Chapter Text
She is four when she discovers Uncle Merlin has magic.
Uncle Merlin is her parents’ best friend. He’s their servant too, but the first definition fits better in her opinion. He’s the Royal Secretary and unofficial nanny. He has been ever since she threw a tantrum at age three.
Aurelia Pendragon isn’t an ordinary child. She’s the Princess of Camelot. She’s the daughter of King Arthur Pendragon and Queen Guinevere Pendragon, said to be the greatest rulers in living memory (she and Uncle Merlin like to eavesdrop on the meetings between Albion’s monarchs). She finds other children her age boring and simple, though she likes to play with them occasionally and never says so because Uncle Merlin says that’s rude.
And now, she’s the goddaughter of Emrys himself.
She’s not scared of him. How can she be? Uncle Merlin is the best. She loves her parents, but they are busy people. It’s her parents who soothe her when she cries, who discipline her, but it is Uncle Merlin who tells her stories and keeps her company during court and plays with her and teaches her medicine and writing and slips her extra dessert.
She loves her uncle. She could never be afraid of him. Magic or not.
She might not be scared of him, but he is terrified of her. He cries, he falls down to his knees.
She will never forget how he looked. She thinks this moment defines her life.
She starts crying too – she’s a child after all; and hugs him.
“Oh, Aurelia,” he says, voice wavering. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She sniffs. “Why do people think magic is evil if you have magic, Uncle Merlin?”
Because it is as simple as that for her.
Her uncle exhales audibly, stroking her hair. “That’s a very big question, sweetheart.”
“Then I want the very big answer!” She says, folding her arms and getting up. Her glare is very fierce, and very much like her mother’s, her uncle tells her later.
He gives in. He tells her hesitatingly, haltingly, where her grandfather’s prejudice against magic had come from. How magic can be dangerous, like all power is. How it can be abused, like grandfather abused his own power.
He swears he loves her and would never harm her or her family or Camelot, but she already knows that and she tells him so.
She also tells him solemnly that she has never been this ashamed of a family member her whole life – the whole four years and seven moons. For some reason, the corner of his lips ticks up at this.
And Uncle Merlin’s magic is so pretty. When she asks (pesters) him, he makes pink and blue and yellow and purple lights around his fingers and their heads. He makes things fly around them. He makes flowers bloom and tucks them behind her ears and teaches her to make crowns of them for herself and her parents. He makes creatures out of sparks from the fire.
“Mummy and Daddy would love all this, Uncle Merlin!” She tells him earnestly.
He pales rapidly, shrinking into himself. He looks like she did when she was vomiting and icky and sick and Mummy and Daddy and he had taken shifts to get her through those days with Grandpa Gaius.
Oh. Right.
“I’m sorry,” she says, small. “I – I shouldn’t have said that.”
Uncle Merlin puts an arm around her, clearing her throat. “No, it’s fine, Aurelia. You can tell them. I can’t ask you to keep a secret from your parents. You shouldn’t. Especially not one this dangerous.”
Every inch of her wants to go and babble excitedly about this to her parents, like she did everything. But – but what if Daddy decides Uncle Merlin is dangerous and can’t be around her? What if – she’s never seen an execution. But she knows that is the penalty for sorcerers, even if it hasn’t been enforced for a while.
She doesn’t like being scared of her parents. But she can’t lose Uncle Merlin.
“You’re not asking,” she says regally, holding her head high. “I’m saying. And magic can be dangerous, but you’re not. We can tell them together when you’re ready, Uncle Merlin.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Uncle Merlin’s voice is ragged as he kisses her hair. “I promise I’ll tell them soon. You don’t have to be there. It’ll probably be. . . messy.”
His voice is gently wary and dissuading. It is the voice she knows to obey instinctively. But she scowls instead. “I will be,” she insists, and her uncle lets it drop, perhaps thinking it was too much for one day.
Perhaps he’s too grateful to her to protest.
Nevertheless, she hates it when her parents come back from court and hug her and ask her about her day.
“Anything special happen today?” Daddy asks, as Mummy braids her hair.
Aurelia pulls her knees to her chest, squashing the urge to glance at her uncle, who is going through Daddy’s paperwork as always. “Just an ordinary day, Daddy.”