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Chapter Text

                  My love,

                  Hunith purses her lips over her brother’s letter, then looks up suspiciously at the travel worn man standing before her stoop. He’s tall, broad in the shoulder and sharp in the jaw with hair thick enough to braid. His clothes are muddied and stained, and there’s the beginning of something settling along his spine that reads of a weight beyond road weariness.

                  She reads Gaius’ words once more, testing them against her brother’s handwriting and tone, and with a final sigh, steps back to let him in.

                  If Gaius was asking her, she could not refuse. She loved her brother too dearly.

                  She points to the hearth, “Sleep for the night. We’ll talk this over in the morning, see where we can send you.”

                  He nods and lumbers his big frame onto the floor.

---

                  Merlin stares down at his bedspread, looking aside from the thing directly before him. His eyes skim back and skip away repeatedly, before finally being drawn down in helpless gravity to the first of the three books his father had left him.

                  It’s dark, bound in aged black leather and tied by a matching cord, the impressions of runes on its face he doesn’t dare read. Similar to the others, its pages are knobbled and worn on their edge, and when his head dips too close there’s the faintest trace of woodsmoke and sugar, the barest hint of handling by hands that knew flame.

                  It makes his stomach curdle.

                  He turns his eyes around the room, blinking rapidly as his fingers curl around the thick blue blanket he was settled on top of, the one Gwaine bought him three winters past when he saw Merlin was still using Gaius’ ratty attic ones. He’d protested until the knight had marched purposefully into his room and spread it over his mattress, taking the other ones to the tailors for scraps. After his first night with it, he’d never complained again.

                  His room has seen similar changes in the recent years, Arthur’s inner council seeming to have decided his lack of material possessions disturbing. There’s a small plant by the window from Gwen’s flower garden, and a series of colorful cloths to fold into handkerchiefs in varying shades of red and blue from Lancelot, and a set of quality ink pens and paper from Leon. Even ever silent Percival had wandered up to him one day and handed him a pair of gloves for winter patrol tailored to his long fingers.

                  He was surrounded by the kindnesses of those that cared for him, and he’d thought it would make this easier. Certainly easier than Gaius peering over his neck, trying and failing to restrain his inner scholar as he peeked for secrets of the ever elusive dragonlords.

                  He turns from the wretched blue sky of his window and reaches out, settling the flat of his palm over the ridged surface.

                  Home.

                  The impression is there in the markings, and instead of pulling the binding open he closes his eyes and leans forward, listening to the brushes of his fingers over the near invisible symbols.

                  History.

                  Heroism.

                  He presses into the notes, broadening and dipping into the song as the runes push out in unsung lyrics, fitting into the rhythm with designed ease.

                  Hardship.

                  Heart.

                  He lets his hand slip off the last onto the soft fabric of the bespread, screwing his mouth shut as the slightest of tremors rake his form.

                  Heritage

                  He opens his eyes and looks down at the simple dark cover.

                  There was little he’d been able to salvage from the time he had with his father, the most significant being the merlin pendant he’d gifted him in a moment of pure love that now hung solemnly around the prince’s neck. The charmed silver has survived the dragon flame, but the rest left to him had been tucked away in a pack meant for a few days travel. Small knives and supplies, a water canteen, and the few possessions the man had wanted to keep from his old life.

                  Three books. Two letters. One ring.

                  Gaius had discovered the items after three weeks of Merlin leaving the pack to a corner, rifling through it himself one evening. It had resulted in the longest shouting match the two had ever had, ending with the warlock screaming his throat raw and dissolving, much to his embarrassment, into hiccupping tears. He’d been angry, lividly so, but he’d be lying if he said the simple weight of his father’s ring at his throat wasn’t a comfort.

                  He reaches up and touches the smooth band, settled comfortably alongside the triskelion he still kept.

                  It’s not his house ring. That rested with Hunith, and he had a dim understanding he would need to collect it from her one day. What settled below his throat was his father’s wedding band, and to Merlin it meant more than any carved and sacred crest.

                  It was poor man’s gold, flaking in many places, notably where his father’s thumb had rubbed it permanently warm in years of absent daydreaming, carved in the simplest marks of the old religion for bond and permanence and love. It was a physical symbol of all he’d never been free to have, and a solid weight of the unrelenting and fierce caring his father bore for his mother and later devoted into him.

                  Some days, especially now, Merlin needed to know he was loved.

                  He sighs away his thoughts, touching the book named Heritage and running his finger under its cover as it creaks open in gentle groan of pleasure, flipping the first smooth page until he reaches the ornate scribbling of dark ink that stains the empty space.

                  The taming of dragons is not a safe practice for any man of unsure heart. The sons raised to our calling are never to be those corrupted by pride or cowardice, and indeed the goddess will pass her gift to others if this is so. Dragons are a wild and ancient race, and bonding settles a weight of time and trust onto the soul of a man that should be borne neither by the unprepared nor the unworthy.

                  Learn to trust in the fury of your conviction, but do not fail to temper your mind with the wisdom and honor of the legacy we offer. So you are one of us, so you belong to us, and so we walk with you in the deepest shadows.  

                  The council reigns in the old forests even in times of blood , and the lords have always walked among the wicked men. Give devotion to the Mother, give passion to the Maiden, give service to the Crone. Follow the path we have beaten down for you, our sons.  

                  Albion draws near.

---

                  Merlin blinks, shaking off the stupor of his motionless hours at Gaius’ shout, slamming the book shut and darting to his door, bursting into the healer’s ward and promptly tripping down the rickety steps that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of making him easy to mock. He pops up, hands up to fight, looking wildly around and likely largely ridiculous with his messed hair and nightshirt crooked on his shoulders, “Gaius? What is it? What’s wrong?”

                  He focuses on his uncle and sees the ever-climbing eyebrow, scans to the side to an exasperated Arthur with twin minions in metal plates behind him, a pair of his father’s knights, “Honestly, Merlin,” the prince drawls, “How you managed to go all your life without lopping off a limb is a mystery to me.”

                  He scowls, biting off his remark and glancing at the watching men. They’re not strangers. Few in Camelot were these days, in part because of the comprehensive network of friendships he’d developed and because Uther had grown intensely cautious about who he let reside in his court for longer than a handful of days. Helen of Mora had left a resounding impression on the tyrant’s nightmares, it seemed, not to mention the notable Edwin Muirden, and his long-lost sweet daughter turned witch by the vile arts of magic.

                  These two were worth little in his mind. Noble. Boorish. Blind. The sort that caused him trouble on misguided principle and vain pleasure.

                  Smoothing his features hurriedly, he bows to his prince, careful confusion in his voice, “What are you doing here, my lord?”

                  “It’s my castle, idiot, I can go where I like.”

                  Arthur’s eyes glint happily as Merlin grinds his teeth, knowing full well the manservant would be nothing but respectful in front of the two so-called knights.

                  “Of course, my lord, I only meant-“

                  He sighs and stalks forward, bored with the game, “. Don’t ask me to explain. Avin, Avos, search out here, and,” the prince turns enough to glare at the two, “be careful with the physician’s things, or I will have you scrounging in the fields to replace each grain you lose.”

                  The fun properly kicked out of them, the two mutter their “yes, sire’s” and set to work, Gaius tutting critically whenever he desires a flinch. Arthur had been certain to be extra threatening after the first time the chambers had been ransacked in one of the king’s desperate scourings.

                  Arthur strides into Merlin’s room, manservant trailing nervously after.

                  He’d been setting the room to rights the moment he left it, of course, cluttering up his desk until his careful notes on the warring kingdoms and power shifts were buried under half-hearted doodles of plant stalks and flowers, his boots toppled akimbo in odd interval beside his bed, a shirt draped along his chair and trousers flung across the chest. Most importantly, his magical possessions were tucked in a wide pocket below his floorboards. Tripping was a wonderful way to hide one’s eyes.

                  The prince kicks the door shut, “I’ll give it a few minutes, let them think I’m breaking things or something.” He flops unceremoniously onto Merlin’s bed, snorting at the wrinkled cover and lopsided pillow, “Do you ever make your bed, Merlin?”

                  The manservant folds his arms, huffing in annoyance. As a matter of fact, his bed functioned as a “slightly more comfortable chair” rather than for its presumed purpose, and its rumpled state was the result of a clever realization of his that he ought to at least try to look like he slept in the thing. It would be more accurate to say he unmade his bed.

                  “I make yours.” He counters, then gestures to his sprawled state, “No, please, barge right in, it’s just my room.”

                  Arthur rolls his eyes, hands tucked under his blonde locks, stubbornly cheerful, “We’ve been over this, Merlin. My castle, my room, my servant.”

                  He groans and snatches up his proper shirt, changing without comment. When he looks over Arthur’s eyes have strayed to his desk, snagging on his inked sketches of the flowers on the hill behind his home. “So.” He looks back somewhat awkwardly, “How’s your day off? Gotten drunk yet?”

                  He takes a moment to answer, eyes snagging on the hint of the silver chain at the prince’s throat, loose without the pendant being pulled downwards.

                  “I’m not a drunk you prat.” Merlin protests half-heartedly. It was an annoying but admittedly convenient lie, and at this point his objections were doing more to convince the prince than acquiescence would, “I helped Gaius a bit in the morning, he needed some sorting done, but mostly I’ve been in here.”

                  “Doing…?”

                  He huffs again. Arthur seriously needed to learn the language of impatient sighs, considering how many he threw out himself, “Doing whatever I please. It’s my day off, which you are, again, interrupting!”

                  The prince waves a loose hand and sits up, “Don’t be such a girl, Merlin. You know what my father’s like.”

                  He did. More than anyone in the city or the court or the kingdom or the prince, Merlin knew what Uther was like. He loosens the reflexive curl of his hand.

                  He strides to the window and plucks up the handkerchief on its sill, tying it in a quick knot.

                  “Ah!” Arthur says, grinning at him, “I knew something was off!”

                  He rolls his eyes, “I think that’s about long enough for your father’s men.”

                  The prince shrugs, “I suppose so.” He wanders out the door, trusting Merlin to trail after, and looking imperiously down at the taller of the two knights, currently bent over a pot of seeds, “Are you quite finished?”

                  They don’t dare say no.

                  Arthur sends them out ahead, turning seriously to the physician, “If anyone comes back to search tell them I’ve been here and make sure they check with me or Leon.”

                  It’s not the first time he’s cautioned them so. After a few high-strung instances of planted evidence, the prince had allowed no one to search the upper tower without his accompaniment.

                  “Thank you, sire, we will do so.” Gaius offers formally.

                  “Go on before I kick you out.” Merlin says, screwing his nose into a wrinkle.

                  Arthur laughs, waving farewell as he disappears out the door, “See you bright and early tomorrow, Merlin, expect to be mucking stalls!”

                  He stares after the vanished prince, huffing this time without the targeted audience and kicking faintly at the air, “Prat.”

                  He waves at his uncle and trudges back to his room, lying back where Arthur had been and staring upward for a long time.

