Under the Malign Star
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Chapter One
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One does evil enough when
one does nothing good.
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King Arthur gripped the back of his desk chair, unintentionally rocking it from four legs to two. His mind was elsewhere, lost in his thoughts his beloved – of Gwen – his adulterous Queen. The entire castle must have heard the news by now, of her affair with Lancelot. The entire royal court had walked in on the two of them – mid kiss. Arthur had been humiliated, mortified and broken into nothingness in front of a crowd. He wanted to die, right then and there. He wished that he could disappear, crumble into ash and drift away upon a gust of wind. But no, he had to appear unfazed and noble. He simply bowed rigidly to all enclosed the throne room and dismissed himself. Merlin had been the only creature allowed to speak with him since the treacherous display though many attempted to enter his chambers, Gwen and Lancelot included. Merlin had informed the king that Guinevere locked herself in her chambers, refusing meals and company. Arthur's chest was tight and aching with pain. He felt angry and betrayed, and he wanted nothing more than to never walk into the light of day again.
After everything he had done for her, after everything he gave up to be with her – how dare she betray him? Hell had been raised when their relationship was made public, generations of nobility swept under the rug and abandoned all for Gwen. He regretted it now, he should have been more sensible – less consumed with the sheer romance of it all. The image kept replaying in his mind, her hand gripping Lancelot's collar the same way she had once flirtatiously done to him. A sour taste choked him, a bite of despair stuck in his throat. Then suddenly, out of a fit of uncontrollable rage, Arthur tightened his grip on the top of his chair and threw it as hard as he could toward the door – a door that was now open, a door that had been guarded, a door that now revealed Morgana. She nonchalantly extended the heel of her boot to cease he chair's slide toward her. She smirked down at the now splintered piece of furniture before tilting her head up to meet her half-brother's gaze. She smirked before casually waving her hand, eye aflame and slammed the door shut behind her as if she had channeled some invisible gust of wind, the very gust of wind Arthur wished he could escape within.
"Aren't you a bit old for temper tantrums, Arthur?" she teased, flicking her wrist and magically skidding the chair back into place.
"Morgana, what an unpleasant surprise," he breathed. "To what do I owe this displeasure?"
"I merely came for a social call," she smiled, a smile that never reached her eyes. "I could not pass up an excuse to see my dear brother in his time of need."
"I'm sure," he replied curtly.
Morgana strode forward, reaching Arthur's dresser and wiping an invisible line of dust from the top, grimacing at her fingertips. She ran her index finger and thumb together before returning her attention to Arthur.
"I warned you about Guinevere," she said coyly. "I told you long ago that she could not be trusted."
"Yes, and I can hardly believe I chose to believe my wife over the likes of you," he said.
"You should always trust those who have nothing to lose, Arthur," she advised, "because we have no reason to lie. People like Guinevere are the ones you should be weary of, for if a single untruth lies between a life of luxury and a life of destitution – only a fool would choose the truth."
"Get out," he snapped. "I am in no mood."
"Poor thing," she pouted in jest. "You never could stand to be pitied."
"Do not contradict me, Morgana," he seethed. "You show up, unannounced, in the middle of the night for no reason but to gloat."
"Aw, you're no fun," he said. "I would have expected you would be pleased to see me. It has been a few years since we last crossed paths. Have you forgotten?"
"You burned down the North Tower," he said dryly. "I doubt I could forget the last time we met even if I wanted to."
"Ah, yes," she said as if she had forgotten herself, "sorry about that. I really did only mean to steal a couple selected items from the dungeons."
"I'm sure you are truly regretful," he replied sarcastically.
"Probably almost as much as your Guinevere is right about now," she smirked wickedly.
Arthur swallowed hard.
"She never was one for loyalty, you know," said Morgana, "but she always was fond of regret and remorse – or at least acting as if she was."
"And what would you know of loyalty?" Arthur spat.
"Nothing," she said quietly, looking a bit broken. "You're right. I have never known the feeling of loyalty–"
"Camelot was nothing but loyal to you, Morgana," said Arthur with confidence.
"HA!" she scoffed, gripping her skirts and taking several heavy footed steps towards the window before swiftly and poignantly turning around to glare at Camelot's king. "When were any of you and your slaves to the crown ever loyal to me? Uther denied me as his only daughter, treated me as a guest in a home that should have been mine all along. Merlin who would prefer me cower in fear of the knowledge of my abilities, allow me to think I was all alone – a monster – while he remained in the shadows of your good graces. Then he poisoned me, let me die in his feeble arms like some butchered beast."
