Morgana’s long brown hair was no longer covered with a veil, nor were her eyes rimmed with dramatic makeup. Her mouth twisted when she saw him.

“Hello, brother,” she said.

“Brother?” Arthur frowned. That couldn’t be right. Yet the resemblance was undeniable. It was there in her dark eyes, in the sharp planes of her cheeks, in the chestnut brown of her hair. “You’re Uther’s daughter?” he asked, surprised.

“Of course not,” Morgana snapped.

Arthur’s pulse quickened as he realized what she meant. He knew his mother had been widowed before she married Uther. That the king had held off the wedding as long as he could, for propriety’s sake, trying to allow her six months’ mourning. And Arthur had suffered because of it.

Bastard. Spare. Illegitimate.

He’d been called so many things. But never brother.

“I didn’t know.” He shook his head. “My mother never said anything.”

“That’s because Uther had me erased from her memory,” Morgana said bitterly. “After he killed my father, he had Merlin take me to a convent and enchant Igraine to forget that I existed.” Morgana gave a harsh, short laugh. “I waited for her to send for me. I wrote her letters for years—all unanswered. Then I discovered that she had a new family. A husband. A son. That she had become a queen. I thought she had abandoned me. Do you know what that feels like? To be unwanted by your own family?”

“Actually, I do,” he said, cutting a glance toward Emry. She still knelt before the stone, her chest heaving. She stared back at him, her expression one of torment and surprise and fear, and he knew that she’d heard every word. “Uther would have gladly sent me away to be forgotten, if he had produced another heir.”

“Yet you stand by his side while he shows himself to be an incompetent old drunk,” said Morgana. “How pliant and obedient you are, brother. I wonder who you learned that from.”

She tilted her head, studying him. Seeing, Arthur realized, so much of their mother.

“We don’t have to be enemies,” Arthur said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Morgana ground out. “Uther took everything from me. So I am going to take his kingdom. And I am going to kill his son. And when I do, I want him to know exactly who’s responsible. The little girl he tried to throw away, returned to conquer Camelot.”

She turned from him a moment, staring greedily at the scene that was forming between the stones. A faint outline of a forest was taking shape.

Arthur cut another glance toward Emry, who seemed to be straining toward something just out of reach, at the edge of the altar.

“I can’t let you do that,” Arthur said grimly.