---

                  I have no excuse to offer you.

                  Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t end up sending him anywhere. He simply… stays. It’s strange how easy it is, to move him into her life. Not that she had much filling it to begin with, but the days on her farm were long and his strong hands made the tasks she dreaded easier.

                  She ignored the gossip from the town, turning from the whispering women to the gentle slope of his eyes. He had the sort of eyes her mother had once told her to find, kind, and tragic because of it.

                  By the winter, she found her heart in his hands.

---

                  The moon’s just beginning to stir upwards when he moves his bed aside and raises the old floorboards, lifting out his cloak and other items with a gesture. He tugs on his boots and leaves his jacket, pulling the deep green fabric of the druid cloak around his shoulders instead, fixing the clasp and lifting his hood. He leaves the staff, reaching up briefly in forgetful motion to center himself on the two small items around his neck, the triskelion cool against the common warmth of the ring.

                  He tucks a few things into his bag and pulls it on, then creeps silently out his door. In other places he could travel quickly, jumping leagues in steps, but the citadel was a dead zone, and it took far too much internal energy to push him from his room to the forest. Left with no other option, he’d become an expert at moving in the shadows of the guard, slipping first past a snoring Gaius and then continuing down familiar halls until he could sweep invisibly around the courtyard and through the lower town, making his way to one of the small forgotten openings in the city wall.

                  He walks through the outlying fields at an unhurried pace, letting himself adjust, tilting his head side to side as his ears pop and music floods in cool tides. The road is straight and broad, Camelot’s strength in its flat stones, and they thrum under his step in fierce pride, calling themselves empire. He pulls back his hood, a bird overhead with wide wing swooping after his path, and he glances through its sharp eyes and orients himself towards the woods. His gait is steady as the ground folds for him, until one stride covers the length of two and then more, a mile of track sent behind in in a few firm strides. His senses heighten and burn, like sleeping limbs rising in a buzz, too numb for delicate use but good enough to take him halfway into the deep trees in a few minutes time.

                  The forest stirs, spirits trailing their awareness over him, offering their awe. He follows the discordant, struggling notes, beautiful instruments strummed by unsure hands, until he reaches the camp.

                  They’re awake still, his people, eating and whispering quietly to one another in stories he did not wish to hear. The clearing is filled by them, but their numbers are half of what they’d been weeks before, and the sting is in the softness of their voices and the redness of their eyes.

                  This is the first he’s come back since that day, seeking them out in their new camp miles from their old place. Though the bodies had been left, as they too often had to be, the ceremony to commit their spirits of those lost was not held until the same moon rose. This was so the proper form of the maiden could take them in hand and lead them to the crone. It was an old tradition, and one he felt deeply inside of him.  

                  He steps among them with some uncertainty. He is partially to blame for their pain. Had he not opened himself so freely that night Uther’s men would never have been drawn to them, pulled by the unseen gravity that sung in all souls.

                  Their murmurings quiet, eyes turning to him, and he wonders what he looks like through their gaze, if he’s anything like the boy he fears himself to solely be.

                  And then a child’s voice is shouting his name and a little girl runs to his arms. Lori. He lifts her up, and he can feel her belief inside her, pure and bright as a hanging star and burdened already with the weight of the entire earth. So young. He embraces her, remembering her dead mother, and the way his power had been wrenched from him for the sake of her life. His tears come softly, then, and the awkwardness breaks away as his grief shows itself to them. His people reach out and he is welcomed to their hearths as one of their own.

                  The mourning ceremony is a simple thing, color thrown on fire and a prayer with lifted hands, each name given its place in the air. The few remaining elders commit the spirits with great cries from their voices, but when it comes Iseldir’s turn he asks to do it himself. He wakes into the currents of his music and finds the curling chord of the man’s magic, twining it around his fingers in flashing thread and letting it rise from his hand with a word older than the forest they wait in. He had been a friend and deserves this honor.

                  After, there is music and food and rest, but he cannot stay. Before he goes, though, he finds his way to the three whose charms he still has and offers them back if they wish. None take them back.

                  The original owner of the triskelion is a boy named Daegal, young, without family to speak of. Merlin looks at him and sees himself, and he speaks with him a long while, and tries to tell him a bit of the pattern of things, of the way souls could be stretched and strummed like lute strings and how the right set of notes could set the whole earth to spinning before the sun. He doesn’t seem to understand, but he believes, a true faith in his heart. If Merlin ever decides to be Emrys entire, he thinks he would have this boy close to him, as Iseldir once was.

                  And then he goes, returning through the dark to the high walls and slipping in easily between rounds of guards. He leaves his people, though a part of him wishes to remain, and ties his grief away as deep and as tight as he can. He had chores to do, and a prince to serve, and if he ever saw Geraint or Lamorak or any of the others in the passing corridor, he would tighten his jaw and let them pass.

                  It was all he could do.

---

                  Merlin sweeps past the attending guards, refusing to allow one to scramble and open the way for him, sending the heavy wood crashing inward and clattering obnoxiously into the prince’s chambers, “Rise-and-shiiiiine! Up and at em’! Time’s a wastin’!”

                  A long groan emerges from the blankets before the weary lord lifts his head from his feather pillows. Arthur squints at him darkly as he clutters breakfast onto the table before shifting his rumpled glare to the horrified guard. Merlin looks over himself, realizing the man must be new. He wrinkles his nose and makes a shooing motion with his hand. The second guard on duty pops forward and hastily shuts the door.

                  Free from observation, the prince promptly flops back down and covers his head with a dramatic arm, “Merlin are you trying to wake the entire castle?”

                  “Just reminding you how lovely my day off was and how often you should give them to me.” The manservant chirps, striding to the curtains and throwing them open. Dawn pours into the space, throwing the large series of rooms into shades of red and riches, the furs and silks of Arthur’s wealth never more casual -nor more striking- than they were his chambers. He ties back each stretch of fabric, ignoring the way the prince pulls the covers over his head.

                  Task complete, he noisily draws out the dining table chair, prompting Arthur to squawk and sit up rapidly, “You’ll scrape the floor!”

                  Merlin looks at him in mock confusion and drags it back a few inches more in painful whine, “What do you mean, sire?”

                  Arthur growls and throws off the covers, marching over in his sleep trousers to cuff at the back of his head. The manservant ducks aside, hurrying quickly to strip the bed lest Arthur be drawn back into its tempting gravity as he had many times before.

                  The prince sits down to his breakfast, becoming a wordless brute for a few minutes as he focuses solely on his meal. Merlin shakes his head and folds the sheets in sharp corners, then goes to the wardrobe and begins pulling out whatever will be needed for the day. Arthur would have training -a rare treat these days, and likely part of the reason he’d sprung from sleep at so little prodding- and then a bath and a quiet lunch with his papers. The afternoon would be spent leading the council chamber and preparing his thoughts for the petitioner’s day tomorrow. Dinner would be with the court, and in the evening the prince would no doubt move silently through his sword patterns as he forced the last of the tension from his shoulders by sheer will. Then to bed, and the next day to rule and wonder and fight again.

                  “I’ve decided to go on a hunt.”

                  Merlin stops mid-motion, rounding in indignation and sputtering his protests.

                  Arthur’s serious countenance breaks into a boy’s laughter, bread nearly slipping from his fingers as he shakes, “Next week Merlin, not today.” He snickers, “You should see your face.”

                  The manservant sniffs, turning back to his chores, “Like I would let you go on a hunt the day before petitioners with who knows who lurking in the forest.”

                  “Once again, I’m the prince.” Arthur reminds him in the voice of the long-suffering, “I can do what I want.”

                  “Not if it’s stupid you can’t.” he grumbles, but let’s the matter rest.

                  Eventually the lord stands to be dressed, and Merlin moves with years of certainty in each movement, tucking fabric and smoothing sleeves. He looks briefly at the pendant that bore the image of his name, strung even in sleep. He settles to buttoning and turns his thoughts to the idiocy of fashion, glad training clothes were the simplest of the courtly indulgences. He kneels to slip the boots on, forming quick knots and tugging to make sure they’re loose in the right places, then stands again to look him over and give a firm nod.

                  The prince stares at him in exasperation, “Aren’t you forgetting something, Merlin?”

                  He widens his eyes in mock confusion.

                  “My-“

                  “Sword?” he finishes with him, grinning and wiggling his eyebrows in a way he once caught Arthur trying idly to mimic, “No, sire, I would never.”

                  Arthur huffs, but it’s good natured and he accepts the offered blade.

                  The moment he would usually turn away passes, and Merlin is suddenly left staring awkwardly as he waits for some sort of dismissal.

                  The prince clears his throat, looking to the side, “I wondered- I wanted to ask-“ he struggles for a few moments. The manservant lets him. Arthur was never the sort to be rushed. “How are you?” he manages finally, “I know…I know these sorts of things require time, and you’ve had very little to yourself, but I am trying to be…helpful.” He finishes lamely.

                  Merlin blinks, hands tightening around one another as his grief socks into him, struggling for a moment to get a clear breath. He swallows, “I’m okay.”

                  He’s not. This wasn’t the sort of thing you could be okay with. Okay didn’t mean “allowable” it meant “living with,” but he didn’t know how to convey the nuance, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to stand here in his memories for the time it would take to explain.

                  Arthur nods, his hand going up idly to touch the silver bird, then lowering again, “That hunt I want to go on, would you take me to his grave, to pay my respects?”

                  And it’s so Arthur, so purely the good shining soul that no tyrant’s fury and no traitorous blood could sweep out of him. Honor cloaks him in greater reverence than a crown.

                  He’s too shocked to think through his answer, “My father doesn’t have a grave.”

                  “What?” the prince stares, forehead crinkling down, “Merlin, I insist you-“

                  But how could he tell him there’s been no body to bury? No eyes to rest closed or arms to fold in calm sleep. Nothing solid to grip to and no last hand to take in his own.

                  “My father cannot have a grave in Camelot.” He says quietly, staring downwards and wondering what death wish made him dredge up such a confession.

                  The prince doesn’t understand, “What do you mean? Of course he-“

                  He interrupts his lord for the second time, snapping his gaze up with eyes burned by tears, fists curling at his sides and voice checked from yelling by the last of his control, the slightest of vibrations flowing underneath his voice, “My father cannot have a marked stone, Arthur!”

                  The silence drops between them and forces them apart.

                  Merlin steps back and then again, Arthur staring after him in blank expression, “May I go, sire?” he cannot keep the trembling from his tone, but at least it keeps out of his hands.

                  The prince nods, and Merlin flees.

                  He’s halfway downstairs before he realizes he forgot the laundry.

---

                  I sought to save you in leaving. I know now I was wrong.

                  It was easy to love him, and this was somehow strange to her. She’d never had an easy time loving. Too many people thought she was a thing to break, a thing to use. It was why she held her land in her own name, and not her brother’s. She would not risk her space being stolen away alongside her self.

                  Ah, but him, he loved without flinching. He gave his heart to anything that asked, to the long blowing grass and the wide arc of sky and the cawing merlins that flew so often above the house, drawing his eyes and whispered prayers.

