Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Part 1: Shadow

As a child, Merlin’s world was small, though he did not know it at the time. He had his mother. He had his stories. He had the wood figurines his father made for him. It seemed, back then, impossible a world could exist beyond the edges of the village. The stream that wound its way through the woods was as far as he dared to go, lest he get too close to the village proper. 

During the mornings, his mother would go into this village and gather washing and mending and the likes. While she was away, she was very clear: Merlin was to stay in the house, play with his toys, and if anyone was to come around, he was to run to the back and hide behind the wardrobe and not move a muscle. 

In the afternoons, Merlin would stay by his mother’s skirt while she stitched chemises by the window, or, if she washed in the river, he would sit on the bank and trace designs in the sand with a stick. Sometimes, if he felt his mother was particularly focused on getting out a stubborn stain, he’d bring the outline to life and let the particles of sand float and shimmer in the air. The sand-dragons would swim along the shoreline; the hollow birds tittered in the trees. 

When his mother would finally notice, she’d turn and bite out a sharp “Merlin!” and he’d let the sand rain back down to the bank as if it had not been animated only a moment ago. 

In the evenings, his mother would cook. She would tell him stories (even stories about his father, if he was lucky). He would fall asleep next to her, breathing heavy, feeling safe. 

And such was life. 

Until, one day—while his mother was out delivering the clothes she’d repaired and collecting the new lot of items to be laundered and mended—Merlin ventured out of their home. 

It was a bright spring day; the air was fresh and the river near him thundered with the extra flow from the melting snow in the mountains. The house, though Merlin loved it (for it was all he knew) was very small, and while his legs were short, he had a lot of energy they twitched to carry him far. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d done it. He’d started carefully, at first, back in the summer, and carried on more often throughout autumn until the winter months made it more pleasant to stay inside. Now it was warm again, he’d taken his adventures up once more. He always made it home before his mother returned and was careful to wipe away any dirt.

This day, though, was the first time Merlin saw another person without his mother. He’d seen other women before (the townsfolk who’d come if they needed work done quickly) and other babes (sometimes their mothers would bring them along) but Merlin could not recall the last time he’d seen another child his age, let alone another boy. 

The boy was by the riverbank. His arms were full of sticks. Light glinted off the eddy in the river and illuminated the boy's face. As he walked, he scrunched his eyes closed to block out the sun and he hummed a tune Merlin had never heard before. 

Merlin froze. He remembered his mother’s warning—that he must stay away from other people—well enough. But at the same time, this other boy was just a boy, not a real, adult person. Still. Merlin kept his distance. Merlin clutched the tree beside him and spied the boy as he shuffled along, humming, through the spaces in the bare branches. 

Merlin leaned closer. Underneath his foot, a stick cracked with a sharp snap. The birds in the tree above him scattered and Merlin’s heartbeat spiked up.

The boy turned. “Oh, hello.” 

Merlin stepped backward and positioned the trunk of the nearest tree between himself and the other boy. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you from around here?”

Merlin shrank but nodded. In the distance, a bird sang, and the spring air made the branches around his face sway. 

“Well, it’s nice to meet you then. I didn’t know there was anyone that lived around here. Unless you’re the washer woman’s son? My mom mentioned she had a boy, but hardly anyone has ever seen him, so I don’t know if that’s you or not.  They say he’s ill, or something.”

Merlin kept his mouth clamped shut. 

“I’m Will, by the way.” The boy shifted the weight of the sticks from one arm to the other. “What’s your name?”

Somewhere in the tight cage of his chest, Merlin found the bird of his voice. “Merlin.”

“That’s a cool name. I was named after my Uncle, and he was named after his Uncle, and I don’t really like either of them.” The boy—Will—swayed from side to side and one of the longer sticks on the top of his pile rolled forward. Will’s eyebrows rose to his hair and he tried to reach forward, but the entire bundle only tipped out of his arms, clattered to the forest floor, and rolled toward the river. 

Will stared down. He wiped away the sweat on his brow with his sleeve. “Oops. That was supposed to be for firewood.”

Merlin stepped out from behind the tree. “There’s plenty more.”

“Sure, but that’ll take ages.” Will stretched his arms up high, arched his back like a cat, and yawned. “Do you want to play with me?”

Merlin shook his head. His mother’s warning rang phantom in his ears and, aside from that, he didn’t truly understand how he was supposed to play with someone else. 

“Come on, let’s play knights.”

A familiar sensation hooked into Merlin’s gut and reeled him forward. He hadn’t felt it often, only when his mother would say something careless like ‘pass me the thread’ or ‘watch your step’, but he hated it all the same. He had no choice in whatever came next and it always made his stomach squirm and no matter how quickly or slowly he acted he came away nauseated and miserable. 

The invisible line pulled him forward, toward Will, who reached out with one of his abandoned sticks. Merlin took it. The weight in his hand was unfamiliar, uneven. Will held his up proudly. Merlin only looked at him, confused. 

“Haven’t you ever played knight before?”

Warmth rose in his face and Merlin shook his head. 

“Then I’ll have to show you. This is your sword—” he tapped the stick in Merlin’s hand— “and we are Cendred’s men. On a brave campaign. We should need to slay the dragon and save the princess and do, you know, as knights do.” 

“Alright,” Merlin agreed. That did not sound bad, as far as games went, though he’d never thought of dragons as something he needed to kill before. “Lead the way.”

They went on like that all morning. Will marched proudly and narrated their moves; Merlin followed alone, tripping over his own feet, and feeling out the gentle rhythm of their game. 

Finally, went the sun reached the top of the sky, Merlin turned to look at Will. “My mother will be home soon. I’m not supposed to be outside.”

Will let his sword fall to his side. “Alright then. I should probably get back too. Meet me here tomorrow and we’ll carry on the campaign.”

Another hook snagged Merlin. This time, it wasn’t as sharp, but it was still there: an irritating thorn in his side.

Merlin went back the next day and, when he reached their spot in the woods, the prickle of discomfort dissipated. Will came along shortly and they continued on the campaign. They rode horses and defeated a griffin and camped on a mountainside. 

Once again, when the sun got high, Merlin had to leave. 

“Alright, but I’ll see you again tomorrow?” Will scratched the back of his head.

It was not an order. Merlin could say no. 

Instead, he smiled. “Yeah. That sounds fun.” 

