Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Merlin woke late, sunlight pouring through half-opened curtains to fall across his face. He turned away, burying his face into a pillow that he only vaguely recognized wasn’t his own. It took him several long, comfortable minutes to make the connection between “not his” and “Arthur’s.” That brought a sleepy smile to his face. He stretched a bit, feeling the ache in muscles he hadn’t had much opportunity to use of late, and rolled over to face the other side of the bed.

It was empty. He frowned at it.

The sheets were cold when he reached out to touch them, which meant it had been a while since Arthur had been there. Merlin sat up, wincing, and put a hand to his head. It wasn’t that bad a hangover, as far as hangovers went, and he could still remember everything that happened last night—boy, could he remember—so he hadn’t been that sloshed. Well, he’d been drunk enough to actually let himself fall into bed with Arthur, so he’d had a bit, but it could have been much worse. And the night itself had been pretty fantastic, if his only-slightly-fuzzy memory served.

But Arthur had left. It was midmorning, perhaps, but without Merlin to drag him out of bed Arthur was rarely awake by then, much less up and out of his chambers. And if Merlin had had a few drinks, Arthur had likely made several more if he’d forgone all his princely self-control and actually initiated things, and Merlin had never encountered a hungover-Arthur that he hadn’t had to pour water on to get out of bed at a reasonable time. Merlin looked around, seeing that his clothes were still strewn across the floor but Arthur’s were gone, and that there was no evidence of breakfast having been brought up by another servant. Maybe Arthur had been called out to dine with his father and hadn’t wanted to wake Merlin. It was possible, but Merlin had a heavy, slightly queasy feeling in his stomach that made him doubt it.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and shook his head to wake himself up, ignoring the way it made his headache worse. He climbed out of Arthur’s ridiculously comfortable bed and scrambled into his clothes, hoping the hitch in his step wouldn’t be obvious to everyone he passed in the corridors. He’d only been had that way a few times before, and a good long while ago at that. He’d thoroughly enjoyed it, of course, but he wasn’t used to it and was now most definitely sore.

He tied his neckerchief on last, blushing as he checked in Arthur’s mirror to make sure he completely covered up the trail of love bites Arthur had left on his neck.

Without Arthur there to give him orders for the day, Merlin fell back on experience. He did the chores he thought most likely to need doing: first and foremost, the bedding. Merlin had a bit of a difficult time keeping focused as he stripped the blankets and sheets from the bed, especially when he came across evidence of exactly what had happened on those sheets a few hours earlier, but he got them bundled into a basket and headed down for the laundry in a few minutes. He dropped them off to be washed and headed for the armory to get some polishing done. Polishing was always a reliable fallback chore.

He didn’t run into Arthur all day. He didn’t even see him on the training field, and he could almost always find him there. It almost felt like Arthur was avoiding him and Merlin’s queasy feeling got worse. He side-stepped Gaius’s inquiries as to his whereabouts the previous night and delivered some potions for want of anything else to do.

Finally it came dinner time and Merlin picked up the usual platter from the kitchens. For once he didn’t go barging straight into Arthur’s chambers. Instead he stood outside the door for a long moment, prancing back and forth like an agitated horse and dithering over whether or not he should knock. He’d never bothered to knock before, he reasoned. He entered without.

"We’ve already had the conversation about knocking, Merlin," Arthur said.

Merlin shut the door behind him without saying anything, feeling legitimately a bit sick now. Arthur hadn’t even looked up from his paperwork. He still didn’t look up as Merlin came forward to nudge rolls of parchment out of the way until he could set down his dinner. Usually when Arthur was up to his eyeballs in work, he welcomed Merlin’s arrival as an excuse to take a break, if only to tease him or shout at him depending on his stress level, but there was something very cold about Arthur’s single-minded focus now.

Merlin hovered for a moment, waiting to be acknowledged at the very least, but Arthur picked at the food without ever taking his eyes from the reports on the desk before him. Eventually Merlin took a deep breath and turned to find something to tidy. There wasn’t much to be done, though, and he was at loose ends within a few minutes. The silence wore at him. It was never this quiet when they were both in the room, at least not uncomfortably so. One of them always had something to talk about, whether it was Arthur complaining about his duties or Merlin filling Arthur in on all the servants’ best gossip, but now Arthur obviously had nothing to say to him and Merlin couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t end in him humiliating himself.

“Will there be anything else? Sire?”

There was nothing left for him to clean or rearrange. Arthur hadn’t finished his dinner yet, but he hadn’t told Merlin to take it away either. Somehow Merlin doubted that Arthur would allow Merlin to ready him for bed as he had practically every night for the last two years.

“You may go,” Arthur said, curt and indifferent.

Merlin swallowed.

“Right.”

He walked to the door and hesitated, hoping that Arthur would call him back and knowing that he wouldn’t. After another deep breath that sounded far too loud in the unnaturally quiet room, Merlin left.

Arthur didn’t speak to him the next day either, aside from some perfunctory orders in the morning that were given without so much as a glance in his direction. Arthur was out the door and down the corridor before Merlin could formulate a response, before he could say something in his defense. He wasn’t sure what he should be defending himself against, though. It wasn’t as though Arthur was attacking him or being cruel. He was just absent. But after two years of constant interaction, that was perhaps the cruelest thing that Arthur could be.

Merlin kept his head down despite the ache it caused in him. If Arthur didn’t want to speak to him, then fine. If Arthur wanted to pretend that it never happened—that Merlin didn’t even exist—then fine. He wouldn’t force his company on Arthur if it wasn’t wanted. He took Arthur’s list of chores, which was considerably shorter than it had ever been before simply, it seemed, because Arthur didn’t want to speak to him for any length of time, and did what was expected of him. He no longer dressed Arthur, no longer tagged along after him on his patrols, and was no longer called upon to keep his cup full during council meetings.

Being at odds with Arthur didn’t sit well with him, apparently. Barely a week had passed since that night, since the last time they had had a normal conversation or even made eye contact, and Merlin felt like he was struggling to walk through sand. He was just tired, a seemingly causeless fatigue dogging his steps and dragging him down. His daily workload was lighter than it had ever been and yet he fell into bed exhausted at the end of the day. He had overslept three days in a row and Arthur hadn’t even shouted at him about it.

The constant worry and overthinking left him with a headache more often than not. At least, he was pretty sure the headaches were from the worrying. The cause of the dizzy spells was a little more obscure. He thought at first that maybe he’d neglected to eat; it would hardly be the first time he’d been so caught up in his personal concerns that he’d forgotten a meal. But he realized by the end of the next day that he’d actually had four meals over the course of the day, far more food than he usually bothered with, and he was still hungry. So it wasn’t a loss of appetite that was making him feel so faint.

He shrugged it off, angry with himself for being so damned weak as to let Arthur’s blatant rejection cause him so much upset.

The tiredness persisted, even as he got full night after full night of uninterrupted sleep. He found himself having to stop and take breaks, leaning against a wall to get his breath back or stop himself from tipping over as his vision spun for no apparent reason. He went to the stables, intending to do the mucking he’d been neglecting for days—another oversight that Arthur hadn’t commented on, despite pointing out Merlin’s failures being one of his favorite pastimes—even though he knew that he’d likely give out halfway through the job. As soon as he opened the stable doors, though, the stench of manure hit him like a brick wall and he doubled over to retch into a nearby barrel of something or other.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, feeling shaky and decidedly unwell. There was something wrong with him. He had never had a problem with horses and all the unpleasant smells that accompanied them before, and certainly never to this degree. But then, he’d never had dizzy spells or the urge to eat three times his body weight in one afternoon either, but there he was.

He spit into the barrel, trying to clear his mouth and pitying the poor stable hand who would have to clean up his mess. As soon as he felt steady enough on his feet, Merlin left the stables behind and made a beeline for the physician’s chambers.

The flu was Gaius's final word on the matter, though his lips were pursed and his brow furrowed in a way that Merlin took to mean he doubted his own diagnosis. That expression did nothing to lessen Merlin’s uneasiness, but Gaius’s orders to stay in bed for a few days were welcome. Gaius gave him a potion for the nausea and told him it would pass in a few days.

Only it didn’t.

Merlin’s queasiness persisted, particularly strong in the mornings and triggered throughout the day by the most random of things, scents that had never bothered him before. Merlin gave up on the stables entirely, not wanting to risk sicking up again and knowing that he wouldn’t have the stamina to actually finish the job anymore anyway. He was only grateful that Arthur wasn’t using him as a training dummy anymore, as he was sure he would have collapsed under the first blow if he had.

Arthur wasn’t using him for anything anymore. It had been three weeks and Arthur hadn’t said a word about that night, or hardly anything else.

Gwen had noticed the rift between them. She had been seeking Merlin out frequently, offering to help him with his duties. With Morgana gone, she had little else to do but pick up odd jobs around the castle and try to keep herself occupied. It hadn’t taken long for her to start eyeing him sidelong, biting her lip to keep from prying.

She commented on his lethargy first, asking if he was eating properly. He said he was and that he was fine, and that was enough to keep her from asking further for a few days. Then she asked about Arthur, if they’d had a fight. And Merlin had snapped at her that Arthur wasn’t the center of his world and it wasn’t any of her business anyway. He’d left her looking hurt and offended and infinitely more worried than she had before.

He’d kicked himself for it after, of course. There was no reason for him to be so rude to Gwen, not when she was only looking out for him and trying to be a good friend. She was always such a good friend and what was wrong with him for reacting like that? It was wholly out of character for him.

Maybe it was just the exhaustion making him moody, on a hair trigger. He’d snapped at Gaius as well, when Gaius had asked if his symptoms were still ongoing. He didn’t know why he was bothering to hide that he was still ill. Maybe it was just contrariness, or maybe he was hoping to get sick enough for Arthur to notice.

Merlin didn’t take sick days. He hadn’t had a day off in the entire time he’d worked for Arthur. Even when he had been poisoned, he’d been back to work by the next morning. But whenever he had been injured, Arthur had always shown some kind of concern, even if it was hidden behind bluster and insults. Merlin had just taken two days off in a row without even informing Arthur about it and Arthur hadn’t come to see him or asked after his health.

King Uther was pleased with Arthur’s sudden disinterest. He’d long been of the opinion that Arthur was unwisely attached to Merlin and had gone to great lengths to punish Merlin for daring to make Arthur care about him. Now, though, Merlin saw him clap Arthur on the shoulder and congratulate him on finally putting his insolent servant in his place.

Arthur simply nodded over his wine, choosing not to comment on the hows or whys of his and Merlin’s falling out. Tears pricked at Merlin’s eyes and he had to set down his serving platter and duck around a corner to hide how hurt he was.

This was ridiculous, he thought as he wiped away the tears. There was no reason for him to be so upset. So Arthur had turned his back on him, so what? It didn’t call for blubbering and snapping and being so woefully emotional about it all. He should just get over it. He had a job to do in protecting Arthur and that was all that really mattered in the long run. He didn’t need for Arthur to like him in order to keep him safe.

He tried to pull himself together, but he couldn’t seem to manage it. Instead, he passed off his wine jug to a frustrated and concerned Gwen and snuck out of the hall without being dismissed. He knew Uther wouldn’t notice, and he doubted Arthur would either. He could only be grateful for that, even if it stung.

Gaius was just laying dinner out on the table, ready for when Merlin finished serving the prince. Merlin hurriedly wiped his face on his sleeves, trying to make himself look less of a mess before Gaius could notice his distress.

“You’re back early,” Gaius commented as he fetched the water jug.

“Wasn’t needed,” Merlin said.

He sat down and prayed Gaius wouldn’t question him further. It seemed Gaius had learned his lesson from the last time he’d asked because he sat down opposite Merlin with little more than a raised eyebrow that Merlin ignored. Gaius gave up trying to pressure Merlin with his stare when he realized his ward wasn’t going to look at him, and he turned to his meal with a sigh.

Merlin nibbled on bread, hating that his issues with Arthur were making everyone around him uncomfortable. Gwen was fretting over him, Gaius was disappointed that he wasn’t be forthcoming, everyone seemed to be giving him a wide berth these days. He was tired and miserable and hurt and lonely and—

“Ugh, Gaius! How old is this ham?”

Merlin spat out his mouthful into a napkin, his stomach roiling. He wiped his tongue on his sleeve, wanting the awful taste out of his mouth, and looked up to see Gaius giving him a baffled look.

“It’s fresh,” he said.

“No, it can’t be,” Merlin insisted. “That is disgusting. That can’t possibly be good.”

“I promise you, Merlin, that it’s fresh. It tastes perfectly fine to me.”

Merlin clutched at his stomach, that damned nausea rearing its head with a vengeance. He gulped down half his cup of water but it didn’t do much good. Gaius proffered up more bread instead and Merlin wolfed it down, hoping it would do something toward settling his stomach.

Gaius was watching him with wide eyes, a very odd expression on his face that Merlin didn’t know how to interpret. Merlin scowled at him, immediately irritated.

“What?” he snapped.

“Are you still feeling ill?” Gaius asked.

Merlin’s sudden anger died, guilt for lying taking its place instead.

“Maybe,” he muttered, head down.

“The nausea? Tiredness, dizzy spells, increased appetite?”

“Yes, all of it.”

“And the nausea. It’s triggered by things like this?” Gaius pressed.

“What do you mean?” Merlin asked.

“There are foods that you have always enjoyed that now make you feel ill? Tastes or odors that used to pass unnoticed but which you can no longer abide?”

Like ham, Merlin thought. Or the stables. Or the spiced wine Arthur liked to take in the evenings that Merlin had used to feel lightheaded just smelling but which had nearly sent him running two nights before. He’d almost sent it back to the kitchens, convinced it had gone bad somehow, but Arthur hadn’t mentioned anything out of the ordinary before he sent Merlin away so he’d figured it must have been fine.

Merlin nodded.

“Have you had any cravings? Urges for specific, perhaps uncommon, foods?”

“Um. I really wanted fish a few days ago,” Merlin said, shrugging. “And I spent two hours last night trying to perfect that spell that lets you grow strawberries in your hand because I really wanted some and they’re out of season so I couldn’t get any from the kitchens.”

“Strange,” Gaius murmured.

“What’s strange?” Merlin asked, a bit alarmed by Gaius’s tone.

“Have you developed any sensitivity to touch in unusual places?” he asked, instead of answering Merlin’s question. “Swelling or tenderness that you’ve never experienced before?”

Merlin shifted in his seat, uncomfortably aware that he had been wearing his softest tunic for several days in a row now. He’d even taking to sleeping topless, as the coarseness of his nightshirt had begun to chafe terribly against nipples that had never been sensitive before. He didn’t answer, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but Gaius seemed to take that response as confirmation of whatever suspicions he held.

“Strange,” he repeated, with more feeling this time. “Very strange.”

“What?” Merlin demanded, angry.

“Mood swings as well, I presume,” Gaius said. “Rapid emotional changes, easily angered or saddened.”

“Gaius, what is this? What’s wrong with me and why is it strange?” Merlin’s anxiety bumped up another notch when Gaius didn’t answer immediately, looking both disbelieving and intrigued in that way he did when he encountered something he’d never seen before. It didn’t bode well. “Gaius?” he asked, his voice trembling now.

“Merlin, all of these symptoms. When seen together like this, they are usually early indications that a woman is with child.”

Merlin stared at him.

“I’m not a woman,” he said eventually, feeling like he really shouldn’t have to point that out.

“And that is why I call it strange,” Gaius said. “I have occasionally seen a reflection of a few of a woman’s symptoms in her husband, a sympathetic mimicry of her ordeal, but you are not in such a position. Some of your symptoms could be explained by other afflictions—”

“Like the flu, or simple exhaustion,” Merlin inserted.

“Yes. But it is highly unlikely that a number of sicknesses would come together at the same time and in the same individual to present like this. And some of the symptoms don’t often appear in any other circumstances, at least not ones that would present in a male.”

“Such as?”

“Well, swelling and tenderness of the breasts is common at some points in a woman’s monthly cycle, but I don’t believe that particular explanation is available to you.”

“No. No, it certainly isn’t.”

“Which leaves us with a very peculiar diagnosis.”

“I can’t be pregnant.”

“No, by all natural laws with which I am familiar, I would say that you cannot. And yet the evidence before me says otherwise.

“Gaius, I cannot be pregnant,” Merlin said again. “I am not a girl, no matter how many times Arthur calls me one. Aside from how ludicrous that sounds, it’s just not possible. There has to be some other explanation.”

“I will look through my books for other possibilities,” Gaius conceded, but he looked skeptical. “Perhaps—” He hesitated. “Perhaps it would be wise for you to consult with the dragon.”

“The dragon?” Merlin asked, dumbstruck. It had been less than two months since the dragon had ravished the city and killed dozens of people. They were still in the process of rebuilding the west wall. Merlin had had to force the dragon into submission, using powers inherited from the father he’d never known and had watched die, and now Gaius wanted him to seek him out? “Why the hell would I go to him?”

“Because he is vastly more knowledgeable than we mere humans. He may have information or insight that I cannot give you with my limited realm of experience.”

“He tried to burn down the entire kingdom and kill us all, Gaius. He’s been manipulating me since the start,” Merlin reminded him.

“And yet he is the only resource we have. Unless you wish to simply ignore the possibility and wait to be proven right or wrong.”

The consequences of the latter option made Merlin pale. The mere possibility that he could be wrong and Gaius right was staggering and terrifying. He gulped down the panic trying to force its way up his throat and nodded.

“Fine. I’ll call him tonight.”

Merlin snuck out of the castle shortly after dark fell, dismissed early from Arthur’s chambers as he had been every night for the last three weeks. The few guards he passed on the way through the corridors didn’t look twice at him, recognizing him as a regular fixture and not a threat. He used magic to distract the guards overlooking the gates to the city and struck out into the woods, heading for the clearing in which he and the dragon had had their last encounter, where he had forced the dragon to bow and ordered him never to harm them again.

It took Merlin twice as long as he’d expected to reach the spot, his fatigue dragging him to a halt every few minutes and making him rest. By the time he got there, the moon was high in the sky and he was already dreading the walk back.

He stood in the middle of the field, long since cleared of the bodies of the knights Kilgharrah had killed there. Merlin tilted his head back to the sky, feeling foolish. He knew it was possible for a dragonlord to call upon a dragon, but he had never seen it done and his father had not had the time to explain it to him. He chewed on his lip for a moment and then closed his eyes, trying to remember the words that had come so readily to him when he’d last spoken to Kilgharrah. It wasn’t a language that he’d ever heard before, nor one he understood, but it was there somewhere in his mind, in his soul. He just had to look deep enough to find it.

“O drakon, e male so ftengometta tesd’hup’anankes!”

The hoarse sound that forced its way out of his throat took him by surprise. He couldn’t have translated the words he’d spoken, but he knew somehow that they were the summons he’d wished for, and he knew that Kilgharrah would obey it.

Merlin settled onto the ground to await the dragon’s arrival, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his head on them. He’d nearly fallen asleep when he heard the great swooping of wings above him. The dragon’s weight shook the ground when it alighted and made Merlin stumble as he climbed back to his feet. Kilgharrah loomed over him, peering down through narrowed eyes, and then he sat back on his haunches, something of a draconian smile playing around his sharp teeth.

“You are with child, young warlock.”

Merlin’s mouth dropped open.

“That’s not possible,” he shouted, as if insisting one more time would make it more true and stop the genuine panic that was rising up to clog his throat now. “I may not have every page of every medical text memorized like Gaius but I know enough about human anatomy to know that!”

“You forget, Merlin, that you are no mere human. You are a dragonlord,” Kilgharrah said simply.

“And what exactly does that have to do with this?”

