The cold, crystalline dawn pierced the high, arched windows of the Great Hall, casting sharp shadows over the dusty floor. The abandoned castle was icy and silent, as if Death's caress still lingered in its' cavernous chambers. Through the frosty air, she could hear a lone robin begin to sing, but it only managed a few forlorn notes before it was cut off by the infinite silence with which nothing could compete. It had stretched on and on through the centuries, as life itself had been swallowed by the merciless hand of time. Silent and foreboding was just the way Morgana Pendragon liked the castle. Yet today, in her triumph, it seemed almost unfitting.

Legs draped aimlessly over the arm of the unforgiving wooden throne, she idly examined the two, shirtless figures kneeling before her, heads bowed low in defeat. To an outsider they would seem like just two ordinary prisoners. But to her? Everything and more. If she were a lesser, weaker woman, she might have been visibly moved, but she had planned too carefully and strived hard for this moment to see it as anything other than her entitlement. Her hour of glory had come at last.

Smoothly, she swung herself out of the throne and sauntered towards the shorter figure, her heels clicking over the flagstones. The noise was soft, but in the utter stillness it exploded around the hall.

"Five years," she said in a near whisper, excitement making her voice carry so that it echoed off the bare stone walls. "Five years of waiting, and finally here you are." A cold smile just touched her lips as she stopped in front of the man. His bare, muscular torso was bent, hunched over his bound hands as if in prayer. Gone was the air of authority that he once wore like a cloak.

Viciously, Morgana reached out and jerked his chin up to face her. He may have appeared to be slumped in despair, but Arthur Pendragon met his sister's eye, glare for glare. "Finally, you are within my grasp," she said coldly, her long fingernails digging into his face. He did not flinch, only continued to stare at her, expression unreadable. Unmoved, she let go of him, expecting his head to fall. Instead, Arthur attempted to square his shoulders and face her of his own accord.

"Are you going to kill me, Morgana?" Arthur asked softly, his eyes searching her face with a hint of despair. For all his bravado, he could not hide the pain that crept, quivering, into his voice. Morgana smirked. Did it honestly still hurt him, after all these years?

"Yes," she purred, sliding an ornate, carved dagger from her belt and gently touching the blade to the pale skin of his neck. The piercing magnificence of the moment almost took her breath away. It was as if the knife was always destined to lie against his throat like this, an eclipse over the sun. Inky black, it glistened like it had been dipped in oil. An intricate vine snaked its way around the hilt and up the blade, before burying itself in a thin, sickly flower, etched just below the razor sharp tip. The bloom of the Mortaeus plant. Eagerly, Morgana watched Arthur's pulse rise against the cold metal, blood draining from his face and beautiful fear flashing in his eyes. Finally, she would have the pleasure of watching the light fade from Camelot's last persecutor of magic. "But not yet."

"First," she murmured, shifting the dagger so that it rested on his side, just under his ribcage "you are going to feel more pain than has ever been felt in all the five kingdoms." For a moment, she paused, nose-to-nose with her wide-eyed brother, feeling his chest rise and fall rapidly as he breathed. Waiting. Then, without warning, she slid the blade smoothly back towards her, carving a long, shallow gash across his ribs.

Arthur's scream shattered the stillness completely, hoarse and excruciating. He crumpled at her feet like a doll.

"NO!" Merlin's cry was almost as desperate and painful as his master's. Momentarily distracted, Morgana glanced over at him. The pathetic man was struggling haphazardly to his feet like a newborn calf, trying vainly to reach his friend. Desperation and fear were written in every inch of his angular face as he fought against his bound hands, tripping clumsily over his own body. But the ropes that held him were tight.

"Stay where you are, Merlin," snapped Morgana menacingly, flinging up a magical shield that threw him unceremoniously to the ground. Merlin landed with a dull thud as the wind was brusquely knocked out of him. "No need to be impatient, your time will come too," she said, voice shifting into mock brightness and a smile lifting on her lips. These days, nothing ever reached her eyes. He turned his head to fix her with an enraged glare, fighting hopelessly against both visible and invisible bonds. Ignoring the fire that glinted in his eyes, she returned her attention to Arthur. The serving boy would burn himself out soon enough.

The King lay curled and whimpering on the stone floor. A curtain of red trickled over his skin and pooled at her feet in a velvety circle, the metallic smell of it stinging her nostrils and making her heart race with the adrenaline flooding her system. Almost time. "Get up," Morgana snarled, taking a handful of his golden hair and dragging him to his knees. He stared blankly at her, sweat beading on his pale brow. Nothing could stop her now. "My dear brother, that was only a taste!" she began to croon manically.