And the next day, he met Will again. 

And the day after that, again. 

They slayed the dragon, and rescued the princess, and then set off on another campaign because the Lady managed to get herself kidnapped immediately after her return. Merlin went home each day with his cheeks both flush from the sun and fresh air and sore from laughter. 

They carried on that way for a fortnight. 

Then, just as they were about to pass to the other side of the unpassable ravine, a sharp “MERLIN!” yanked them from their reverie.

Merlin swivled around. Will was at his side, his hand out to pull Merlin across the chasm. “Uh oh,” he muttered under his breath, “you’re done for, mate.”

“Merlin!” Hunith raced across the forest, her skirt hitched up. In the thick of their game, Merlin hadn’t noticed how high the sun had climbed in the sky. “Get away from him!”

A fish hook in his gut: Merlin scrambled backwards. His hands burned with the rock and dirt and roots from the ground. His eyes welled with tears and he sank his teeth into his lip. “He’s nice!”

Merlin didn’t have a chance to protest further. His mother had him under the armpits and hauled him away, despite his cries and kicks. 

Finally, back at home, Merlin finally managed to level his breath back to normal. “Mom, he is nice,” Merlin insisted.

His mother shook her head. Her eyes were also red and watery and her breath high in her chest. “Merlin, I’ve told you: it’s dangerous. We know nothing about this boy.”

“His name is Will and he’s my friend. ” Merlin balled his hands into little fists and turned his head to the far wall. “He didn’t even make me do anything.”

Hunith sighed. She came up next to him and pulled him into a tight hug. “I’m sorry, my love. It’s not the same for you. We need to be careful—”

“I know! I know! But he’s nice and I’ve never had a real friend and all we do is play knight.”

Merlin couldn’t see his mother’s face, but he could feel the cool, rough skin of her hands against the sides of his cheeks. 

“I want to see him again.”

The silence was heavy; the wind howled against their little home. 

“I’ll think about it.” She pressed a kiss to his hair. “I know this isn’t fair.” 

Merlin did not learn the world was an unfair place: he grew up knowing such a fact to be true. He knew the world did not favour each person equally as well as he knew that the wide sky domed over Elador was blue, and the fields of grass that wimpled in the wind were green, and that the buds of spring and baby lamb came after the bare branches and snowy drifts of winter. 

Sometimes, especially when he was small, his mother would hold him tight and tell him the world was cruel. 

“I know,” Merlin would reply. He did not reply with vitriol or mourning, he was simply stating a fact. 

“There is still so much you don’t know about this world, my bird.” His mother would kiss his brow and smooth his hair. 

Merlin disagreed with that. He knew the spider that webbed the corner of their home. He knew the path into the forest so well he could walk it with his eyes closed on the night of the new moon and not even trip on any tree roots. He knew that when his mother slept, the wings he spied beating in the sky were the wings of a dragon and he also knew enough never to tell her as much. 

Merlin knew there were castles, though he had never seen one. He thought he would like to, one day—Will said that King Cendred’s keep was so tall that if you stood on top of the turrets, you could reach your hand up and scrape the sky. It did seem that it would prove difficult to travel to the castle, though, because he was not supposed to talk to anyone that he did not know and trust. The night after the fight with his mother, Merlin fell asleep thinking about a castle and knights and a dragon and a beautiful princess. The fantasy was more appealing than the notion that this world (the river, the woods, this house, his mother) would be all he would ever know. 

The next morning, Merlin woke bleary-eyed and bed-headed. A bowl of oatmeal sat on the table, steam curling off the top and catching the dawn light. 

His mother curled her hands together and offered him a small smile. “You can see Will, if you like.” 

Merlin would like that very much. His little world, now, grew larger.

Chapter Text

With Will, the circle of Merlin’s life widened and widened. Will told him things about knights and Ladies and the next village over and the gossip in town and, even though Merlin found it difficult to conjure up exactly what life would look like if he lived in the mountains instead of by the river, or why the folks in Ealdor cared so much that the butcher’s daughter should marry the shoemaker’s son instead of the smith’s, he nodded along and listened endlessly. 

Will had a way with words. He had a charm that drew Merlin in, too. He was so unlike his mother—there was no fretting or humming or tutting—Will simply moved and laughed. Merlin had so rarely seen anyone besides his mother, much less talked to them, and he found himself happy to sit by the river and listen to Will chatter away. Even the cadence of his voice rang a different bell in Merlin’s ears than his mother’s. 

They passed the spring together, playing knights in the trees, and then as spring warmed to summer they stayed together and their games shifted to skipping rocks and climbing trees. Sometimes, whenever Merlin reached a particularly high branch, he imagined himself as a bird. He would quite like to take off, away from Ealdor, and see all the land from the sky. If he could go high enough, no one would be near enough to order him around.

Although his mother allowed him to see Will, she forbade him from telling him about both his own magic and the magic of the curse that wove into his bones when he was just a babe. As such, Will sometimes said things carelessly—he would tell Merlin to climb higher or follow him deeper in the trees. One time, when Merlin was babbling about sparrows, he told Merlin to be quiet only to later storm away when Merlin wouldn’t answer his questions. It took running home to his mother to be able to speak again and (luckily) all was forgiven with the rising of the sun the next morning. 

After spending his mornings with Will, Merlin would return home to see his mother. As he grew, he learned to thread needles and stitch and mend. He wrought lye soap for the washing and pinned clothing to the line behind their home. In the afternoons, when the wind raced over the crest of hills, the washing waved like flags.

The biggest change, after Will, was that sometimes his mother would come home with things. It was a medallion, at first, and she slipped it over his neck. 

“Merlin,” she said, her lips a thin line and her brow creased. “Raise your arms.”

Merlin’s arms shot up in the air. 

His mother sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Nothing but a waste of a week’s wages. You can put your arms down if you like.”

From there, they moved on to lumpy poultices under his pillow, then to potions thicker than oatmeal he choked down, and finally to inhaling vapours that made his head swim. 

Afterwards, his mother would tell him to do something simple. Each time, Merlin did it without fail. 

His mother spent a great deal of time sighing and rubbing her forehead. Nothing she tried seemed to change Merlin’s lot in life, but at least now he’d found Will and that was a greater change in his fate than any charm or potion or bundles of herbs.