“Do you know nothing of your heritage?” the dragon sneered, and Merlin’s temper flared hot and bright and almost enough to make his eyes flash.

“Perhaps if someone had seen fit to inform me that my father was alive, he would’ve had the time to teach me all about it,” Merlin growled. “As it is, the only thing he had the opportunity to teach me was how to kill you. I suggest you keep that in mind.”

Kilgharrah let out a long breath that sent smoke furling from his nostrils into the cool night air.

“Dragonlords have always been a rare breed,” he said, ignoring Merlin’s pointed comment and his not-very-veiled threat as though he hadn’t heard them. “Rarer even than the dragons they call kin. Since the ability is passed from father to son, should a dragonlord die childless, his lineage would die with him. It is of the utmost importance for a dragonlord to pass on his gift.”

“Meaning?”

“A dragonlord must produce a child, whether he sire his offspring by another or bear them himself.”

“What, so just because I let a man fuck me, my body decided that I would rather be pregnant than have a child by someone else?” Merlin demanded, far beyond filtering the words that came out of his mouth at this point.

“Your body cares not. It is of no consequence how you produce your young so long as the line of dragonlords remains unbroken.”

“There are certainly consequences for me, Kilgharrah!” he shouted. “I’m going to have to leave Camelot! This is blatantly magical, and there’s no hiding it. How am I supposed to protect Arthur from half a kingdom away and with a damn baby to take care of? How am I supposed to fulfill my destiny now?”

“Your destiny is manifold, young warlock,” Kilgharrah said with that infuriatingly patronizing patience, as though Merlin were a small child incapable of understanding the vast scope of a dragon’s knowledge and foresight. “For your and Arthur’s bloodlines to mix is the best hope for—”

“You know about that too?” Merlin didn’t know why he was surprised, but he thought the indignation was perfectly reasonable. “Arthur getting me pregnant is part of our destinies?”

“The union of your lines is the culmination of all you will accomplish together,” the dragon intoned. “Your descendants will shepherd this kingdom into an era which even I cannot imagine. It is your destiny to—”

“Fuck destiny,” Merlin said, which seemed to shock Kilgharrah enough to shut him up for once. “Fuck it. Destiny doesn’t have any say in my sex life, nor does it get to dictate the nature of my relationship with Arthur. And if destiny thinks that making me into some sort of he-she freak is going to make Arthur like magic, then I have a feeling it’s going to be sorely disappointed.”

“I am sorry this causes you such distress,” Kilgharrah said, sounding more wrong-footed than Merlin had ever heard. “You must have faith that all will be resolved for the best.”

“Right. For the best, of course. But for who’s best? Because it’s certainly not for mine.”

Merlin turned away from the dragon, ducking his head as if that would make the tears on his cheeks less real. He didn’t wipe them away until he was out the clearing, stumbling through the woods toward the castle in the dark. The first time he had to stop to regain his breath, he was so angry and frustrated with his own weakness that he slammed his fist into a tree. He clutched it to his chest, the pain ripping apart what little was left of his self-control, and then he sat down on the ground and cried until he couldn’t anymore.

Gaius was waiting up for him by the time Merlin made it back to the palace, even though it was well into the small hours of the morning. Merlin didn’t even have to say the words for his guardian to understand. One look at his face was all it took for Gaius to pull Merlin into his arms, holding him tightly and patting his hair. Merlin didn’t cry again, but he clung on fiercely and tried to stop himself from trembling.

Once he’d gotten hold of himself again, Gaius sat him down at the table and placed a steaming cup of what Merlin suspected was one of the calming draughts often made for trauma victims in his hands. He was sadly grateful for it, thinking that traumatic was probably a very good way to describe this entire day. He sipped at it slowly, wanting nothing more than to sleep and sleep and wake up to find this was nothing but a nightmare. Gaius puttered around the room in a facsimile of his usual routine even though it was the middle of the night and there was nothing for him to actually do, and the illusion of normalcy soothed Merlin more than anything else, if only for a moment.

“Did the dragon have an explanation?” Gaius asked at length, when Merlin’s shaking had subsided and he had run out of things to shift about on his many tables. Merlin nodded, putting down his cup so that he could clench his hands in fists.

“It’s a dragonlord thing,” he said, his voice hoarse from shouting at the dragon earlier. “A dragonlord must produce offspring, one way or another. Apparently passing on the gift is more important than all the known laws of nature.”

“Fascinating,” Gaius breathed as he sank into his chair across the table, but he looked thoroughly chastised when Merlin shot him a dark look. “Did he have anything else to say on the matter?”

Merlin picked up his drink again, gripping it tightly. He didn’t answer with anything more than a shake of the head. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell Gaius—Gaius was the only person to know of his great destiny and all that it entailed, and he was the only person Merlin had to lean on—but the prospect of his intimate relationship with Arthur becoming a topic for discussion over the dinner table was less than appealing.

“What of the father?”

Merlin looked up sharply. He swallowed hard, hoping his thoughts couldn’t be seen on his face.

“What of him?”

“Do you trust him?” Gaius asked.

Merlin gaped at him.

“It doesn’t matter if I trust him, Gaius,” he said. “There’s no one in this entire kingdom that I trust enough to confess this to.”

“I just think it’s something you should consider,” Gaius said diplomatically. “Having a child is a momentous and wonderful thing, not to mention a difficult one. Depriving this man—and I won’t ask who it is—of his chance to know his child if you don’t absolutely have to—”

“And what exactly would I tell, him, Gaius?” Merlin snapped. “Just walk up to him in the street and blurt out that I’m a magical freak who’s carrying his completely impossible magical baby? Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over really well.”

“Merlin!” Gaius sounded both chastising and taken aback, shocked that Merlin would say such a thing at all. Merlin didn’t back down from his look.

"And you’re the one always advocating caution wherever magic is concerned," he pointed out. "This is most definitely magic—very obvious, unnatural, get-me-killed sort of magic. Why the hell are you even considering telling anyone?"

"Merlin," Gaius said, much more gently, and Merlin was taken aback to see such a tender expression on his face. "I never had a child of my own. But if it’s anything like what having you in my life has been, then I would never take that away from anyone."

All Merlin’s horror and affront dissipated in an instant and tears pricked at his eyes.

“Gaius,” he said, his voice choked. “You know that you’ve been everything I could ever have hoped for in a father, and you mean more to me than I could ever properly express.” Merlin wiped at his wet cheeks, remembering long nights as a little boy looking out the window and wondering why he didn’t have a father like all the other boys did, when his father was coming back for him, what he’d done to make him leave. “I know what it’s like to grow up without that,” he said. “And I wouldn’t wish that on any child, but I don’t have a choice here, Gaius. Trust me on that, please.”

Gaius looked at him for a long time, his eyes sad and old. Then he reached out to clasp Merlin’s hand tightly.

“I understand. I only wish you wouldn’t have to do this alone. Where will you go? Back to Ealdor?”

Merlin scoffed.

"No, of course not. How could I?" he said. "And bring all this down on my mother’s shoulders? Besides, the people in that village never liked me much anyway, and they certainly didn’t trust me. I was always a bit strange, a bit suspicious. If I show up out of the blue and then lock myself away in the house for months on end without ever setting foot outside, how’s that going to look? They’ll ask questions that my mother won’t be able to answer, and I won’t put that on her."

"Then where?"

Merlin took up his cup again, thinking through his very limited options.

“I’ll go to the druids,” he said eventually. “If there’s anyone who would be willing to abide something like this, it’s them.”

Gaius nodded.

"Explain your rather distinctive situation to the elders," he suggested. "Some of them may be old enough to remember similar happenings before the dragonlords were wiped out."

"Yeah, maybe," Merlin said, but he didn’t hold out too much hope. His life just didn’t work out that way most of the time, so there was no point in letting himself expect anything but the worst case scenario. He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling tired down to his very bones and still a tiny bit sick. "I’m just gonna go to bed, Gaius. I guess I’ll start packing my things tomorrow."

"I’ll ask some of my contacts if they have an exact location for the nearest druid camp," Gaius offered.

Merlin nodded and heaved himself to his feet, ready to stumble to bed and forget for a while. Gaius caught him on the way to his room and pulled him into another tight hug. Merlin accepted it gladly, his throat closing up again when he realized he wouldn’t have access to hugs like this for a long time after tomorrow.

"Look after Arthur for me, if you can manage it," he said with a sniff. "Don’t let him get himself killed while I’m gone."

"I’ll certainly do my best to make sure you find him intact upon your return," Gaius said with a small smile which Merlin mirrored, grateful for the reminder that this wasn’t necessarily a permanent exile. Just a few months, a year or so at most. Then he’d be back and everything would be fine again.

Merlin slept late the next morning and Gaius didn’t wake him. Arthur didn’t notice, or if he did then he didn’t seem to care because no one came barging in to demand that Merlin attend to him immediately like they used to do when he was late. Merlin spent the time before lunch packing up his belongings, all that he could carry on his back. He took the time to learn a spell to shrink things without damaging them, and its counter-spell, so that he could also pack his Sidhe staff and his magic book without drawing attention. Then he sat on his bed for a while, trying to find the courage and fortitude to do what he had to.

Merlin knocked before entering Arthur’s chambers, balancing the laden tray on one hand and waiting for Arthur’s call before pushing the door open. He laid the tray down on the table and stepped back, watching as Arthur began eating without looking up or commenting on how late the meal was.

“I need to talk to you,” he said eventually.

“I’m a very busy man,” Arthur said, eating a leisurely meal at a table for once completely empty of work. Merlin’s temper, so close to the surface nowadays, flared.

“Are we really going to keep doing this?” he demanded.

Arthur didn’t answer and Merlin let out a bitter laugh.

“You know what, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m leaving.”

“I’ve not given you leave to—”

“I don’t mean I’m taking a trip, Arthur. I mean I’m leaving.”

Arthur looked up this time, looked directly at Merlin for what was probably the first time in three weeks. Merlin wanted to be able to enjoy the look of shock on Arthur’s face, but he really wasn’t in a position to take any pleasure from it.

“What?” Arthur said.

“First thing tomorrow,” Merlin said.

“Merlin,” Arthur said, and it felt like an arrow to the heart to hear his name in that voice after so long without it, even if it sounded tentative and wrong-footed. Arthur cleared his throat. “If this is about the… incident, then—”

“The incident?” Merlin repeated, dumbstruck. “Good god, Arthur. If you regretted it, you could have just had the decency to say so. We could have blamed it on the ale and pretended it never happened.” That wasn’t entirely true, not in the circumstances, but Arthur didn’t know that and he could have at least tried. “Instead you cut me out, ignore me completely.”

“I didn’t mean to drive you away,” Arthur said.

“Then what exactly were you meaning to do?” Merlin asked, incredulous because Arthur was looking hurt and confused and a little bit afraid, and he had no right to be any of those things. Maybe it was because the confrontation was escalating so quickly, but Merlin’s resentment had been festering for weeks and his self-control was already stretched thin and frayed around the edges.

“We were friends, Arthur,” he said, his voice harsh, and it wasn’t until after he’d said it that he realized he had phrased it in the past tense. “And then I let you fuck me and now suddenly it’s like I don’t even exist, like I’m nothing.”

Arthur stood up then, coming around the desk toward him. “Merlin, I—”

“Do you have any how cheap that made me feel?” Merlin demanded, giving voice to things he hadn’t even allowed himself to think. “Like a whore you’d had and gotten tired of. You got what you wanted and were through with me.”

“No!” Arthur said sharply, looking horrified. “No, Merlin, god no. I never thought of you like that at all. It was nothing like that.”

“Then what was it like, Arthur? Please tell me, because I don’t understand what could make you act like this,” Merlin said, feeling the heat in his eyes that signaled the advent of tears. He blinked them back, as angry with himself as he was with Arthur.

“It’s just—” Arthur struggled for words, drawing a hand through his hair until it stuck up on his head in tufts that made him look worlds away from the put-together prince he tried to be, more human. It made Merlin’s heart ache fiercely and he blinked faster to guard against his own weakness. “It was just easier, alright?” he finally came out with.

“Easier? What was so difficult about it?” Merlin demanded. “If you regretted it, all you had to do was say the word and I’d never have brought it up again. It was that simple.”

“But I didn’t.”

Arthur put a hand over his own mouth, his eyes wide and suddenly fearful. Merlin felt like he’d been kicked.

“What?” he said.

Arthur turned away for a moment, both hands on his head. When he turned back, his mouth was set in a tight line but he looked determined.

“I didn’t regret it,” he said. It was just as painful and baffling to hear a second time.

“Then why would you—”

“Because nothing can ever come of it!” Arthur cried. “And it hurts to be around you when I know what you taste like and what you sound like, and to know that I can’t have that.”

Merlin wondered if he might be sick. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair. He almost wrapped his arms around his stomach but he stopped himself just in time, knowing he would be unable to explain the unusual gesture. If the circumstances had been just the slightest bit different, he would have run into Arthur’s arms right then, would’ve argued and fought for them. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t because he was leaving, because he had no choice but to go.

It was Merlin who turned away this time, unable to look at the stricken expression on Arthur’s face, too open after so long kept shuttered and blank. Merlin took a deep breath, then another, trying to gain control of himself. Then he felt Arthur’s heat on his back and an arm snaked around his waist, strong and comforting and far too close to Merlin’s newest secret. He jerked away, shoving Arthur back.

“Don’t,” he said severely, holding up a hand to ward Arthur off. “Don’t you dare. You have no right.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Arthur said, the admission sounding ripped from him against his will. But immediately his expression cleared, as if saying it out loud had turned a key. All his doubt and torment fell away and he stepped closer. “I don’t want you to leave,” he said, more firmly, reaching out.

Merlin pushed his hand away.

“My leaving has nothing to do this.”

It wasn’t entirely untrue, in a way. It had more to do with the baby growing impossibly inside him than it did the way Arthur had been acting. He’d have stayed in Camelot for years to come no matter how Arthur treated him, but he didn’t have that option anymore.

“Really?” Arthur said, made bold by his new faith in them. “Because it looks like you’re running away.”

“I’m not the one who ran away, Arthur,” Merlin snapped, whip-sharp and angry. “I’m just the one who woke up alone.”

Arthur flinched but he nodded, accepting the blame.

“Don’t go,” he said, though it sounded more like a plea than a command.

Merlin hastily wiped a stray tear from his face, unable to look Arthur in the eye.

“My mother’s ill,” he fabricated, pulling out the only thing that was guaranteed to make Arthur let him leave. “It’s nothing to do with you,” he repeated.

“Hunith?” Arthur asked with genuine worry in his voice and the weight of Merlin’s guilt nearly drove him to his knees.

“I’m going back home to tend to her,” he said instead.

“You’ll—” Arthur broke off, suddenly unsure. “You’ll be coming back.” It was a statement looking or confirmation, not a question, just like it had been the last time Merlin had left for Ealdor. Merlin bit his lip, sniffing, not trusting his voice. “Merlin?”

“I don’t know,” Merlin choked out. “I don’t—I don’t know.”

“No, Merlin, you have to come back,” Arthur said. He sounded nothing short of devastated and Merlin knew better than to raise his head and risk catching a glimpse of his expression. “You have to,” Arthur insisted. “I need you here.”

Merlin would’ve given anything to hear Arthur say that. Just not now. Merlin bit back a sob, unable to keep the tears in any longer. He stepped back out of Arthur’s reach once more, then pushed past him toward the door. Arthur caught his arm, said his name, but Merlin pulled out of his grip.

“I can’t, Arthur. I can’t,” Merlin said. “My—my family comes first. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Merlin fled the chamber, ignoring Arthur calling his name again, and took off down the corridor. He ran until he couldn’t hear Arthur anymore, until he was sure that Arthur wasn’t following him. Then he stopped and threw up into an alcove, feeling faint and dizzy and so thoroughly heartsick that he couldn’t hold himself upright. He slumped to the ground and pressed a shaking hand against his stomach, imagining he could feel the pulse of life inside and trying so hard to hate it. And when he couldn’t manage that, he cried some more.

Chapter Text

Merlin slept fitfully that night, and he didn’t remember his dreams upon waking. Arthur didn’t come after him, and Merlin was torn between feeling grateful that Arthur wasn’t pushing the matter and hurt that he didn’t try one more time.

In the end, he waited until after Gaius was out on rounds to leave his room. Gaius had left breakfast on the table for him and gone without fuss, knowing Merlin well enough to realize that he didn’t want to say his goodbyes all over again. Merlin ate quickly, not tasting the porridge even though it was his favorite, and then hitched his bag higher on his shoulder and set out.

He kept his head down on the way through the castle, taking the long way to avoid the most crowded routes. Some people nodded to him in greeting as he passed, but mostly he went unheeded. He wondered if they could tell that he was different today, that he wasn’t just going out to pick herbs or trail after Arthur on a hunt. He wondered if any of them would really care. Merlin hadn’t noticed how closely his world had revolved around Arthur until he realized that he had practically no one to say goodbye to.

He ran into Gwen on his way through the marketplace. She took one look at him, at the pack on his back, and put her hands over her mouth. Merlin gave her the same story he’d given Arthur: that his mother was ill and he was returning to Ealdor to tend to her.

Gwen hugged him tightly, kissed his cheek, and told him to give Hunith all her love and best wishes. She had tears in her eyes when Merlin walked away. Merlin knew he must have looked pale and drawn, like he’d been gutted and wrung out. Gwen had to have thought his mother had one foot in the grave and no chance of drawing it out again for him to look like that.

He tried to smile, to reassure her in some small way, but he didn’t do a very good job of it by the look on her face as the bustling of the townspeople separated them.

Finding the druids was a little harder than expected. Gaius’s contact had been able to give him a general area, but nothing like a landmark or town name. Merlin wandered in the woods for several days, growing more and more anxious with every hour that passed. He ran out of food in his pack and ate off the land, foraging for what he could and using magic to bring down small game. He was glad the weather hadn’t turned yet and the nights were balmy and clear, and his fires were strong enough to ward off any predators that might have wanted to make a meal of him. He was about to give up, to go back to Ealdor anyway because he didn’t have anywhere else to go and he couldn’t do this alone, when they found him.

Iseldir was a tall, thin man with white hair and a serene, knowing aura that was both unnerving and comforting in a very strange way. He appeared from the trees without so much as a whisper of sound, nearly startling Merlin out of his skin. His robes proclaimed his druidic heritage without his needing to tell it and Merlin immediately petitioned him for asylum.

Iseldir listened solemnly as Merlin told his whole sorry tale—except, of course, for the identity of his child’s father because that was no one’s business but his own—and then he gave Merlin a slight bow. He called him Emrys, referred to him as “my lord” and said they would be honored to shelter him during his time of need. The show of respect made Merlin squirm uncomfortably, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky about his treatment.

The druids were a remarkably kind and accepting people. Merlin’s plight was wholly unnatural and he wouldn’t have blamed them for casting him out as an abomination, and yet they welcomed him without question. They took him in, provided him with a draped tent and druidic robes of his own, and shared their food and provisions with him.

The women especially took a liking to him, welcoming him into the fold and sharing their stories with him, commiserating over his sore back and his morning sickness.

One of the elders did remember the dragonlords, as Gaius had thought they might. Uma was a tiny old woman, stooped and withered, and she spoke of a dragonlord named Hestius whom she had met when he was heavy with child. She spoke of the love Hestius had shared with his partner, a man of the sword who had stood by his side through it all. It made Merlin’s chest ache in a dull sort of way that had him thanking her for her wisdom and pleading exhaustion so that he could lie in his tent and avoid talking with her again.

The best part of staying with the druids was that there was magic everywhere. Not all of the druids in the camp had magic, but many of them did and they used it without restraint. Fires were lit, tents erected, and food prepared all with a flick of the hand and a murmured spell. Merlin oftentimes just sat in the midst of the camp, gazing around him and taking in the subtle blanket of magic that lay atop it, a soft and constant presence in the very air.