                  And when she asked, his heart was hers.

---

                  He can’t avoid Arthur, of course, but he can be just late enough for training that the knights are already paired in their rows by the time he arrives. The prince is busy dueling Leon, the two moving around another in a way Merlin notes is almost lazy, warming up. He settles down on a bench to watch.

                  Leon was a sturdy fighter, methodical with surprising specks of ingenuity. He was a strategist and valued for his expertise in every classical form the knights were shown.

                  Arthur was a born swordsman.

                  Merlin hadn’t been around for his first lessons, but he had little doubt the prince had walked up with his wooden sword with the same glint in his eye and grip in his fist that he took up his steel one today. He was quick, ruthless, and took any opportunity left open to him with a precision that made him one of the most terrifying opponents in the five kingdoms. Leon had helped train him, but he could not match him, and as the prince’s strokes picked up speed it soon became clear how little Arthur was going to hold back today.

                  The manservant sighs and sweeps his gaze over the other knights, picking out the shapes of his friends.

                  Gwaine is busy mocking Percival and his missing sleeves. Merlin also privately thought the larger knight’s insistence on sleeveless chainmail was foolish, but judging by the giant’s darkening scowl that wasn’t an opinion he should be voicing. Lancelot is glancing over occasionally at the conversation, looking torn at whether or not it would be safe to intervene between the dancing blades.

                  He jerks his head over as his name is called with an exasperation that indicates he’s been tuning his lord out for far too long, “What?”

                  “Get your lazy arse up off that bench and bring a shield over!” the prince gripes.

                  Merlin pulls back slightly, affronted and annoyed, the climbing sun hot on the back of his neck as he ever so slowly gets to his feet and ambles to the shields, hefting one of the circular burdens and ignoring the mixed reaction of the knights. Those who knew Arthur best watched with a fond sort of regret, as though torn between amusement and apology for the earful he would likely receive for the insolence. The other knights simply stared in shock and scorn. The manservant knew his awful behavior was near legendary among the castle servants and had long ago assumed the upper nobility were equally baffled by it. He baffled himself sometimes. He was certainly feeling some measure of regret now as he approached Arthur’s ever-darkening scowl.

                  Instead of taking the shield, the prince points wordlessly to the training circle. He can’t hold back his groan, shooting his lord a pleading look before resigning himself, stepping into the middle and lifting the thing up to protect his chest.

                  For a moment, Arthur faces him, and he is everything a man should know to fear. Strong and silver with unflinching determination and unbending will, strength in every shift of his muscles and skill in every trace of his eyes. Merlin feels his stomach drop into his gut.

                  The prince comes at him relentlessly. He gasps and staggers back a few steps under the first brutal assault before he gets his feet under him, Arthur snorting like a boar in annoyance.

                  He doesn’t know why he’s doing this. He had knights to train today. There was no reason for him to want to beat him into a pulp. It could be this morning upsetting him, but that hadn’t been a proper argument, and Arthur reacted this way to anger, not shame.

                  He ducks his head and takes it, arms straining. The sword clashes into the wood and jars him, no rhythm in its patterns. He steadies his breathing and screws his eyes shut, suddenly recalling the cool sensation of cold metal sliding through his stomach, the strange weightlessness of a severed arm, the helpless gasp of blood-filled lungs.

                  He grits his teeth, darting a glance up. Arthur is deep in his motions now, trance-like as he follows the ritualistic sets, a strange peace in the settled determination of his features.

                  His magic whispers under him, dust shifting around his feet, and he forces it to still. His prince was not a threat, no matter the emblem on his armor or the anger in his eyes. He would not fight back.

                  The world narrows around them. He can’t feel anyone or anything else, forgetting all the other watching eyes. They are alone, together, in their opposition.

                  Suddenly, the wood splits.

                  Arthur gives a sharp gasp and tries to pull away, Merlin turning instinctively, but the steel still drives down on his arm, and he falls backwards, gasping.

                  His head is filled with ringing, but not of his music, and he blinks dizzily as someone yanks him forwards. Arthur, checking his hair for blood. Strong hands run over his shoulders and arms, searching for breaks, and then fingers are circling the fabric of his coat.

                  He pulls back, shifting and looking up in the same moment Arthur realizes that though the fabric is sliced through, his skin is unblemished. His prince stares, then shoves up his sleeve and brushes the space, looking up slowly at his manservant.

                  “Did you hurt him?” a voice demands.

                  Merlin starts, twisting and staring up at an enraged Gwaine. The rebellious knight drops and reaches out, glaring at his prince and fussing needlessly.

                  Arthur is instantly offended, “No! Of course not, there’s not a scratch on him!”

                  There should be. They both know there should be.

                  Merlin thinks of the single moment, of the heat and the flare and the instinctive shove down on his magic and then another sort of force rising up, of flashing shadow as his scales moved instinctively to defend. He swallows, wondering what might’ve happened if they hadn’t receded before Arthur had reached him.

                  “This is ridiculous!” Gwaine snaps, holding Merlin tightly, “You shouldn’t be whaling on him like he’s some sort of recalcitrant squire! He’s not a knight, and he shouldn’t have to take your beatings, no matter how much your knickers are twisted because he didn’t fold your socks nicely!”

                  A few others are around, Leon nervously trying to shield viewers of the shouting match in all possible directions while Percival pointedly shoos people back to their tasks.

                  “He’s my manservant!” Arthur retorts hotly, “I’ll do what I bloody well please with his time-“

                  “Manservant,” the knight counters, jostling Merlin, “Not knight, and not training dummy-“

                  “Gwaine!” Merlin shouts, grinding the argument to a standstill as he rips his arm away, scrambling to his feet, “I’m perfectly fine, thank you!”

                  Gwaine looks up guiltily, getting up as Arthur does, the two men looking weirdly chagrined for upsetting him.

                  He huffs, struggling to think through his anger, turning finally to Gwaine, “It is not becoming for a knight to shout at his lord. Apologize.”             

                  Gwaine flushes. Merlin can see Leon’s incredulous glance, ignoring it pointedly. After a beat, Gwaine masters himself enough to turn to Arthur and lower himself into a bow, “I have behaved poorly towards you, my lord. I apologize for my manner.”

                  Not his words, but his method. His tone. No one misses the semantics.

                  Arthur nods, seeming all at once incredibly tired, “No harm done, Gwaine, and you weren’t wrong on every count.” He hedges.

                  The tension seeps away.

                  Merlin nods, satisfied, and turns entirely from the man to Arthur, an effective dismissal. He steps slightly forward, relying on the other’s efforts to keep this private, and dips his head, “Are you well, my lord?”

                  The prince sucks in a sharp breath, “Merlin- Merlin I didn’t mean to hit you. I’m sorry.”

                  He nods. Once, he would’ve melted, would’ve forgiven and been free with his smiles. Now he knows the taste of blood and the cut of teeth around a scream. He tilts his head, “I know, Arthur. It’s alright.” Because it has to be. “I have errands to run for Gaius. Is there anything you would ask of me?”

                  The prince shakes his head.

                  Merlin bows, nods to the others, and takes his leave, steps fast as he takes himself out of the sun and the dust and the stinging clash of steel. He turns blindly through the castle’s back corridors until he can duck into an alcove and crouch down, pressing the back of a hand to his mouth and hissing around his sudden, unspeakable grief.

                  He shoves up his sleeve and brushes his fingers over the place the scales had risen to defend him, his father’s gift. He stares and trembles and then a single diamond square rises, black and smooth and strong. He presses his thumb to it and simply breathes, hunched over where no one will find him, for as long as it takes his heart to calm.      

---

                  He spends the rest of the afternoon puttering in Gaius’ workshop. His mentor had raised an eyebrow at his continual presence, no doubt having assumed Merlin would be eager to return to his regular duties after being cooped up the day before, but doesn’t object. Instead, he badgers him with questions.

                  Merlin scowls down at the table as he mashed slugs and small wriggling things into paste, glaring at the vile goo and wondering how there was no better cure for common pox than smears of this. The physician, rather than mixing his tonics, is bent over a blank tome, dutifully scratching in line after line of whatever comments the manservant managed to mutter around his thoughts.

                  “And the calling of the lightning, you say it had form to you? The energy?”

                  He sighs. Gaius had taken it upon himself to study the practice of magic through Emrys’ eyes, insisting such work could become invaluable in the years to come. Merlin tolerated the old man, if only just. He knew Gaius had good reason to be so eager. A literal creature of magic was living in his back room in a time where most had been hunted to extinction. Moreover, he was forever a lover of knowledge, and he knew for all those Gaius had seen walk the steps of the pyre, he felt the same ache for every book lost to Uther’s rule as he did for every man.

                  The trouble was little of what he felt could be articulated. He could offer metaphor and description for hours, but he never felt he could touch into the core of it.

                  “Sort of. Yes. No.”

                  Gaius humphs pointedly.

                  He tries again, “It…” he furrows his brow and flows back along the notes, remembering the way they strung themselves through the air, “It was distinct in each piece, but clear. The shape of it jagged and cold, but I knew I could bend it as wished. Lightning isn’t…it’s not light. It’s energy. I mean, light is energy, so it is, but it isn’t. It’s…opposing energies, mixing.”

                  The physician looks over at him, an eyebrow raised in clear skepticism, “Opposing forces in one?”

                  “They discharge into the earth.” He says idly, “The earth holds the energy, and the lightning wants to return to it, or at least is drawn to it. Its notes are…high. Thunder is deep and lightning is far above, and its sound is in its movement. It is movement, in a form, and cannot exist in still places.”

                  Gaius seems doubtful, but he scratches down and makes his words a record all the same.

                  “And light, it’s an energy?”

                  Merlin lifts his hand and snaps his fingers, and a glowing orb appears above their heads, bobbing slightly. Gaius squints at it. He didn’t have to snap, but it helped imply causation. He tried to be clear.

                  “Light and heat are the same thing, in this.”

                  “So the sun-“

                  “Is really really hot, yeah.”

                  The physician hums and makes a note, “And when you called-“

                  “Gaius.” He interrupts, fidgeting in his seat, “Can we please stop for now? You know- I-“ he sighs, “This is hard for me.”

                  The old man peers back at him. He’d chronicled much of the technical aspects of Merlin’s adventures, but some had been left unmentioned for their pain. Nimue was one Gaius had been trying to coax out of him for years, and when he’d learned Merlin had called down lightning, he’d been only that much more determined to learn how it was done.

                  While he appreciated the intent, the day he’d called down his power was the same day he took his first life. Or his first calm, intending-to-kill life. He’d felt her soul dissolve, felt her die, felt his song sweep over hers and strike her into silence. Gaius had nearly died. His mother had been caught up in his mess. He’d reached farther into his magic than he’d ever known he could go and become someone who could bargain for the lives of men. Things like that left their scars in places frailer than skin.

