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On the bed, in the night, they are curled around one another like lovers. It is deceptive, the way Morgana buries her head in the soft space between Gwen’s ribs, the way Gwen breathes too steadily, her fingers tightening in her lady’s thick raven hair. No one sees them. They are silent; they don’t speak of the things they should, and later Gwen will wonder whether that is where she went wrong. But for now, they are one, Morgana’s palm on the small of Gwen’s back as intimate as a raindrop on a tongue, heavy and cool and startling against her flesh, through the thin layer of her nightgown. Something pools in Gwen's stomach, warm and heady, making her breath falter, and she swallows. They don't speak about this either, how Morgana tilts her head and raises it, slowly, slowly, until her forehead touches the underside of Gwen's breast. A brush, physically barely there and emotionally an implosion, a wildfire in her chest that makes the pulse on the insides of her wrists go wild.
The dark of the night is the blanket in which they are covered, hidden and unseen. Gwen brings a trembling hand to Morgana's head, curves her palm around the skull, touch gentle, and listens to her lady's unsteady breathing in the silent night. Last night's horror looms in Gwen's mind, a rain cloud heavy-pregnant and swollen with a torrent of dread. Morgana cannot sleep, dreams of things she shouldn't see but does plaguing her mind, making her thinner, paler. Gwen is afraid of finding Morgana a ghost one morning, translucent against the covers of her bed and equally as ephemeral, at last. In daylight, they will share looks over the dinner table when Uther inquires after Morgana's sleep. Both will think of the night before in Morgana's room, of the torch alighting just as Morgana's eyes snapped open from a dream, and they will remain silent. In daylight, they speak words but not about this, never about this. Morgana knows that Gwen at least suspects, and Gwen knows that Morgana doesn’t want anyone, herself included, to know. It silences them, tonight, makes Morgana bury her face deeper into Gwen's body until her face is hidden in her own loose hair and her friend's body warmth. The silence fuels the secret, one that neither wants to acknowledge. It is present in the way the window rattles in its frame as a vision shudders through Morgana's body, in the way the wind echoes the cries stuck in Morgana's throat.
It is present but hidden still, and Gwen moves closer to her lady, shifts her fingers through her hair, seeking to soothe. She bows her body in a half-circle around Morgana, a shield to protect her, made of warmth and something else they cannot yet name.
Morgana dreams that she is crazed with loss and regret and fury, chained to the bottom of a dry well with a white creature curled around her knees. Morgana dreams of Gwen appearing, a small spot at the far away opening of the well, and the curls of Gwen's hair move like grass in a breeze, and a voice speaks of the past, of dirty knees and wet dresses drying in the sun. Morgana's face opens up like a flower bud, hope blossoming inside the hollow cavity of a chest.
Gwen watches as Morgana curls closer to her, and does not know that Morgana knows how to spread her arms and fly to meet Gwen at the other end of the well, at the opening, where there is freedom, because Gwen is the sun that Morgana turns to as a flower does, eternal like nature's law.
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They speak of the magic when it is too late, and there are only ruins left.
They do not speak about the other thing. The rose bud, tender once, has borne thorns. Thorns to tear the skin and feed the stem blood, poison marring the petals black.
They do not speak about the other thing, but Morgana will think of it, crazed with loss and regret and fury, chained to the bottom of a dry well with a white creature curled around her knees, and she will see Gwen, and she will wish to fly and be forsaken.