It was a week or two before Merlin could bring himself to be so free with his own magic, and a while longer before he got used to the looks of awe he got when he accidentally showcased how much more powerful he was than the rest. But the camp members grew accustomed to him soon enough, the reverence fading into fond smiles and proud looks.

An older woman named Kyla offered to give him some formal training and Merlin jumped at the chance, relishing the opportunity to focus on something other than the way his stomach was growing with every day that passed. Kyla gave him spells to practice, exercises to do that strengthened his control and his precision, meditation techniques that allowed him to broaden his mind and sense his surroundings in a way he had never experienced before. Kyla directed him with a gentle firmness that reminded him very much of Gwen, only without the stammering, and he enjoyed working with her almost as much as he enjoyed having the chance to stretch his magic as far as it would go without fear.

Merlin missed Gwen fiercely. They hadn’t had as much time to spend together in recent months as they had when he had first arrived in Camelot, but she had been one of his closest friends for the last two years and he missed her smiles and her teasing and her open warmth. He wanted to spend the evening in her cramped little hut with a jug of wine he had swiped from the kitchens when the cook wasn’t looking, drinking and laughing and gossiping until they fell asleep together in a tangle and were late for work the next morning.

They hadn’t done that in a while, not since before Morgana had disappeared. Merlin wished they had. He hadn’t been a good enough friend to Gwen, too wrapped up in his own guilt and anguish to pay attention to how much she must have been hurting. She’d lost her oldest and best friend.

He didn’t let himself think about Arthur. He had a tendency to become annoyingly weepy when he did, and he was so very tired of crying. After a month or two, he had to wonder if maybe Arthur had forgotten about him, or if he had moved on and found someone else for his affections. Gwen, maybe. They had had something, before, and they would be good for each other. She would make a great queen someday. Merlin tried not to let that thought, the thought of someone else in Arthur’s bed and his heart, bother him but there was some part of him that refused to consider that Arthur might not be his.

Some of the more forward druids had asked questions about Arthur, about the Once and Future King, but Merlin had murmured something vague and affirming before finding any excuse he could to move off.

The only people who could make Merlin talk about Arthur were the children. The druid camp was full of children, running and playing and letting loose peals of laughter that rang through the air so full of happiness that Merlin had to smile, even in his worst moods. A good number of them had magic, coming up to him with tiny flowers in their hands that they had grown themselves, giving him wide toothy smiles and waiting for him to make one too so they could trade.

When they asked about Arthur, Merlin couldn’t bear to turn them down. He would inevitably regale them with stories of his and Arthur’s great adventures, sometimes tweaked a bit to make them a little less dangerous or tragic or bungled than they actually were. The kids soaked it all up with wide, awestruck eyes, enthralled with his fantastic tales of noble deeds. And Merlin swallowed down the pang in his chest that came from how desperately he missed those times.

He sought refuge from the ghosts of his absent friends in making new ones. One girl in particular, a new mother named Lahti who was still recovering from her own birthing, stuck close by his side. She had a sweetness to her, a reticent sort of charm that reminded Merlin very strongly of Freya. She had magic but only a small bit, and she absolutely delighted in watching Merlin create pictures in smoke and sparks. Her face would light up with wonder and she would reach out to touch, to trail her fingers through flecks of fire that were somehow cool against her skin. Then she would turn to Merlin and smile so hard her eyes almost disappeared.

All in all, it wasn’t so bad. Merlin missed Camelot with a fierceness he would never have expected before he’d moved there, but the druid camp was warm and homely all the same. He was free to be himself, free from the burden of secrets and lies in a way he had never experienced before. He had people that he had genuinely come to care about and a wealth of support from a tight-knit community that welcomed him with open arms.

And as he watched Lahti with her little daughter, fast asleep in her arms, Merlin found himself almost looking forward to that. The circumstances were as far from ideal as he could imagine, but that didn’t mean that Merlin had never thought about being a father. Now he was just father and mother in one and, as strange as that was, he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it when he thought of how he would feel when he finally had his and Arthur’s baby in his arms.

The pregnancy was not an easy one. It was painfully obvious that, while magic had made it all possible, Merlin’s body was simply not made for the purpose to which it was being put. By the time he reached seven months, he could no longer walk or stand. He was weak and worryingly thin, and the camp’s healer practically took up residence at his bedside, just in case. The baby came three weeks early, but no one was particularly surprised by that.

Merlin had never had so much respect for his mother as he did in the twenty-six hours he spent in labor. It was a pain that far outstripped any other pain he had ever experienced before, and he’d suffered through two days’ worth of agony induced by a poison that had legitimately almost killed him. It was horrible, excruciating, and terribly messy experience that Merlin was later glad that he could barely remember, and he screamed himself hoarse.

He lost consciousness as soon as the ordeal was over, staying awake barely long enough to hear his baby’s first squall before he succumbed to his exhaustion.

Merlin awoke to weak morning sunlight and a warm, unfamiliar weight on his chest. It took him some time to blink himself fully awake but when he did, he glanced down to find a tiny, pink, scrunched up face very close to his own. Merlin raised a shaking hand and placed it as lightly as possible on the baby’s back, rising and falling in quick little breaths that he could feel against his cheek. The baby had been cleaned and wrapped in swaddling cloth, a soft bundle that looked too small and peaceful to have caused such a fuss earlier.

“It’s a boy.”

Merlin would’ve started if he’d had the energy to be startled. Instead he just turned his head to see Lahti, looking tired but pleased. She knelt down on the furs at his bedside, running a finger along the baby’s cheek.

“A boy,” Merlin repeated. It was hard to understand, to wrap his mind around it. A baby boy. He had a son.

Lahti hummed in confirmation.

“What are you going to name him?”

Merlin lay silent for a long time and Lahti let him think, amusing herself with stroking the baby’s downy-soft head, sprinkled with dark hair.

“Ambrose,” Merlin said finally.

Lahti smiled.

“Ambrose. It’s lovely,” she said. She stroked Merlin’s hair, still damp with sweat, back from his forehead. “Now get some rest. That was probably the most traumatic birth I’ve ever assisted and I know you must be shattered. I’ll make sure you wake up when Ambrose does.”

Merlin nodded his thanks and closed his eyes without protest, letting the rapid pulse of his baby’s heart lull him back to sleep.

Merlin spent most of the next several weeks sleeping, or at least that’s how it felt. He was immeasurably grateful for his magic because it meant he wasn’t entirely dependent on other people, even if he couldn’t walk or move about too much. It took a very long time for every abused part of his body to heal, and even longer for his stomach to return to something vaguely resembling the shape it was supposed to be. The women of the camp gave him exercises to do that would hopefully give the stretched out muscles their old strength again and Merlin did them as often as possible, missing his old body more than he could express.

The one thing about his body that hadn’t changed the way he’d expected was that he hadn’t developed breasts. He’d resigned himself to the prospect around the time his pregnancy had become clearly visible and he could no longer deny it, but he had never developed more than a light swelling and tenderness. According to old Uma, Hestius had been just the same. He had only produced milk for a scant few weeks before he had dried up and had to get a wet nurse. After the first time he had had Ambrose latch onto him with a punishing strength in his little jaws, Merlin couldn’t say he was complaining about that.

Once he was back on his feet, Merlin kept Ambrose in a wrap that hung over his shoulder and across his chest. Ambrose turned out to be a remarkably calm child, at least according to the mothers in camp who had experience to judge. Personally, Merlin still thought the amount of crying was excessive, but Ambrose did spend the vast majority of his time asleep, which was alright with him. Sometimes Merlin caught himself just watching him, this tiny creature that he had created from his own flesh and blood. He flushed with embarrassment when Lahti caught him at it once, but she just smiled and gave her own child a kiss on the forehead, that same tender wonder in her own eyes.

When Merlin’s milk dried up, Lahti took it upon herself to ensure Ambrose got fed. She had plenty of milk to spare, she said, and her daughter Rista would never be able to drink all of it. Merlin hated having to rely on someone else, hated not being able to provide for his child properly, but at the same time he had to recognize the limitations of his strange situation.

Thankfully, he was too tired to dwell on that too much. As much as Ambrose slept, he never seemed to do so on any reliable schedule, and it was always right when Merlin was getting to sleep himself that Ambrose decided he desperately needed attention. Merlin hadn’t slept a whole night practically since he’d given birth.

Before Merlin quite realized it, Ambrose was five months old and he had been with the druids for a whole year. Merlin himself was entirely back to normal in a physical sense, hardly any different than he had been before the ordeal of pregnancy and giving birth—which he couldn’t be more thankful for—and his thoughts turned once more to Camelot.

The druids were a very isolated people, avoiding contact with the outside world if at all possible for the sake of their own protection, and news from afar was rare and sparse. Merlin hadn’t heard much more than the occasion whisper about Camelot since he’d got there, the only real information being that Uther was going out of his way in his search for Morgana.

Merlin was set up on a blanket in the middle of the camp when the news came.

Ambrose was in the laborious process of pushing himself from his back onto his stomach and Merlin was talking to him, rambling nonsense that kept him entertained even if he couldn’t really understand what was being said. When he finally managed to roll over properly, Ambrose kicked his legs and flailed his arms, a bright smile lighting up his face that made Lahti coo and clap from the other side of the blanket. Merlin was about to roll the baby back over and see if he was determined enough to do it again when a stranger in long robes crossed his sight, striding quickly toward Iseldir’s tent.

“Traveler?” Merlin asked, and Lahti nodded.

“Looks like. I haven’t seen him before.”

“I think he’s got news,” Merlin said.

He caught Ambrose under the arms and swung him up into his grasp, pushing to his feet and heading in their direction. Iseldir turned to include him in the conversation even as the stranger looked askance at him; the druid elders held Merlin’s power in great esteem and they had come to respect his opinions over his time there, but this man only saw someone who was clearly not actually a druid.

“What’s going on?” Merlin asked, looking to Iseldir.

“Milo brings word of Camelot,” he said.

Merlin’s breath caught.

“What word? What goes on there?”

“The king’s mind fails him,” Milo said. “He is going mad.”

“How so? What’s wrong with him?”

Milo gave Iseldir a peeved look, appealing to him to make the impertinent outsider stop making demands of him, but Iseldir just waited for his answers as well. Milo gritted his teeth before turning back to Merlin.

“I hear the king is seeing things,” he said. “Figures in the well. Phantoms in the courtroom. He’s shouting at nothing, terrified of his own shadow. His son and ward are beside themselves with—”

“Wait, his ward?” Merlin interrupted, sure he had heard wrong.

“Yes, his ward, that’s what I said, isn’t it?” Milo snapped.

“The Lady Morgana? No, she was gone. She disappeared over a year ago,” Merlin said.

“Well she’s been found.”

“When did she—”

“What reason have you to care?” Milo asked.

“Milo,” Iseldir said tersely. “Emrys has every reason.”

All Milo’s chagrin drained away and he paled, looking back at Merlin with wide eyes. Merlin almost grimaced, a little disturbed that a simple name—and not even a name he truly claimed as his own—could cause such a drastic change of opinion in someone.

“My lord,” Milo said, and Merlin had to bite his lip to keep from ordering everyone and their mothers never to call him that again; if being a figure of awe and wonder got him the information he needed, and quickly, then he would bear it. “I apologize. I have been abroad for many years, I had not heard tell that you were—”

“It’s quite alright. Just tell me about Morgana. Please.”

“King Uther has been sending out patrols for months, scouring the land for any trace of his missing ward,” Milo said, hurrying to oblige. “He’s had the prince leading as many of the expeditions as he could, and it was the prince who found her, stumbling about in the woods.”

“When?” Merlin asked. “What had happened to her?”

“Less than a fortnight ago. The story I heard is that she had been captured during an attack and they’d kept her, for what purpose I don’t know. Supposedly, her captors got drunk one night and forgot to lock her up properly. She says she escaped and headed for home with all due haste.”

Merlin frowned. Morgana hadn’t had captors so much as a captor, if she could even be called that. She had been taken away by her sister, someone who loved her enough to give up her very successful assault on Camelot in order to save her life. Merlin couldn’t imagine Morgause trapping Morgana against her will or allowing her to be mistreated. He was also just the slightest bit skeptical of Morgana allowing herself to be mistreated in any way. She had magic, untrained though it was, and she had used it before on instinct when she was frightened. Chances were, if she had genuinely been threatened, her magic would have burst out of her in a way that at least allowed her to escape much sooner if she’d needed to.

“And you say the king has fallen ill,” Merlin said, to which Milo nodded. “This madness. When did it start?”

“A few days ago, I suppose,” Milo said. “It had a quick onset.”

“Before or after the Lady Morgana was brought back to the kingdom?”

Iseldir looked at him sharply, but Milo looked confused.

“After, I think. Why—”

“What are you thinking, Emrys?” Iseldir asked.

“I’m thinking the timing is highly suspicious,” Merlin admitted. He shifted Ambrose from his arms to lean against his shoulder, rubbing his back to keep him calm.

“I knew Morgana well before she disappeared,” he said, more for Milo’s benefit than for Iseldir’s. “And I knew Uther. Uther may be deluded where magic is concerned, but his mind is anything but weak. I can’t imagine any madness like the one you described cropping up out of the blue like this, not without a cause. And Morgana wasn’t captured in mid-battle. She was taken away by someone who cared about her, someone she likely would’ve gone with willingly had she had the chance, someone who has made threats against Uther and Camelot before. And as soon as Morgana takes up residence in the castle again, Uther falls apart. That can’t possibly be a coincidence.”

“But King Uther practically raised that girl,” Milo exclaimed. “Surely she wouldn’t be involved in a plot to kill him.”

“She’s tried to have him assassinated before,” Merlin said. “Granted, she had a change of heart at the last second, but that was before her magic manifested.”

“Her magic?”

“Yes, her magic,” Merlin said grimly. “She has every reason to want Uther dead, and she’s spent the last year in the company of one of the most ruthless sorceresses I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. I doubt she’ll lose her nerve this time.”

Milo seemed too stunned by these revelations to respond. Iseldir didn’t look entirely surprised, but then he was rarely anything but serene.

“What will you do, Emrys?” Iseldir asked.

Merlin chewed his lip for a long moment, feeling Ambrose’s small hand patting at his shoulder as he watched the bustle of the camp behind them.

“I have to go back,” he said.

“Back to where?” Milo asked.

“Camelot.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because Arthur Pendragon is the Once and Future King,” Merlin said, his voice ringing with conviction. “And if Camelot is threatened, then so is Arthur.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lahti said, bullying her way into the group of men with a surprising strength for such a small girl.

“No,” Merlin said immediately. “Camelot doesn’t exactly welcome druids.”

“Or sorcerers, and yet you still call it home.”

“Lahti—”

“Ambrose needs a wet nurse,” she said firmly. “And someone to look after him while you’re running off playing hero.”

Merlin winced because it was true and he didn’t really have any argument to counter that one. But he had to try anyway.

“This is your home. I can’t take you away from that.”

“There’s nothing here for me, Merlin. Not without Braxton,” she said, her voice soft and pained.

Merlin deflated at the mention of Lahti’s husband, the one who had disappeared into the night with another woman on his arm when his wife was six months pregnant. Merlin ran his free hand through his hair.

“It’s dangerous,” he said. “If I’m right, then we’re likely to be walking into a battlefield.”

“All the more reason for me to come along,” Lahti said brightly. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you walk into a battlefield with an infant on your back.”

Ambrose let out a peal of laughter right on cue, wriggling and reaching out for something, happy and enthusiastic and precious—so precious that the thought of him in danger made Merlin feel dangerously faint. Merlin clutched at him, swallowing hard.

“Fine. Fine, you can come with me.” He let out a breath that puffed up his cheeks. “I have no idea where you think you’re going to be staying, considering I live in what is essentially the physician’s storage cupboard, but I suppose I can hardly stop you if you really want to tag along.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said, patting his arm. “Now if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go start packing.”

She turned away and headed definitively toward her tent, leaving the three men feeling a bit as though they’d been run over.

“She always seems so nice and sweet and quiet,” Merlin muttered, “and then she does that.”

“She’s as stubborn as her mother was,” Iseldir said with something of a fond smile. “She deserves far better than she’s gotten in life.”

“That’s always the way,” Merlin said.

Freya had deserved better too. And so had Gwen, and Morgana, and Arthur, and Merlin himself. They’d all drawn the short end of the stick, but there was nothing else to be done but what could be. And Merlin would do everything in his power to keep the people he cared about safe.

Considering how long it took Merlin to find the druids, he was rather irritated to find that they were actually within two days walk of the city walls. He complained loudly and at length about that, but he couldn’t feel too bad about it when he remembered that their seclusion was the only thing keeping them from being slaughtered.

They camped in an open clearing when it became too dark to walk, a thin barrier of Merlin’s magic stretched out into the trees to alert him to anyone coming their direction. Merlin set up a fire with a flick of his wrist.

“Probably best not to do that here,” Lahti said.

It took Merlin a moment to understand what she meant, and then he cursed himself.

“Right. Yeah, no, I really shouldn’t,” he said. “The last time I was so careless out in the open, I nearly got my guardian burned at the stake in my place.”

A part of Merlin, much bigger than he thought it would be, wanted to stay with the druids where he didn’t have to hide who he was. Going back to Camelot meant suppressing his magic, sliding back into old lies and half-truths, and making up more stories to explain everything that had happened in the intervening months to the people he cared about.

“Then why go back?” Lahti asked, settling down across the fire.

She tugged on a corner of the blanket they had laid out for the babies, dragging it further away from the flames; Rista was sleeping for the moment, but she was just getting the hang of walking, and Ambrose’s newfound ability to roll over on his own mean they were safest out of reach.

“You know who I am, Lahti,” Merlin muttered, still not entirely comfortable with it all even after a year of immersion in the druid culture and all their legends. “My place is with the Once and Future King.”

“And yet you never do what you’re supposed to do,” she pointed out. “Not unless you really want to.”

Merlin’s mouth twitched up into a smile. “I guess that’s true enough.”

He threw another stick onto the fire, watching the sparks fly up. He raised a hand, thinking to conjure the shapes Lahti so loved watching, but he caught himself just in time and dropped the hand to grip his trouser leg instead.

“I’m going back because I care about Arthur, as my friend more than my king, and I don’t want to see him harmed. Destiny is secondary.”

Lahti gave him a long look, too kind to be piercing but still penetrating enough to make Merlin squirm a bit. It was moments like this that made Merlin wonder if she’d put two and two together, if she had figured out that Arthur was Ambrose’s father. None of the others in the camp seemed to have made the connection, but Lahti knew him best and she was the only one besides the kids who had managed to make him talk about their time together. She didn’t say anything more about it now though, for which Merlin was grateful.

“What are you going to tell them?” she asked instead. “If you won’t tell them the truth.”

“I can’t tell them the truth. You know that.”

“Not even your friends?”

“Lahti, I know that the druids are some of the most open-minded and accepting people in the world, but you have to understand that not everyone is the same way,” Merlin said, drawing his knees up to his chest. “What happened to me is… It’s not something that most people would be willing to abide. Especially not in a kingdom like Camelot where magic and anything that resembles it is condemned.”

“But if they really trust and care about you then surely they won’t see you killed,” Lahti argued.

“Maybe not but that doesn’t mean they’ll accept it. Even I have trouble accepting it still,” he admitted with a shrug. “It’s wrong, completely against the natural order of things. They would probably be horrified, disgusted. Even if they don’t want to see me dead, I could still lose them as friends. And I don’t have enough of those to risk alienating the few I have.”