                  Gaius knows him well and seems to read all this. He shuts the book without complaint, shuffling to his feet to hide it among their shelves, “Very well, my boy, but then perhaps you could tell me why you’ve decided to spend this lovely summer afternoon tucked away with me instead of attending Arthur? Or at the very least making the proper sort of trouble for one of your age?”

                  Merlin feels his lips quirk up ever so slightly, “Do we know how old I am?” It was a favored debate between them.

                  The physician huffs and begins to mutter over his vials, “Don’t try and distract me. I want the truth out of you.”

                  He hesitates, wondering how much to mention of the fight in the courtyard. He knew Gaius disapproved of Arthur’s use of him as a sparring partner, and he’d certainly eyed the slice in his coat sleeve, but if he was honest his mind had been turning to other things. Namely, this morning. “Arthur asked to see my father’s grave.”

                  The physician gives a half-moment’s pause, “Ah. And you said?”

                  “That he could not have a marked grave in Camelot.”

                  Gaius whirls on him instantly, refusing to be mollified by his light tone, “Have you lost your mind? Merlin the king could have your head! All it takes is a word from Arthur and you’d-“

                  “Be bound to the stake, I know.” He interrupts flatly, bringing over the bowl of uncomfortable paste and setting it down wearily, “Arthur may be a prat, but he isn’t stupid. I want to see what he does with this.”

                  The physician studies him, “You think it’s time?”

                  “I think,” he says tightly, “I saw my people murdered not a moon past in cold and ruthless disregard for all that is sacred. If it is not time soon, I will lose my patience.”

                  It takes him a moment to realize Gaius hasn’t responded, and when he glances over the old man looks strangely unnerved. He clears his throat, snatching the bowl up and beginning to scrape the contents into his latest mixture, “You left in the antenna.”

                  He winces. He knew he’d forgotten something, “Sorry.”

                  Gaius sighs and waves a dripping spoon, making him dart back, “Just go on and go somewhere. You’re gloomy. You need to go out to the sun. Maybe visit the tavern and learn the barkeeps name for when Arthur asks it of you.” He shoos until Merlin relents, “Go now! Be quick about it!”

                  He lets himself be chased out, rolling his eyes as he trudged down the stairs. Gaius was a good friend and a trusted companion. He thought of him as family and he knew to some measure Gaius saw him as a son, albeit an unusually powerful and foolish one. But he was, at the end of it, mortal, and could only handle so much of Emrys’ reality before he needed a break. Merlin understood. Sometimes he needed a break too.

                  And that was why, instead of heading out into the bright day, he took himself lower, down into the depths of the castle.

It was time he returned to the dragon’s cave.

---

                  I lost the best of our time together, and time to know our son. I see so much of your heart in him.

                  The year was long in the moment, in short in all after. It was sweet and simple and she remembered laughing more than she ever had in her life. They should not have fallen so deeply. Their worlds were different, and in a better time they never would have found one another. Yet somehow, she found no trouble could reach her in the circle of his arms.

                  He was sweet with her, and tender, and brought her little gifts. They handfasted and followed his customs as she cared little for her own, and she recited the oaths to pass from maiden to mother with hope in her heart for the children that would come.

                  And when they did not, she trembled and comforted herself in the grasp of his hand and the reverence of his mouth.

---

                  Merlin sways slightly behind the prince’s chair, glancing over at his lord in the hopes of a subtle indicator of how much longer he’ll need to stand here. His feet are killing him after his long trek through the caves and he’d hoped Uther’s temper would be triggered early in the proceedings, effectively calling the day to a close.

                  The cavernous space had been cold without the warmth of the creature that once dwelled there. Merlin had wandered to the remnants of the metal binds, brushing over them with his fingers and thinking of each mistake that formed a link in the chain leading to his father’s death, holding him captive in his grief.

                  It had taken him hours to find the tunnel exit the dragon had passed through, and another long stretch of minutes to tap deep enough into the song of the earth to pull the tear closed. He had grown wary of his power, worried it would retreat from his hand like a skittish lamb, terrified of the murmurings behind his ears falling away to silence.

                  He supposed he would have nightmares about it if he dared to sleep.

                  Arthur notes his motion and briefly rolls his eyes skyward, obviously fighting not to show his annoyance. The prince had been most displeased with how late his dinner had been, irritation writing over whatever remorse he felt for his earlier actions. There’s a subtle warning in the look he sends him, and Merlin juts his chin out ever so slightly in indignation. He knew better than to lock his knees after the first time.

                  Then again, fainting might be a quick way out of this. Sure, the prat would call him a girl again, but if he had to hear one more pleading farmer complain about the evil spirits cursing their crops, he was going to hold his breath until his legs gave out. Crops failed for many reasons, but the current and ever-pressing problem had more to do with Camelot’s insistence on draining magic from its populace by way of the sword rather than any finnicky weather system, much less a vengeful ghost. Merlin, a being of essentially pure magic, suffered in the city. It was simple reflection the land did the same. The more Uther sowed blood into his lands, the less it would heed him, and Merlin had little motivation to coax the song back into symphony so long as the tyrant held the throne.

                  Uther doled out his judgements in time-honored philosophy, ruling in simple decrees as his father’s had before him. Arthur listened carefully and occasionally offered his thoughts, but the final decision was always left to Uther.

                  He shifts again, grumbling inwardly. At least when the druids petitioned him he got to sit down.

                  A muttering breaks out from the back of the room and Merlin snaps his attention back into focus. A man in dark travel worn clothes is clutching a bound woman, her hands blue at her fingers where they’re clasped before her, hair a ratted mess and tears streaming from her eyes as she’s thrown down before the dais. Knight’s flank the two but make no further move.

                  “Sire, my lord,” the man addresses the king, then the prince. He nudges the woman with his toe, “I am Kraine, and I found this woman setting a stone above a witch our town burned not days hence, in accordance with his most noble majesty’s law.”

                  Sparks race up Merlin’s spine, and his hands tighten behind him. Arthur’s head snaps back slightly, and he makes an abortive motion to stare at his manservant. Merlin watches him loosen and flatten his hands on the arms of his seat.

                  Uther looks down at the sniveling woman, lip curled, “You would pay honor to a witch?”

                  “My sister,” the woman sobs out, hair brushing the floor, her bare feet sliding rough over the stone, dress hem tattered, “My sister! My lovely little sister who’s hair I used to braid, she should not be forgotten, she does not deserve to be forgotten-“ she breaks off as Kraine lands a solid kick in her side, whimpering and falling into her tears. For a moment, the court is silent in the sound of her sobbing.

                  Uther nods sharply, coming to his decision, “Guards, take her to the cells and have her fitted for a noose.” They hoist her up, her scream short and sharp and slipping off into a whimper. The king continues over her voice, “And you…Kraine. You have done well to-“

                  “Father.” Arthur’s voice is soft and strange, and it brings the room to standstill. Merlin catches himself holding his breath, staring hard at the golden hair of his prince. “Surely this woman was only seeking to mourn the loved one who was lost to both life and magic, not condone the vile art.”

                  Uther turns to his son, fury blooming behind his eyes at being so contradicted, “Sorcerer’s may not have marked stones in my kingdom. They forfeited such rights when they turned to the practice of unbalancing nature and purity.”

                  Merlin bites back a snarl. Uther would dare speak of balance? He had done more to upend the laws of the cycle than any single man before him.

                  “I’m not sure…” Arthur murmurs, as though oblivious to his audience as he works through his thoughts, “…that I would consider an act of grief and love to be impure.” He looks up, and he finds the gaze of the woman. She cries, still, but Merlin can see the gratitude in her eyes, the shock of being understood. He’s fighting through his own shock. Arthur never spoke so openly against his liege.

                  The habit shows in Uther’s fury, voice framed in mocking curl, “Yet you are not king, and so what you would consider,” he snarls the word, “is of little import.” He nods sharply to the guards, “Take her.”

                  The moment is over. She’s dragged backwards, Kraine is taken to receive his payment, and the court tries to settle back for the procession to continue.

                  As the next man steps forward, frail with his hat clutched in his hands, looking nervously up at the displeased monarch, Arthur rises to his feet, “Forgive me, father, I find myself unwell.”    

                  He doesn’t wait for a dismissal, leaving behind a sputtering Uther.

                  Merlin gapes as the man strides down the center of the hall, eyes of all the crowd after him, disappearing out the wide doors the guards open in panicked swiftness.

                  Silence, and all the court lets out their indrawn gasps.

                  The manservant suddenly realizes he’s still standing beside the prince’s empty chair.

                  “MERLIN!”

                  He winces at the bellow and the attention of the court. He sketches a hasty bow to the king and promptly sprints from the hall, knowing his uncle is wincing at this lack of propriety and trying to ignore the tittering laughs that follow in his wake, undermining the gravity of the prince’s exit and making him feel all the more the disgruntled fool.

---

                  The walk to the prince’s chambers is silent, and Merlin’s heart sinks with every pounding step of the lord’s boots.

                  Arthur rounds on him the moment he shuts the door, “What is this?”

                  Merlin stares at the enraged man, features set in such awful mimic of his father’s, and tries to pull his thoughts together. He’d thought Arthur had made the connection between the laws and his comment before, having decided it the reason for his anger on the training field, but it was clear the pieces had come together for him only now, “I-I don’t-“

                  The prince has little patience for his stammering. He pulls the cord from under his shirt, still in all his finery with his crown and cape, and folds his fist around the bird’s outstretched wings, “Tell me you did not give me a criminal’s token.”

                  His fear is swept over by his anger in a single moment, and he steps forward hotly, “My father was no criminal or murderer or whatever cruelty you want to lay at his feet! He was the best of men.”

                  “So you’ve said!” Arthur spits, “but a sorcerer cannot be! Explain this!”

                  He presses his lips together tightly and stares at his lord. There is so much missing between them, communication in opposing beats always settled behind their conversations, true meaning shifted to the side. Arthur was his other half. He understood this in the way he understood himself. There was an indescribable quality to it, pieces that baffled him still, but it was as certain and easy as his own breath or hand or tongue. There was an ease that came with Arthur that no other offered, and he knew, he knew, Arthur could feel this. They were puzzle pieces, and they fit beside one another in easy love. It’s why the prince trusted him enough to pull the pendant on in the first place, and why he had not quite ripped it off now. It’s why the secrets hurt so deeply.

                  “There is so little you understand of your own kingdom, Arthur.” He says finally, surprised as the words escape his mouth.

                  The prince pulls back, hand falling to his side, “Excuse me?”

                  “Entire cultures and histories have been pressed under your father’s boot. You spoke against him before the court today. Did you believe yourself?”

                  “I-“ he’s thrown off his stride, and he looks away, going to run a hand through his hair and then pulling off his crown in disgust, “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right to me, that they should not have graves. They were people before they chose magic.”

                  He looks aside, pushing away the voice inside him that screams magic made him no less of a man.

                  Though of course… it was perhaps not so, for him. A regular sorcerer, yes, but warlock stretched the definition, and Merlin? Merlin was a reframing of every assumption made by the magical community in the last hundred years. Not a passage rewritten, but a revelation.

