The Magician's Mistake (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 1) by Katherine Sparrow Page B

vainglorious men with their foolish suits of metal? Every day was a long one, full of song, fish, and bread.
    Memory flooded back to me, with vivid images embedded with meaning, each one crisp and whole. There was no loss of recollection: all of it lay there in my mind, whole and ready to be remembered. I could have stayed there, in my early days of Avalon, and wrapped myself in the memories of that long ago and long lost childhood.
    But I didn’t.
    One day my father came for me. His name was Uther Pendragon, and he was a cruel man. A tall and sharp king who forced all his children, all of his many bastards, to come to his castle and serve him.
    Life under his thumb was a misery. And yet, we were children and so, like water, we learned to bend around the hard times and claim our lives as our joyous own. When we were not ordered to do our father’s bidding, the children of Uther roamed far in the fields and slept puppy-piled together where we fell. Arthur, the true-born son, ran with us, as wild and fast as the worst of us.
    But then Arthur grew up. My sweet and swift brother turned manly: kingly and heavy with crowns and jewels. He wed Guinevere, a political marriage to a distant princess with fine blonde hair. He loved her. He worked to make her laugh, even though she had a way of looking at our world as though it was nothing. I remembered the two of them walking in the orchards, thick with the sweet scent of apple blossoms, as she complained of the mud. Lovely dresses were made for her, yet they were always the wrong color and fit. It didn’t matter, Arthur and every other male watched her and waited for a flick of her lovely eyes, a brief touch of her hand. Her beauty was a magic that bored me, but it was powerful, nonetheless.
    Even the magician watched her. He was a quiet and tall boy who came to court to serve my brother. I hated him on first sight, for why did my brother need a magician when he already had a witch-sister who would have done anything for him, if only he had asked? This Merlin bristled with power and became my brother’s greatest confidante.
    And what of all of Uther’s bastards? We had no role in Arthur’s court. Our King-brother set us free.
    I returned to Avalon for a while, and I remembered my mother braiding my long black hair and asking why I spoke so much of this Merlin, perhaps it was because … ?
    No, Mother. He is vile. He is arrogant and —
    I could speak of him for hour upon hour, to whoever would listen. It was all unfair and unjust, everything that happened at Arthur’s castle, and the sourness of it bled into my love of Avalon and I couldn’t stay there, where life was much too sweet. I ran away, wild and unrooted. Unbound and unclear on what a girl such as I should be in the world. So I made trouble, of course.
    Merlin and I battled each other, time and again, as he tried to help those bumbling knights of the round table with their grandiose missions, and I stood in their way. Sometimes for good reason: helping out the small people they sought to trample. Other times? Wickedness was its own fun.
    And I could have stayed in those memories, each one like blood on my tongue. I could have explored the battles waged and lost, and the many clever spells made in the age when I was still so young and careless.
    But my memories skipped forward restlessly.
    Decades later, long after Arthur was dead, as was Lancelot, Mordred, Galahad, and a thousand other proud men. Guinevere had sunk her claws into Merlin by then, and I thought less of him for it. He and I still battled now and then, and we still set traps to ensnare and destroy the other, but with a more measured and practiced magic. He made me better at my craft: I had to outwit him to survive.
    We met in battle, on a terrible day full of cold rain and lightning strikes. We fought on the muddy outer edges of Cader Idris for stupid reasons: Queen Guinevere wished her magician-consort to bring her the Plate of the Holy Restoration, a relic