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It was different in the day—that gray, mourning light when death nearly snatched her soul. Overhearing whispers in dense dream fog:
Could it be?
Must it be?
Her fingers curled with loathing at the words, the revelation seeping into her brain, then down, down, down back into that death of sleep she fell, waiting, thinking, wondering if she posed the question to him then perhaps, she could stay her hand, lay down her crusade.
Perhaps, she wouldn’t have to kill the king.
Perhaps, she wouldn’t have to kill her father.
When he arrived at her door, his face ebullient, full of love, her heart burst with resounding joy, her body tingling on edge of anticipation and dread—
This was the moment. The moment she would no longer be a ward shut up in a chamber, yearning for her father, the father that was taken from her. Now, she would have a new father…a brother; she would have a family again.
Her eyes welled staring up into his, his hands in hers, her heart fluttering like a bird taking flight.
That was pierced clean through by an arrow.
Gasping, she watched him walk away, and it was as if a dark poison ran through her veins as she fell like a bird from the sky down, down, down.
Night fell.
Everything full of promise in the day dies a slow death in the night. Nothing is as it appears, all dark pitch and shadow. The mind wanders to past hurts, recalling old haunts.
The ghosts come calling back.
Or a sister.
Morgause whispers in Morgana’s ear, a touch as gentle as a lover’s kiss. Of course, how could she have forgotten, she is her family now.
Arthur isn’t Uther’s son, but an imposter, conceived of magic and carried in Ygraine’s womb until she died bloody on the birthing bed, the price for Nimueh’s sorcery and her father’s own hubris. His lust for an heir.
And thousands died in his grief thereafter.
She could be one of them, she thinks, not hearing her half-sister as she tells her to wait out this night of storms and darkness, thunder and rain, to not act rashly.
But Morgana is elsewhere, down, down, down in the dungeons where Uther had thrown her mercilessly in chains, and the imprint of his hands at her throat, they’re there again suffocating her.
She remembers the names of those less fortunate than her, those poor men and woman executed in pyres of scorching flame or beheaded by the executioner’s grisly ax.
She could be one of them.
She is one of them.
He has proven that he doesn’t care for her, as she did for him all those weary years kept like a prisoner inside these very walls.
Inside those walls, lightning illuminates her twisted face.
Night has fallen.
And now, the poison in her head, her heart, urges her to act.
Tonight, she will murder her father and dance in the blood to pool at his feet.