                  He shakes aside his shadows, trying a different track, “And if they did not choose?” He says steadily, heart racing in his throat, hardly daring to hear himself.

                  The prince’s eyes snap up to his, “What?”

                  “Magic can be an inborn gift, something that must be used lest it break free to its own wild purpose.” He chews his lip, glancing down before offering what he can, “My father was such a man.”

                  Arthur stares at him.

                  Then, slowly, he turns and walks to his table, sinking into a chair and setting his crown down on the wood with a clatter. He motions vaguely, and Merlin hurries over to get the prince his wine, pouring and bringing over the cup with an ease he’d once feared would never come to him. How many stains had he scrubbed from the stone with chafed hands and whispered pleas?

                  The young lord leans back, drinks long, and taps his fingers around the rim of his cup. When he speaks, his voice is heavy, “I had wondered.” His brow furrows, and he draws a hand down over his face as Merlin’s heart begins to pound, “You remember the summer we went to Nemeth, the year I came of age?”

                  Confused, he nods. His own memories of the trip were likely to be different from Arthur’s. While the prince had spent his time treating with the king and charming his sweet daughter, Mithian, Merlin had snuck away for days at a time to train and learn from the Catha. It was the first real education he’d ever had in his gifts, Gaius’ knowledge being somewhat more eclectic, and the spattering of spells he knew were overshadowed by the hundred combat chants the warrior-priests had dutifully shown him.

                  “You were off drinking for most of it,” Arthur snorts, “but as magic is not an offense punishable by death in Rodor’s kingdom, I took a moment to speak with him on his views. Little of it made sense to me, but I do recall the casual way he explained it, how certain youth came to their power in sparks of helpless travesty, and how he did all he could to take these ones out of the general population once they showed the signs.”

                  Merlin swallows. Yes, he recalled Nemeth, and the way he’d once again been forced to slink in shadows lest he be taken below the castle and…pulled apart.

                  There was a reason for the Catha’s vigilance.

                  Arthur hears none of his internal horror, continuing, “I never asked quite what he meant, but I wondered in the months after. Magic unknown until it showed itself, without education in their dark arts.” He purses his lips, “I suppose I didn’t want to believe it.”

                  Merlin’s still standing before him, a dutiful manservant, but his pulse ever refuses to slow, “What?”

                  “That for some, it’s not a choice.”

                  Arthur turns his blue eyes on him, solid and certain and suddenly Merlin wants to blurt it all out for him, explain everything, fall to his knees and beg for absolution, but he holds fast to his lifelong fears and waits out the weighty stare.

                  “Your father, did you know him long?”

                  He knows the real question the prince is asking, and he refuses to be cowed. He lifts his chin, ignoring the hoarseness of his voice, “Three days.”

                  “And you knew of his power?”

                  “From the beginning.”

                  “And you sought him to…?”

                  Now, at last, he finds himself looking away. A strange numbness sweeps over him, and his voice sounds far from his ears, “I thought…I thought he could help. With the dragon.”

                  He can feel the prince’s eyes, but all he sees is a rush of white flame.

                  “Was he so gifted?”

                  Merlin barks a short, sharp laugh, and he suddenly can’t stand here before his lord, his friend, and let himself be mocked, be nothing, be hunted as if he had committed some awful sin. He regretted so much in his life, had so many mistakes to make up for, but knowing his father was not one of them. The man’s death? Yes. But the chance to begin to understand the legacy left to him, to meet the man who he’d waited all his life to know, to face down the creature that had belittled and scorned him and turn back with retribution scorching from his throat? No. That he could not regret.

                  “He was a dragonlord.”

                  For the second time, Arthur seems lost to him, the thoughts blanking out from the prince’s face at the words, fingers going limp.

                  Merlin screws his jaw and looks him in the eye, fighting off the trembling in his shoulders, “They made a bargain, between them, based off their laws. The beast said blood was owed to him, the highest price that could be paid, and my father gave himself for it, to save yours. I don’t know what magic was in his blood to give him such rights, but I know he was a good man. A great one. Not a criminal or…a- monster.” His voice comes softer on the last word, and he’s suddenly aware his arms are folded, not in anger, but almost cradling himself, shoulders hunching inward.

                  “You’re a noble.”

                  He blinks at Arthur’s slack expression, and then instantly snaps into annoyance, “You prat, that’s what you took from that? I tell you one of the greatest secrets of my life and you’re shocked I’m-“ he sputters to a stop, suddenly shocked himself, a chill running down his spine, “Mother above, I’m a noble.”

                  How had he not realized this? He’d had plenty of time to mull over his place in the magical community, how could he have missed that not twenty years past there would have been a place for him with land of his own.

                  A noble.

                  Disgusted, he looks around the chambers. They’re frighteningly untidy, as always, and he hurriedly sets about collecting scattered socks. A noble. A bloody lord. No, thank you.

                  “Merlin…” Arthur says slowly, turning in his seat to watch him, “We need to talk about this.”

                  “No. We don’t.” he says shortly, nodding to punctuate his certainty and snapping out a rolled-up wad of muddied cloth, tossing it over his arm in sharp motion, “I am not a noble. You can’t make me one. I refuse. Besides, Uth- the king- decimated the houses he saw as tainted.”

                  “He never revoked their standings.”

                  “No…” he stills, staring at the corner of the crumpled bedspread, “Only killed them all, and gave their holdings to others.”

                  “Because they refused to give up magic.” Arthur clarifies.

                  Merlin turns on him and is surprised his voice remains strong despite having a pile of dirty laundry over one arm, “Which, as we have discussed, is not always a choice.”

                  Arthur sits back, and Merlin can see the thoughts turning in his mind, sliding together with all the careful precision of a time-honored battle strategy. Strike fast. Outnumber. Outflank.

                  “Do you have magic?”

                  It shouldn’t be this simple. It shouldn’t be this strange. He opens his mouth, closes it, and rocks back a slight bit on his heels. He stares, “It’s not hereditary.”

                  “That’s not an answer.” Arthur notes.

                  He looks away first, stomach curdling.

                  The prince nods slowly, but when he speaks, he presses on a different track, “And your father gave his life for mine?”

                  He’s unprepared for the flood that rises in him. Arthur’s words are soft, curious, wonderous, and Merlin feels struck to his core. He bows his head, eyes watering, “Yes, my lord.”

                  Arthur nods, and suddenly is on his feet.

                  Merlin starts and jumps back slightly, to do what he doesn’t know, but Arthur only strides to his drawers and starts pulling out the favorite of his maps, spreading them over his table and settling down weights. He flicks his eyes up to the manservant’s frozen form, “Clean all that up, would you?”

                  Dazed, he nods, grabbing the last loose clothes and dumping them in the basket for laundry, hoisting it on his hip and wondering if he should be grateful he’s not being asked to linger, to explain.

                  Arthur stops him as he touches the door.

                  “Merlin? Be sure my riding clothes are prepared. We’re going to hunt tomorrow.”

                  He turns, but Arthur is busy tracing the lines and arcs of his kingdom’s ancient valleys.

                  Throat dry, he murmurs his acquiescence, and flees down the hall as fast as his shaking legs will carry him. He has no doubt of the prince’s intentions.

                  Tomorrow, he is to return to the last place he saw his father.

                  To the place he saw him die.

---            

                  Please know my love for you has never wavered. In all these years, the thought of you was my only peace.

                  He slipped out from her bed in the hours before dawn. She woke, but didn’t stir, watching him through slit lids as he gathered what he could bring himself to take. Her cheeks were still tracked with tears when he leaned down to kiss her forehead and brush her hair behind her ear. It took everything in her not to leap up, to hold him and scream out her grief again as they both had the evening before.

                  He would come back. He’d sworn it. When the danger passed, and the king’s eye was turned, he would return.

                  She spent days dreaming him settling back into her bed in the night, reaching out blindly in the morning. She spent weeks imagining him pushing open the door and taking her in his arms. She spent months thinking him climbing up the hill behind the house, covered over with flowers and one in his hand for her.

                  She spent years wondering what to tell her son when he grew old enough to understand what was missing.

---

                  He finds himself that night perched in one of the high towers, after finding the woman already dead in her cell before he could try to bring her out. Desperate to be away from the pressing earth, he’d brought himself as high in the air as he could reach without growing wings. The aviary was dim in the night, the nocturnal birds peering down with interest at him while the rest of their number slept. The falconer had taken a liking to Merlin in his first months, perhaps simply by the sake of his name, and had taught him the types and calls of all the feathered fine things in the king’s tower.

                  They cooed softly down at him now, asking questions in their simple pinging notes, and he hums a bit in the back of his throat to hush them to silence. They would wake their keepers, and Merlin could not be found here, cross-legged in the room’s center reading a banned book by streaming moonlight.

                  He’d prepared all Arthur had asked as dusk had slipped down, checking over the bags a last time before stealing away past the sleeping physician to spend his midnight hours here, learning of his people.

                  The more he read, the more he came to understand the strange life his father had taken for himself when Camelot spurned him and his chance at a home had been lost.

                  Dragonlords were powerfully devoted to the old religion. It was woven into them, and Merlin felt their reverence seep up at him from the yellowed pages and fading ink. Their history was much as Balinor had described, with arcing cycles of kingship and silence. He learned there were never more than six dragons in any one age, and three true dragonlords in each generation. Though many sons could carry hints of the gift, only one was taken to be heir to bond a dragon’s heart.

                  Merlin shivers as he feels the gaze of Kilgharrah’s miserable glare, the distance nothing between them when he wished it to be. He scowls and slips thoughts of the hateful creature away.

                  He knew he had potential to be, perhaps, the most gifted of any of his forebears. To inherit a bond was a great honor, but Merlin’s scales hinted at there being a different bond for him to take. Black scales for a white dragon, and as he blinks below his eyes is a fleeting impression of silver and ivory.

                  He swallows, running a limp hand along the spine of the book and staring up into the lumped shapes above him.

                  His scales were another gift, and his mastery over them unprecedented. His easy use of pure dragon flame. His slow, stumbling understanding of their language. All of it was written inside him, and in each new line of reverent prophecy he saw himself pressed between the old paper, folded together like a summer flower to be found in another time. These men spoke of Emrys as the Catha did, with such certainty it struck against every doubt he’d ever carried.

                  His hand reaches up, brushing against the triskelion and ring around his neck. He shuts his eyes, remembering his father’s careful questions, of the tears in his eyes when he’d heard his druidic name.

                  How he’d called him the hope of all he’d thought he’d lost.

                  He’d understood he’d meant all he’d never had, all that had never been family and community and a full life, but it was only now he was coming to realize the man had also meant the fulfillment of all that had been taken from his people, his history, his future.