The years skipped by like the stones Merlin tossed on the surface of the river: one, a breath, then the next, and the next, each year coming in more rapid succession than the last. 

One summer, when they were ten and two, Will’s father left to fight in King Cendred’s war. 

He did not return. 

They did not play knight after that. 

For Will, there was less time to enjoy after the loss of his father. The days stolen in the sun turned to days Merlin passed washing clothing in the frigid river or, for Will, days working in fields, threshing wheat and tending to cows. Sometimes, Merlin came by the farms. He watched from afar and spotted Will among the other men and women tending to the crops and livestock. He kept his distance, even as he turned ten and four. 

Merlin knew he was scrawny and lacked the muscle on his bones that the other men had earned, but he was tall enough and more than anything he was determined. He could help in the fields and earn some extra coins to help his mother get through the winter. He told her as much one night, by the hearth.

His mother shook her head. “Absolutely not, Merlin.”

“But Mom—”

“It’s too dangerous.” The firelight cast shadows along the lines of her face. Her lips did not twitch; her cheeks did not lift. 

“We could have enough for more meat this winter! For new, warm clothes!”

“Merlin!” Her voice cracked and she turned her head away. “It’s just—it’s not possible.”

And that was the end of that discussion. 

The other boys in Ealdor did notice Merlin, though. It was not just Will who would spy him at the edge of the fields and wave. And, although Merlin did not see other people with any sort of regularity, he understood more of the world than anyone ever gave him credit for. It was as though the wind whispered to him that the world was off, that danger was coming for him. 

It was no surprise, then, when Merlin came to the clearing where he and Will often met to find that it was not Will that awaited him, but a group of farm boys that he did not know. 

Merlin stopped by the edge of the clearing. The branches of the oak tree whimpered in the wind. The other boys lounged in a spot of sun, laughing and roughhousing and, for a moment, Merlin believed he had been quiet enough that they had not noticed him. He could simply slip behind the tree and rock and wait for them to leave. 

Just as he crept to his left, though, a boy with ruddy skin and curled blond hair called out, “Oi! You! Come over here!

Merlin froze. One of his feet hovered in the air, the other pivoted in the dirt. He marched like a soldier toward the boys, who’d all grown quiet and leered. 

“You’re Hunith’s boy?” asked the tallest. Behind him, the blond spun a stone in his hand. 

Merlin kept his mouth shut. He’d follow the order to come toward them, but now there was no compulsion keeping him in the clearing. If he could be fast enough, he could leave. Merlin did not wait to find out what they would say next—he turned on his feet and pushed himself forward. He knew this part of the woods well and his slight build, though it did not favour him in a fight, was perfect for fleeing through the woods. 

He dodged branches and roots and, just as he came to where the river bent, the noise of their footfall gathered in his ears. Without thinking, Merlin spun around and threw out his hand. 

The old, tall aspen creaked. It bent against the wind. 

Then—with a resounding crack that scattered the birds in the canopies—the tree snapped in two. It was as though the trunk (as thick as Merlin’s shoulders) were one of the sticks that Merlin and Will used to pretend were their swords. 

The aspen flew downward. It missed the group of boys by mear feet: the tall boy jumped back and the blond swore. Dirt rose like vapour as the wood collided with the ground. The boys scattered and, again, Merlin was alone with nothing but his heart pounding in his ears. He wiped the sweat from his brow and spat out the blood in his mouth, for in his haste he had bitten into his lip. 

“Merlin, mate, that was something else.” 

Merlin jerked his head up. Will stood before him, his hair gilded by the sun. 

“That was—what a coincidence.” 

Will raised a brow, chuckled, and shook his head. “Care to tell me what caused that coincidence?”

Merlin opened his mouth, but he was still bound by the words from his mother all those years ago—he was not to tell anyone about the curse or his magic. “I can’t.” Merlin kicked his heel against the dirt. 

Will rubbed the back of his neck and took a seat against the trunk of a tree. “I thought by now you would have realized you can trust me.”

Merlin’s heart sagged. “I do trust you! It’s not that. I—I can’t tell you, no matter how much I might want to.” 

Will said nothing. He let his head fall back and gazed up at the sky.  “I know I’m not the sharpest, but even I have noticed by now that you’re not like everyone else. I know there is a reason your mother keeps you away.” 

Merlin cleared his throat. “Will,” he said, his voice shaking. 

Carefully, Merlin lifted his hand. He turned his palm skyward.

A miniature whirlwind kicked up; dirt spun and wove itself into a neat ball, and Merlin let that ball hover in the air. Like a potter, he pulled the ball wider and then sent it narrow and long again. 

Will straightened up. His eyes widened and he leaned in closer and, under his breath, he muttered an amazement. 

Finally, Merlin let the dust scatter from its ball. He pulled his hand to the right and the dirt snapped taut then, with one final twist of his wrist, the line morphed into a dragon. The dust-creature’s wings flapped and bits of dirt shook free as it twisted through the air to the floor of the forest and returned to the soil once more. 

When Merlin looked up, Will was grinning. 

And, once again, Merlin thought that with Will at his side, things might just be alright. 

Again, the years bounced forward like a stone: skip, skip skip. 

As the leaves grew orange and brown and fell from the trees, Merlin turned eight and ten. His mother remembered the day he was born well; Samhain the next week always made it easy to remember. 

But now, as his coming age loomed on the horizon, the passing of the years stirred something in Merlin’s chest that whispered, more, more, more. 

Ealdor was small. Merlin had only his mother. He had only stories. He had the wood figurines his father made for him, now worn with time. It seemed impossible a world could exist beyond the edges of the village and he should not get to know it. The stream that wound its way through the woods was a cage that kept him hemmed in. 

At night, Merlin dreamt more often than he did not. Visions of castles and dragons, of knights and swords, of fire and war rioted in his mind. When he woke, he was drenched in sweat. Sometimes, when he woke from nightmares and could not sleep, he would slip outside to catch his breath. The stars over Ealdor were clear and bright and if he was looking skyward at the right time, he would spy the wings of the dragon ruffling the moon. As a boy, that thrilled him. Now that he was grown, it only inflamed the ache that he could not rid himself of: how dare the world allow such incredible things to exist and then relegate him to a corner? 

The thoughts clouded Merlin’s mind. He found it hard to focus much on anything, let alone the mundane work of making soap or patching another hole in a pair of trousers. 