"Just kill me and be done with it," Arthur managed to pant. "Please."

Spiteful thrills began to crawl up and down her spine. The King of Camelot was begging her. Pleading for her to kill him. Oh, how that made her laugh. Vicious, electrifying mirth bubbled up from her stomach and rang sourly through the air of the Great Hall, mixing with the smell of blood and pain and fear in a curdling cocktail. "Oh, no, I couldn't!" she cried, flinging Arthur to the ground and starting towards where Merlin lay sprawled under her spell. A cruel smile twisted gracefully in her mouth, taunting and malicious. "First I am going to make you watch your only friend die."

"No!" Arthur rasped, "Please, Morgana! Killing Merlin won't get you what you want!"

Ignoring him, she raised her hand and threw the manservant hard against the nearest pillar, her eyes flashing hot and hateful gold. With a sickening thud, he collided with the hard stone and fell into a heap. He had barely crashed to the floor, panting, before she was upon him with the ebony dagger. Tangled in his own limbs, Merlin struggled to get away from her, but Morgana was faster. Like a striking snake, she snatched his arm and dragged it towards her, calmly meeting his frightened, blue eyes with her cold, green ones. Slowly, almost lovingly, Morgana lowered the blade and opened his wrist.

White, venomous pain surged up Merlin's arm. Blinding, vicious and destructive, it fed the scream that twisted his throat like pitch feeding a flame. Throbbing and pounding at his eardrums, it drowned out every other thought, every other instinct but to escape. The wound itself was long and shallow- no worse than any other the warlock had sustained as Arthur's manservant. Yet the pain crackled and consumed and threatened to plunge him into unconsciousness. Looking up, Morgana's smirking face was all it took to confirm what he was beginning to suspect about the knife winking in her hands. The etching of the Mortaeus flower was red from his blood.

It was getting worse. The coldness was reaching out from his shoulder and spreading sickly tendrils across his chest towards his heart. Bitter panic bloomed, bursting through his body and writhing its way through his senses. Merlin screwed his eyes shut, trying to remain calm, but reason was no match for rampant fear. Instinctively, he reached for magic, wrapping himself around his lifeblood and feeling its warmth seep back into his soul. It flooded his mind, driving out the pain and fear, but replacing it with an uncontrollable force of its own. It raged mercilessly through him in a torrent that he had only felt once before, when the life of the woman standing over him had been his to save. But, for the first time in his life, he could not prevent the words that surged to his lips.

"Ahlúttre þá séocnes! Þurhhæle bræd!"

Shock speared through the witch like lightning as Merlin's eyes snapped open, glowing as brilliantly as suns. Like liquid gold, they swam with power as his incantation reverberated around the chamber. It took Morgana several moments to piece together what her eyes were telling her. The utterly unthinkable.

Staring speechlessly at the man at her feet, her mind fought tooth and nail to make sense of what her one-time friend had become. Denial still echoed through her head as familiar emotions began to intertwine in a muddled whirl. Astonishment. Wonder. Hurt. Betrayal. Rage. The last one stuck. A vehement snarl twisted her elegant face as she raised the dagger high above her head, its' tip quivering in her livid grasp. Her eyes locked hotly with Merlin's as she plunged it between his ribs.

But the firm crunch and the gentle give of his flesh never came as the knife smashed into an invisible barrier just above Merlin's chest. Try as she might, Morgana could not drive home a fatal blow. With a primal yell, she tossed the weapon aside and launched herself at the warlock with her bare hands, pouring all her strength into a frenzied attack. Manic tendrils of enchanted air snaked their way towards his throat, armed to kill. But once again, Merlin cast her attack aside with infuriating ease.

Taking hold of her flailing wrists in a grip of iron, he dragged her closer so that she knelt over him, her face not an inch from his, glowering helplessly. Morgana was so close to him that she could feel each hot gust of his breath bathing her face. Eye-to-eye, the two sorcerers stared obstinately at each other, waiting for the other to break the stalemate. Sweat, smouldering anger and something unidentifiable surged between them almost tangibly, crackling like electricity. She remembered a time when she might have found a moment like this exhilarating. Now it just made her sick.

"Morgana," Merlin began quietly, his jaw set a stubborn line, "you're fighting the wrong war."

