to his ministers, and they would prepare for war.