The day before Samhain, Merlin sat by the river. There was a rock near the bank that was smooth and high and let him see the path toward his home and the thundering water. Unofficially, it had become his spot to sit and think and wait for Will, who was busy so often these days. 

Merlin’s breath clouded the air. The morning was cold, unseasonably so. It wasn’t snowing properly, but pin-point flakes drifted down from the grey dome of the sky. The branches shuddered and the last leaves gathered like dust at the bases of rocks and trees and coated the forest floor. On days like these, the veil between his world and the next felt so thin that Merlin was sure he could reach his hand out and skim his fingers along the other side of death. 

Behind Merlin, leaves crunched. 

“I didn’t think you would make it today,” Merlin said without turning. He pulled his knees closer to his chest and shuffled to the side to make room for Will on the rock. 

No reply came. 

Slowly, Merlin looked over his shoulder. It was not Will near him, but the awful blond boy. Aelfric, Will had said his name was. Merlin, as he grew older, had been near or in the village more and more but never without his mother or Will at his side. 

“Waiting for the one person who will tolerate you?” Aelfric spat. He shifted up and, in his hand, Merlin saw the rabbit trap. This part of the forest was not for hunting, but the crops this year had been poor—he, just like Merlin, had probably not expected anyone else to be here. From what he’d seen from afar and heard from Will, Aelfric had never struck Merlin as particularly clever, but anyone in their right mind who dared to poach would surely try to do it as quietly as possible. 

Merlin rolled his eyes. “At least someone chooses to spend time with me. Can you say the same?” 

Aelfric’s gaze narrowed. His eyes were a bright shade of green, but rather lifeless. It was as though there was nothing behind the points of his pupils and rings of colour. “Freak.” 

The burr did not sting as much as it once would have. Merlin only shrugged, stood, and started on his path home without another word. 

“Wait—stop,” Aelfric called. 

So Merlin stopped. He jolted forward like a ragdoll; his feet tripped over nothing and the lurching motion sent him spiralling toward the forest floor. He threw his hands up to stop his teeth from cracking on tree roots and skinned his palms instead. 

Aelfric only laughed. “I was going to warn you not to tell anyone about what you saw, but even if you did, I doubt they’d believe you. Who would listen to the ramblings of the simple village idiot?”

Merlin, still on the ground, boiled with anger. He reached for the coil of his magic and readied himself to lash out with it and strike at Aelfric—he needed the other man to leave. 

Leaves crunched under Aelfric’s boots as he walked nearer to Merlin. “You’re even more odd than I thought, though, aren’t you? Tell you what, Merlin: Do your poor mother a favour and drown yourself in the river. Lord knows she would be better off without your burden.”  

Merlin jerked up. “No, no—take that back,” he rambled. His knees bent under him and his arms pushed himself back to his feet. 

Aelfric said nothing. He only stared on, though he seemed more confused than malicious. 

Merlin marched forward. He had learned, long ago, that he could delay orders. He dragged his feet. He begged Aelfric to tell him to stop. But he carried forward all the same until his feet brought him to the edge of the river. 

Without delay, Merlin stepped forward and crashed into the rapid, frigid water. 

His world was black in seconds. He fought to get back to the surface, but between the weight of his clothes and the compulsion, he only succeeded in dragging himself across the rocks and the bottom. Merlin thrashed. His lungs burned. His limbs were numb and distant and, with the shock of the cold water, he drew in a breath despite trying to keep his mouth shut. 

This would be his end. Merlin was sure of it. He tried to pull himself to the surface but even his most base, primal instinct was shackled. Instead, Merlin was another stone, stuck at the bottom. 

Around the edges of his vision, the murky world darkened. 

Then—a hand at his shoulder. 

“Merlin!” a voice, distorted by the water, struck his ears, “grab it!”

Merlin’s hand jerked forward and found a roughened palm. 

“Pull yourself free!” 

Merlin’s vision swam. The word was still dark, but in his muscles, a new strength sprang free—power Merlin did not know he had. 

Between his own strength and the help of the hand, Merlin pulled himself free. His head broke the surface and he gasped and sputtered. 

Will stood in the river next to him. He grabbed Merlin by the waist and hauled him to the side. Without the order, Merlin’s legs were weak and his muscles stiff. Again, he coughed and coughed and his eyes burned. A gust of wind slammed into his face and Merlin shuddered. 

“Merlin, mate, try to breathe.” Will ferried him to the bank and helped him to the ground once more. Like a colt, Merlin tried to stand but stumbled toward the ground. 

Will shook his own wet hair and as he lay next to Merlin he threw out his arms. “I love you, but I don’t think this is the place for you to be anymore.”

As Merlin coughed and wretched, he silently agreed. 

Later that night, Merlin sat by the fire with his mother and told her what Will had said. She’d wrapped him in no fewer than four blankets, got him into dry clothing, and made him hot stew, but Merlin still couldn’t shake the chill in his bones. 

The night past the window was deep and, as Samhain grew near, the hair on Merlin’s neck stayed permanently raised. 

His mother sighed. She wrinkled her nose and wiped at her eyes. “I think Will is right,” she said so softly that Merlin could scarcely hear her. It was as though she were afraid to speak louder, as if vocalizing such a thing would make it truer. 

“I’ve tried my best, my bird, but this is no life for you.”

“Mom.” Merlin looked at her and, not for the first time, he could see the way the years had caught her: The grey hairs, the lines under her eyes, the broken skin of her knuckles. 

“I have one last hope—someone who may be able to help you.” She ran her hand over his shoulder and pressed a kiss into this side of his messy hair. “We can talk in the morning. Things always seem more clear with the coming of a new day.”

Merlin nodded. The flames in the hearth sparked and roared and, with a push of his magic, they climbed higher and threw off more heat. When Merlin looked deep enough into the red and orange, as he let his eyes glaze over with the blackened wood and white embers, he thought for a moment he could see the point of a dagger in the ghost of the flame.

Chapter Text

Merlin had never left Ealdor. It seemed only fitting that the first time he did, he walked toward a new kingdom altogether. The pack on his shoulders was thick and the weight of the straps dug into his skin, even through the cotton of his tunic, and he was sure that when he stopped to rest for the night he would find brilliant red welts left behind. 