"Merlin had no choice," Arthur argued.
"He had a choice," Morgana interrupted so callously, so coldly that Arthur felt a shiver climb his able spine. "We all had a choice."
"Morgana–"
"I am far from finished," she sneered. "I cannot exclude Gaius who protected his idiot apprentice, spitting on a decade of affection and loyalty to me. And then there's your bride, sire, who would so easy cast me aside for a mere fleeting glance from you or your Sir Lancelot. Though Guinevere is incapable of being loyal to anyone, and that obviously does not exclude you," Arthur suddenly shifted uncomfortably and Morgana smiled wickedly as she received the response she had traveled so very far to claim. "Ah, and I appear to have struck a nerve."
Morgana retained her chilling grin as she strode gracefully forward, circling the King like an elegant huntress about to deliver her prey a final mortal blow, and maybe she was. But Arthur was never one to step down from a fight, yield in battle – especially not to Morgana. He cleared his throat in a matter that had all the intention to sound regal but ended up sounding so utterly ungraceful that he was embarrassed for himself.
"And me?" said Arthur, longing for a change in subject. "How have I wronged you? I have always remained loyal to you, Morgana."
She did not expect this, not at all. She'd come to gloat, so wallow in his sorrows of his adulterous whore, not to bring up wounds from their past, wounds that had never healed, not really. She swallowed her self-satisfied grin and adjusted her jaw.
"Your father," she began slowly and meaningfully. "He raised his hand to me, and you– you stood idly by like one of his idiot bootlickers. I expected it from all the others, Arthur, but not from you, never from you."
"I helped the boy escape, didn't I?" he snapped. "If I betrayed anyone it was my father."
"What you do in the shadows of night matter little when the sun rises again in the morning," she spat, so utterly angry that her head tilted inhumanly to the side.
"Lies," he sneered. "You know my loyalties were always to you and my father equally. Though I know now how foolish that was, if I had only remained faithful to my father then that bastard child you raised as if he'd grown within your own womb would be dead and Camelot would be safe."
Morgana moved as quickly as she had ten years ago, at the youthful age of twenty. She gripped her ornate dagger, the very dagger she'd received from Arthur on her twenty second birthday, and held it firmly against his throat with a crazed expression. Arthur put on his best effort to appear unfazed by her abrupt motions. He simply looked into her eyes with an almost annoyed look. Morgana's chest rose and fell with great haste; she shook her head slowly from side to side. She opened and closed her mouth several times, her jaw shivering as if from some nonexistent icy breeze. It was as if she couldn't find the words, like she'd been aching to speak for ages but could never do so until now. A single tear was blinked down her flawless cheek as her beautiful green eyes drowned in unshed tears.
"He is not a bastard," she finally said, her voice cracking slightly. "Mordred has a father, I assure you."
"And who is that, Morgana?" he seethed. "Some scoundrel, some murderous criminal being forced to rot away for his sins behind steel bars as his son will soon mimic – and what of his mother, I wonder? Tell me, was she a whore, some village s–"
"I am no whore," she said viciously, causing several of the dimmed candles to grow to nearly reach the stone ceiling, "and you rot away for your sins behind castle walls."
Arthur looked at Morgana as if he'd never seen her before, like she had just spoken some sort of foreign language that he could not decipher. He knew one thing for certain, the words Morgana had just spoken could not be true, there was no way...
"Do not tease me, Morgana," he said suddenly, taking an abrupt step backwards to free himself from her reach. "I have been tormented enough for one evening."
"I do not jest, brother, not anymore," she whispered.
"Morgana you can't mean–"
Morgana shed her previously unshed tears and looked away, out the opposing window onto a courtyard that had once belonged to her.
"I was a child, I knew nothing of men – of boys," she frowned, closing her eyes for a thoughtful moment. "I was so young, we both were, Arthur."
"This is madness," said Arthur. "If you– I would have known."
"I was fifteen, you a year younger," she sighed, disgusted in herself for crumbling before the insufferably noble sovereign. "We were children, too young to even begin to understand the consequences to our immature accounts of pleasure."
"You lie, Morgana," he said a bit frantically. "I would have known if you bore my son, your figure never changed. You–"
"– were sent away for six months," she snapped. "Have you forgotten? Your father forced me to live in solitude at my childhood home until I bore your son, with only Gaius to see to me."