Lahti looked pained, as though she couldn’t imagine anyone being so judgmental as to turn Merlin away. She placed a hand on her daughter’s chest, comforting herself with the steady rise and fall of her tiny chest. “So what will you tell them then?” she asked.

“When I left, I said that my mother was ill and I was going to tend to her,” Merlin told her. “But that story doesn’t exactly hold water anymore if I walk back into town with a five month old baby.”

“Unless you met someone while you were back in your home village?” Lahti suggested. “Someone you fell for right away?”

“Then why wouldn’t they have come back with me?” Merlin countered. “And no, I’m not pretending that you are the mother of my child. There are many things wrong with that particular claim, one of which is that you have a baby of your own and the timing doesn’t line up.”

Lahti laughed. “Alright, there goes that plan.”

“I supposed I could...” Merlin stopped, chewing on the side of his thumb and thinking. “I’ve found that lies are easier to maintain if they’re based in fact.”

“I would imagine so.”

“So if I want this to be convincing, then I need to wrap it around kernels of truth,” he said. “I’ll tell them that I left because I found out that I had gotten a woman with child and I was going to be with her.”

“And she didn’t come back with you because…?”

“Because she’s dead.”

Lahti looked taken aback, obviously not having expected for the conversation to take such a dark turn. Merlin gave her a sad smile.

“There was a girl, almost two years ago now, in Camelot. She was a druid too, but she was cursed and had been cast out. She got picked up by a bounty hunter and taken to Uther to be sold and killed. I saw her in her cage and I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, even dirty and dressed in rags.”

Merlin huffed a soft laugh.

“I didn’t know she was cursed," he said, "not really. She tried to tell me after I broke her out and hid her away, but I just thought she meant that having magic was a curse in itself. I didn’t realize—”

He stopped to press the heels of his palms against his eyes, hoping to stop them from stinging.

“She was a bastet,” he said, and he heard Lahti gasp. “People were dying but I didn’t know it was her. She couldn’t control it, and she was more afraid of herself than anyone else could’ve been.”

He dropped his hands, sniffing.

“I was going to run away with her," he admitted with a watery smile, "take her somewhere far away where no one would find us. But she didn’t want to take me away from my life. She didn’t want me to give up everything for her sake, so she tried to leave without me. She didn’t make it out of the city before night fell and she transformed. She got cornered by guards and…and by Arthur. Arthur dealt her a mortal blow. And I wasn’t there in time to stop it. All I could do was take her somewhere beautiful and lay her to rest with the respect she deserved.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Lahti whispered. She had tears in her eyes and she didn’t bother wiping them away. “I’m so sorry. What was her name?”

“Freya.”

It hurt to say it out loud; he hadn’t spoken her name since she had lain dying in his arms. He sniffed again, drying his face on his sleeve.

“See?” he said with a levity he didn’t quite feel. “I can say Freya died in childbirth, and I won’t have to fake being upset by it like I would if I made someone up.”

Lahti nodded.

Merlin slid around the fire and picked Ambrose up off the blanket, moving slowly and carefully in the hopes of not waking him. Ambrose stirred lightly and then nuzzled his face into Merlin’s chest, still out. Merlin held him close, rubbing his cheek against the baby’s soft hair.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Merlin?” Lahti said softly. “I’ll take first watch.”

“My wards will wake me up if anyone crosses them,” he reminded her. “We don’t need to take turns. You get some rest too. We may need it tomorrow. Who knows what we’ll find?”

Merlin jerked awake not too much later. He sat up, looking around the campsite for some sight of what might have awakened him. It wasn’t until there came another tug at him that he realized it was his magic that had pulled him from sleep; someone had crossed his wards, and another person a moment later.

Merlin checked to make sure that Ambrose and Rista were still asleep, but he found Lahti with her eyes open, lying still but watching him worriedly.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll go check.”

Lahti caught his arm as he tried to rise.

“No, Merlin, it’s too dangerous. Just wait for them to leave.”

“I’ll only be a moment.” Merlin shook off her arm. “If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s sneaking around. Trust me.”

Lahti looked terribly anxious, but she let him go without more fuss. Merlin slipped off into the trees in the direction his magic indicated to him, using a hastily muttered spell to dampen the sound of his footfalls. Merlin was glad for all the hunting trips Arthur had dragged him on for it meant he was intimately familiar with this portion of the woods surrounding the citadel and he didn’t need a conjured light to find his way swiftly.

A moment more of dodging through the trunks and Merlin heard voices, voices that he remembered.

“Sorry you had to wait. There was much to discuss.”

That was Morgause, Merlin would recognize her voice anywhere. He still heard it in his nightmares, always paired with the feeling of Morgana heaving against his chest, gasping for breath, clutching at his arms in desperation. He wasn’t at all surprised when it was Morgana’s voice that answered. He flattened himself against the nearest tree, tilting his head to better hear what was being said.

“But your visit was successful?”

“Cenred’s army ride for Camelot on my command.”

Merlin had to put a hand over his mouth to smother his gasp. He leaned carefully to one side, thinking the words of a spell to conceal him from their gaze.

Morgana looked just as she had before she’d been taken, pristinely well-dressed and unbearably beautiful, but her face was alight with malice in a way he had never seen before. It was unnerving to see someone he remember as so kind and compassionate looking so cruel. Morgause’s cruelness was no surprise, nor was the smug tilt of her lips at the thought of putting an end to Uther’s reign.

“There is nothing you cannot do,” Morgana said, admiring.

“It is you that gives me strength, sister,” Morgause said. “How goes the battle for Uther’s mind?”

“The mandrake root does its work admirably. When Cenred marches on Camelot, he will find a kingdom without a leader,” Morgana said, triumph in every line of her face.

Morgause mirrored the expression for a moment, but then her face darkened.

“What of the boy?” she asked. “The one who had the audacity to use your life as a bargaining chip? He thwarted us last time. He must not be allowed to do so again.”

Merlin checked his magic to make absolutely certain that there was no way for them to detect him, but Morgana scoffed.

“Merlin?” she said acidly. “He won’t be a problem. He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“He left to tend to his ailing mother well over a year ago and never returned. We don’t have to worry about him.”

She spoke with a mocking sort of concern that made Merlin’s stomach churn. She had been as taken with his mother as Arthur and Gwen had, and Hunith had gushed over how sweet and wonderful and passionate the Lady Morgana was. That Morgana had fallen so far as to speak like that of the woman who had opened her home to them made him feel sick.

“And without Merlin meddling into our plans,” Morgause said, “we are sure to succeed. There is no one else to suspect us.”

“No one who isn’t too cowardly to act on it,” Morgana corrected her with a sneer, and Merlin thought she was probably speaking of Gaius.

“You are trusted by all,” Morgause insisted. “And your path is clear. When the time comes, no one will stand in your way. I will bring you the staff in two days’ time.”

Morgana balked, looking suddenly unsure.

“The Rowan Staff is a powerful magical artifact, Morgause. I am not yet strong enough to wield it.”

“It contains magic of its own, sister. It will guide you. All you must do is plant it in the crypt and Camelot will be besieged from within and without. Not even the knights of Camelot will be able to withstand such an onslaught.”

“If you truly believe I am capable of it,” Morgana conceded.

“You must return to Camelot, Morgana,” Morgause said, placing a hand on her sister’s cheek in a tender gesture that Morgana leaned into. “You must give them no reason to question you. Play your part well and I assure you that—”

The squall of a baby cut through the still night air, startling all three of them. Merlin’s heart shot up to clog his throat, pounding hard enough that he was sure the sisters could hear it.

Both women turned toward the cry, baffled and wary. The sound was muffled after a long, tense moment in which Merlin readied himself to intercept the women if he needed to; he would kill them where they stood if they threatened his child, no hesitation and no second thoughts. Morgause swept her gaze around the clearing, scanning the trees with piercing eyes, but she looked right past Merlin without seeing him. Eventually she turned back to Morgana.

“You must go,” she said. “And quickly. You must not be seen.”

“I know,” Morgana. “Nor you.”

“Be careful, my sister.”

They shared an embrace, and then Morgana slipped back into the trees toward the city. Morgause stayed a moment longer, unmoving and patient. Merlin stood perfectly still, watching and holding his breath.

In the end, he outwaited her. She pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and took off into the foliage in the opposite direction. Merlin stayed until he could no longer hear the soft shush of her footsteps, and then he took off back toward his own camp, relying heavily on his magic to disguise the racket of his passage through the undergrowth.

Lahti had Ambrose over her shoulder when he arrived, rocking and rubbing his back and looking nothing short of terrified. Much of her fear dissipated when Merlin came into her line of sight. She stood as quickly as she could and passed the baby to his father.

Merlin took him gratefully, his warm weight wholly reassuring after the heart-stopping terror of nearly being caught out. Lahti picked up a still-sleeping Rista, seeking the same comfort.

“What happened?” she asked. “Who tripped your wards?”

“It was the Lady Morgana,” Merlin told her, “and her sister.”

“I didn’t know she had a sister,” Lahti said, brow furrowed.

“Few do. She certainly didn’t, until Morgause came to Camelot directly. They’re only half-sisters, by their mother. But Morgause was taken away to be raised on the Isle of the Blessed before Morgana was born. King Uther believed her to have been a stillborn.”

“She is a High Priestess?” Lahti asked, shocked. “What was Morgana doing meeting with her outside the city in the dead of night?”

“Plotting.”

Merlin looked up at the sky, calculating how long they had until it was light enough to travel again.

“Cenred’s army is on the move toward Camelot," he said, "thinking to attack while King Uther is incapacitated. Morgana will raise an army of the dead from the crypts that will attack the knights from the rear. They cannot fight on two fronts at once, especially not without Uther at their helm. Arthur is a great warrior but he lacks the experience to defend against the likes of this.”

“You need to warn him,” Lahti said grimly.

“I will. If he’ll listen to me.”

Merlin ran his free hand through his hair, biting his lip.

“He loves Morgana like a sister,” he said. “I don’t know if he’ll be willing to take my word over hers, especially with no concrete evidence.”

“Your evidence will be the attack you predicted,” she said. “If you tell him that Cenred’s men are coming before his scouts see them, and you tell him that the skeletons in the crypt will rise to take up arms against them, and they do? How can he deny it then?”

Merlin rubbed his thumb over the fuzz of Ambrose’s hair, a mindless gesture.

“I really hope you’re right,” he said. “But I fear the situation is far too complicated for everything to go that smoothly.”

Chapter Text

The lower town looked no different than it had the day Merlin had last walked through it, burdened with more than the pack on his shoulder. The marketplace bustled with people going about their shopping, the market stalls already open for the day.

Merlin adjusted the wrap that kept Ambrose snug against his chest and kept one hand on Lahti’s arm to prevent them from being separated by the early morning crowds. Lahti stuck close by his side, eyes wide, overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the big city when she had only ever known the sedateness of a druid camp.

Merlin towed her through to the courtyard, not letting them be waylaid by the people hocking their wares. He looked up toward the citadel, took a deep breath that filled his lungs with a smell he’d almost forgotten, and was nearly overcome with how much he had missed this place. It put a smile on his face, despite the terrible news he would have to deliver.

The guard he passed on the way to the physician's tower gave him a startled look, no doubt recognizing him, but Merlin didn’t stay to chat.

The door to Gaius’s chambers was open, as was his custom during the daytime hours if nothing sensitive was happening within. Gaius himself was grinding herbs in his largest mortar, looking exactly the same as Merlin remembered. The sight nearly brought tears of relief to his eyes.

Merlin waited until Gaius had finished his task and laid down the heavy stone pestle before he rapped his knuckles against the door. Gaius turned and froze.

“Hi, Gaius.”

Gaius crossed the room more quickly than would ever be expected of a man of his advanced age. He almost threw his arms around Merlin in a hug but he stopped just in time when he recognized the bundle across his chest for what it was. He stared open-mouthed for a moment, unable to find words.

“This is Ambrose,” Merlin said, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion. He scooped the baby out of his swaddling and held him up to face-level. “Wake up, Ambrose. Time to meet your grandfather.”

Gaius made a choking noise, but his eyes filled with tears.

“Grandfather?” he repeated.

Merlin smiled at him through tears of his own.

“For all intents and purposes,” he said with a misleadingly casual shrug.

He held out his son and Ambrose wriggled in his grasp, reaching out and babbling. Gaius took a moment to steady himself before he took Ambrose from Merlin’s grip, hefting the child with surprising strength.

“Hello, Ambrose,” he said, a little shakily. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

Ambrose let out a peal of laughter, waving a small fist in the air and kicking his feet. Merlin thought Gaius might actually cry, but the old man held it together. He tucked Ambrose against his shoulder, finally taking in the fact that Merlin wasn’t alone. Lahti had tucked herself behind Merlin, out of sight to allow them some privacy for what was obviously an emotional reunion.

“And who might this lovely young woman be?” he asked after clearing his throat.

Lahti blushed, stepping out into plain view. She too had her baby swaddled across her front, but Rista was sleeping soundly.

“This is Lahti,” Merlin said. “She was at the druid camp too. She had just had her baby shortly before I got there. She’s been an enormous help, and a great friend.”

“I’m also Ambrose’s wet nurse,” she added. “Which is why I actually came back here with him.”

Gaius nodded. He sat down on the bench of his main work table and perched Ambrose on his knees. Merlin pulled up a stool for Lahti and took one for himself, his smile at seeing his son in Gaius’s lap wide enough to make his cheeks hurt.

“It’s been a very long time, Merlin,” Gaius said.

“I know. I’ve missed you.”

He had missed his guardian more than he could ever possibly say, but Gaius was looking back at him in a way that made Merlin think he understood completely.

“And I you, my boy.”

Gaius held out a finger for the baby and Ambrose wrapped his hand around it, holding on tight. Gaius smiled.

“How old is he? About four months, if my count is correct?”

“Five,” Merlin said. “He came a bit early, but we weren’t really surprised.”

“I imagine there were complications,” Gaius said, “but you both look well enough now.”

“It was tricky for a while, but they pulled through,” Lahti said.

“And you said his name was Ambrose?” Gaius asked, and Merlin nodded. “Ambrose,” he said again, getting used to the feel of it in his mouth. “It fits.”

He opened his mouth to say more but he was interrupted by the door to the chamber being thrown open hard enough for it to bang off the wall. Arthur crossed the threshold, already with a hand pressed to his forehead.

“Gaius, what’s taking you so long with the—”

He stopped very suddenly when Rista woke up and began to cry, upset by the loud noise. Arthur took in the tableau before him and paled in shock.

“Merlin,” he said after two attempts where no sound came out.

Gaius stood up quickly, hauling Ambrose up with him. With the bang of Arthur’s arrival and Rista’s noisy response to it, Ambrose was getting red in the face as well, ready for a good cry of his own. Gaius handed him back off to his father, who made soft noises in the hopes of distracting the baby from his upset, and turned to face Arthur looking just a little bit too frazzled to come off as his usual professional self.

"Yes, sire, my apologies," he said brusquely. "The potion is almost ready. I’m afraid I got a little sidetracked. Give me just one moment."

He bustled off to his table, back to the pestle and mortar he had been utilizing when Merlin had gotten there. Merlin stood so that he could bounce and rock, patting Ambrose’s back to keep his fussy noises from escalating into a proper wail. Lahti had grabbed the nearest interesting thing she could find, which happened to be a small handheld mirror, and was holding it up in front of Rista, who had abandoned her tears in favor of the novel sight.

"Merlin," Arthur repeated.

A smile lit up his face and Merlin cursed himself soundly because it made him the tiniest bit weak in the knees. He didn’t know how he’d managed to forget how beautiful Arthur’s smile was, but it was certainly dazzling now, full of relief and elation. Then his eyes went to the baby in Merlin’s arms and confusion took over.

"Whose baby is that?" he asked. He glanced at Lahti but she shook her head, occupied with her own child.

Merlin mouthed soundlessly for a moment; he had expected to have more time before confronting Arthur and he was not prepared to have this conversation right now.

"Here you are, sire," Gaius said and Merlin took a shaky breath as Arthur turned away for a moment. "It will keep the king’s strength up and hopefully help him to rest easier."

Arthur took the glass vial, his previous distress coming over his features again like a veil.

"Right," he murmured. Then he swallowed hard and turned determinedly back to Merlin, not to be distracted.

"Whose baby is that?" he repeated, but this time Merlin wasn’t so wrong-footed.

"Now’s really not the time for that," he said. He handed a squirming Ambrose back to Gaius and said, "Watch him for a while. Arthur and I have something we need to talk about."

"We need to talk about whose baby that is," Arthur said, pointing insistently.

"No, Arthur, we have more important things to discuss."

"What could possibly be more important than you turning up in Camelot with an infant, Merlin? Tell me who—"

"Morgana’s a traitor!"

It was Merlin’s turn to clap a hand over his mouth now; he had really intended to break it to him more gently than that, not that there was really any way to make it less harsh.

Arthur stared at him.

"Excuse me?" he said slowly.

Merlin cursed under his breath. Lahti was biting her lip, looking sympathetic, but Gaius had his eyebrow raised as high as it could go in a very reproachful expression even through his haze of astonishment at the abrupt revelation of that particular secret.

"Look, just come on."

Merlin took Arthur by the arm and dragged him out of the room; if they were going to have a shouting match, it would probably be best to do so out of earshot of the babies lest the two of them end up waking the whole castle. Merlin suspected Arthur only allowed himself to be manhandled because he was still so thoroughly in shock, both over Merlin’s unexpected return and what he’d blurted out.

Arthur’s chambers looked exactly the same as they always had, though maybe a bit messier. Merlin pushed Arthur in and closed the door behind them. He took a deep breath before turning around to face him, fortifying himself and trying to arrange what he had to say in a way that would make Arthur more inclined to believe him.

"What the hell do you mean Morgana’s a traitor?" Arthur said, incredulous and obviously offended on Morgana’s behalf.

"I mean exactly what I say," Merlin said. "She’s in league with Morgause."

"Morgause? And how exactly would you know that, Merlin? In case you hadn’t noticed, you’ve been off gallivanting throughout the kingdoms for the last year," Arthur said with something of a sneer.

Merlin frowned at him.

"What? Gallivanting through where?" he asked, thoroughly mystified.

"I don’t know where the hell you’ve been, Merlin, but it certainly wasn’t in Ealdor," Arthur said. "Your mother had no idea you’d left Camelot. She wasn’t sick at all, and she hadn’t heard from you in months."

His tone was sharp and accusatory and Merlin rubbed his hands over his face. The fact that Arthur had gone all the way to his hometown to check on his mother, or possibly to bring him back, made Merlin feel guiltier than possibly anything else.

"That’s not important right now," he tried again.

"Then what is?" Arthur demanded.

"There’s an army coming your way, that’s what," Merlin snapped. That got Arthur’s attention properly. "Morgause has gotten Cenred on their side and he’s riding this way. They’ll be here in two days’ time."

"And how did you come by this information then?" Arthur asked, sounding slightly less patronizing.

"Lahti and I were camped in the Darkling Woods last night on our way here," Merlin explained. "I heard noises in the trees. I told Lahti to watch the kids and I went to investigate. Morgana was meeting with Morgause. I heard everything they talked about."

"And they talked about an army?"

"Among other things," Merlin said, his voice heavy with implications.

Arthur looked at him for a long moment, scrutinizing his face. Merlin didn’t know what Arthur saw that convinced him, but Arthur slowly sank down at his desk, looking shaken. Merlin tentatively took the seat opposite him, waiting for Arthur to object, but he didn’t.

"There’s more," Arthur said, waiting for confirmation. Merlin nodded. "Tell me."