And, when he did stop to lay out his camp, he did find angry, red lines on the flesh of his shoulder. Merlin stretched out his legs and lit the bundle of wood in front of him with a wave of his hand—sparks caught and drifted up in the air. The night was cool and his jacket was thin, but the thrill of his adventure warmed him and staved off the worst of the chill. 

Merlin, for the first time in his life, did not know what the next day would bring. Joy and terror bolted through him like the lightning in the storm clouds he watched crackle in the distance. 

There are more people in the square than Merlin had ever seen in his life, let alone in one place. People flowed like water through the streets of Camelot and the castle was so tall that the parapets scraped the clouds, just as Will as told him. Merlin smiled, smiled, smiled. Life, here, was already so different from life in Ealdor that it might as well have been a different world. He felt as if he’d fallen asleep and tumbled deep into the trails of his dreams—he would not be shocked to wake in a field to his mother rocking his shoulder, or Will nudging his leg.

Merlin beamed. 

But he didn’t even make it across the courtyard before a man died. 

For the crime of sorcery, the executioner lopped off his head with a clean blow. The crime of being accused of sorcery. Merlin’s stomach tightened and between his travels and light sleep, the head lightened as the blood rushed away. Merlin swayed on his feet. 

“Easy, lad,” a man behind him whispered and steadied his shoulder. 

Involuntarily, Merlin’s nerves eased. The king’s words rang in his ears: magic was evil, magic was chaos. 

In the square, a woman screamed. The mother of the man who died. 

In front of Merlin, magic roared to life—it struck how strange this is, how he should see someone else do magic for the first time in such dire circumstances. But as suddenly as he had come upon the scene in the square, the people of Camelot cleared out once more. And Merlin was alone. And the swing of the ax echoed in his ears. And his heart beat slow, measured and easy. 

And Merlin wondered if he had made a horrible mistake, even if this was the best option to break his curse. 

In the surgery, Merlin’s first action was to save Gaius from his fall. 

A scolding followed. 

The old physician had eyebrows that gave away all his emotions and a gaze that could make anyone, even the bravest of knights, wither. 

Merlin handed him the letter from his mother. 

“You’re Hunith’s boy,” Gaius said softly. 

Merlin nodded. 

“I—I only learned you had been cursed when she wrote to me. If I had known earlier…” his voice cracked and cut off. 

Merlin found it very hard to meet Gaius’ rheumy eyes. Merlin’s curse was not something he had ever discussed. His mother never spoke about it. Merlin could not tell Will (even though Merlin was certain Will suspected there was more depth to his secrets than magic alone). There was no one else that Merlin could have possibly talked about his curse with—was he to tell the bees that he was cursed? Whisper his problems to the river stone? 

“We will look for ways to break this monstrosity immediately,” Gaius said with more confidence than Merlin had felt in a long time. “But if you are to survive here, you must not let anyone know about your magic or your curse. You understand?”

The weight of his words tightened around Merlin’s bones. Merlin clenched his teeth. “Perfectly.”

In Camelot, his first days ran together. Ladies and Lords needed poultices and potions; servants needed salves and knights needed bandages. Everyone, always, needed something and Merlin was happy to oblige.

Already, Gaius had some old books he wanted to skim through to find more about the curse that had been tied to Merlin when he was only a babe. Merlin, too, had a new book of his own—a book of spells, of real magic. At night, when the castle had gone to sleep and the stars awoke, he would shut the door to his room, bar the handle with a chair, and sit with a light in his palm pouring over the ancient text. 

He knew so little of magic, though it swelled within him like a raging river. Merlin hungered to know more, to learn it all, then he could tame his river.

It did not take long in Camelot for Merlin to come across a group of knights bullying a servant. They reminded him of the other boys in Ealdor: big and strong and so afraid of the world that they desperately tried to grasp whatever they could control.

The blond man threw a knife at a servant, who scrambled to his feet. 

Merlin stepped in. 

In later years, Merlin’s memory of this moment will be a blur—a story remembered, misremembered, told and retold—and Merlin will never be sure who spoke first, or how the beats of their fight played out.

What Merlin will remember is this:

Merlin tries to walk away from whatever harm his big mouth might bring, but the blond knight tells him to stop and so Merlin stops. They fight. The knight forces him down and Merlin holds back his magic like a dog in a fight. 

“Who do you think you are, the king?” Merlin bites out.

The blond knight’s mouth curls in a cruel smile. “No. I’m his son. Arthur. ”

The first days in Camelot felt like years and seconds at the same time. There was so much to do and so many people to talk to that Merlin went hoarse. He lost his way in corridors and collapsed into bed each night fighting sleep so he might read his spell book for a few moments longer. 

The prince was an ass and continued to be. The Lady Morgana’s maid was sweet and kind and reminded Merlin a little of Will in the way that she eased his fears. 

And, just when Merlin thought he might be settled into his routine, the mother of the executed man threw a knife at the prince. A son for a son. 

Merlin moved without thinking; he brought down the chandelier and knocked the prince out of the path of the knife. 

For his bravery, the king rewarded him with the joy of serving the prince. Merlin’s stomach soured. He had spent his life being ordered around, how could he force himself to be obedient to a man as unpleasant as Prince Arthur?

“You have no choice,” Gaius told Merlin that night. “The king was not offering, Merlin.”

Merlin frowned and ruffled his hair. “I know! I know! But I don’t see how I’m to go through with this.” The world could not be so cruel as to make Merlin wake up every morning to be beholden to every whim of a horrid man. 

“I’ve got a lead, my boy,” Gauis promised. “There is a potion that we can try, but the ingredients are difficult to come by. It will take several moons to brew, so we’ll just have to weather the storm until then.”

With a sigh, Merlin agreed. 

And, that night, as Merlin lay in his bed waiting for the sleep that he knew would not come, a whisper cut through his mind: Merlin. Merlin. MERLIN.

Merlin jolted up. He raced to the window. 

In the distance, over the trees beyond Camelot, the wings of a dragon beat in the dark. 

Again, the voice echoed in his mind: Arthur is your destiny. 

He wanted to know more—Merlin needed to know more. But the dragon’s wings beat and he was left calling out empty words to an empty sky. 

With a sigh, Merlin slumped down under the window and leaned against the wall. His head ached and his feet hurt and, tomorrow, he would have to wake and serve the prince. The prince who was supposed to be his destiny. 

