She hadn’t thought to. “Why?”

“Oh, dear girl.” The wisp of a sad smile crossed his face. “You changed your mind. Your love for Arthur pulled you back. Call Viviane’s hold on you bewitching, call it convincing … that you could break it was no small feat. You came to me, and you told me everything. I shouldn’t have let you be unprotected for a moment after that. I will never forgive myself for that error. I was within seconds of being too late.” He shook his head before looking at Vera with deep fondness, maybe even admiration. “The point is that you were willing to sacrifice your own life to try to fix what was broken.”

Merlin spun the glass vial idly in his fingers. Guinevere had a part in creating the mess, but she’d given her existence in an effort to make things right. Vera felt no connection to the actions of her former self. Nevertheless, she was riddled with a sense of responsibility. She could endure pain to complete the undoing of Guinevere’s betrayal. Indeed, she was quite literally made for it.

Vera took the vial from Merlin’s outstretched palm. She unstopped it and threw its contents back like a shot of liquor. The grey substance slid over her tongue, smooth and tasteless. It left a trail of warmth in its wake all the way down her throat.

As it all settled in her stomach, the warmth turned into a burn, and her impulsivity felt like a mistake. Vera gripped the desk in front of her, gasping helplessly. The stinging heat began to fade as soon as it started, replaced by something different than she’d ever known.

The tips of her fingers prickled with sensation. She felt not only the chair beneath her but the wood’s grain through her clothing. The dim room now seemed bathed in light, and beyond the cellar’s earthy aroma, Vera caught a whiff of baking bread from dinner preparations in the kitchen. She could hear the whirring mechanism of the well cranking above. Her senses had taken on all the fire of the potion. This must have been how Randall felt all the time.

Merlin stood and rounded the desk to stand right behind Vera. “Do I have your permission to enter your mind?” he asked. Vera was relieved that it was nearly a whisper.

“Yes,” she breathed. Her heart pounded as loudly as the fire crackling in the hearth.

“If you need me to stop, say the word.” Merlin raised his hands and carefully positioned them on Vera’s head. His palms sealed over her ears firmly enough that they created a suction, making a surreal growling white noise. His middle and index fingers pressed into each of her temples, the next finger right on her cheekbones, his pinkies along her jaw, holding it tightly in place. Vera trembled under the pressure of the mage’s surprising strength.

“Ready?” he murmured.

She tried to nod, but Merlin’s hands held her skull in place.

“Close your eyes, Guinevere.”

She took a deep breath and shut her eyes as she exhaled.

“Let’s begin.”

The dark behind Vera’s eyelids swelled to an abnormal vastness that she intuitively understood to be some part of her mind. Everything beyond her mind, even her physical body, felt more like a dream.

“What are you looking for?” She asked it silently, testing her sense that Merlin couldn’t hear her active thoughts. He didn’t answer.

She felt his presence meandering through her memories, but there was no image of him, nothing to see. He wasn’t in her active, thinking mind. His foreign presence was solely in her memories. Merlin moved like he knew where he was going. There was a distinct tug toward one sensation: affection.

He pulled it forth like taking a book from a shelf. Then, images flipped past in quick succession, slides of memory scrolling past until the Rolodex slowed. The first thing that came into focus replayed as Vera remembered it: Arthur holding her as they danced before the crowd and laughing as he called out the moves to her—God, how had that just been yesterday? She thought Merlin might stop there. That seemed a good place to begin, but he flipped past it.

Next was Lancelot. Short scenes in quick succession: him kissing her on the forehead in the throne room, nudging her with his shoulder on the hillside, laughing with her while on a run. Not all her memories with him went by, but there were so many: throwing his hands in the air in glee that first night, running toward the woods the day they went to the sacred grove … Vera deliberately moved away from this one, realizing that she had some control if Merlin was aimlessly flipping through. Instead, she pulled forth one when they’d played tic-tac-toe and saw the adoration on his face in her memory.

“Guinevere,” Merlin said disapprovingly. His physical voice sounded like it came from the farthest point of a jet-dark pit. “You need to be careful.”

“It’s not like that,” she said, but he’d already moved on before she could offer more of a rebuttal. She chuckled despite her discomfort. What would he have said if he saw them half-naked in the cave together?

Merlin blazed onward, further back in her memories, back to university. This couldn’t be right. This was too long ago. It was the beginning of Vera’s third year, and she remembered this day in particular. The stormy day when she’d met Vincent in the library. It all played out as she remembered. It hurt to look at him in this memory, so full of life and light. He had no idea … no trace of fear at what was to come for him and what would be his end.

Vera’s immersion in the memory broke. It lay open in front of her, but the focus shifted. Darkness fell like the power to her mind was cut, and a loud ring in the obscurity of the black shook her as if she stood inside a church bell being struck. The tone made her seize up. Merlin had promised there’d be pain, and that was the first sign of it.

“Keep breathing,” he said, his steady voice easing Vera some.

An incision sliced into the darkness, and a memory was born into her mind through it, but it wasn’t hers. She was seeing it from someone else’s perspective. The emotions that came with it were foreign. They had to be Merlin’s. They had no home in her and experiencing them stung. The new memory shimmered into focus, and Vera saw Guinevere from Merlin’s perspective.

Something of Merlin’s context mystically transferred to Vera, and she knew she was watching Guinevere and Arthur’s first meeting. She radiated nervous joy as she curtsied in front of him. There was her father not two steps behind Guinevere, severe even as he smiled, looking on as she passed Arthur a gift. She couldn’t tell what the gift was from her vantage point—from Merlin’s vantage point, she corrected herself. Guinevere and Arthur shifted, and Vera couldn’t see her face well, only his. Beaming, he passed the gift straight to Lancelot and took both of Guinevere’s hands in his. He kissed the top of one.

Merlin’s emotions flooded Vera in full force. Relief and joy. Guinevere and Arthur—the hope for the kingdom.

It wasn’t so bad now that she was used to this memory. Merlin maneuvered the whole of it to nestle against the one of Vincent. They fit nicely there together. A bit of what Vera felt that first day for Vincent leaked into the new memory, spilling over and recoloring her affection for Arthur.

Then, there were emotions that weren’t Merlin’s nor Vera’s own, but they, too, came crashing into her mind. It was Merlin’s understanding of what Guinevere felt: affection and attraction. He inserted it with the rest, making one misshapen package. That part hurt a little more. Vera gripped the arms of her seat and exhaled a stiff, shaking breath. The lumpy memory settled in with the rest, and Merlin backed away from it. She unclenched her muscles as the pain eased.