"Morgause called Morgana ‘sister,’" he said first. He had known of their relation already, had been filled in on that whole sordid situation by Gaius shortly after Morgana had been taken, but he was willing to bet that Arthur didn’t. "She said she’d been visiting Cenred and that his army would ride against Camelot under her command. And then she asked about Uther."

"What about him?" Arthur asked sharply, his jaw tense.

"Morgana said that the mandrake root was doing its job," Merlin told him. "Now, I don’t know what that means because I haven’t had the chance to ask Gaius yet, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s part of an enchantment and that that is what’s making your father ill.”

"Are you really accusing Morgana of witchcraft and attempted regicide?” Arthur said, anger and skepticism warring for dominance.

"I’m telling you what I heard. Cenred rides against you because he believes he will find Camelot without a strong leader. You know he’s too much of a coward to risk confronting Camelot’s might directly if he didn’t have an advantage like that. And," Merlin added, in too deep to just stop now, "Morgause is going to give Morgana some sort of magical artifact that will raise the dead from the crypts and force you to fight on two fronts."

"Raise the dead?" Arthur said with an incredulous laugh. "Merlin, this is ludicrous. You can’t possibly be serious."

"Yes, Arthur, I am."

"You really think that Morgana would try to kill my father?"

"It wouldn’t be the first time."

Merlin almost kicked himself. Arthur had stopped laughing, but he looked torn between horror and complete disbelief.

"After Gwen’s father was killed," Merlin confessed. "She was working in tandem with Tauren when they got attacked at her father’s grave. She had a change of heart at the last minute, and it’s a good thing because I wouldn’t have gotten there in time to stop it, but that was before she spent a year in the company of Morgause. Morgause, who hates Uther and Camelot more than anything and wants nothing more than to see them both destroyed. Do you find it so hard to believe that Morgause could have fanned the flames of Morgana’s resentment into something she is actually willing to act upon?"

"My father raised her," Arthur said, but with much less conviction than his earlier protests. "Camelot is her home. She wouldn’t—"

"Arthur." Merlin took a deep, fortifying breath. "She has magic."

"No."

"Her dreams were always just a symptom of that. She came to you more than once claiming that something bad was going to happen, and those things always came true," Merlin said. "She begged you not to go after the Questing Beast because she’d had a dream that you were going to die, and you very nearly did. And that’s hardly the only time it happened. And that fire in her rooms, the one your father insisted was an assassination attempt," he went on. "That was her. It was an accident but it was her, not some attack. She wasn’t kidnapped by the druids, she fled to them on her own.”

"How do you know all this?" Arthur asked weakly.

"Because she told me," Merlin said on a sigh, heart aching because he was betraying her trust yet again, but it had to be done. For the sake of Camelot, it had to be done. "She was scared and alone and didn’t understand what was happening to her. She thought she was going mad. She needed someone to confide in and Gaius didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening because he thought it put her in more danger than if she was left ignorant of what she could do."

He took a shaky breath, wishing so badly that he could go back to that time and do everything differently, that he could offer her now what he hadn't then.

"But she needed more than what I gave her," he said heavily. "So when Morgause came along, saying they were family and that she could help her, that she was the only one who would accept her fully for what she was…is it any shock that Morgana went with her gladly?"

Arthur looked like he was grinding his teeth, or maybe chewing his tongue. He shook his head, trying so hard to deny it, but his eyes were bright with unshed tears. He stood up so quickly he almost knocked his chair over backwards, turning to pace feverishly before the fireplace.

Merlin stayed silent, watching Arthur struggle with himself.

"Swear to me," Arthur said, rounding on Merlin with a dangerous intensity. "Swear to me that all you say is true. On your life, swear it.”

"I swear it on my life, Arthur," Merlin said solemnly. "I swear it on mine and my mother’s and yours as well."

It took another moment for all the resistance to go out of Arthur’s body and he nearly slumped over, bracing himself on the table to keep from falling.

"Why didn’t you tell me before?" he asked after a long silence.

Merlin shifted uncomfortably.

"It wasn’t my secret to tell," he said. "I didn’t think she was a threat, so it was safer for her if no one knew."

Arthur looked up. It seemed like he wanted to be angry or offended but couldn’t quite manage it.

”You thought I’d turn her over to my father?”

"I didn’t know what you’d do, Arthur," Merlin said tiredly. "I don’t know what you’re going to do now either."

"What can I do?" he asked helplessly, and Merlin had to fight the urge to take Arthur in his arms and comfort him. "My father’s out of his mind, the council is pressuring me to take over the regency, and if you’re to be believed then there’s an army coming our way and a magical traitor in my court."

Merlin stood and put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, emboldened when Arthur didn’t shrug it off.

“First things first,” he said, his voice low and soothing like it was when Ambrose was having trouble sleeping. The tone seemed to work just as well on Arthur and he felt some of the tension seep out of him. “Let’s talk to Gaius about what I overheard. If he knows what she meant about the mandrake root, then we may be able to cure your father of this madness. Then we can deal with the army when it gets here.”

Arthur nodded. He straightened up, shaking his head to clear it. Then he led the way out of his chambers, with Merlin falling into step as though he’d never left his place at Arthur’s side.

 Lahti had set up a makeshift area for Rista to play in by the time they’d gotten back to the physician’s chambers and had Ambrose at her breast. Gaius was dangling a knotted string in front of Rista and watching with a smile as the little girl made snatches for it whenever it bounced into her line of vision, giggling. He looked up when the door opened, his cheerful expression dampening when he saw the strain in Arthur’s features.

"Sire, has Uther’s condition changed?" he asked, straightening up and heading toward his worktable.

Arthur held up a hand.

"No, Gaius. There are more pressing matters," he said.

"Gaius, what do you know of the mandrake root?" Merlin asked.

Gaius looked up, startled.

"Mandrake root?"

"Could it be the cause of Uther’s madness?" Merlin pressed.

"Why, yes. If properly prepared," Gaius said. "If used in conjunction with certain spells and rituals, the mandrake root can twist the mind into the very image of fear and dread. It is known to cause hallucinations, which often manifest in the form of the victim’s greatest regrets."

"My father said he saw my mother down the well," Arthur said.

Gaius nodded.

"He must hold some lingering guilt over the…circumstances of her death," he said, trying to be delicate in his phrasing. A muscle ticked in Arthur’s jaw anyway. "Sire, may I ask where this question is coming from?"

Merlin explained about the conversation he had eavesdropped on in the woods the night before, from the mandrake root to the army and everything in between. Gaius sat down heavily on his bench, pale and stunned.

"I will admit that I knew about her magic, sire," he said, a hand pressed to his heart, "and that she harbored a certain bitterness toward your father, but I had no idea that she had betrayed you so fully. I truly believed that her show of regret and repentance upon her return was genuine."

"She’s always been a consummate actress," Arthur said tightly. "Even as a child, she could lie her way out of any situation. She usually managed to turn the blame on me somehow, even if I hadn’t been there."

"If your father is truly under the influence of a mandrake root," Gaius said, pushing to his feet again, "then it will need to be destroyed forthwith. Once he is free of it, he can begin the healing process."

"How long will it take for him to be back on his feet?"

"For his mind to heal fully, he will need several days. He will likely be confused and disoriented for a while, not entirely in touch with reality."

Arthur nodded, looking grim. Merlin understood his apprehension; Uther wouldn’t be back to full strength before the enemy reached the walls in less than two days’ time, which meant that Arthur would be leading them in battle, the ultimate authority with no one to fall back on should he start to flounder.

Merlin stepped up to stand by his side, not close enough to touch but an obvious supporting presence.

"I will take Uther his potion," Gaius said, "and see if I can locate the mandrake root in his chambers, as that is its probable location."

"Thank you, Gaius," Arthur said. "Report back whether or not you find it."

Gaius nodded and shuffled off through the door. Lahti cleared her throat uncomfortably into the silence that followed. Ambrose squirmed in her grasp, making small aborted noises that signaled the advent of real tears.

"Here, Merlin," she said, coming around Arthur so she could let Merlin take the baby from her. "He’s been fussy ever since you left earlier. Nursing kept him quiet for a while, but he misses you."

Merlin missed him too; he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been separated from Ambrose for so long since he’d been born, and he’d only been with Arthur for an hour, if that.

"Now if you don’t mind," Lahti said in a casual tone that didn’t fool Merlin at all, "I think I’ll take Rista for a walk outside. She could use the fresh air."

Before Merlin had a chance to object—strenuously—Lahti had scooped her daughter up into her arms and disappeared out the door, leaving him with a fussy baby and a very uncomfortable-looking prince. Merlin watched the door close with a rising sense of dread; he had thought himself prepared for this, he really had, but he had been blatantly lying to himself.

He put Ambrose over his shoulder, patting his back and starting to pace in short circuits, hoping the repetitive walking motion would help soothe both of their agitation. He grimaced when Arthur cleared his throat twice without actually saying anything in between, as sure an indication of nervousness as anything.

"So," Arthur said at long last. "That is—I mean, I’m assuming that—"

"Yes, Arthur," Merlin said, putting him out of his stammering misery. "This is my baby. My son. His name is Ambrose."

He didn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, but he felt them on him acutely.

"How, um. How old is he?"

"About five months. He was born a month early though," Merlin added quickly, knowing that Arthur would make the calculations and, because he’d never make the right assumption about the baby’s parentage, would think that meant Merlin had slept with someone else around the same time as him. Something of Merlin’s pride stung at the possibility of Arthur thinking him a slag or that he had been so distraught over Arthur’s apparent rejection that he’d thrown himself into the arms of another for solace. It sounded sort of pathetic.

"So this is where you’ve been then?" Arthur asked, leaning back against one of the tables and picking up one of the little bottles behind him, fiddling with it. "This is why you left?"

"Yes."

"You couldn’t have said something?" Arthur said, sounding stung. "Why didn’t you just tell me, instead of lying about your mother’s health, of all things?"

"We weren’t on the best of terms at the time," Merlin said, immediately regretting both the words and how sharply he’d said them when Arthur winced, looking down and away.

"Merlin—" he started, but Merlin jumped in first.

"I’m sorry," he said. "I didn’t mean that—"

"No, Merlin, you don’t need to be sorry," Arthur said tiredly. "You’re right. I hadn’t exactly been receptive up to that point. And when I did talk to you again, all I did was argue and push."

"I think I was the one doing most of the arguing, honestly," Merlin offered, something of an apology in that too.

"But you were justified in that," Arthur said. "I treated you terribly. I took out my own confusion and pain on you when you deserved so much better. I pushed you away and then had the nerve to get upset when you didn’t want to stay."

"I did want to stay," Merlin said, almost a whisper. "I would have, but…"

Arthur pushed off the table to come closer and Merlin stopped pacing, feeling sort of like a deer in a hunter’s sights even though Arthur’s approach was anything but threatening. Instead Arthur reached out a tentative hand, laying it upon Ambrose’s back only when Merlin gave him a nod of permission.

Ambrose tried to turn toward him, pushing off from Merlin’s shoulder and nearly overbalancing in the wrong direction. Arthur steadied him with a laugh.

"Energetic little thing, aren’t you?" he said with a smile. "Just like your father. Could never get him to stand still either."

Merlin gave a surprised laugh. Arthur turned that smile on him then, the expression so unbearably fond that Merlin couldn’t look away for a moment.

"May I?" Arthur asked.

Merlin nodded.

Arthur plucked Ambrose easily from Merlin’s hold, lifting him high before bringing him carefully back down to eye-level. Ambrose kicked his feet, laughing. Arthur gave him an exaggerated smile and Ambrose smiled back, a wide toothless grin that made his blue eyes disappear.

Art by dawn-rot (x)

“Hey, little man,” Arthur said, and Ambrose let out a string of gibberish in response.

Ambrose reached out a hand, waving it until it connected with Arthur’s chin and rested there. Merlin could swear that Arthur melted on the spot and turned into a giant puddle of goo. He had to put a hand over his mouth to cover his own awed smile, to hide how affected he was at the sight of his—their—child in Arthur’s arms at last, to see Arthur looking at their son like that, even if he had no idea.

Arthur pulled Ambrose in to be propped up on his shoulder as he had been on Merlin’s, wrapping an arm around the tiny body and putting a hand on the back of his head to support him. Merlin had to wonder if he’d had experience with babies before, and when, because he handled them better than Merlin had at first. He also had a small, infinitely contented smile on his face as he turned his head to rub his nose against Ambrose’s hair. Merlin swallowed back something suspiciously close to a sob.

Arthur opened his mouth, but he didn’t have a chance to ask whatever he’d been meaning to as the door opened and Sir Leon leaned inside.

"Prince Arthur," he said, sounding a bit breathless as though he’d been running. "Our scouts report an army approaching."

It wasn’t until after he’d delivered this crucial bit of news that he allowed himself to look bewildered at the sight before him.

Arthur’s face grew grim once more and he handed Ambrose back. The baby made a noise of distress, reaching for him, but Merlin simply wrapped him back in his swaddling clothes, snug and secure against Merlin’s body. When Arthur followed Leon out of the room, Merlin was only a step behind and Arthur didn’t protest, even though it had been a long time since Merlin had been in his service and therefore he had no justification for coming along.

Leon gave him an odd look, and Ambrose an even odder one, but since Arthur hadn’t said anything he didn’t seem to think it was his place to object and simply led them on.

They were almost to the council chambers when a figure clad in white silks appeared around a corner ahead of them. Merlin wondered frantically if he had time to dive behind a pillar, or if Leon was big enough to actually shield him from view entirely, but Morgana had already turned toward them.

He knew the second she caught sight of him. Her eyes went huge and round and her mouth dropped open. She looked nothing short of staggered. Then her expression turned dark and fierce, so openly hostile that Merlin had to wonder that Leon didn’t see it too. But it was barely a second more before she had schooled her face into something resembling joy, as if she were happy to see him.

"Merlin!" she cried, rushing toward him. "You’re here! I’d heard you were gone."

She was making an effort to sound like this was good news, but Merlin could hear the undercurrent of aggravation, the frustration of another obstacle being added to her path.

"I was," Merlin said in a falsely hearty voice. "But I’m back now."

Morgana’s eyes fell to Ambrose and she drew in a sharp breath, her mask slipping. Merlin pulled his child closer against his body, shielding him as much as he could from Morgana’s all-too-shrew gaze. He thought he saw Morgana pale as understanding set in and his heart sank. He had a suspicion that if they’d been alone, she would’ve dropped the act entirely, but they weren’t and so she forced an approximation of a smile onto her face and said, “That’s wonderful. It’s so good to see you again.”

"I’m glad to see you well," Merlin said, the sincerity of the statement lost in the tension between them.

"Merlin," Arthur said pointedly. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, far tighter than could be explained even by the reality of an oncoming battle and the weight of leadership on his shoulders. His eyes darted back and forth between Merlin and Morgana, then he jerked his head. "Come on, we don’t have time for pleasantries."

Merlin hurried after him without another word, leaving Morgana staring after him with venom in her eyes. Merlin shivered and Ambrose thumped a hand against his chest, reacting to his pounding heart. Merlin let the baby wrap a small hand around one of his fingers and hoped against hope that he would stay quiet through the coming war council.

In the end, a subtle and judicious use of magic on Merlin’s part was the only thing that kept Ambrose from interrupting the meeting. He wrapped Ambrose in a layer of warmth designed to pulse gently with the steadiness of his father’s heartbeat and the infant was asleep within minutes.

Merlin stood off to the side of the chamber, mostly hidden by pillars, and no one paid him any heed as the council members debated the best course of action. Arthur stood his ground against those who wished to take a more pacifying approach, taking his place at the head of the table where Uther usually sat and commanding that the castle be readied for siege.

"You did well in there," he said as he followed Arthur out of the hall. "You made a tough decision."

"Perhaps."

Arthur looked troubled. He shook himself out of it and turned back to Merlin, seeing Ambrose asleep in his arms.

"I need to go speak with my knights," he said. "You should go back to your chambers, take some time with your son. There’s nothing you can do for me right now."

"Do for you?" Merlin asked, feigning surprise. "Why would I do anything for you? I don’t even work for you anymore."

He’d meant it teasingly, but Arthur’s face fell and he looked genuinely disappointed and maybe even a little hurt. Merlin hastened to add, "But I might be persuaded to take it up again. If you really feel like displacing whatever poor sod took over when I left."

Some of the dismay faded from Arthur’s face, but he turned away with what Merlin thought might actually be a blush on his cheeks. Arthur mumbled something.

"Sorry, what was that?" Merlin asked, already smiling, sure that he knew what Arthur was going to say.

"I never took another manservant," Arthur confessed on a sigh, sounding resigned to mockery. "Guinevere’s taken over laundering my clothes and things like that, but I take care of most other things myself."

"You’ve got Gwen as your maid?" Merlin asked, surprised.

Arthur shrugged.

"I had lost my servant and she her mistress," he said in explanation. "And we’d both lost our best friends.

It made Merlin flush with pleasure to hear Arthur call him that so freely; before Merlin had left, even before things got awkward and complicated, Arthur had always gone out of his way to insist that there was nothing between them even when there obviously was. It seemed he’d given up lying to himself about it.

"We were both at loose ends," Arthur said. "And besides, Gwen is wonderful, truly. She’s been a great friend to me."

"Just a friend?" Merlin asked, as if he actually wanted to know the answer when really every fiber of his mind was screaming that he didn’t need to torture himself like this.

Arthur shrugged and bit his lip, giving Merlin a quick sidelong look.

"Just a friend," he confirmed, and he sounded genuine enough that Merlin relaxed all the muscles he hadn’t realized he’d tensed. "We may have had something at one point, and we may have given it a try for a while, but we’re better off as we are. She’s kind and wise and gives great counsel, but whatever spark we had at first has long since faded."

Merlin almost said he was glad but he caught himself, figuring that was probably insensitive, not to mention a very obviously jealous thing to say when he had no right to be jealous in the first place.

“I suppose that’s good,” he said instead, hoping he didn’t sound as relieved as he thought he did.

Arthur looked at him, though, so he guessed he wasn’t successful at that. Then Arthur gave him a light push on the arm.

"Go on, then," he said brightly. "I won’t drag you back to work until after all this is over and you’ve got everything settled. Ambrose takes priority."

Merlin smiled, helpless against the warm feeling in his chest, and Arthur blushed again. Merlin chose not to add to Arthur’s embarrassment and turned around without protest, heading in the direction of Gaius’s chambers. He stopped by a window looking out over the courtyard and caught sight of Lahti in the marketplace, holding Rista up to look at the colorful scarves draped all over one of the stalls while she chatted with the seller. He smiled, pleased that his friend seemed to be taking a liking to Camelot.

Merlin headed off again, but he didn’t get more than a few paces before a hand whipped out to take a painfully tight grip on his arm and haul him bodily into an alcove.

"If you breathe one word of what you heard," Morgana hissed, uncomfortably close in the cramped space, "I will make sure that your life is a very short and painful one."

Merlin yanked his arm free, wincing as her fingernails dug deeper into his flesh before they released him, and pressed himself back against the wall.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, not really holding out much hope that she would believe him. “I didn’t hear anything.”

"Don’t bother, Merlin," she said. "I should’ve known it would be you anyway. You were always the one meddling in things that didn’t concern you, sticking your nose in where it didn’t belong. I have to admit, though: the babe is unexpected."

Merlin tensed, fully ready to defend his child, though he didn’t honestly think that Morgana would attack him. No matter how far she’d fallen, he didn’t think that she would stoop quite that low. She just sneered at him.

"I don’t know why you’ve come back here, Merlin, but I assure you that it would be in your best interests to leave again."

"I came back because I heard you’d been found," Merlin said. "I needed to see for myself that you were alright."