Merlin could have laughed.

Chapter Text

Merlin woke with a pit of dread hardening in his stomach. Around it, he was soft and fleshy, vulnerable and prone to bruising. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and watched the sun rise beyond his window and, briefly, he wondered if it would be better to run than to face the Prince. 

But there was a curse to break and it seemed that Gaius was the best person to do it. Even with the prince’s prickish personality, and the whole ban on magic on threat of death, Camelot was preferable to Ealdor. Merlin didn’t want to think too deeply about what that meant about his home. 

In the half-light, he washed and dressed, and then he made his way through the maze of the castle’s hallways. This time of morning, the only people around were other servants, guards, and a handful of knights coming back from a long night out. 

Merlin found the prince’s chamber without difficulty, thankfully. He stifled a yawn of his own as he entered and drew open the curtains. 

The prince did not stir. He was wrapped in layers of his blankets; his face smushed into his pillow. He did snore, too, albeit lightly. At times like these, Merlin wanted to shout to whoever would listen about his rotten luck. Why him, out of all people? What god had he angered to end up in such a ridiculous situation? 

“Erm.” Merlin shuffled toward the prince, tentatively reached out, and shook his shoulder. “Up and at ‘em?”

The prince groaned and rolled over. He waved Merlin off. 

How had the manservant before him done this? Merlin scratched his head. The manservant before him had knives thrown at him. And, if the king was willing to assign a random person with no experience or training to take care of the prince, the job couldn’t have exactly been highly desired. 

Again, Merlin cursed his luck. “You have a full schedule today,” Merlin tried. “And according to Guinevere, it’s my job to get you fed, dressed, and have you at the council on time. So rise and shine.” 

The prince pulled his pillow around his ears. “Oh, bugger off.”

Ice flooded Merlin’s veins at the command. Trust a prince to say something awful so carelessly, without a second thought about what his words actually meant. Merlin’s body went rigid, he turned on his heel, and he marched toward the door.

“Wait—don’t actually do that,” the prince called from his bed. He rolled over and rubbed his eyes as he sat up.  Half his hair stuck up wildly, like some sort of strange bird. 

Merlin sagged. He took a breath in carefully through his pursed lips and tried to hold his hands steady. He knew well enough without warnings from his mother or Gaius that it could spell disaster if anyone in the citadel learned about his curse—truly, he was around more vicious and ruthless people than ever before—and the least among the people he could standing knowing was the prattish prince. 

The prince, who was currently staring at Merlin as if he’d never seen a person before. “You’re a strange one, aren’t you, Merlin?”

Merlin ran his tongue over his teeth. He smiled, because that was the only thing he could truly do to maintain any control. “So I’ve been told.”

Merlin’s first weeks with the prince went much the same way as the first day. In the mornings, the prince would whine. Somehow, Merlin rallied and readied him all the same. The days blurred together: washing and scrubbing, picking up lunches and filling cups with wine, mending and dressing. More than anything, Merlin quickly learned, the prince’s manservant was there to temper him. Left to his own devices, the prince wouldn’t manage to put on his shirt the right way around. 

Despite the way the constant commands ground on his spirits—the never-ending strings of ‘polish my armour’ and ‘stoke the fire’ and ‘bring me breakfast’—Merlin found he was rather good as a servant. At least his curse made him useful at something for once. Even if, one time, he did work until his fingers were raw and knuckles bloody in a fruitless endeavour of scrubbing the floors in the prince’s room until they shined. 

Merlin had his tongue as his resistance. And it was enough, for now. While his body would turn rigid and move like he was possessed, he didn’t have to like it, and he made the prince well aware of that. 

“Merlin, mind yourself,” the prince told him one day, after Merlin had let him know he was a prat for demanding that Merlin should clean up the training fields after the new group of knights had left it in chaos. 

“Well, you are a prat,” Merlin said plainly as he gathered the wooden practice swords in his arms all the same. “I’m simply speaking the truth.” 

“I have half a mind to put you in the stocks for that.”

Merlin hauled another fake sword into his arms. The sun was high and bright and the stone of the castle behind them gleamed. “Go right ahead,” Merlin dared. “Then you’ll have to clean this field yourself.”

The prince shook his head and turned away. “You’re a terrible servant, you know that?”

Merlin grinned. “I know.” Delight and warmth bloomed in his chest. In his life, he had so little control—over the circumstances of his birth, over his life in Ealdor, over his own will—but, from the outside, the prince did not see him as an obedient, perfect servant.

As Merlin reset the training grounds so the new knights could come again tomorrow and muck it all up, he wondered if appearing defiant and being defiant were one and the same. 

A month passed, and then another, and before Merlin knew it, he’d passed a whole season as the prince’s manservant. Time, Merlin thought, did not always fall evenly like the sand in a glass or melt as consistently and steadfastly as candle marks. The first days he passed in Camelot felt like years—he was on edge, confused, and afraid. The more used to the city and the people and his routine that he got, that prickly edge of fear faded to a background hum. 

Gaius, try as he did, still had no answer for Merlin and his curse. In some ancient tome, there had to be a remedy, but such books were either locked in the vaults or nothing more than ash in the wind. 

At dinner, after another failed spell dried up on Merlin’s tongue, he sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples. 

“Cheer up, my boy,” Gaius said as he slid another bowl of stew toward Merlin. “There are many places we have yet to look.”

“I know,” Merlin mumbled. The fact there were so many places left to look for a solution was what frightened him the most. Would he have to read every book in the library and vault? Would he have to speak to every exiled sorcerer and witch and druid? Would he have to venture to the end of the land, where the earth met the sea and sky, just to find a way to be normal? 

“I know,” he whispered to Gaius once again.

There were several unpleasant things Merlin had to do in service of the prince, but the chief among them had to be following him on hunts. Merlin detested the cruelty of it all. The prince, his knights, the nobles—these were not desperate men, like the ones he had known in Ealdor, who were only searching for a way to make sure their children’s bellies were full as they laid down to sleep. 

No—these men wanted glory. They want trophies to take home and lift over their heads and woo the ladies of the court. They couldn’t care less if the rest of the kingdom was in a feast or famine. Men like that had never known hard winters, when spring seemed so far away and even watery broth was a meal that one would crave. 