"You were on a mission trip," said Arthur, shaking his head. "You went to Cornwall to help with the wounded from the war with–"
"For six months?" she snorted. "Tell me you are not that naïve, Arthur. You believed that your father would send his fifteen year old female ward into a battle zone for the better half a year?"
"But someone would have told me," he said dumbly.
"Your father suffered his undying guilt for baring me illegitimately into this cruel world," she said logically. "What honestly makes you think that he would want you to be forced to suffer such a fate, with your sister no less. He ordered the infant from my womb to be suffocated before it took its first breath of air."
"You do go on, Morgana," said Arthur crudely. "How long did it take you to plot out this tale?"
"I do not tell tales of my son," she snapped, "our son."
"Stop this!" he shouted. "If your story is true then why does the boy live?"
"Because I begged, pleaded for his life," she said, tears falling as freely as her words. "Gaius begrudgingly agreed to smuggle the child into the night after his birth. He left the infant, our son, to be raised by the Druids. I felt a bond with him when he appeared wounded in my chambers, but I did not know him to be my son until after I left Camelot for good. He was just a nameless babe when he was torn from my arms."
"Why did you not tell me then, Morgana?" asked Arthur threateningly. "After all these years, why did you not tell me? The boy must be just shy of his twentieth year now and you choose tonight to confess this to me, a night when I am most emotionally vulnerable? Has he sent you to manipulate me? Because I am no longer wrapped around your wicked finger, and you cannot take advantage of me, not anymore."
"It is not like I never considered it before now," said Morgana, ignoring his suspicions of manipulation. "There were nights when you held me in your arms – nights before Guinevere – when I laid awake, watching you sleep, sleep so soundly. I knew that if you knew of your father's sins, of my true whereabouts for those six months that you would never sleep soundly again. I could have never done that to you."
"Why?" he asked. "Why would you care whether or not I bore such a burden on my mind?"
"Because I would not wish such a burden on my worst enemy and never on someone I loved above all others," she admitted. "And you were and have been both of those titles to me."
"Give me proof," he said firmly. "Your words are nothing but lies to me now."
"And I suppose the fact that he has your eyes does not suffice?" said Morgana, raising an inquisitive brow. His silence was her answer, and she released a heavy sigh. "Ask the wizard, ask Merlin. I imagine Gaius would have told him such privileged information before his untimely death."
"It should not have been described untimely to you considering it was you who killed him," said Arthur coldly.
"Ah, so I did," she said curtly, suddenly more interested with the length of her fingernails than Arthur's eyes, "but his years on this earth allotted him enough time to tell Merlin all his secrets, secrets that Merlin now keeps from you."
"Merlin would not keep something like that from me," Arthur argued.
"Wouldn't he now?" she said with an upward inflection. "He knew of the true nature of your mother's death, of the blood you and I share for years–"
"That's different," said Arthur, "he was trying to protect me."
"And how would his motives be any different now?"
Arthur swallowed hard, looking deep into Morgana's pale green eyes. Morgana's body had not aged since she left Camelot. She looked just as she did at the age of twenty, slender and more beautiful than any other woman he had ever seen or would ever see. Her eyes, however, her gorgeous eyes had aged and grown tired and lifeless with each passing year. Those eyes haunted Camelot's king, etched themselves to his consciousness. It took several moments before Arthur spoke again.
"I'll send the guards to retrieve him," said Arthur.
"No need, sire," said Merlin, pushing open Arthur's bedroom door. He looked onto Morgana as if she was the filth upon the underbelly of his boot and Morgana looked onto Merlin with an almost amused expression. "I could smell her familiar wicked stench of self-loathing from my chambers."
"Ah, I'm so happy to see you as well, Merlin," said Morgana in a sardonic tone. "It has been too long."
"Not nearly long enough," he cooed.
She approached her former friend turned mortal foe with elegant strides. She smiled snidely and gently placed a calloused palm against his cheek. Merlin looked down at her small frame, his posture stiff and his eyes the only moving body part. No matter how many years passed, Merlin and Morgana still retained their almost animalistic pull towards one another. Whenever the two were in each other's presence, the air became thick with tension. Morgana thrived on the suffocating air and Merlin choked on their innate bond. She leaned in close to the warlock, her fingers sensually combing through his peppered beard that had only recently began to grow. She clicked her tongue against the inside of her mouth as her lips became so close to the warlock's jawline that he could feel her warm breath against his pale skin. He suppressed a shudder, cracking his lips only slightly at her tender touch.
