“Let me guess,” Ere interrupted. “Merlin took Igraine to Tintagel?”
“Aye,” Morgan said, blinking distractedly. “How do you know such things?”
“Wild guess,” Ere muttered.
She looked back at Wolfe.
“The union did bear fruit. Arthur was conceived that night.”
Arthur was hisbrother?
Wolfe was related to the fucking King of Briton?
“True to his word, Merlin did not dispute Uther’s claim on the child. Given that Igraine was Uther’s consort, and likely wife, Arthur became Uther’s heir. Uther was further emboldened and vindicated in his belief that Arthur would become the prophesized King of kings when a comet shot through the sky that night. It was then that he adopted the title Pendragon, the title he passed to Arthur.”
“But not to you,” Ere pointed out.
Morgan glanced at him.
“No, not to me. I am supposed to be Uther’s daughter. But he was no father to me. I might as well have been a stool in his great hall for all the notice he gave. To be fair, he treated most of my sex that way. Except for the ones he wanted to bed.”
“What of the hill?” Wolfe asked. He tried to follow and absorb everything she said, but his mind was awhirl with possibilities and ramifications.
He didn’t know what to make of it all. But he sensed in his very bones that the witch did not lie.
“I’m getting to that.”
“Get there faster,” he growled impatiently, his head splitting with a dizzying ache.
“Merlin did not plan for it; none of them did. But the dragon fell in love, or at the very least became enamored, with Igraine. He could not forget her. He could not forget that night. But Igraine was Uther’s. He could not have her if Uther did not let her go. Seeing that he could use the dragon’s powers again, Uther made another bargain. He would cast Igraine away from the castle, pretend that he no longer knew her, if Merlin defeated the white dragon beneath the prophesized hill.”
Morgan twisted her lips and added, “Uther would keep the children, however. Arthur was his heir, after all. He was to be the most powerful warlord these lands had ever seen. How could he not be, with a dragon’s blood flowing inside him.”
“Merlin won. He vanquished the white dragon, at great cost to himself, and Uther built his castle on top of the hill. Igraine was taken to a faraway village to the east, where no one knew her, but where she was always protected by the king’s guards from afar. Perhaps she was also protected by Merlin’s magic. He visited her every few months in the form with which she’d developed an affection. As the warlord Gorlois.”
“What…”
Wolfe bit off his question and swallowed hard. He was overwhelmed by these revelations. He hardly knew what to think, how to feel.
Damming up his broiling emotions, he uttered, “What did Gorlois look like?”
“Golden hair,” Morgan said softly, seemingly sympathizing with Wolfe’s confusion. “Tall. Blue eyes.”
It was the “soldier,” Wolfe knew. The soldier who’d saved him that fateful day. The same dead soldier he and his mother had buried in the back garden.
Except.
It wasn’t really the soldier. It was the dragon in disguise. At least, when the dragon visited his mother. And if the dragon, Merlin, was his mother’s lover…
What did that make Wolfe?
His eyes flew to Morgan’s.
She was ready for his piercing gaze. She held his eyes steadily with her own. Answered his unspoken question wordlessly.
And then, she gave voice to her reply.
“Aye, warrior. You are my bother by the same mother. You are Arthur’s brother as well. But more than half. You share both parents. Your mother is Igraine, and your sire is—”
“Stop,” he uttered, staggering a step back.
But Morgan advanced upon him, taking a step forward.
Relentlessly, she revealed, as her hand reached out to grasp his arm, setting the entire limb to tingling with fiery shockwaves:
“Merlin, the red dragon.”