So, as Merlin followed on horseback behind the prince one day in spring, he kept his jaw locked and his head forward. The clouds that sifted the sun also threatened rain. Merlin knew it would catch them before they returned and he’d be the one stuck with the work in the rain when they reached the citadel again; the prince would bolt inside for a hot bath and food.

Merlin adjusted the reigns in his hands. Today, it was only the prince and him. They were out on one of the prince’s whims, as opposed to anything more formal—just another thing he hated about hunts. As soon as the prince had a bad day, he would skive off on a hunt. Merlin never did see how hunting would right a sour mood. 

“Hold.” The prince raised his arm and Merlin brought Llamrei to a stop. “There’s something in the bush.” 

The prince dismounted Hengroen and gestured for Merlin to bring his bow and arrow, which Merlin did. The tree branches, heavy with the buds of spring, swayed in the wind. Bits of snow still clung in shaded spots and the ground was damp with snow melt and rain. Merlin stepped forward and cursed the water that flooded through the hole in the heel of his boot. 

Carefully, the prince stepped forward and around the trunk of a great oak. Merlin followed behind, dutifully, holding the extra arrows and biting his lip. 

“Oh.” Prince Arthur lowered his arrow. 

In front of them, tangled in a knot of vines and dead leaves and a fallen trunk, was a stag. A new set of antlers was beginning to bud from his head; his front left hoof was caught deep in a divet in the land and a bush wrapped with thorns jailed him there.  

The prince handed his crossbow and arrow back to Merlin. He drew his sword. 

“You can’t—”

“Honestly Merlin.” The prince rolled his eyes. He crept forward, navigating the uneven ground with ease and grace. He lifted his sword and in one clean movement, Prince Arthur brought it down on the thick tree branch that kept the stag in place. From there, he worked swiftly, cutting through the brush and keeping his blade clear of the fitful animal. 

Finally, Arthur reached forward and lifted the stag’s hoof from the hole. The animal protested and fought, but the moment Arthur brought him to solid ground once more, he bolted off back into the trees and thick of the forest. 

Arthur wiped his brow. Gashes marked the back of his hands; a deep thorn had embedded itself in his left palm. A trickle of blood made its way over his skin like a stream over the land.

“Did you honestly think I’d kill it?” His voice was small. From behind a thick cloud, the sun finally found its way to freedom. Beams of light cut through the trees and danced with the shadows of the forest. Sun fell across Arthur’s nose, which Merlin had never realized before was slightly crooked, as though it had been broken and reset. 

“I don’t know,” Merlin admitted. “I don’t know you very well, do I?” He had not been in Camelot yet for half a year. 

“I suppose not.” Arthur placed his sword back in his scabbard, frowned, and wiped his dirty hands together. “I’m nothing if not a man of honour, Merlin, and there’s no honour in claiming something that has already been caught.” 

Chapter Text

After that day in the woods, Merlin found it difficult to look at Arthur the same way he had seen him before. And maybe that was exactly it: before the hunt, Merlin hadn’t bothered to examine the prince any closer. He had taken in Arthur’s blond hair and eyes like the sky and proud chin and thought that was the whole of him. Thought he was a vapid bully, same as the other boys in Ealdor, just bolstered by the arrogance of his title. 

There was some of that. Merlin wouldn’t pretend there wasn’t. But when Merlin looked closer there was something more. For as many times as Arthur spoke carelessly, or ordered Merlin around without a second thought, there were equal times when Merlin would catch him sitting in silence, rereading a letter for a third time, or taking the long way back after a council meeting, or stopping in town to hear out the worries of the people of Camelot. 

In short, Arthur was a mystery. A bit like the woods, Merlin thought—one could look from the outside and make their guesses about the whole of it, but there was no way to know for sure what lay in the wilds of the centre unless one was to venture inside.

When Merlin looked at Arthur and tried to guess what was behind his expression, especially when it turned stony, he found himself coming up empty. He could only guess; there was no way to know, one way or the other, what Arthur was really thinking. 

More than anything, the words the dragon whispered in his mind when he first arrived in Camelot, that Arthur was his destiny, swirled in his head. He couldn’t fathom their meaning any more than he could pretend to know what Arthur was thinking, but, as the days and months passed, the idea that Arthur and he might be tied together in ways that he couldn’t yet understand was less painful than each day and month prior. 

Sometimes, it even gave him hope. 

A feast, at the height of summer. The room full to the edges: knights and ladies, lords and guests. A bard played his lute and the whole hall sang along, clapping and stomping. From the edge of the wall, Merlin nodded to the beat of the music. A few times in Camelot now, he’d caught glimpses of singers and listened to the strum of music, but it had never been like this. His heart and head roared with the thunder and the whole room felt alive and charged with energy, as close to magic as Uther would ever allow. 

Back home, in Ealdor, the only music he had was his mother’s soft tunes that she would sing as she worked. Lovely as they were, it’s not the same. How much he missed out on; how many wonderful things the world is full of. Merlin closed his eyes and let himself fall into the heart of the music. He could stay like this for a long while, with the music bringing him to new life. The room was too hot—the warmth of the day had not yet faded and the bodies in the room only added to the temperature—and the smell of the food teased his stomach (for in his morning rush he had missed breaking his fast with Gaius and only managed a light lunch before he had to hurry to ready Arthur for the day), but Merlin didn’t mind. Later, he and the other servants would have their go at the food. Night brought a cool breeze and Merlin had a few tricks in mind to make his own room more pleasant so he could manage a good night’s sleep. 

All in all, things in Camelot were not as awful as he had feared they would be. 

“Merlin.” Arthur’s voice cut through both song and Merlin’s thoughts. No easy feat, considering Merlin wasn’t sure which was louder. 

The torchlight glimmered off Arthur’s circlet. He raised his cup and waved it. 

Merlin rolled his eyes as he shuffled forward with the wine and refilled the empty goblet. There might have been more to Arthur than met the eye, but what met the eye was still very much there and real. 

The bard finished his song and took a sweeping bow. The hall burst into applause and cheers and demands for another, which he started to strum once more. 

Arthur didn’t look at Merlin as he whispered a simple, “Do pay more attention.”

Merlin winced as the command hooked him; the simple ease he carried melted into wrought attention. His back straightened, his eyes widened, and as he made his way back to his spot behind Arthur he knew his mind would not wander through his stray thoughts. He would have to ask Gaius to undo it all when he returned later in the night. 