"The beard, Merlin," she whispered seductively, "it does not suit you."
Then her sexual undertones faded in an instant as her smiled changed from sensual to sheer amusement as she playfully tapped his cheek twice. He winced and turned away from Morgana as she hovered beside Arthur once again.
"It appears I am still able to at least wrap your wizard around my wicked finger, Arthur," she smiled victoriously.
"You forget yourself, Morgana," said Merlin coolly, "for it has always been the other way around."
"The only body part of yours that I have ever been wrapped around are your hips," she teased, "and I would welcome that–"
"You wish–"
"Enough," said Arthur, jerking back the attention from his two counterparts.
Merlin snorted at Morgana as she sent him an approving grin, narrowing her gaze. Arthur was far from amused as he stared viciously between the pair.
"Morgana has come to gloat tonight, Merlin," said Arthur.
"Adulterous gossip travels fast," she smirked, "especially when it involves the king and queen of Camelot."
"I wager her self-satisfaction is not what you sent for me to witness," said Merlin.
"Still as witty as ever I see, Merlin," said Morgana.
Merlin smirked and tilted his head to the side, pouting his lower lip to mock the enchantress and urging her to mock his expression. She did.
"Morgana has a claim," he explained, ignoring their banter.
"And what is that, sire?"
"She claims the boy, Mordred is her son – and my son," he said.
It was obvious that Merlin was trying his hardest to appear unfazed but his involuntary gulp made his indifference a facade. Arthur stared intensely at his best friend and confidant with an unreadable expression.
"Preposterous," said Merlin uneasily as if he had choked on the word.
"Liar," Morgana hissed.
"Silence," Arthur bellowed, striding before Merlin with unyielding determination after every heavy step. "Merlin, what are you keeping from me?"
"Nothing," he lied again, much easier this time.
"You lying, son of a whore," said Morgana swiftly. "You have grown to be just as big of a sniveling coward as Gaius."
"Watch your tongue," said Merlin threateningly.
"I understand now, Merlin, why you never told Arthur of his son," she grinned, urging him to release his rage. "You've always had a soft spot for bastards... seeing as you are one yourself–"
Merlin suddenly tore forward at Morgana, and she expected and wanted this reaction. The only time Merlin was ever feeble or weak at her hand was when he allowed his emotions to get the better of him. He extended his hand and gripped Morgana around the neck, shoving her against the stone wall at full force. He leaned in as close as Morgana had done to him earlier as she grinned pompously up at him. She reacted only slightly to his harsh touch, choosing to place a soft palm on his chest for her own protection as well as to feel his rapid heartbeat. She slid her index finger in between the loose buttons of his maroon night shirt, savoring the feel of his skin against her fingertips. Merlin didn't seem to notice, and if he did then it was clear he did not mind. He held his free hand in her hair, gripping her lengthy raven locks to force her to look up into his piercing blue eyes.
"Watch your tongue, Morgana, or I shall tear it from your mouth and watch it for you," he sneered, his eyes glowing gold for a quick second.
"Your threats do not frighten me, boy," she spat. "What more could you possibly do to me? Kill me again?"
"I will make you wish for death," he said in a fierce whisper.
"That's enough, Merlin," said Arthur, yanking him away from Morgana by the back of his collar.
"You should keep your mut on a leash, Arthur, before he ends up biting someone," said Morgana indifferently, adjusting her hair and posture after her release, "because you know that once they get their first taste blood they grow an insatiable craving for more."
"You–" Merlin began.
"Ignore her," said Arthur, pulling Merlin back into place though he fought the King wholeheartedly to get his hands on Morgana once again. Morgana smiled mockingly at the wizard as Arthur prevented him from harming her again. "She just wants to get a rise out of you."
"I want to get something out of him alright," she smirked as Merlin released a quiet involuntary moan.
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A/N: So... not my typical romantic comedy/angsty Merlin fic. It's darker, and I like it so far. I hope you do too. I will update soon. I will make this much more Merlin/Morgana next chapter. I was/kind of am considering making it all Arthur/Morgana, but I want this fic to be more of a coming to terms fic than a rekindling love. We shall see, I don't know. Enjoy for now=)
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Review.