Bewitched. It echoed in her mind, the subtle and persistent tap of a piece that didn’t quite fit. “What do you mean by bewitched?”

Merlin didn’t answer.

“Did she use a spell or a potion or something?” Vera pushed, dread rising in her gut.

Merlin glanced down at the desk before meeting her eyes. It all but confirmed her suspicion: the “bewitchment” had nothing to do with magic.

“Viviane was very powerful and very convincing. And you were uniquely situated to be swayed. You endured awful things. She saw how that weighed on you and capitalized on it. And there was no one better positioned than you to fill that role. You had the king’s trust and access to all military information. It was easy for you to pass intelligence. Who better to help bring down the leader than the person closest to him?”

A new word now: betrayal.

“Bring him down? I wouldn’t—she wouldn’t—” In truth, Vera didn’t know what Guinevere would have done. “But …” She thought of how Arthur loved his people and the magical pull that brought him to the throne. Of all the parts about this that were untenable, that may have been the most. “The people wouldn’t stand for another ruler. She had to have known that! They would revolt.”

Merlin steepled his fingers in front of his lips. If she hadn’t known the conversation’s context and had only walked in the room then, she’d have thought he was wrestling with a complicated maths problem. “The magic that calls Arthur to the throne would end upon his death. I don’t know the specifics of Viviane’s plan. I can’t say whether she meant to kill Arthur or if she wanted that done by your hand.”

“No,” Vera breathed. She didn’t know what she’d imagined, but it wasn’t this. This was so much worse. An affair with Lancelot would have been child’s play in comparison. And Arthur—she had seen the way his face had hardened last night. “Arthur knows, doesn’t he?”

She needed no answer, but Merlin gave it. “Yes.”

Ah. There it was.

She was a traitor. To Arthur, first and foremost. All the time he had been cold, had physically pulled away from Vera … He’d been exceedingly generous, all things considered. No wonder he stayed so deliberately distant. If Vera had anything more of Guinevere in her than memories, she was a danger to him and to everything he’d poured his life into.

Vera dropped her forehead into her hands. The fuel was sucked from the fire of her anger, suffocated by the truth. Her remaining feelings of disdain for Arthur melted into shame. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought we had time for you to remember on your own,” Merlin said. “It used to be that my life force could sustain magic across the entire kingdom. Its reach has diminished. Now it won’t even hold reliably to Exeter.” Bitter frustration bubbled into his voice, and the pallor of his face looked greyer than before, as if merely thinking of his recent endeavors exhausted him. “And there are the attacks in the Frankish Kingdoms—another one quite recently. I’m not convinced it’s unrelated to Viviane’s ruler. The only chance we have of reversing the damage is if you remember what she did. If the magic continues to weaken this rapidly, the Saxons will seize upon that and invade even without Viviane. We’ll need your memories then, too, to stand a tactical chance against whatever intelligence you gave them.”

Vera tried to swallow and found her mouth dry. “And once I remember what Viviane did, you’re not sure you’ll be able to fix it, are you?”

Merlin held her eyes for a breath before he shook his head bitterly.

“That’s not much of a hope,” she said.

He clasped his fingers together and leaned toward her. “It’s all we have. If we can’t restore the magic, our society will crumble. The Saxons will invade, and they will win.”

Though she didn’t move, aware of the bite of her fingernails pressing into her palms and the way the front edge of her chair was becoming uncomfortable against the crook of her knees, Vera felt like she was falling forward or like the room was tumbling backward around her. She couldn’t tell which. She only knew the sensation was in her mind because there was Merlin before her, an upright anchor to reality while her mind spiraled.

“But that—how do you know what should happen? That’s the way my history books tell it. The Saxons do eventually conquer.” Vera dragged words, leaden and heavy, from her depths and forced herself not to think of anyone, especially not of her friends—not of Lancelot, who would be the one leading the armies to their end. “Maybe this is the way things always were supposed to be. That magic dies, and Arthur’s kingdom—” Her stomach churned. “That Arthur—” And Lancelot and Matilda and Percival … Vera clamped her mouth tightly closed, stifling the urge to throw up as a wave of nausea crested through her.

“Surely you don’t hope for that,” Merlin said softly, and there was no question in it. She willed herself to keep her face blank, to keep the intrusive vision of her friends bleeding on the battlefield from her mind.

“No,” he said. “That’s not the way it should be.”

“But I’ve lived there. There’s no magic in my time.”

“How do you know that?” His lips ticked up at the corners, and his eyes glimmered. “Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

She had never considered that her own world might not be as it seemed. “Are you saying—?”

“It’s complicated, Guinevere. All of it. And the future isn’t fixed.” Merlin held up a hand in anticipation of Vera’s protest. “I know. You lived there. You came to be who you are there, but the only thing that tethers that reality into being is you.”

“That can’t be. I—I served food. I cleaned toilets,” Vera protested weakly.

It brought a wry smile to Merlin’s face. “Yes. And you held existence intact with every scrub. That’s the rather tricky bit about the presence of magic in our world. It’s a guiding force, much like the way it called Arthur to the throne and the way it makes me feel certain he should stay there, but it doesn’t control us. We can break its call to our detriment.”

“What can I do?” Her voice croaked. “Can you make me remember? Is there magic that can pull it out?”

Vera saw Merlin’s eagerness, but a careworn determination quickly replaced it. “There is,” he said. “It is invasive, and it will be painful.”

“All right,” Vera said. What choice was there? How could she choose her own comfort and damn the kingdom—damn the future? “How do we do this?”

“The procedure requires your consent, and you can end it at any time. I will enter your conscious memories and …” He paused, considering. “Add my memories of you from before. I’ll use things that parallel emotional experiences of the life you know to help regenerate the life you don’t recall. That’s the part that hurts. And it’s best we only do this once, so when you’re ready, you should take this.”

He held up a glass vial between his thumb and middle finger. The grey substance in it swirled of its own accord, only held in by the cork stopper. It was more than mist and less than liquid as it listlessly tapped at the cork like it knew that was the way out. Vera didn’t have to breathe the question aloud. Merlin was already answering it.

“It does have an element that increases your attraction to Arthur. I’m sorry, but we can’t proceed without it. That connection is the essential thread of your memory. Largely, though, this is a sensitivity potion. It won’t help you recall anything from before, but it will make all that you experience today more vivid. You won’t forget a single moment of what’s to come. I do not wish to mislead you, Guinevere.” He dropped his free hand to her arm. “This will not be pleasant. If we do it right, it could make all the difference.”

It gave her pause. The first procedure had been frightening and debilitating enough.

“I’m surprised,” Merlin said, pulling Vera from her anxiety. “You never asked me why Viviane turned on you.”