“Her Horcrux,” Merlin answered, and then shrugged vaguely.
“Or the thread itself. Both are equally important to her. Though not quite as important, I am willing to wager, as this.”
He took one hand away from his mug and held it up. Sparkling between his thumb and forefinger was Petra’s brooch, the one she had lost from the stern of the Gwyndemere, and the one that she had refound in the World Between the Worlds, brought over by her alternate self from another, darker dimension. James’ eyes widened at the sight of it.
Merlin turned his gaze from James to the brooch in his hand, tilting his head back to examine its silver and moonstone through his spectacles. “It was a gift from her father, while she was yet in her mother’s womb. He was never able to give it to her, sadly. He died in prison.”
“He didn’t die there,” James said before he could stop himself, his own voice an octave lower than normal. “He was killed there.
Murdered by his guards for secrets they believed he was keeping.”
Merlin nodded, still examining the brooch, turning it this way and that by the firelight. “The gears of justice are too large not to occasionally grind up the innocent. Or at least, in this case, the only slightly guilty.”
James opened his mouth to retort, but stopped himself. He narrowed his eyes as an idea—a near certainty—came into his mind. He remembered something that Merlin had said to him back during his first year: nine-tenths of magic happens in the mind. The last tenth is pure and unadulterated bluster.
Merlin was pulling the same trick that his father had so often used on him. The same trick that had only recently worked so well on Rose, getting her to confess nearly everything about their first disastrous trip to London. The headmaster was pretending to know far more than he did, in order to lure James into telling him all the rest. Only Merlin, being Merlin, was infinitely better at it.
“I don’t know where she keeps anything,” James said, reverting to the headmaster’s initial question. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It just wasn’t all of the truth.
“You are very nearly of age now, James,” Merlin said, lowering his hand and gazing at him again. “Indeed, in the world I once knew, you would be considered old enough to go off to war, to marry, to own and tend your own holdings. You are no longer a child, but a man.
And this is not flattery, for it is a terrible responsibility to be a man or a woman, grown and thrust out from beneath the wing of your parents and teachers. Thus, be sure that when I ask you about Petra Morganstern—or Morgan, as she now reluctantly prefers to be called—I do not ask as a guardian to a charge, but as one responsible citizen to another, with nothing less in the balance than the fate of worlds.”
His eyes were stern as he spoke, but his voice remained calm, low. “I believe that you are keeping your own secret council for noble reasons. Perhaps you mean to assist Morgan or dissuade her using your own unique influence over her. Perhaps you fear for the lives of those you love if you draw them into a potentially hopeless confrontation with her. In short, I trust your motives, James, if not always your judgment.”
Here, Merlin stood behind his desk, leaving the mug steaming on its corner. James watched him, resisting the urge to speak up, to answer Merlin’s comments. He desperately wanted to explain everything. There was nothing more tempting in the moment than to share the burden of responsibility with Merlin, to be welcomed into his powerful camaraderie and confidence.
But Merlin couldn’t dissuade or stop Petra. He would die trying. As much as it pained and saddened James, he remained stubbornly silent, afraid almost to look the huge sorcerer in the eye, lest he reveal the truth with his mere gaze.
“I shall do you the service of telling you everything I know, James,” Merlin said, slowly rounding his desk and approaching the fire.
“For via my diverse arts I have learned much, however frustratingly incomplete. Petra has identified herself with her dark mirror, the other version of herself, now murdered and bound to this earth. She believes that only by assuming Morgan’s place in her original dimension can she reset the crumbling destinies of our twin worlds. In this, James,” Merlin reached the fire and turned his gaze sidelong to face him, “Petra is both absolutely correct, and terribly, fatally mistaken. For there are other forces in play, powerful forces both terrible and corrupt. They assist Petra, drive her, and yet they do not share her benevolent motives. I see them not, but I sense their movement, like shapes underwater, tracing deep ripples on the surface of causality, undermining all that is true and good.”
“Judith,” James said involuntarily. A chill traced down his spine, shaking him where he stood.
“And another,” Merlin nodded slowly. They both knew who he meant, but neither would say it. And this sent another, harder shiver all the way to James’ heels. For many long years—over two decades—no one had been afraid to say the name of Voldemort. Why should they?
The Dark Lord had been beaten and killed by his young nemesis, Harry Potter.
But now, the greatest wizard alive, Merlinus Ambrosius himself, stood with his back to the fire in his own office leaving that old name unspoken in the air between them. Voldemort was once again He Who Must Not Be Named. He lived again, if only as a fractured shred in Petra’s mind, but stronger today than yesterday, and growing ever stronger by the minute.
Because Petra no longer resisted the perverse whisper of Voldemort’s influence. She was cultivating it. She was using it, drawing conviction, and power, and direction from it.
Every child knew the stories of how the Dark Lord’s black magic worked, back when he was fully alive in power and malevolence: speaking the villain’s name summoned him.
Now, it was true once again. If either James or Merlin spoke the name, she would know.
And perhaps she would come.
“There is only one thing that matters in all of this, James,”
Merlin said, turning to face him fully now, regarding him levelly.
“Petra’s—Morgan’s—mission cannot be what it appears as long as the worst villains in this, or any, earth are driving her to accomplish it. She may believe that she can harness the power of the bloodline within her while not succumbing to it. But she grows blinded in exactly the same measure as she grows powerful. And soon, James, she will not care if she is blinded or not. He whose soul curses her will turn her completely.”
James shook his head slowly, thoughtfully, now looking up at Merlin. “No, she won’t. She can’t be. Petra is good. She can resist.”
“She has resisted,” Merlin agreed carefully. “But she stopped doing so the moment that she made her Horcrux. Now, she has partnered with her curse. Soon, inevitably, it will consume her.”