"Your concern for my well-being is touching," Morgana drawled, sarcasm in every syllable, "if the tiniest bit ironic. And if you insist on being a thorn in my side, then I will make absolutely certain that Uther knows exactly how much you care about his cherished ward."

"I never wanted to hurt you, Morgana."

"You tricked me into drinking hemlock," Morgana said, incredulous. "You tried to murder me."

"That doesn’t mean I actually wanted you dead," Merlin insisted, aware of how ludicrous that sounded. "I didn’t have a choice. You were the vessel for Morgause’s spell, Morgana. As long as you lived, everyone in the kingdom stayed asleep and Morgause was free to do as she wished. She’d have taken the kingdom. Uther and Arthur would both have been killed, and any number of others besides."

"You betrayed me, Merlin," Morgana said, the icy, indifferent facade breaking to reveal a sliver of real hurt still lingering underneath.

"I know," Merlin said, his breath hitching. "And I still wake up screaming from nightmares of that very moment. But it was one life or many. I did what needed to be done, not what I wanted to do. And I clung to the hope that Morgause could save you."

Morgana was breathing hard, her face flushed and her eyes bright, but it wasn’t only anger on her face anymore. Merlin couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling, but she opened her mouth several times without any words coming out. He didn’t look away, held her gaze as she scrutinized him, hoping that she could see every ounce of the pain and regret he felt when he thought of what he had done that night.

The clanking sound of a guard coming down the corridor made them both jump. Merlin looked down to see that Ambrose’s face was beginning to scrunch up in protest, and by the time he looked back up Morgana was gone, the click of her heels fading away.

Later that night found Merlin in Arthur’s chambers again. He’d intercepted the servant bringing up the prince’s dinner and delivered it himself instead. Arthur looked so pleased to see him that Merlin didn’t feel any qualms about inviting himself to sit down and share the meal with him. He set up Ambrose, recently nursed and changed, in the center of Arthur’s large bed, far enough away from any edges that he wasn’t likely to fall off even with his newfound rolling skills, and left him on his stomach to observe his new surroundings.

The meal was mostly a quiet one, with little talk beyond pleasantries and the occasional mention of castle gossip that Merlin had missed out on in his absence. It was comfortable and almost familiar even after all their time apart, but there was a tension in the way they kept catching each other’s eyes, always looking away quickly.

Arthur offered Merlin a drink when they’d finished and Merlin took it, settling into one of the chairs before the fire. Arthur sat opposite, watching the flames and swirling his wine in his goblet, involved in his own thoughts.

"What good will siege preparations do," Arthur said eventually, not quiet enough to avoid sounding loud in the silence of the chamber, "if Morgana manages to raise a force from the inside?"

"You must do what you can to combat Cenred’s army," Merlin said. "You cannot neglect one threat in the face of another."

Arthur didn’t say anything else for a long time and Merlin thought that might be the end of it. Then Arthur took a big gulp of his wine and set the goblet down, drawing the back of his hand over his mouth.

"I can’t think of her think like that," he said hoarsely. "As a threat, a sorceress. I can’t imagine her with so much wickedness in her heart."

"Just because she has magic, that doesn’t make her wicked," Merlin said.

Maybe it was the wine that loosened his tongue, or maybe it was the firelight flickering over the planes of Arthur’s face, making him look both golden and careworn. Arthur looked at Merlin, mouth open as if he wanted to say something, but he simply pressed his lips together tightly and looked away, his expression strangely pinched.

"Then why would she do this?" he demanded. "What could make her turn from us so fully if it’s not the very nature of magic to corrupt?"

"Morgana disagreed with Uther’s politics long before her magic manifested," Merlin reminded him. "She fought him at every turn, condemned his practices and his laws as vocally as she could get away with, and went behind his back whenever she could because she believed that what he did was wrong. And then suddenly she found herself becoming the very thing he condemned, not by choice or through any fault of her own.

"She was scared, Arthur."

Merlin saw it again, the tremble in Morgana’s hands and the tears in her eyes as she confessed her life-threatening secret to him and begged for nothing more than affirmation. He shook his head.

"She was so scared, and so alone, and so angry at the unfairness of it all that she should be an outsider in the one place she should’ve been able to call home. Fear, anger, and isolation—it's a dangerous cocktail, for anyone."

Arthur had a hand over his mouth, inscrutable as he stared unseeingly into the fire. The tight clench of his other hand on the arm of the chair told Merlin he was listening, though, so Merlin took another fortifying sip of his wine and continued.

"And then she spent over a year with Morgause," he said. "Morgause is older, more powerful, more experienced. She offered Morgana family and companionship, knowledge and training, the sort of acceptance that she knew she would never find here. And I’m sure that all she asked in return was that Morgana hate Uther and Camelot as much as she does."

"She could have had that here,” Arthur said, almost too quietly for Merlin to hear. He shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter. “She didn’t have to be alone. If she had just come to me… Did she really think I would have had her executed?”

He sounded not so much offended as wounded that she would think so little of him. Merlin took another drink, but he had trouble swallowing around the lump of guilt in his throat.

"Sometimes," he started, but he had to clear his throat before he could go on. "Sometimes the fear you feel is stronger than any trust. And sometimes it’s hard to believe that someone else might care for you if you don’t think you’re worthy of it."

There was another long silence in which Merlin felt Arthur’s gaze on him but refused to meet it. He couldn’t bear to look at Arthur right now, to see his confusion and his concern. The urge to just tell Arthur, to tell him everything, was almost overwhelming. But he was not Morgana. Arthur hadn’t grown up thinking of him as family like he had with Morgana. There was a deeper bond there, a sort of unconditional regard that Merlin could never hope to have. Arthur might be willing to accept Morgana, but Merlin couldn’t expect the same, especially not with all the other secrets sitting so heavily on his tongue.

"I can’t believe that she’s lost to us," Arthur said, his legendary stubbornness shining through. "If it isn’t the corruption of magic that’s taken her away from us, then she can brought back."

"Arthur," Merlin said, cautioning. "This may not be something you can fix."

"Why not?" Arthur asked, turning wide, wet eyes on Merlin.

"Because one ally will never be enough to make her feel safe here," Merlin said, feeling the truth of it acutely. Gaius had been his refuge since the day he’d set foot in Camelot and he would give his life for Merlin in a heartbeat, but that did little to lift the pall of dread that still had Merlin shaking in his bed after nightmares of nooses and pyres. "It may be that it’s just not enough. And if that’s the case, then it won’t be your fault any more than it will hers. I just need for you to remember that."

Arthur swallowed and turned away, quickly wiping his eyes on the back of his hand in a way that said he was hoping Merlin wouldn’t notice.

“When did you get so insightful?” he asked with a weak laugh. “One year away and suddenly you’re all wise words.”

Merlin shrugged.

“Dunno. Maybe fatherhood changes a person,” he said, glancing over to see that Ambrose had fallen asleep.

Arthur looked too, smiling at the sight.

“Or maybe it was just that I didn’t have you knocking me around the head anymore,” Merlin added as an afterthought.

He kicked the leg of Arthur’s chair. Arthur laughed more convincingly this time and kicked Merlin’s chair in retaliation. Then he settled down, a fond and almost marveling smile on his face as he looked Merlin.

"Where have you been all this time, Merlin?" he asked, though he didn’t sound half as accusatory as he had the last time he’d asked. "I went to Ealdor about three months after you’d gone but obviously you weren’t there. I went back a few months later too, with Gwen because she was worried, but you still hadn’t turned up there. We were starting to think you were dead in the forest somewhere."

"I’m sorry. I didn’t really think you’d go looking."

"Of course I would," Arthur said, as though it was obvious for a prince to ride off in search of his servant. Or maybe it was a friend searching for his friend and it really was the most obvious thing in the world.

"I was with the druids," Merlin confessed and Arthur’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"The druids?" he repeated. "Well, I guess that explains why you have such a positive opinion of magic now."

"They’re an incredibly kind and accepting people," Merlin said. "Peaceful to a fault. Do you realize that it’s against their beliefs to fight even if they’re threatened? It’s a rare druid that will actually fight back against you."

"Was she a druid then?" Arthur asked, interrupted him. "Ambrose’s mother."

Suddenly Merlin wished he hadn’t drunk so much wine because he felt a bit sick.

“Arthur,” he said. He didn’t know what he was going to follow it with, but it didn’t matter because Arthur kept talking, the sort of anxious ramble Merlin was used to with Gwen but had never really heard from the prince before.

"It makes sense. That she would be, I mean. I can’t think of any other reason you’d be with them. Although I’d have to wonder how you met her in the first place, because I can’t remember you ever traveling far from the city. At least, not far enough to run into druids. Not that I was paying particularly close attention at the time, admittedly, but I think I still would have noticed. I guess she could have been in the city for supplies but—"

”Arthur.”

The prince stopped, looking surprised at Merlin’s harsh tone.

“I really don’t want to talk about…about her,” Merlin said, having to force the words out. “Can we not?”

Merlin saw Arthur’s eyes widen, his mouth fall open as understanding spread across his face, and knew what conclusion he’d drawn. And even though it was exactly what Merlin had originally wanted him to think, just what Merlin had planned all along to tell him, Merlin had to turn away from Arthur’s compassion before he broke under the weight of it.

"I’m so sorry, Merlin," Arthur said, and his voice actually cracked. Merlin blinked back tears, but not for the reason Arthur obviously thought. "Did she—"

Merlin jumped to his feet; he couldn’t stay here and listen to this. He couldn’t answer Arthur’s questions, couldn’t feed him lies. He had thought it would be so easy. He’d lied to Arthur for years, after all, but this was so different and he just couldn’t do it.

“I need to go,” he choked out, making for the bed to get Ambrose so that he could run back to his little bedroom off Gaius’s chambers, bury his face in his old pillow, and cry until he didn’t feel like the worst kind of traitor anymore.

Arthur caught his arm when he was halfway there, pulling him up short with a gentle tug.

"Merlin," he said. "Are you…alright? If you need to…to talk or anything, you know that you can…” Arthur stumbled over the words, so unfamiliar in his mouth but so obviously genuine.

Merlin took a shaky breath, his lungs feeling too small in the face of Arthur’s devastation on his behalf, Arthur’s grief over a woman he’d never met, a woman he clearly thought had replaced him in Merlin’s heart.

Merlin reached out to press a trembling hand against Arthur’s cheek. Arthur’s breath caught in his throat but he leaned into the touch, his skin warm against Merlin’s palm.

“I don’t want to talk,” Merlin whispered. “But thank you.”

He didn’t quite realize he was leaning closer until he felt Arthur’s breath on his skin. Arthur’s eyes seemed impossibly blue, the exact same shade as Ambrose’s, and Merlin had to kiss him. It was just a press of lips, and it only lasted a second, but if Merlin could have frozen time in that instant he would have. Instead he stepped back, trying to reorient himself in a world that felt suddenly off-kilter.

"I should go," he said.

Arthur didn’t respond, didn’t do anything. He seemed rooted to the spot, stuck, even as Merlin carefully retrieved the sleeping baby from the bed. He finally came back to himself as Merlin crossed the threshold.

"Merlin," he called.

Merlin turned back, apprehensive.

"I missed you. Every day."

Merlin’s heart thumped out of rhythm.

“And I you.”

"I’m glad you’re back."

Merlin smiled.

“So am I.”

Chapter Text

Merlin didn’t see Arthur the next morning as the prince was stuck running between the war council chambers, issuing orders through gritted teeth, and his father’s rooms. Gaius had found the mandrake root hung underneath Uther’s bed, dripping some awful tar-like substance and emitting a terrible scream that apparently only those with magic could hear, and chucked it in the fire immediately. Uther wasn’t recovered yet, not by far, but he was at least resting easier without the magical presence.

Merlin took the free time as an opportunity to set up his tiny room in a way that could accommodate two people and both their children. He thanked his magic for letting him duplicate and manipulate his furniture, and his year living in a cloth tent for his ability to consolidate space so well. It turned out the tiniest bit cramped, but it was better than the last night where Merlin had let Lahti have his bed and had slept on the floor himself, the babies together in a makeshift bassinet set up on his desk.

While the babies napped, Merlin and Lahti helped Gaius prepare his remedies; battle always meant an influx of injuries and a desperate need for medicines that one old man alone could not fill. Lahti was quick with her hands and well-acquainted with herb lore, as most druids were, and she was perfectly content to listen to all of Gaius’s stories, the ones that Merlin had heard so many times he could repeat them from memory.

It was near midday that Rista decided she didn’t like being indoors. She managed to pull herself up onto her feet with the help of a bench and waddle all the way to the far wall where she could point upward toward the window, opened and letting in a fresh breeze.

"You miss being outside, don’t you?" Lahti asked, lifting Rista up to look out.

Rista reached forward, saying something that sounded suspiciously like "yes." Lahti laughed.

"Alright, you silly thing, you. Merlin? I’m sure Ambrose could use some fresh air too."

"These two have never known anything but trees!" Merlin said.

He brushed the herb dust from his hands and picked up Ambrose from where he’d been trying valiantly to push himself up onto his hands and knees so he could follow Rista.

"Do you wanna go outside?" Merlin asked him brightly. "Come on, let’s go see what’s going on in the market today."

They bid Gaius farewell and made their way out of the castle. Merlin was waylaid repeatedly by other servants remarking on his sudden disappearance and even more sudden return. He waved off their questions and managed to extricate himself from every conversation without giving them any real answers, which he thought he deserved serious commendation for.

The market was loud and busy, full of bright colors and new smells. On the fringes of the regular activity were signs of the siege preparations: soldiers gathering in full garb, barrels of arrows and crossbow bolts being transported to the battlements, crates of food and sacks of grain being dragged up from the storage areas into the castle proper, and materials for provisional barriers being collected and made ready for use.

The townspeople were trying to ignore all the fuss. They knew what was coming, but Camelot had been attacked too many times for them to be thrown off their daily routines now. They would panic when the time came and not a moment sooner, as was the Camelot way.

Merlin and Lahti made the rounds of all the stalls that were still set up, letting the babies marvel at the influx of sensory information they had never experienced before, so very different from the tranquil environment of the deep forest they’d been born into. The sellers cooed over them, pinching their cheeks and tickling them until they laughed, and the parents walked away with a good number of free samples in hand.

Merlin was just accepting a bite of sweetmeats from a plump woman with a headscarf when the warning bell began to ring. The woman promptly dropped the sweetmeat in her fright and immediately began to snatch her wares off the table, sweeping them unceremoniously into a bag which she then tossed over her shoulder. She was out of sight by the time Lahti grabbed Merlin’s arm.

"What’s going on?" she asked. "What does that mean?"

"It’s the warning bell," Merlin told her. "It means Cenred’s army is almost upon us."

He took Lahti’s hand and began towing her through the crowds of people rushing about with twice the purpose they had been before, all scrambling to get out of the way before the fighting started in earnest. They were bumped and jostled, knocked every which way, and Ambrose set to wailing his displeasure over the whole situation. Merlin tried to shush him, but he didn’t have enough hands or enough time to stop and attend to him properly.

They were almost to the castle courtyard when Merlin heard his name shouted in an achingly familiar voice.

"Gwen!" he shouted back as a long line of knights came tromping past, the clangor of their armour almost deafening when added to the babble of agitated voices all around them.

Gwen forced her way through the mass of people, elbowing even soldiers and guards out of her way until she was right in front of him.

"Merlin! Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, apparently intending to ignore the chaos around them in favor of haranguing him. "You just up and disappear for months, Merlin, months. You never even send word that you’re alright. Arthur and I went all the way to Ealdor only to find that you’d never set foot there. I worried about Hunith for weeks and she was never even ill. We were worried sick about you, Merlin! Do you have any idea how upset Arthur was after you left? I just cannot believe that you would really—”

"Gwen, look, I’m really sorry, but we don’t have time to have this conversation right now," Merlin spoke over her. "I’m sorry I lied about why I left, but I really needed to go and didn’t want to explain why. Now if you would be ever so kind as to hold this—" He pushed a crying Ambrose into Gwen’s arms, paying no heed to her startled cry. "—I need to go find Arthur. Lahti, explain what you can. You two need to go back to Gaius. You’ll be safest with him."

Merlin took off toward the citadel.

”Merlin, you get back here this instant and explain yourself!” Gwen yelled after him, but Merlin didn’t turn back. Lahti could fill her in on the essentials, but their heart-to-heart would have to wait until after the battle. Merlin hated to leave her like this—to leave any of them like this, honestly—but he had no doubt at all that Gwen would have kept Ambrose safe even if she had no clue at all as to whose baby it was, that was just in her nature, and it helped to alleviate a bit of the horrible panic he felt at having Ambrose out of his sight in a moment like this.

Merlin sprinted through the corridors, searching for any sign of Arthur. He passed Sir Leon leading a charge to meet the enemy as they came, but it seemed that Arthur was nowhere in the castle. A percussive blast shook the stones under his feet as something large and heavy collided with the castle wall. If there were already trebuchet involved, there was no way Arthur would still be in the citadel. Merlin made his way back to the front steps and stopped there abruptly, taken aback by how quickly the situation had devolved.

A mass of Camelot’s soldiers were clogging the courtyard, head to head with a similar throng of soldiers in black. Steel against steel echoed loudly, bouncing off the stone and reverberating back at him until it made his head buzz, and the air sang with arrows.

Merlin struggled to get closer to the front line without actually getting drawn into the fight, trying to get close enough to pick out faces. He finally caught sight of Arthur standing atop a makeshift barricade, his sword raised high as he rallied his men for another charge. He was a breathtaking figure, backlit by fire as he was, fierce and noble—a true warrior king who needed no crown to declare his rank. Merlin began to push toward him but was nearly knocked over when a figure came barreling past him.

Uther, haphazardly clad in his chainmail and armour, lurched into the fray, sword swinging clumsily before him. He managed to knock down one opponent through sheer luck before Arthur leapt down from his higher vantage point to rush toward him. Arthur took his father by the arm and began hauling him backward, away from the fighting, even as Uther thrashed and tried to throw off his restraining hold.

"What are you doing?" Uther growled.

"You’re not well," Arthur said firmly, not letting up in the least.

”This is my kingdom!”

Like Gaius had predicted, Uther was definitely not in his right mind. If he had been fully in touch with reality, he would have recognized his own weakness and acknowledged it. As it was, even when a stray arrow imbedded itself in his thigh, Uther still refused to return to the castle of his own will. Merlin wanted to help, seeing how difficult it was for Arthur to hold him back, but Uther’s sword was still whizzing through the air in all directions and Merlin didn’t think he had the proper reflexes to dodge it at close range and would rather not lose a limb.

There was a crashing sound as Cenred’s men launched themselves at the barricade, a splintering of wood as it started to give. Arthur gave it a panicked look.

”Pull back!” he bellowed to his men. “Retreat!”

The knights dispatched their nearest foes and backed out of range of new attacks. Cenred’s men tried to press their advantage, to fill the void, but Merlin ducked his head to hide his eyes and with one word the wooden barricade caught fire, a wall of flames roaring up to block their path.

Merlin caught up with Arthur as he leaned his father against the well in the courtyard. The pain of being shot seemed to have cleared Uther’s mind a bit, the frenzied light in his eyes dimmed.

"You must get back to the battle," he panted, clutching at his injured leg. "We’re losing the lower town."

"It’s already lost, father," Arthur said, his pain and helpless frustration evident. Merlin knew that he wanted nothing more than to go back in and roust the intruders, to fight to his dying breath for every inch of his kingdom. But he had to be pragmatic, and if the lower town was overrun then there was no use in wasting life trying to reclaim it when the men were needed elsewhere.

"And the citadel?" Uther inquired.

"Safe for now."

"It must stay that way."