                  If the records kept in these pages were true, magic had been fading for years before Uther’s time. Indeed, Camelot had been created as a refuge for those without magic, the king’s father taking his place by steel and the promise of a land refusing to compromise to power. Though small magics had been allowed, the laws had grown steadily harsher, the hatred of generations being poured out into the magical community as a whole rather than the few divisive factions that had used their gifts to terrorize. In those days, magic had no master, and each man and woman followed the goddess by blood and knife. The old king’s generation had sought to end this by force, and when all had been successfully brought below his heel, Uther had taken the final step and ground them under his boot.

                  The dragonlords had watched peaceful lands be ravished by chaos. Their carefully kept dreams of Albion had been swept away by the greed of an unchecked magical population turning from the old ways, and then nearly snuffed entirely by the resulting genocide. At the end of it all, like the last spark of a fallen candle, Merlin stood, the sole intersection between man and creature and something far more. Emrys. Other. Immortal.

                  And Merlin wondered, slowly, for the first time in his life, if he could perhaps become everything they had prayed for a thousand years for him to be. Source and servant and savior and son.

                  He thought of Arthur’s quiet command, his simple question. Do you have magic?

                  It could all change tomorrow.

                  Everything could fall apart.

                  Or everything could be true.

                  He laughs a bit around his own soaring heart, thinking it must be some kind of pride that made him take hope from the very myth he found himself inside. The music twines around him, doubled and tripled and rippling over again, and suddenly all the tower hunting birds are singing around his free laugh.

                  They herald the dawn and the day to come, and Merlin can feel the promise in it.

---

                  The ground is soft under each step, and he breathes in the world around him with joy. Arthur had cast a curious eye over his bright mood, but had not questioned it as he brought them deeper through the trees. Once they’d reached the edge of the path, however, the prince had stopped his steed and spoken softly.

                  “Merlin. Come up beside me.”

                  Merlin starts out of his reverie, caught gazing at a simple cut of blue found between the shifting leaves. He nudges Llamrei forwards beside Hengroen.

                  Arthur meets his gaze steadily, “I want you to take me to the place you left your father.”

                  Where he left me, Merlin thinks. Had he his way they’d have never again parted. He swallows, nodding, and directs his steed into the forest.

---

                  The clearing still smells of ash to him. He can taste it under his tongue, and he lingers in the tree line, looking out at the trampled grass. After a long moment, he dismounts, and Arthur does the same. He leads him inward, until he finds himself in the place he’d stood, moved aside and forced to watch the column of fire rush down.

                  What a bitter irony it was his father had escaped Uther but burned for him in spite of it.

                  He stares at the patch of brown grass. The place is withered black, and he can feel no magic in it, hear no song. All of himself has withdrawn from the space, and he knows with certainty it will never hold life again.

                  “Here.” He nods to the dark space, “Kilgharrah -the dragon- burned him.”

                  “It had a name?”

                  “They are reasoning creatures.” He answers tonelessly.

                  The prince nods, accepting this, and studies the remnants of ash. He motions towards it, “May I?”

                  Merlin isn’t sure what he wants, but he nods.

                  Arthur steps closer and kneels beside the space, putting one flat palm over it in quiet show of respect.

                  Merlin is suddenly overcome. Tears stream from his eyes, and he shakes his head against them. He had never thought this day would come, nor so soon. He waits as Arthur closes his eyes and murmurs a prayer for the dead, and though it is not of the old religion, Merlin finds a place inside himself to accept it, and return his gratitude.

                  The prince stands, and turns squarely on his manservant, voice firm, “Now I would know what it means for you, to be a son of a dragonlord.”

                  Many things. A thousand things. It is a heritage and a strength and a call. But that’s not what Arthur truly asks after. “I…inherited his gifts. To speak to dragons in their tongue. To call the one bonded to me. To touch their fire. To move scales over skin.”

                  Arthur’s eyes light in connection, “The training field.”

                  Merlin fingers the cut in his sleeve he’s not yet mended, and ducks his head, “It was an accident.”

                  “Show me.”

                  And what can he do but obey? Arthur needs truth if he is ever to become what Merlin hopes he might be.

                  He flutters his eyes and when they flick open the seven arcs of scales are flowed along his skin, the drum beats pattering behind his ears. He pulls up his sleeve at his wrist and shows him small movements, “They’re essentially impenetrable.”

                  The prince nods, reaching out and running a finger over them, seeming briefly surprised at their rough texture, “I’d wondered.” He tilts his head, “This dragon who attacked my city, you’ve killed him?”

                  Merlin flinches, turning away. The wind wraps around him comfortingly, and all the clearing trees stretch toward him as they sense his struggling. He looks up at the space in the sky the beast had blocked and feels again those hating eyes, “No.”

                  Arthur waits. He knew him so well.

                  “I took his flame.” He says finally, choking around the words, “and cast him from my presence. I said as he had used his fire to take my father from me his game would be raw in his mouth always. He’ll never set his eyes on Camelot again, should I have my way of it.”

                  And there’s a low growl under his last words, one Arthur hears. Merlin looks back, finding his friend’s face carefully blank, refusing to offer indication of judgement. The prince lets out a long breath, “Are there other dragons?”

                  “None I know of, though there is perhaps a yet unhatched one I’m meant to bond too. I don’t know where, though.” Silver. Lightning. Notes too high for a human voice to sing.

                  He can tell Arthur doesn’t understand all of this, but he moves on, “And now what are you going to do?”

                  “Do?”

                  “You have power.” Arthur explains patiently, as though thinking him a fool again, “You command a threat all my father’s knights could not defeat, whatever success they claim,” his voice goes dark with the words. “What will you do?”

                  Merlin stares at him dumbly before stuttering out, “Serve you.”

                  The prince rolls his eyes, “Merlin, you could have anything you wanted. You could return to my father and demand the reinstatement of your house. Wealth. Rule. Influence. It’s all in your reach.”

                  “But…but I’m your manservant.” He protests helplessly. It’s an immutable fact in his mind. Whatever path he might take for himself, the end of his road would always bring him back in service to Arthur. It was his place, and he found peace in it. When he found himself faltering under the idea of being a dragonlord or Emrys or even Merlin, he could be at his prince’s side. “Arthur, I don’t want to blackmail or threaten the kingdom. I have my issues with Camelot, and good reason to despise your father, but I believe in you. You’re going to be the greatest king the isle has ever known, and I would be your servant for as long as I live.”

                  For forever, he adds silently, certain it’s true. Arthur will bring Albion. Arthur is everything. He has to be.

                  The prince in question stares at him, seeming confused. Slowly, his mind begins to process, and after a long minute, he looks at Merlin squarely and repeats what he’d refused to answer before, “Do you have magic?”

                  It’s a simple question. A simple answer. But it means more than it could ever say. Do you have magic, but also do you trust me? It is his own accusation thrown back, do you believe what you say?

                  And with the words of his forefathers behind him and the blood of a silenced generation inside him, Merlin does.

                  He quietly kneels, settling all from his mind, putting his focus here and on the man he has dedicated his life too, and lets the song swirl up, glowing in his eyes, “Yes, my lord.”

---

                  I wanted to come home.

                  In the end, it mattered little what she told him. Too much of her was caught up in keeping him alive, in hiding him from her neighbors, in holding him in her arms. The stories she offered were ones of safety and caution, not of strange, noble men standing in doorways with somber eyes.

                  And the story of his name was knotted up inside her, refusing to come out.

---

                  Merlin barely hears the commotion outside his door, engrossed in the spell book his father had left. It’s a fascinating collection of nature spells, and he was itching to try growing an orange from a blackberry seed. He could feel the simple notes of it, ringing under the painstakingly copied runes of the spell.

                  There’s a sharp knock and then his door is being shoved open.

                  He yelps, falling off the far side of his bed and taking the book with him, smacking it underneath. Unfortunately, he hits it too hard, and it slides all the way up against Arthur’s boot.

                  The prince sighs, picking up the tome and flicking through a few pages before glaring at the warlock, “It’s been a day, Merlin, really.” He walks over and thumps the servant on the head.

                  Merlin scowls, scrambling up and snatching it back, tucking it away carefully under his floor. Arthur notes the hiding place with interest, “Is that a staff?”

                  “From the time the Sidhe tried to drown you.” He explains briefly, before turning back to the issue at hand, “What do you want, you prat? Has your father ordered another search?”

                  Arthur’s expression shutters, “No. He’s sick.”

                  Merlin stills. Gaius had been gone since he’d returned, but that was not so unusual. Sometimes there were difficult births in the lower town or children needing care through the worst of their fevers. He thinks back over the last hours and recalls the strangely empty corridors, the hush that had come over the citadel.  

                  “How bad is it?”

                  The prince shakes his head, “Gaius is with him. He said to bring you and whatever you can find for fever.”

                  Merlin nods, needing no more instruction. He bustles through Gaius’ workspace, snatching and sliding away vials, throwing rags over his arm and tucking a bowl under another before rushing out. Arthur hurries in front of him and makes a clean path to the king’s chambers, guards dipping down before him.

                  Uther’s rooms are strangely spartan. While they did carry the marks of a king’s wealth in vibrant dyes and purity of metal, nothing was ornamented beyond the necessary. His furniture was straight and strong, and the bed he laid on was uncompromisingly stiff. On his off days, Merlin found the whole thing rather funny.

                  Arthur shuts the door behind them quietly. Gaius is bent over the king, checking his temper and murmuring gentle things. Uther seems to be asleep, if restless, his limbs twitching and eyes darting madly about under his lids.

                  He hurries to the physician, “How is he?”

                  Gaius purses his lips, taking one of the rags from Merlin’s arm and spilling the yellow contents of a vial over it before using it to wipe gently at the king’s forehead, “Poor. I’ve never seen a disease as this. It seems to trap him in slumber, though he wakes every hour or so in a madness.”

                  “And how long has he been like this?”

                  “Since the night.” The physician eyes him shrewdly, lowering his voice, “You did not tell me you were going to leave the citadel. I could have used your help.”

                  “Merlin was with me.” Arthur interrupts from behind, having approached as they conferred, “I was hunting.”

                  Gaius dips his head, unable to protest against the royal, and turns back to tending to the king.

                  “Your thoughts, Gaius?” the prince queries, voice uncomfortably calm.

                  “I do not know, your highness. I have never seen a disease as this, coming this suddenly and with such violence. I can do no more than what I do now.”

                  “Is there nothing in your books?” Merlin asks.

                  “Nothing I have not paged through a hundred times.”

                  “We cannot do nothing!” Arthur protests.

                  As though snapped from a taut string, Uther surges upwards. Gaius leaps back, but Merlin is caught unawares as an iron grip seizes his wrist, his bones creaking under sudden pressure. The king’s eyes are wide to the white, breath a rasping rattle as he hisses out his words, voice caught inside his throat as though he meant to scream, “The tower stands on lake stone and two rise from its waters and all crumbles as the two come and as the two weave and there is red in the sky as I have seen it red and the white curl and their claws together and the tower cannot withstand them and the lake reclaims its land and the two rise from its waters the red and the white-“

                  Merlin wrenches his hand free with a great cry, staggering back and clutching his head as images flow through his mind, flashing impressions of the king’s words. He sees the old stone of the tower and the ancient spring it set itself upon. The curling red tail like flame. The knife slice of silver-white. The music of the scenes are cacophonous, shattering, and he hits hard down onto his knees.

