“I cannot see our future, my love. It pains me too much when I am not allowed to alter what I see.” His sigh was deep. “The future of Arthur and Camelot pierced me enough that more wounds feel unbearable.”

She gazed at his wonderfully familiar face and saw the goodness, strength and kindness that had first drawn her to him. But she also saw something else—his visage was shadowed by a weariness that made him appear a decade older than he had just months ago.

If only there was a way she could take some of the burden from him. She’d known loving a mortal would be difficult and that she would, eventually, have to lose him, but Merlin was a powerful Druid, and the goddess had hoped that his magical powers, so utterly tied to the earth, would give him the strength to live as her consort far longer than an ordinary mortal would have the ability to live.

It was ironic that it had not been the stress of loving a goddess that had been Merlin’s undoing. Instead it had been the encroaching darkness that seemed eerily drawn to his human charge, Arthur Pendragon, the boy grown to man who was like a son to him, that had caused the Druid to want to escape the world badly enough that he had bespelled himself and would soon fade to nothingness in the self-made prison of this deceptively beautiful crystal cave.

That damned Arthur! Why had he not listened to Merlin and chosen a wife other than young, beautiful and utterly vapid Guinevere?

As if reading her mind, Merlin said, “My love, please do not blame Arthur. It isn’t his fault, not entirely. Nor is it Guinevere’s fault. None of us can choose where we love.” Merlin leaned back against the fur pallet he’d arranged for himself in one smooth corner of the crystal cave. “I know I’m being a coward, but I have seen what will happen to him—to all of them. I have also seen that I cannot change it. It is ...” He paused, looking close to tears. “It is as if Arthur is embracing his destruction. I have done everything in my power to help him. I have fought with him, counseled him, begged him, cajoled him—nothing works. In every scenario of the future I see, the light and goodness that is Arthur is utterly destroyed by the darkness of jealousy and greed, lust and anger.”