Uther tried to force himself to his feet, to stand strong and take command, but Arthur pushed him back down with a hand on his shoulder.

"You have to trust me, father," Arthur said. "I know what I’m doing."

For all that he had agonized over his ability to lead, he certainly took up the mantle of leadership easily. It was only in the calm before the storm that Arthur ever doubted himself, while the stark rush of a battle in progress only brought out the steel in his spine. Now was not a time that he would stand for being questioned or underestimated.

He grasped the shaft of the arrow in Uther’s leg and freed it with a decisive tug. Uther let out a strangled cry.

"You must rest," Arthur told him. "When you are well again, you will still have a kingdom, I promise you that." Arthur gestured Merlin closer. "He needs to be in the infirmary. Make sure he gets there."

"I’ll see to it," Merlin said.

Arthur gave him a nod and then disappeared into the battlefield with a war-cry on his lips.

Merlin was glad that some of Uther’s obstinacy had faded because he didn’t think he would’ve been capable of dragging him back to the castle if it hadn’t; the king may have gone a bit to seed but he was still a large and powerfully-built man, much larger and stronger than the man charged with his care. Merlin heaved him to his feet, staggering a bit when the king leaned much of his considerable weight onto his shoulder, and headed for the makeshift infirmary.

Merlin dropped Uther onto a cot set up near the entrance, looking around the room. Usually he would have expected to see Gwen helping tend to the wounded, but neither she nor Lahti were anywhere in sight.

Gaius pushed his way toward them through the sea of injured knights and the number of chambermaids he had aiding him, bandages already in hand. He immediately took up scolding the king for being out of bed when he was less than recovered and should have been resting, but Uther wasn’t paying him the slightest bit of attention. Merlin found the nearest still-mobile knight and gave him strict instructions, from the prince himself of course, that Uther was to be kept exactly where he was, then he dragged Gaius out of earshot.

“Where’s Ambrose?” he asked immediately. “I gave him to Gwen. Have you seen her and Lahti?”

“Yes, yes, they’re fine,” Gaius said, and Merlin nearly slumped over in relief. “I left them both in my chambers and advised them to lock the doors.”

“Good. Good, alright.” Merlin took a deep breath. “What about Morgana? Where is she?”

“She was here earlier,” Gaius said with a frown. “She was assisting me like she used to when things got too busy, but she disappeared several minutes ago. I would have followed her, but there aren’t enough hands here as it is.”

“No, you stay here. We know where she’s going anyway.” Merlin squeezed Gaius’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Gaius. One way or another, we’ll put an end to this.”

Gaius didn’t look particularly reassured by that, but he nodded anyway.

“Once I leave, seal off the hospital,” Merlin said, his tone for once brooking no argument from his guardian. “I don’t know exactly what sort of creatures Morgana will conjure, but I can guarantee they won’t be friendly.”

Gaius gave him a grim nod and returned to his patients.

Merlin left the king where he was, under guard and protesting it vehemently, and closed the infirmary doors behind him. The corridors were empty as he passed through them, but they rang with the sounds of distant swordplay. Merlin was almost to the front steps when a wave of dark, clotted-feeling magic slammed into him so hard he was nearly knocked off his feet and he knew, he knew, that Morgana had done what Morgause ordered. He shook his head to clear it and took off running.

By the time he reached the courtyard, he could see skeletons beginning to lurch out of the passageways that led toward the crypt, some of them made of dry-brittle bone and some with rotted and rotting flesh still clinging to them. He thought one or two of them might still have enough meat on them to be recognizable. He fought the sudden urge to empty his stomach.

Merlin skirted the edges of the courtyard, witnessing the moment that Sir Leon pulled back from the front to get his breath and turned around to see three skeletons walking toward him with swords in hand. Leon’s face lit up with horror and disbelief, but he was a good enough knight to know that disbelief wouldn’t stop what was obviously true. He called for those around him to ready themselves, each one bearing the same expression but raising his sword nonetheless. Merlin didn’t stick around to see if the knights’ swords would do any damage to the undead; he didn’t think he wanted to know the answer.

He turned when he reached the door of the crypt, scanning the crowd. He caught sight of Arthur battling his way down the stairs, the thrust of his sword ineffective against an opponent that couldn’t bleed. Arthur landed a solid kick in the middle of the skeleton’s ribcage, sending its rib bones clattering across the cobblestones, then he turned and looked directly at Merlin.

Merlin cursed; if he wanted to talk to Morgana alone, he would have to do it fast. He ducked through the doorway into the passage beyond, assaulted by the stench of dust and death and decay.

The burial vaults were cracked open, large slabs of stone broken off and pushed aside to allow the inhabitants to exit their chambers. There was a staff made of dark wood in the middle of the chamber, topped by a beautifully carved imitation of tree branches wrapped around a glowing stone and with its base planted firmly in the middle of a shattered cobblestone. That staff emitted a horrible, dark glow, one that was deeper than sight alone could detect, and Merlin shudder at the feel of it.

Morgana, her face lit with a smug grin, turned to face him.

“You should leave now while you still can,” she advised, the metal of the armoured wrap around her waist glinting in the light thrown by the magical crystal.

“Morgana, please, I beg you,” Merlin tried. “Women and children are dying. The city will fall.”

“Good,” she spat.

“You don’t mean that.”

She couldn’t mean that, couldn’t have fallen so far in so short a time.

“I have magic, Merlin,” Morgana said, raising her chin defiantly, as though that alone would grant her confidence. “Uther hates me and everyone like me. Why should I feel any differently about him?”

“He isn’t the one you’re hurting.”

The voice came from behind and Merlin turned to see Arthur in the doorway, his sword in his hand but not at the ready. His face was twisted in such an expression of pain and sadness that Merlin’s heart clenched in his chest.

Morgana had gone pale, her eyes wide and scared in a way that made little sense when she had already evidenced her betrayal with the staff behind her and the undead crawling the battlefield.

“These are innocent people, Morgana,” Arthur said. “You have always fought to protect the innocent.”

“None of them are innocent,” Morgana said harshly. “Not really. They all fall in line whenever Uther snaps his fingers. They believe his drivel about magic and they would see me burn, you all would.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Arthur said, sheathing his sword. He stepped forward, reaching a hand toward her, but she backed away from him. “We can find another way.”

Morgana let out a bark of laughter, sharp and bitter. “There is no other way,” she said, but her voice trembled. “You expect me to believe the son of a tyrant and the man who tried to murder me for what I am?”

“That had nothing to do with your magic,” Merlin said, ignoring Arthur’s confused and disbelieving face at that accusation and his non-denial of it. “Morgana, I knew about your magic for months before that day. If I had given a damn about you having magic, do you really think I would’ve helped you find the druids? That I would’ve gone all that way in the hopes of warning them that the knights were coming?”

“The knights led by him,” Morgana said, pointing a sharp-nailed finger at Arthur.

“I don’t care about your magic, Morgana,” Merlin insisted. “I’ve never cared about that. I trusted that you would use it for good, but this is not good. This is not magic’s purpose.”

“What do you know?” she shot back, her face flushed. “You don’t have magic, either of you. How could you hope to understand?”

“I do understand, Morgana,” Arthur said, trying to soothe her, to talk her down, but Merlin knew already that it wouldn’t work. There was nothing Arthur or anyone else without magic could ever say that would convince her. “I understand how you’re feeling and I—”

“No!” she shouted, losing all semblance of her carefully-held control. “You can never understand! You don’t know what it’s like to be an outsider. To be ashamed of how you were born, to have to hide who you are. To live in fear every hour of every day. You have no idea what that feels like, so don’t you dare say that you understand.”

“You’re right,” Merlin said, and Arthur and Morgana both looked at him in shock.

Merlin swallowed hard, but his mouth was dry. His heart thudded in his ears, but there was only one way to do this. Morgana was trembling, her eyes wide and frightened and desperate. She looked like a cornered animal, desperate to flee or fight back. She teetered on a knife’s edge, and there was only one thing that might be able to bring her back.

“Arthur doesn’t know what that feels like,” he said. “But I do.”

Morgana scoffed.

“What could you know of it, Merlin?” she asked venomously. “You know nothing.”

“I know what it’s like to look at every person I pass on the street and know in my heart that they would watch me burn with a smile on their face,” Merlin said. “I know what it’s like to wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares of the pyre. I know what it’s like to fear my own emotions because they’re a loss of control that I can’t afford.”

Merlin closed his eyes; he couldn’t bear to see whatever look might be on Morgana’s face, and he couldn’t even think of Arthur right now, a burning presence at his side. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to get through this. And he needed to, for Morgana’s sake.

“I know what it’s like to listen to everyone say over and over again that magic is evil, that what I am is an abomination,” he said, his voice hoarse. “And I know what it’s like to wonder if maybe they’re right, if I’m truly the monster they think I am. To feel that power rise up inside me and know in my soul that it’s wrong, that it’s dangerous, but not be able to do anything to make it stop.

“It took me a long time to get over that,” he said. “It took years for me to accept my gift for what it is—something that I can use for good, to help people, to keep the ones I care about safe. But that fear never goes away. I know that better than anyone. You’ve felt it for two years, maybe more,” he said, raising his eyes to Morgana’s face, needing her to really see him now. “But I’ve lived with it for my whole life, for as long as I can remember. I’ve never known anything else." He swallowed hard. "And maybe that’s made me a coward.

“You reached out,” he said, his throat dangerously tight and making his words come out choked. “You’ve always been braver than me, Morgana. You were so frightened, but you reached out a hand to me, and I was too selfish and cowardly to reach back because I was frightened too. I betrayed you, and you will never know how much I regret letting you think that you were alone.”

“You—” Morgana tried to speak, but then she closed her mouth again. She shifted on her feet, her jaw working and her expression pinched and uncertain. “You have—”

“You’re a sorcerer?” Arthur asked, sounding strangely small in the large, echoing chamber.

Merlin closed his eyes again, but then he forced them open and turned to look, to face Arthur’s reaction head on. But Arthur didn’t look angry. Merlin wasn’t sure of the emotion on Arthur’s face, but he was sure of that.

“Yes,” he said. “I have magic. I always have, since before I can remember.”

“But you never told him,” Morgana said finally. “You never told any of us. How can you expect me to trust Arthur when you don’t trust him yourself?”

“I’m trusting him now,” Merlin said, more firmly than he’d said anything else so far. “I will trust him with my life as I would trust him with yours. And more than that—” Merlin looked at Arthur’s inscrutable expression once more, taking a deep breath to steady himself for what he was about to do, for the enormous leap of faith that he was about to take. “—I will trust him with my son’s.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Arthur. He went wide eyed and shocked, his mouth hanging open.

“Ambrose?” he asked faintly. “Ambrose has magic?”

“Not yet,” Merlin admitted. “But he will. There’s no doubt about that. I started showing signs when I was his age.”

Merlin ran a hand through his hair, trying to stop it from shaking.

“You said I didn’t know fear,” he said to Morgana, a slightly-hysterical laugh in his tone. “But I know a fear stronger than anything even you have experienced. Because I brought a magical child into this world. I brought an innocent child into a world that would see him dead for something he doesn’t even comprehend. And it’s a world that I can’t protect him from.” Merlin’s voice trembled. “There is only so much I can do for Ambrose. I can’t change this world. I can’t make Camelot safe for my son. But Arthur can.”

“I can,” Arthur repeated, barely aware of what he was saying. He was dazed, a bit blank, still in the process of comprehending. Then he shook his head, his eyes refocusing until they became sharp and determined. “I can,” he said again. “I can protect him. All of you.”

He looked at Morgana, who had a hand pressed to her mouth and tears in her eyes.

“When I am king,” he said, “I can change things. I can make it safe for all of you.”

“And in the meantime?” Morgana asked shakily. “What about before you are king? What happens if Ambrose is discovered before then?”

“I will let no harm come to him,” Arthur said fiercely. “He’s a child. He has done no wrong and there is no evil in him. I will topple my father from his throne before I allow any harm to come to that boy.”

Merlin covered his mouth to smother a laugh of pure, giddy relief and felt wetness on his fingertips, tears he hadn’t realized he had shed. Arthur must have heard it anyway because he turned to him for a moment, his eyes shining. Then he turned back to Morgana.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t care about your magic. I know you, and I know that this—” He waved his other hand, gesturing back to the sounds of screams that echoed through the passageway toward them. “—isn’t what is in your heart. You don’t want this.”

“Don’t I?” she asked, an uncertain challenge in her wet eyes. “Magic will never be free in Camelot while Uther rules. My people will never be safe.”

“Uther will not rule forever,” Arthur reminded her. “One day it will be my turn. I will take the throne and I will change things.”

“It could be your turn now,” Morgana pressed. “Why wait? It could be years, decades. Who knows how many innocent people could be killed in that time?”

“Innocent people are dying now, Morgana,” Arthur said. “Because of what you’re doing. This is senseless slaughter.”

“With every life taken by those skeletons, another person is convinced of magic’s wickedness,” Merlin put in. “The more you use magic for violent means, the more people will believe that violence is its only purpose.”

“By attacking the kingdom with no heed for the lives lost, you and Morgause are only serving to further my father’s agenda,” Arthur said. “I believed that magic was wicked because I have spent my entire life having to guard against magical attack.”

“Sorcerers attack you because you persecute them,” Morgana snarled.

“I realize that now,” Arthur said, “but I didn’t then. And neither do the people out there. They fight because there is a threat against their home and they believe they are doing good. They don’t understand that there’s more to magic than this. But there has to be. If someone as unfailingly compassionate as you have always been can have magic, then there has to be the potential for good in it. I need to believe that. Please don’t prove me wrong.”

He reached out once more, his hand held out to her palm up.

Morgana shook her head, staring at his hand like it might strike her.

“How can I trust you?”

“You’re family, Morgana,” Arthur said, his voice cracking. “My sister in all but blood. And nothing could ever make me stop loving you.”

“Promise?” she asked, a mere whisper, childlike in its desperation.

“Double promise,” Arthur said with a smile.

Morgana laughed, a shaky thing that seemed to surprise even her, and Merlin got the feeling that it was an inside joke, something from their shared past. Morgana hesitated for a long moment. She looked at Merlin, at his tear-stained but desperately hopeful face, and then back at Arthur. Slowly, tremulously, she reached out and placed her hand in his.

Arthur immediately pulled her in and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. Then Morgana was sobbing, gripping onto him and burying her face in his neck. Arthur pressed his face into her hair and stroked her back, murmuring into her ear words too quiet for Merlin to hear.

Breathing what felt like the first gasp of air in a long time, Merlin looked away from the private moment. He took up a sword that lay abandoned by one of the opened crypts and snuck around the pair of them. With one word of magic, he brought the sword down hard and the staff snapped in half under the force of the blow, the reverberation of the magic’s sudden release making him rock back. He heard Morgana’s gasp as she felt it too, and Merlin let the sword clatter free of his fingers.

Chapter Text

Merlin didn’t fancy the lot who were tasked with cleaning up after the battle. As soon as the magical staff had been destroyed and its spell broken, the skeletons had crumpled, falling apart in the absence of the magic that had animated them, and the bones littered the city from the courtyard to the gates. With them gone, Cenred had recognized that he was at a disadvantage and pulled his troops out. The battle was over and Camelot victorious.

But the true triumph was Morgana sitting in Arthur’s chambers, wrapped in a blanket and with a cup of warmed wine in her hands, looking small and uncertain and vulnerable but there.

Merlin left the two of them alone—it would take a long time for him to earn back Morgana’s trust after all that he had done to her, but Arthur had done her no wrong that he could not atone for. Theirs was a hurt that could heal and heal quickly. Merlin had no doubt that they would talk through the night and come out the stronger for it in the morning. His and Morgana’s situation was trickier, but he would do everything he could to make her understand how sorry he was. Just not tonight.

Merlin opened the door to Gaius’s chambers to see Gaius, Gwen, and Lahti all waiting up but the babies nowhere to be seen. Presumably they’d been put to bed in his room in the back; it was far into the night by now, well past the time they usually slept.

He closed the door behind him quietly so as not to wake them. He’d no sooner reached the three of them than Gwen faced him with her jaw set and slapped him hard across the face. He gaped at her, rubbing his stinging cheek. Then she pulled him into a tight hug that confused him even more.

“Gwen?”

“You’re an absolute idiot, Merlin,” she said fiercely. “Arthur’s right about that.”

“I know he is,” Merlin admitted. “Why exactly though?”

Gwen pulled back to look up at him, lips pursed.

“Because you made up some story before you left instead of just telling us the truth.” She sounded disappointed in him, which was so much worse than anger. “I guess I can understand you not telling Arthur because you thought he would tease you, but why did you have to lie to me?”

Merlin shrugged, eyes downcast.

“I don’t think I was thinking very clearly at the time,” he muttered. “I was a little overwhelmed.”

“You weren’t thinking at all, you mean,” Gwen corrected. But then she sighed, her displeasure fading. “Ambrose is a beautiful little boy.”

Merlin couldn’t help but smile at that.

“Yeah, he is.”

“And surprisingly well behaved for a child of yours,” Gwen added.

Merlin gave her an indignant look.

“I take offense to that!”

“That doesn’t make it any less true.”

“How are you, Merlin?” Lahti interrupted the friendly bickering. “Did you get caught in the fighting? Are you hurt?”

Gwen looked instantly aghast that she hadn’t thought to check him for injuries, but Merlin pushed her questing hands off.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I wasn’t in the thick of it.”

“Did you find Arthur? You said you were going to,” Gwen said. “Is he alright?”

“He’s fine too. We’re all fine.”

“Those skeletons,” Gaius said with a raised eyebrow. “They fell apart.”

“Yes.”

“Any idea why that was?”

“Arthur, Morgana, and I went down to the crypts to take care of it,” Merlin said simply.

Gaius’s eyebrow soared even higher and Lahti seemed a bit skeptical, knowing what she did about the circumstances of Morgana’s involvement in the whole skeleton situation, while Gwen only looked concerned for her friends.

“Morgana helped?” Gaius asked.

“Yeah,” Merlin said, trying to add a significant enough weight to the short answer that Gaius would understand. It seemed he managed it because Gaius’s eyes widened and he gave a short nod.

“I’m glad,” he said, a world of relief in his tone.

“Me too,” Merlin said. “She’s with Arthur now. She was pretty shaken up by it all.”

“I’ll go to her,” Gwen said, fretting already. “Gaius, do you have any calming tea? And a sleeping draught? I get the feeling she’ll be needing it tonight.”

Gaius bustled off to fetch what she’d asked for.

“You’re sure you’re alright?” Gwen asked Merlin again, biting her lip.

“I’m sure, Gwen,” he said with a fond smile as he watched her twist her hands into her skirts in worry. “I missed you,” he told her.

Gwen smiled back. “I missed you too, Merlin. And I understand why you did what you did, even if I’m not particularly happy about it. I’m just glad to have you back. And,” she added with something of a tease in her tone, “I’m looking forward to watching your son grow up to be just as wonderful as his father.”

Merlin blushed, but Gwen only laughed at his embarrassment and wrapped him up in another hug. He sank into it, feeling the strain of the evening’s events lift infinitesimally from his shoulders at the pure love and comfort she offered, even when she was displeased with him.

Gaius returned with the draught and the tea and Gwen excused herself to attend to her mistress. Merlin found himself wondering what sort of scene she would walk in on, and if Morgana would be more likely to confide in her maid now that she wasn’t so thoroughly convinced that everyone would turn away from her. He hoped she would. Maybe then he could work up the courage to tell Gwen, if not about Ambrose and the circumstances surrounding his birth, then about his own magic.