"Me!?" hissed Morgana, indignation scouring her words, "I'm not the one who's abandoned our kind, Merlin! Where were you when Uther was butchering us?"

"I haven't abandoned anyone," insisted Merlin quietly, "Uther is gone, Morgana, and Arthur is not his father." She opened her mouth in retort, but he smoothly cut her off. "Morgana, when the Once and Future King unites Albion, magic will be free once more. Our gifts will no longer be feared and we won't have to hide again, ever. We might even be appreciated, respected. Don't you understand? You are killing the only man who can give you what you want. It is what you want, isn't it?"

For a count of ten she continued to stare at him. Then, his grip on her wrists slackened and she sat back on her heels, breaking away from his gaze. It frightened her to see her soul, reflected back into her face from the depths of those lucid eyes. Yet, for one shining moment she believed what they were telling her. She believed that all it would take would be for her to stop fighting, to release her grip on the steep rode of warfare. She could go back to being a princess, go back to having friends. She could sleep at night without the fear that her next dream would end in her execution. A single tear slid down her porcelain cheek.

Then she glanced over her shoulder at Arthur, lying semi-conscious behind her, chest smeared with blood. The sight of him, of her victory, was all it took to bring the black stain of Uther's hatred flooding back. She could never return. The scars of his crimes ran far too deeply for her to forget her cause so easily. What was she, if she was not alive to fight for her sister's memory? Would she forget the only person to ever truly love her, all on the word of a serving boy, sorcerer or no? Merlin was wrong. Arthur had never been peaceful or tolerant; he would never accept her kind. The only thing he had ever been was arrogant.

She spun back to face the dark-haired warlock, still sitting slumped against the wall. His eyes met hers once more, wide and expectant, clearly waiting for her to cast herself at his feet. His faith was touching, really, and she regretted that it would have to end like this. She watched, with an odd sinking feeling, as his hope softly fell at the look on her face. A drop fading into a pond.

"How would you know anything, Merlin?" she demanded savagely down her nose, smooth venom returning to her voice.

She wasn't sure how she expected her old friend to react. She might have thought he would look away, like a chastised schoolboy, or that he would plead for her forgiveness. She might have expected some desperate retort, or even a downcast acknowledgement. But Morgana did not expect Merlin to sit up and grip her shoulders firmly in his strong hands; eyes awake with a cold and unidentifiable light. Unexplainably, she felt her face begin to burn.

"I would know, Morgana, because a manservant is only half of who I am." His voice was like stone.

This time, Morgana had to work hard to maintain her scorn. Something in his darkening face wormed its way to the back of her mind. As much as she tried, she could not quite quash the uncomfortable sensation that settled in her stomach. Like a cat stalking unobserved, it lurked, quietly threatening, just below her consciousness. Nothing could make her admit it, but in her heart of hearts, she was afraid of him.

"Then who is the other half?" she tried to sneer, but the pitch of her voice belied her certainty.

Merlin's Adam's apple bobbed rapidly as he swallowed and scanned her face with an alarming intensity. She couldn't tell what he was searching for, but the deepening lines at the corners of his mouth told her he hadn't found it. Without warning, he placed his palm gently against her cheek. She almost pulled away, but his eyes held her, like a snake hypnotising its prey. She watched, as they began to glisten with unshed tears. Then, as suddenly as a cloud covers the sun, his face turned as dark as an oncoming storm.

"My name is Emrys," he whispered.

Morgana barely had time to register her disbelief before a cold pressure slammed into her chest. Her breath hitched uncomfortably and a soft gasp escaped her. Merlin released her and she drew back, looking blankly down at the hilt emerging ominously from between her breasts, black as death. Again, she tried to breathe in, but could only manage another ragged gasp as instinctive panic swelled, compressing her lungs into a sob. Her mind worked wildly, searching for escape, but for the first time in her life her sharp wit could not keep up with reality. Then came the pain. Frozen, blistering and unfathomable, it dragged her silently to the cold, stone floor. Frantically, she fought off the crowding darkness, but still it grew. Swirling, consuming and terrifying, it surrounded her with a gruesome promise. In her desperation, she caught onto two fragments of blue to light her way. Once so familiar, now they chilled her with an alien indifference. Once full of hope, then pity, now they bored into her with an icy rage.

As her vision faded, Emrys stepped over her tangled form and strode across the hall to kneel beside his unconscious King.