                  “Merlin!” Arthur’s hand is on his shoulder, drawing him back to reality.

                  “M’fine.” He gasps, “Just startled me, is all.” His eyes dart between Gaius and his prince, uncertain what to tell whom, but knowing neither could have seen the strange, clashing fragments of something like memory as they forced themselves into his skull. He climbs unsteadily to his feet.

                  So Morgana gained her gift through blood after all.

                  They spend the next days reading. Uther wastes away in his bed, and it’s some time late in the week when Merlin finds himself alone with Arthur, paging through yet another medical book and trying not to drop into sleep as his lord paced fitfully at the end of the bed. The kingdom had gone strange as word of Uther’s illness spread, and Merlin could feel a dryness growing in the air, itching under his skin.  

                  “Merlin.” Arthur says abruptly, stopping and turning his full focus to the manservant, “Could you heal my father?”

                  He groans, rubbing at his eyes, “I don’t know, Arthur. I’ve been trying to find something, and Gaius is getting more books from Geoffry, but we’ve been at it for-“

                  “No.” he interrupts, voice lowering in a way that has the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. This was Arthur’s danger voice, the one he used to warn of watching eyes and creeping enemies.

                  “Could you heal him with magic?”

                  Merlin stares. He opens his mouth and closes it again. Arthur. Asking him for magic. It has always been a dream to him, and here he finds it twisted into a nightmare, everything just shy of sense.

                  “I…I’m rubbish at healing spells.” He says softly. It’s true. Patterns were meant to be, sometimes, and that meant men had to die as their pattern dictated. It was the way of the world, and the way of the goddess. He could not turn aside a river if the land had no other place for it to flow.

                  “But could you?”

                  He looks away, down at the sleeping face of the king. He’d been careful not to touch him since that first day.

                  “Arthur…” he begins, unsure how to explain, “He’d kill me if he ever knew.” It’s what he says, but not what he means. He opens his mouth and tries again, “And if that were the whole of it, I might try, but…” he struggles, “I don’t think you understand…what it feels like for me, to be around him. He has murdered thousands of my people. I’ve lost so much to his hand.”

                  “Your father.” The prince admits quietly, stepping closer and sitting on the mattress so he can look at them both, “Merlin, I know, but please, I cannot lose him. Would you make his sacrifice void?”

                  Merlin recoils, standing and striding away for a few moments until he can regain his temper. He turns back when he’s regained control, “My father died for yours, yes, but your father’s life was necessary then because you were not prepared to take the throne. You are now, Arthur. You will rule well.” And he believes it. He can see it, straining between them, barely beyond their grasp, Albion.

                  The prince shakes his head, “No, Merlin. If I can do anything to save him, shouldn’t I? Is that not the honorable thing to do?” He sighs, running a hand through his hair, “I am sorry, truly, for whatever pain he’s put you through, but I am going to ask this of you.”

                  He pauses, weighing the sincerity he sees on Arthur’s features. He’s truly grown so much since their first days, but if he could not see his own strength, who would? He sighs, “Lock the door.”

                  Arthur does so, and Merlin turns to the king. He pauses, studying the flick of the king’s eyelids, trying to imagine another ten years of Uther’s iron rule.

                  He swallows and reaches down.  

                  At once, he’s bombarded by the shapes in the king’s mind. They’re the same as before, flashing and unfocused, and he struggles to fight their pressing waves. The visions nearly press him under, and for a moment he can taste water in his lungs and feel steel under his hand, and then he is breaking up and wrapped entirely and the madness of Uther, in his bloodlust and bitter hatred and viscous self-loathing. He sees his deep love for his children and his wife and his people and his intense fear wrapped tightly alongside each. He sees the young man who broke far too easily under the weight of a crown and years of endless nightmares, the scenes once horrors behind his eyes caused in the morn by his sharp command, pyres and rolling heads familiar in a way they should never be. He sees a sword thrust through stone and a nation stretching across the isle, a dream he once believed in.

                  He tries to find the sickness. It fights him, and the chaos is overwhelming, but he finds the knotted thread and tries to unwind it as best he can. He searches for the music but can hear nothing under the sound of flames. He feels like he’s stumbling in the dark, and he knows he’s beginning to shake. His body will not bear this strain much longer.

                  Suddenly, he pulls the right string and everything wrenches apart. He sucks in a sharp breath, falling back in his chair and opening his eyes to what seems like blinding light.

                  The first thing he notes is the silence, and the second thing he knows is what it means.

                  Merlin is unable to stop the shaking of his hands, throat releasing a shocked rasp of breath, “He’s dead.”

                  Nothing answers him.

                  He lifts his palms from Uther’s chest, his ears still ringing, making his head pound. He can taste blood in his mouth and everything around him is swimming with black sparks.

                  “He’s dead.” He repeats, and a thought blares past his pain. He turns to Arthur, staggering up, “Oh, goddess Arthur, I’m sorry. He- I don’t know how- some sort of counter-“

                  The prince twitches ever so slightly, and his steel gaze slides from the body of his father to his best friend. “Of course.”

                  The words are accepting. Understanding. Simple.

                  His tone is anything but. It snaps out like a whip strike, “Of course you wouldn’t save him.”

                  Merlin flinches, and his hand that was reaching out draws itself back. Hushed, stricken, he murmurs, “Arthur.”

                  The prince refuses to hear him, eyes drawn again to the still form of the king, “I should have known better than to let magic near my father. He always warned me, and yet I was a fool. Why would you save him? This was your chance. You said as much, like you were warning me.” He growls, low and spitting, a fist curling slowly on the bedpost, “I wanted to believe you, Merlin. I was going to throw away every lesson I’d ever learned for you. I wanted this-“ he snatches his hand up to the silver chain around his throat, curling unmercifully over the hawk’s shape and yanking down in a sudden jerk, the cord snapping cleanly, “to be more than a lie.”

                  Merlin can feel his heart climbing up his throat. Arthur has never looked at him this way. Not when he told him the truth of his heritage. Not when he showed him his gifts. Not when he entered his service in his first week and promptly failed at every task set to him. In all their years, Arthur had never once looked on him with hatred.

                  “It wasn’t a lie!” he protests, reaching out, “Arthur, please! I tried to save your father, but something blocked my magic.” He can identify the sensations now, no longer being torn apart by the mad king’s mind, “I wasn’t prepared and everything rebounded. I would never do that to you!” his eyes dart to the pendant in the prince’s fist, and he thinks of his father’s sad eyes, of his quiet hope, of the future he’d believed -on Merlin’s word- Arthur would bring.

                  Arthur throws the gift back in his face and unsheathes his sword.

                  Merlin staggers back as though it burns him, letting it fall to the floor, “Arthur!”

                  The prince advances, stepping on the silver carving, sword out until it presses his manservant back into the wall, “You are everything my father warned me of. A traitor. An enemy. A liar. I called you my friend!”

                  “I am your friend!” he pleads, trying to ignore the steel settled in line with his frantic heart, “Arthur, there’s so much you haven’t come to know yet! The kingdoms were never meant to be separated like this, you’re meant to lead them! You’ve been written into this history of my people for thousands of years! It’s never been just about us, there’s so much more, and Albion-“

                  “ENOUGH!” Arthur screams, features screwed together. For a moment, Merlin feels the sword run through him, believes this the moment his terrible luck runs its course and he loses it all to the one person he couldn’t help but break for.

                  But Arthur breathes hard and slowly lowers the blade, “Enough.” He steps back, and points to the door, “Go. Out of my kingdom. I will not see you again.”

                  It is the threat of a noble. It is the vow of a warrior. It is the command of a king.

                  Merlin stares at him, but his feet move slowly, and he inches the steps towards the door in sickening confusion.

                  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

                  He’d shown Arthur his magic and remained his friend. The secrets between them were dissolving. For a moment, his life had become the sun breaking through dirtied glass, the peep of green above winter’s snow. He’d begun to hope that if he could only accept himself, Arthur would accept him too. He’d let himself believe the dreams of his people could be realized, that Arthur would lead them.

                  It was supposed to be the beginning of Albion.

                  And his eyes snag on the old king’s body, and how had he not realized it would be Uther, even in death who would come between them? Uther whose legacy would stain them both. The dark notes still shiver around him…or…under him…

                  “GET OUT!” Arthur screams suddenly.

                  He flinches, staggering back, taking his father’s necklace from where it had been thrown to the floor casting a last look at his prince.

                  At his king.

                  Arthur doesn’t look back, but stares down at his father, features beginning to screw together in pain, in grief, in guilt.

                  Then, Merlin flees, tearing out the door as if dogs were at his heels.

                  Camelot can be his refuge no longer.

---

                  I’m sorry I could not keep my promise.

                  Soon, everything had begun tangled up, dream and memory one moment forgotten and the next too real to remember. Her lonely hours were spent in silence, and it was two hearts missing from her now, her dear sweet son’s and her own, given away long ago.

                  It was fitting, she thought later, that the returning of one would bring the other, and it was with a simple paper so similar to the one that had allowed him welcome through her door that managed to pry open again every tucked tight hope of her youth.  

---

                  The house is still small in its rickety place on the hill, leaning a bit along with the wind and in need of a new layer on the roof. His step lightens despite the load within, and he takes the last few yards at a half-run.

                  Merlin has come home.

                  He’d left the citadel within the hour, pleading a quick goodbye with Gaius and tossing everything he could not part with in his satchel. His father’s few possessions. The Sidhe staff. Percival’s gift of winter gloves.

                  Somehow Gwen heard he was leaving and had stopped to plead with him to stay. He’d ignored her words, holding her one last time before starting down the stairs, leaving her to Gaius.

                  Lancelot found him at the stables, and he’d wordlessly helped tack up Llamrei without voicing the questions in his eyes. Merlin had felt bad about stealing the mount, but she wouldn’t let anyone else ride her anyways. As he’d swung up on to the saddle, the knight had gripped his reins and searched his features before speaking softly, “If you ever need me, call, and I will come.” Merlin had nodded, a horrible, tight thing swirling in his stomach, and grasped the man’s arm one last time before starting off. Lance had given his life for him once before, and Merlin had dragged him back from the grave itself. Their bond was deep, and the distance was already aching inside him.

                  Gwaine had caught him at the edge of the lower town, running into the path of his horse. He’d demanded answers, and when Merlin had merely stared, unknowing how to explain his years of lies, the knight had started shouting. They’d yelled at each other for a few minutes before the manservant realized he was on a horse and had simply gone around, leaving his friend calling after him in the street.

                  And then he’d run.

                  He’d fled his body as much as he dared, sweeping up into the race of a hunting bird’s wing, slicing through the wind around the path, shuddering through every thundering step of Llamrei’s hooves. He’d soared on the notes of his music, and they’d tumbled and soured with his grief. The storm swept over the plains without warning, and he’d breathed out against the water on his lips and yelled to make lightning shake the trees.