He was still reeling from the way Arthur had looked at him after he had confessed to it, from the vehemence with which Arthur had sworn to defend Ambrose, from everything that had happened that night. Arthur had reached out in good faith to someone who was actively attacking his kingdom in the hopes of winning back her confidence. He seemed to have accepted a friend who had lied to him for their entire acquaintance, though he would really need to check in on that front tomorrow and make sure they were really okay. And then he had promised to usurp his father for the sake of a child he had met barely two days ago, a child who possessed the one thing he had always been taught to fear and hate.

Merlin hadn’t known it was possible to be so grateful to or so proud of anyone.

Merlin took the stairs to his room two at a time but he pushed open the door gently to keep it from creaking too badly. The babies were both sound asleep in their little magically-constructed bassinet, as he’d suspected they would be. Moving carefully so as not to disturb Rista, Merlin dislodged Ambrose from his blanket and pulled him close. Ambrose snuffled but didn’t wake, turning his face into the warmth of Merlin’s chest.

Merlin pressed his lips to Ambrose’s forehead, the skin there soft and warm, breathing in the scent of him and imagining a world in which his son could live free—and world which maybe wasn’t so far away. He slept that night with Ambrose laid out on his chest in a way he hadn’t since he was a month old, a thick layer of magic wrapped around the infant to keep him from rolling over and falling off the side of the bed. The sensation of Ambrose’s tiny heart beating alongside his own was all the reassurance Merlin needed to have the best sleep he’d had in a year.

The next morning saw Merlin in the throne room with what seemed to be every other resident of the castle and half the lower town as well. A messenger had been by far too early to give him a message from Arthur, which was that he was to wear his best and most presentable clothes. Merlin had no idea what that was supposed to be about, but it wasn’t like he had anything that Arthur would consider presentable anyway so he wore his least threadbare outfit and called it a job well done. It wasn’t like any nice outfit was likely to stay nice when he had a squirming infant in his arms who liked to spit up on things at every opportunity.

Arthur was stood at the front of the hall, dressed in all his finery and looking annoyingly handsome as usual. Morgana was there as well, still pale and wan but somehow less burdened in a way that Merlin couldn’t describe. She met his eye across the room and gave him something that almost resembled a smile. Merlin returned it, his heart swelling up to clog his throat at the thought that maybe they could get past everything.

Uther rose from his throne, holding up a hand for silence. A night of good sleep had done him good. He had the color back in his cheeks and there was no sway in his firm stance as there had been the day before. His madness had passed and he once again commanded the room and everyone in it with ease. He stepped forward and looked imperiously upon each and every person before him, favoring them all with a hard glance before a smile broke out upon his face.

“In my time,” Uther said, his voice echoing in the chamber, “we have won many battles, but none so important as this. Every man, every woman and child, has performed their heroic best, and I thank you, and I salute you all.”

He raised a hand, tipping his head in a gesture of respect toward his people. Then his face grew grim again.

“Even before the battle,” he announced, “we knew there was a traitor in our midst, one who was almost the undoing of us. However, we have to thank the one person who outwitted them.”

Merlin frowned, looking back and forth between Arthur and Morgana. Considering Morgana was standing up on the stage and wasn’t in the dungeon in chains, Merlin figured her status as the traitor had been kept a secret. And if it were Arthur whom Uther planned to commend, he probably wouldn’t have been so roundabout with it.

His confusion must have been evident because Gaius elbowed him in the side to make him stop looking like a simpleton. Merlin would’ve jostled him back if that weren’t petty and likely to cause a disturbance in the middle of Uther’s climactic speech.

“It was this man,” Uther called out and Merlin frowned harder, “who determined the source of the dark magic that plagued our kingdom. And it was he who single-handedly destroyed that source and stopped the swarm of unnatural creatures that threatened to overwhelm our forces. For this act of courage and dedication to his kingdom, he must be commended. Merlin, come forth.”

It took Merlin a moment to recognize and comprehend the fact that the king had just said his name in front of an entire hall filled with courtiers and townspeople. It took Gaius prodding him again to make him realize that he should probably move.

Hurriedly, Merlin transferred Ambrose into Gaius’s arms and then he mounted the dais with his heart in his mouth. Uther smiled at him, a real smile with crinkly eyes and everything, and clapped him on the shoulder almost hard enough to send him to his knees. He managed to keep himself upright under the onslaught, though, with the thought that Arthur would never let him live it down if he didn’t.

“I thank you for your service, Merlin,” Uther said, loud enough to carry throughout the room. “You showed great resourcefulness and even greater courage.”

“Thank you, sire,” Merlin said, still too stunned to do anything else.

“Once again you have proven yourself to be a trusted ally in the fight against the magic that threatens us all,” Uther proclaimed and Merlin bit the inside of his cheek to keep his expression from showing exactly how ironic that was. He had to restrain himself from glancing over the king’s shoulder to see how Arthur and Morgana had taken that statement. “You will be rewarded,” Uther said.

Merlin knew better than to protest this time, even though the last time he’d been rewarded by the king he’d been relegated to a position of servitude and hard labor, and he heaved a sigh of relief when Uther pulled a large sack of gold from his pocket and pressed it into his hands.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

He bowed and then turned to face the crowd as the entire room burst into applause. Gaius beamed at him, pride shining through on his face. The old man lifted Ambrose high and the baby flailed, smiling and laughing. Just before Merlin began to feel a bit overwhelmed with the attention, Uther finally drew their attention back with the beginnings of yet another speech on the treacherous nature of magic and why they must be ever vigilant and Merlin was able to fade back a bit. He ended up next to Arthur who, now that Merlin had a chance to look at him more closely, looked unbearably smug.

“This is why you wanted me dress nicely,” Merlin whispered accusingly.

“Couldn’t have you looking like a vagrant, could I?” Arthur said.

“Some warning might’ve been nice.”

“You should’ve expected it,” Arthur said with a shrug. “You were the one to stop the curse. You were the one to defeat the army. You were the one to out the traitor and put a stop to the attack.”

“Sort of,” Merlin muttered, his face heating. “I don’t think the king would be so quick to commend me if he knew how I’d done it.”

He wanted to kick himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but Arthur didn’t react the way he expected. In fact, it almost looked like a smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“No, he really wouldn’t,” Arthur agreed lightly.

Merlin stared at him, at a loss, but Uther had obviously finished talking because chatter was rising from the crowd now and people were beginning to filter out of the hall. Merlin rocked on the balls of his feet, clutching more gold than he’d ever had—cumulatively—and not having any idea what to do next, not with Arthur so far off script. Eventually he jumped down from the dais and met Gaius halfway, trading out the bag of gold in favor of his son. Merlin didn’t realize Arthur had followed him down until Ambrose reached out over his shoulder and let out a squeal of eager laughter.

“Good morning, Ambrose,” Arthur said cheerfully, reaching out to let Ambrose take hold of his finger. Ambrose gripped it tight and waved his fist, and Arthur let his hand be dragged through the air with a fond smile on his face. He gave absolutely no indication that he was at all bothered by the fact that the baby he was playing with would inevitably develop magic.

Arthur turned his smile, a bit bashful, on Merlin.

“That’s a lot of gold,” he said. “It could probably support you and Ambrose for a while. If you wanted it to, that is. But—” Arthur bit his lip, looking away for a moment. “But if you still want to work, to fill the time and whatnot, then your old job’s still open.”

“You still want me?” Merlin asked, surprised and realizing too late that the question could be interpreted in more than one way.

“Always.”

Arthur’s answer felt loaded and Merlin’s breath caught in his throat.

“Then I’ll be there,” Merlin said.

“Late, probably,” Arthur said with a lopsided grin.

Merlin laughed, a gusty sound of pure relief, but he nodded.

“Yeah, probably,” he conceded. “Always have been. I’m certainly not going to change now.”

“I don’t want you to change,” Arthur said softly.

It was only their very public location and Gaius’s presence at his elbow that kept Merlin from falling into Arthur’s arms right then as every piece of him seemed to rearrange and fall together in a new and wholly perfect way. He blinked away tears even as he smiled wide enough to make his cheeks hurt.

Arthur ducked his head, his face flushing.

“I’ll see you for dinner,” he said.

Then he cleared his throat, reluctantly dislodged Ambrose’s grip on his finger, and strode away with his head held high and shoulders thrown back in the most dignified way possible.

Gaius gave Merlin a raised eyebrow, very aware that he was missing something, and Merlin remembered that he’d yet to actually tell Gaius what had happened the night before.

“I probably have a few things to explain, don’t I?” he asked with a wince.

“Indeed,” Gaius said, rather ominously in Merlin’s opinion.

“Right. I’ll fill you in over lunch.”

Merlin delivered Arthur’s dinner predictably late. In his defense, the girls in the kitchen had gotten very excited and affectionate when they realized that he was back for good and would be resuming his duties for the prince, which meant that he sort of got stuck in the kitchen while everyone took turns pinching his cheeks and trying to feed him. Except for the head cook, of course, who eventually rapped him on the knuckles with a ladle and shooed him away so her girls could actually get work done. Merlin wondered if there would be any force on earth strong enough to stop them if they got a hold of the baby.

“Where’s Ambrose?” Arthur asked as Merlin lay the plates out on the table.

“He was already asleep by the time I left for the kitchens,” Merlin said, pulling out the seat opposite Arthur and taking a plate of his own without waiting for an invitation. “Between Gaius and Lahti, I think he’ll have plenty of supervision until I get back.”

“Lahti is his nurse right?”

“Wet nurse, yeah.”

“She seems nice,” Arthur said. “Not that I’ve actually spoken to her. She looks like she’s nice, though.”

“She is,” Merlin said with a grin. “She’s a great friend. And her daughter Rista is sweet as can be.”

“Is Lahti a druid?” Arthur asked.

Merlin hesitated on instinct, years of fear telling him that druidism wasn’t a safe thing to admit to in Camelot, but then he met Arthur’s eyes over the table. He took a deep breath and let the fear out on a sigh.

“Yes,” he said.

Arthur simply nodded, turning back to his food.

“Is your…your magic,” Arthur said, only stumbling over the word a little bit, “the reason why you went to the druids instead of back to Ealdor?”

“Part of it,” Merlin admitted. He shifted in his seat, not sure how he was supposed to feel in this moment. “It’s, um… It’s sort of why I left Ealdor in the first place.”

“You said you didn’t fit in anymore,” Arthur recalled.

Merlin nodded.

“Everyone thought I was strange,” he said, “because strange things tended to around me. They couldn’t prove it, and there was nothing so obvious that they couldn’t wave it away, but a lot of people were suspicious. My magic was getting stronger and I didn’t know how to control it properly. The longer I stayed there, the more dangerous it got for me.”

“So you came here instead?” Arthur asked, incredulous. “You do realize that’s completely counterintuitive and borders on suicidal, right?”

“My mother knew Gaius,” Merlin said in defense. “She knew he used to practice magic himself, and she trusted him enough to ask him to help me. Teach me.”

“Did he?”

“He gave me advice,” Merlin said. “But there wasn’t a whole lot for him to actually teach me. By the time I got here, I was already stronger than he’d ever been.”

“How strong are you?” Arthur asked, and Merlin couldn’t begrudge him his skepticism. He didn’t look like much, he knew.

“Stronger than you’d ever imagine,” he said with a surety that made Arthur raise his eyebrows at him. “Strong enough that the druids took me in without a second thought and actually started calling me ‘my lord,’ which was very strange.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am absolutely serious,” Merlin laughed, enjoying Arthur’s disbelief. “It may be hard to believe, but I am actually exceedingly powerful.”

“You said, down in the crypt, that you started showing signs when you were Ambrose’s age,” Arthur said, pushing food around his plate with his fork but not taking his eyes off Merlin. “Is that…normal?”

“Virtually unheard of,” Merlin told him. “Normal is more along the lines of early teens.”

“Why are you so sure that Ambrose will be the same?”

Merlin shrugged.

“He’s my son.”

Arthur nodded, looking pensive. He returned to his food and Merlin did the same, trying to eat even though his stomach was doing strange flips that were somewhere between giddiness and nausea. Arthur didn’t say anything else until he’d cleaned his plate and pushed it aside, pouring them both wine instead. Arthur took his goblet and wandered over to look into the fireplace.

“Did Ambrose’s mother have magic too?” he asked.

Merlin froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. He dropped it to his plate and pushed back from the table, not hungry anymore.

Arthur glanced back at him and looked suddenly contrite.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry. You said you didn’t want to talk about her. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Merlin stared hard at his knees, trying to bring himself to say something. He should give Arthur the story he’d concocted about Freya. It made sense, it was perfectly plausible. And best of all, Arthur wouldn’t question it. Arthur would take his word for it and he would be respectful and move on with the conversation. He wouldn’t press him and he wouldn’t doubt him. He would go on believing that Ambrose belonged to a woman who had died long before he’d even been conceived. And he would never know that Ambrose was his.

“Not exactly,” Merlin found himself saying. He couldn’t blame Arthur for looking confused. “She—she wasn’t—”

“Merlin?” Arthur asked, concerned by far more than Merlin’s sudden inability to form a coherent sentence.

Merlin pushed himself out of his seat and took a hearty swig of wine, hoping it would smooth the way for the words he needed to say. And he needed to say them. He couldn’t let this go on any longer, couldn’t possibly live with this one final secret when so many others were out in the open now.

“There is no she,” he said.

Arthur frowned at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The impossibility of his situation struck Merlin again and he failed to fight down a laugh. He ran a hand through his hair, then brought it down over his face.

“Gods, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Merlin, who is Ambrose’s mother?” Arthur asked, opting for the direct approach now that Merlin was acting so very strangely.

Merlin gave a helpless shrug and took the plunge.

“I am.”

Arthur stared.

“Merlin, no matter how many times I may have accused you of it,” he said eventually, “you are not actually a woman.”

Merlin had to laugh again.

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Merlin. You’re not making any sense.”

“I’m a dragonlord, Arthur,” Merlin said, rushing to get the explanation out before Arthur could figure out how to react and interrupt him. “Balinor was my father, and I didn’t know that until right before we rode out to meet him. And then when he died, he passed on his dragonlord abilities to me, just as Ambrose will inherit them upon my death. But Balinor didn’t have time to explain anything about what being a dragonlord entails. So finally I had to go talk to the Great Dragon—and I’ll explain everything about him some other time, I can only tell one impossible tale at once—and he told me that passing on the ability is more important than any of the laws of nature. Dragonlords are apparently capable of bearing children through some strange machination of magic, specifically to double our chances of having sons to pass on our gift to.”

“Wait,” Arthur said, holding up a hand. He was pale and wide-eyed and completely lose. He mouthed at Merlin for a moment, speechless.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said. “What exactly are you saying? That you—”

“I know it sounds crazy and impossible,” Merlin said beseechingly. “I would never believe it if I hadn’t lived it myself.”

“Are you trying to say that you birthed Ambrose yourself?” Arthur asked, his voice strangely high-pitched. “How in the bloody hell is that even supposed to work?”

Merlin winced.

“Please don’t ask for the gory details, Arthur. Trust me, you do not want to know.”

Arthur continued to gape, his eyes roving over Merlin’s body in a way that made him squirm, probably searching for some physical evidence of pregnancy and childbearing. His eyes eventually returned to Merlin’s face, scrutinizing him for signs of insanity or dishonesty or anything else that would disprove this completely ludicrous story. But he found none of that, only a vulnerability that made Merlin feel as if he were torn wide open, laid bare and shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“If…if you’re the mother, so to speak,” Arthur said hoarsely. “Then who’s the father?”

“Do you really have to ask?” Merlin whispered, tears filling his eyes.

Arthur put a hand over his mouth. He turned away, then turned back, eyes unfocused and darting around the room as he tried to comprehend what he’d just been told. Merlin stood trembling as he waited for it to sink in, for the disgust and horror he knew was just under the surface to flare up. He waited for Arthur to sneer at him, to throw him out, to tell him to take Ambrose and leave before he called the guards because there was only so much unnaturalness he could take.

But then Arthur looked at him with eyes that sparkled and said, “Ambrose is—” He let out a shaky sound that was almost a laugh. “He’s mine?”

Merlin nodded, his throat too tight to speak. Arthur put both hands over his mouth this time, but Merlin almost thought he saw a smile before it was hidden. Arthur dug both hands into his hair, holding his breath and then letting it out in a gust. He laughed again, openly this time.

“He’s my son?” he asked, dazed.

“He’s our son,” Merlin said.

He found himself wrapped in Arthur’s arms before he could register that Arthur was moving. Arthur held him tightly, lifted him from the ground, spun him around, and set him back down again without letting him go.

“Arthur?” Merlin asked breathlessly, not daring to believe what his senses were telling him.

Arthur pulled back to take Merlin’s face in his hands. He was smiling, a blinding grin that made his eyes crinkle up and forced the tears from them.

“Our son,” he repeated with open wonder. “We have a son.”

He kissed Merlin, his lips clumsy in their haste and excitement. Merlin was left dazed and swaying when Arthur released him to take up pacing again, his steps quick and energetic, like he wanted nothing more than to run and shout.

“Arthur?” Merlin said once more. “You don’t...”

“Don’t what?” Arthur asked.

“Don’t…mind?”

It seemed like a drastically inadequate way to formulate his question, but he couldn’t bring himself to put it into words properly.

“Mind?” Arthur said with a laugh. “Merlin, I’m a father. We’re both—”

Arthur was smiling too hard to speak clearly. He ran forward and took Merlin by the shoulders.

“We have a son,” he said, as if saying it one more time would help make it more real.

“Through magic,” Merlin said, not wanting to ruin this moment, but feeling the need to point out all the reasons Arthur wasn’t supposed to be taking this so well. “It’s unnatural, Arthur. It’s so, so wrong.”

Arthur gave him a shake.

“Nothing,” he said fiercely, “nothing about Ambrose is wrong.”

“He’s got magic,” Merlin said weakly. “Or he will.”

“Apparently half the people I care about have magic,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “Either I accept it or I turn my back on all of you. And I can’t do that. I could never do that.”

“Even if I’m a—a freak?” Merlin asked, his voice breaking.

Arthur wiped a tear from Merlin’s cheek with his thumb, cradling his face.

“I don’t care. I already lost you once,” he said, his voice ragged. “Nothing is worth losing you again. Merlin, I love you.”

Merlin let out a sob, all his walls crumbling under Arthur’s words, or maybe he was flying apart as a weight was lifted. He let Arthur pull him close, hold him and stroke his hair. He clung to Arthur’s shoulders and cried for all the times in the last year he’d not allowed himself to. All the while Arthur murmured in his ear, soft affirmations and endearments, reassurance that he didn’t care, that he wasn’t going anywhere, that he loved him, that he loved Ambrose already and would protect him with everything he had. It seemed like a long time before Merlin had control of himself enough say it back.

“God, I love you, Arthur,” he whispered into Arthur’s neck. “I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” Arthur asked, pulling back to look Merlin in the eye.

“For everything,” Merlin said. “For leaving. For lying to you about so much, about everything. For not trusting you the way I should have.”

“Sometimes fear is stronger any trust,” Arthur said with a small smile and Merlin recognized his own words quoted back at him. “I understand that. And I’m the one who should be sorry, Merlin. I’m so sorry you ever had to feel like that, especially about me. And I know that one ally isn’t enough, but I can promise you that no harm will ever come to if I can stop it. You and Ambrose and Morgana and Gaius. I will protect you all with my life.”

“I know,” Merlin said, awed. “I know you will.” He reached out to run the pads of his fingers across Arthur’s cheek, trailing over his lips. “Thank you. I can’t say that enough.”

Arthur caught Merlin’s hand in his and pressed a kiss to his palm that sent shivers down Merlin’s spine.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Arthur said. “Just take me to see our son.”

Merlin took Arthur’s hand in his, and he had never felt more whole.