                  Miles behind him, the citadel had begun to flood.

                  Now, he pushed eagerly into the small room, Hunith turning in shock before breaking into a cry of joy, running from her stitching to his arms. He embraced her back, letting his mother hold him, too raw to weep truly again but overwhelmed all the same. Flowers burst along the walls, and she swats at him fondly.

                  “What’s wrong, little bird?” she asks, concern painting her features as she sees his bloodshot eyes.

                  “Mum…” he stops, overwhelmed with how he’s supposed to find answers for it all, for everything that’s happened in this short span of days that has completely altered the course of his life.

                  She hums, and there is no magic to it, but it brings him peace all the same, and she sits him down at the table in firm insistence they eat before any tales be told. She passes their time with updates on the state of the village, of the smith’s daughter wedding a lad from the next town and Renna’s horse losing its foal. Somewhere in the middle of an explanation about the river being unusually low, he breaks and begins to speak.

                  He tells her he found his father and what became of him.

                  And he gives her the letter.

                  They’d been tucked together in the last book, a journal his father had kept. He’d paged through it idly but had left the first true reading to his mother. It was her name ornamenting the paragraphs alongside his prayers. She takes the fragile binding with shaking hands and the small, folded parchment with tears already streaming from her eyes.

                  There had been two, and both for her. One if he was alive but could not yet come, and one for this, the worst of outcomes. He’d burned the other with a flick of thought and let the ashes stream out his window. Such things would never be.

                  His father hadn’t written him one. Maybe he’d thought he wouldn’t need to. Maybe there wasn’t time. Or maybe he couldn’t find the words for a son he’d barely known. Merlin didn’t know. But he did understand the fragile shuddering that swept through his mother’s frame as she traced her fingers along each line.

                  He gets to his feet, squeezing her shoulder gently, and goes outside, settling against the door.

---

                  I am ever your love, if you should wish it,

                  -Bal

                  This time, the tears came in slow relief, and when they passed she felt a missing sense of herself return.

                  His words were wrong.

                  He had, in the end, returned to her.

---

                  He pretends not to hear her sobbing; pretends she was not weeping as though he’d gone from her bed only the day before. He’d heard his mother cry this deeply only a few times in his memory, when he was very young.

                  Night has swept over the sky, and he looks up at the faint lights, holes poked through cloth. He gives a grim smile, reading the pattern without thought, and knows if he wanted he could recall each of their names. The music of stars was a grand, mystical thing, and he saved their voices in a special place inside himself.

                  He’d not come home first, when he’d fled the city. Instead, he’d gone to the druids, telling Daegal to get them out. He could easily see again Arthur’s glare in his mind’s eye, and he knew his vengeance would be all the greater, for Uther’s rage had been righteous, while his son’s was that of a man in the full belief he had been hideously wronged. Uther’s war was strangely holy. Arthur would have no such restraints.

                  He’d told his people to flee Camelot, looking out over their exhausted faces and unable to apologize for the dream he’d shattered for them. As they dismantled their refuge, promising to spread word to the other camps, he’d taken his young follower aside and offered him back the triskelion if he wanted it. The boy had only smiled, faint and strange, and remarked that how a god may not need faith, but a mortal could not live without it.

                  It had been moving to him. He’d begun to understand a little more of what his father meant. These were his people, and he was to care for them, but he could lean on them too. Breaking their trust was something he could not forgive himself for, but he doubted even his death would break their belief.

                  They would need it in the coming days. He’d encouraged most to Annis, knowing she would treat well with them, but the other rulers would be shaken by this mass exodus. Still, Merlin was grimly adamant.

                  Behind him, the door opens, and as he steps in he’s enveloped in his mother’s embrace.

                  They hold onto each other, talking softly, for a long time.

                  At some point just before dawn, Hunith lifts a chain from around her throat and they exchange rings. His mother slides the wedding band on her thumb with a shuddering breath and Merlin grips the weighty house ring in his palm.

                  They lose themselves in their thoughts, and time passes.

                  He doesn’t move, fingers turning the heavy seal over in his hand, brushing the intricate carving. His mother is weeping again over the letter, running her hands over the thin paper in similar fashion to his own motions. The fire holds itself steady beside him, moving slow so as not to startle but reaching out all the same. He can feel the spirit of it, and the way it wants to be joined to him, filled by his will so as to gain life and motion and  purpose.

                  The circle of metal is heavy, a type of iron purified by the earth and brought through rituals to take the harshness from its nature. It is silent to his magic but burns with a heat only just bearable. He thinks of all the men who wore these rings. All the judges and warriors and kings who ruled with hot reminder twined over their hands of all they were in oath to.

                  An idle hand reaches up and traces his triskelion. Emrys…he did not know how to be. He was learning, slowly, taught by his father’s book and by the examples he’d watched move through life around him. Uther had known little of leading men, and Arthur…he knew everything, when he chose to remember it.

                  His mouth sours at the thought of the new king. Camelot was not going to be merciful to his people anytime soon, his folly had ensured that.

                  Arthur was not going to be merciful.

                  He shuts his eyes against the memory of familiar features set in cold hate and looks again at the gift left to him by his father.

                  The symbol is strangely familiar. A dragon set in the dark, burning like a cool star. Behind his eyes, flashes stir, of a great cry of a silver-pale creature, of a banner flowing from a high tower, of history and myth joining together and birthing from themselves a nation anew.

                  He bites his tongue until it bleeds, and gasps awake from the momentary vision.  

                  He moves to slip the metal on to his hand but pauses. Could he do this? Take up the mantle of his house and with it all the responsibility of leadership he’d once cowered from carrying?

                  Unnerved, he falls back into his music, and under the rising swell of tones, he hears the old trailing pattern of his father, following after his own. For a moment, it’s as if he stands here again, in their small and quiet home, touching a gentle hand to his wife’s shoulder and turning to his son.

                  Merlin stares up, blinking as tears begin. He wants to off apology, but knew the man would never accept it. He’d made his decision, as he had a right to, and Merlin would respect it. He had grieved for him, and would for years to come, but their time together was past, now. He would not have his father any longer, but he could honor him, and make him proud from beyond the veil.

                  He knows his eyes are swimming with light as his two powers shift in untraceable patterns, silver and gold in endless swirls. He forces himself to sit straight and speak clearly down the line between himself and this memory, Thank you. For your help, your guidance.

                  For seeing me. For choosing me. For letting me be your son.

                  And, like an echo, a familiar voice stretches back to him. I only offered a hand. You stand tall on your own two feet, Merlin, you always have.

                  A lump catches in his throat, and he nods helplessly.

                  The image steps closer and kneels on the thin mat, meeting his eyes in unflinching affection, Your journey has only begun. You wield a power you cannot yet conceive of.

                  He reaches out half-blindly, and their hands touch and hold for a single instant of warmth and callouses before he begins to fade.

                  Do not be afraid, my son. Trust in what you are, what you will be.

                  “Don’t go-” he says, speaking out suddenly, hitching around a sob.

                  There are no goodbyes, Emrys. he answers, distant, Soon, you shall awaken into the light. Albion comes.

                  Albion comes, he echoes, and then they are alone again, him and his mother in their home.

                  Hunith brushes at her tears and gives him the faintest of smiles, “I felt him, just for a moment, did you-“

                  “Yes.” He breathes, trembling.

                  “Oh, my boy.” She comes to him, in the space his father had been, and holds him in her arms. She kisses his head, “He would be so proud of you, as I am. He is proud of you.” She reaches down and curls his hand around the ring, “You are well-deserving of his legacy. You are his legacy.”

                  Merlin swallows, grateful, giving her the best smile he can manage before staring down at the small weight once more.

                  House of Ambrosius. Dragonlord. Creature of the old religion.                

                  In some days, a king.

                  This was his to claim, his right, his blood, his heritage. All else of his people had been taken from him, but of the scraps he swore now he would weave something anew. He could take this honor to himself, and he would protect his own.

                  He could be his father’s son.

                  He slips on the ring. It’s heavy and hot and comforting, and he opens and closes his fingers a few times.

                  Inside him, the music roars.

Chapter Text

                  He can still hear their voices shouting, calling his title, proclaiming him king. The faces of his men had looked up at him, reverent, trusting, but all he’d felt when the weight of metal settled on his forehead was strange sense of loss. Something was missing. Someone.

                  The coronation had been postponed due to flooding. Arthur wasn’t a fool, he knew this was an unnatural time of year for rain, but he’d refused to say as much to the council. He ordered servants to bailing out water, pretending to be oblivious to the sloshing at his ankles in the training field or the pouring over his skin on the battlements. Now, though, after a month of deluge and damage, the sun beat down unflinchingly, and Arthur worried it would for a good while.

                  He sets his cup down beside him, turning the paper over in his hand. It had been settled onto his pillow, and no guard or maid had been able to explain its presence. He knew who it was from, though. The silver cord sat on his knee, outstretched wings of the hunting bird faintly warm in a way that had once baffled him. Now, this slightest of heats felt like a burn.

                  A few more turns, a few more sips of wine, and he stops delaying for his fear. For his hope.

                  When he’d first saw the gift, he’d thought, perhaps, Merlin would be coming home, but it became clear a few lines in that wasn’t to be.

                  Arthur,

                  I wasn’t sure I wanted to write this, or return to you the favor I once bestowed. In truth, I am not sure you deserve it. There is little favor I feel towards you now. Still, I counted you as my friend, as you admitted you counted me. I thought perhaps in my time with my mother you would send for me, but I understand you have chosen a different path.

                  Albion must come, Arthur. I know you understand little of the destinies you have been caught up in. Once I thought it was my place to guide you through those destinies, but now I imagine the Mother has other paths for us. I go to Nemeth to learn from the faithful and to better understand my people. You know I am a dragonlord, but our name marks us as more than a master of beasts. We were kings in another time, and I think I will be so again. Magic has been left lawless for too long, and I hope to give it the structure and center it has been denied under your forefathers.

                  I do not say this to threaten. I could not kill you for the sake of any man, least of all myself. No, our bonds run too deep for such harm. I do say this: you cast me from Camelot, and so I have gone. All who serve me are commanded to leave your realm. No sorcerer or sorceress, no warlock or witch, who seeks to walk in the old ways will live in your lands. So also will go the creatures, the gryphons and sprites and who carry the spark of my gift inside themselves. My spirit will leave your soil, and your people will grow their crops on only what the land will give. It is as your father wished, and as, I imagine, you now do also.  

                  I am taking myself from your life, but the pendant you may keep. I gave it to my father for the love I bore him, and it is for that love, for the dream of my father, I still hold it out to you. It will help you seek me, should you ever wish to.

                  Farewell,

                  Merlin Ambrosious

                  Arthur reads it once more, and then over again. His throat is dry and his eyes tight, and he looks for a long time into the fire as the night hours stretch on. He tries to tell himself otherwise, but no delusion holds. He reaches up and slips the crown off his head.

                  Merlin is gone.