Merlin clenched his hand around the jug of wine. Arthur clapped along to the bard's new song and threw a careless smile at some of his knights; he was none the wiser to what he’d just ordered Merlin to do.

“Merlin?”

He whipped his head to the side. Though Arthur might have been ignorant of Merlin’s sudden change in demeanour, Morgana had not. With her chin, she motioned for him to come near, and so Merlin did. 

“More wine, my lady?” He raised the jug.

In return, Morgana raised her eyebrow, in a way that suggested she’d been spending entirely too much time with Gaius. “Oh, enough of that. Are you alright?”

“I’m perfectly fine.” Merlin plastered on his best smile.

“You don’t look it,” Morgana muttered, and while part of Merlin was flattered someone actually paid attention to him, he squirmed under her sharp gaze all the same. Gaius, his mother—they had been clear he was not to let anyone know. Will might have been alright, but the risk of anyone in the court discovering him was too great: he had to hide better. Flatten his expressions. Swallow his annoyance. The images that haunted him at night ranged from being stuck as an errand boy for all of perpetuity to landing himself on the chopping block, which was one way to break the curse. 

“I promise, I’m alright. Just a touch tired and hungry.” That wasn’t a lie.

Morgana only blinked at him, before turning back toward the bard. “If you say.”

When Merlin returned to his place behind Arthur, he couldn’t help but notice the glances she threw his way for the rest of the night. Even when Arthur finally decided to retire for the night, and Merlin trailed behind him, he caught a last glimpse of Morgana before they left the hall. Her eyes were fixed on the two of them. She gave a small nod as they exited the hall. Merlin had a strange feeling that it wasn’t Arthur she was watching, but him.

With Arthur, once they had found their rhythm, the time passed much the same as Merlin’s early years. Again, he imagined a stone on the water: skip, skip, skipskipskip.  Weeks, months, and then the years blurred together. 

In Camelot, Merlin learned quickly there was always something. Unicorns. Trolls. Snakes, coming to life in shields. Mostly, when things went wrong, there was another sorcerer somewhere to blame. All of it made Merlin quite tired. 

Gaius and he, for all their searching, had still not found a cure. Sometimes, when the night grew deep and dark and Merlin sat awake and alone in his room, he would look out the window in the direction of Ealdor and think of his mother. They wrote, but it was not the same. 

At what point would he call it? Would it be best to cut his losses and return home to her, tail between his legs? 

Each time, Gaius would say the next potion or talisman or incantation would be the one to break the tight chains of the spell. Each time, the curse stayed as tightly wound to Merlin’s will as ever. 

At what point did one give up hope? 

The answer was not a year, nor even two nor three. 

Three years, come and gone like the leaves on autumn trees—always turning sooner than one thinks, then too easy to believe the brilliant gold will last forever, only to be gone with a great shake in the wind. 

Three years, come and gone in Camelot. Curse, unbroken. The only thing Merlin thought had changed when he took stock of his life, was his affection for Arthur. 

They—as in Merlin and Arthur, and Merlin wondered what meant that he was increasingly thinking of himself and Arthur as one unit—stayed together in the inn near Mercia. Earlier that day, Arthur killed a Basilisk that had been terrorizing a small village. Eating the chickens and eggs and horses and the likes. 

Now, the poor thing was dead. A corpse in the forest, ready to rot with the falling leaves and be buried under the winter snow. What else could you do with a Basilisk? Arthur took a fang as a trophy, but the rest of it was too big to move and there was no point risking lighting up the whole forest by trying to cremate the remains. 

The inn was old and needed fixing, but a rain storm had blown in through the valley and even Arthur had agreed it would be senseless to try and return to Camelot. They would never make it in the dark and stopping while there was an inn, rundown as it was, was preferable to camping in the downpour. 

Fire crackled and popped in the hearth. Arthur sat on the edge of his bed and sharpened his sword. Merlin had taken up by the fire, for both warmth and light, as he mended a rip in Arthur’s cloak. The Basilisk had nearly torn the garment in two; Merlin doubted his threaded would do much good, but it at least could give Arthur some protection on their ride home come morning. 

Rain hammered and wind shook the walls of the inn. Water dripped down from the corner near Merlin’s bed and the bucket the innkeeper stuck underneath threatened to spill over. 

And still, there was nowhere Merlin would rather be. 

When Arthur finished with his sword, he came near the fire. He folded his legs under him and sat on the floor next to Merlin, his hands spread out to find the warmth of the fire. 

“Some day, wasn’t it?”

Merlin agreed. 

“I thought that thing was going to bite me in two.”

“That would have been terrible. I couldn’t call you an arse if you didn’t have one.” Merlin kept his focus on his stitching and pulled the corners of his mouth in from their smile. 

Arthur swatted his shoulder. “I’m the future king, Merlin. You should think twice about how you speak to me.”

The command hooked into Merlin’s gut. His smile wavered as he straightened up and met Arthur’s gaze. His skin and hair drank in the firelight—he glowed with the warmth and the fire flickered in his eyes. 

“Right. Sorry. Without your royal arse.” Merlin grinned. “And I did think twice before I said that, just for the record.”

Arthur’s mouth twitched. He pushed Merlin over to the side and his laughter rang through the room, clear as a bell. 

Merlin kicked back, knocking Arthur over too. Arthur rolled, like he would with his knights, and hooked Merlin’s arm. The two of them tumbled together and swung wide in a circle across the floor of the inn, scraping and fighting like pups. 

Arthur came to rest with Merlin pinned beneath him, squirming. His heart beat up into his throat. Try as he might, there was no way to get Arthur to budge; roughly, they were the same height, but Arthur had the weight of his muscles on Merlin. 

“I win,” Arthur muttered. 

Merlin cocked his head. It would take less than a blink to send Arthur flying backward. “So you do. If you laid off the bread I might have a fighting chance.”

Arthur, this time, did not laugh. He did not move. His face was very close. His nose nearly touched Merlin’s. Like this, he must have been able to feel the beat of Merlin’s heart. They were too close not too. Every feeling, every twitch of their muscles, every hum of their throats—they were both laid bare in front of each other. 

Arthur’s hair smelled like rain. His soap, underneath. “Merlin,” he whispered. His hand trembled. 

Merlin swallowed. His lips parted. 

And Arthur was there. His lips, brushing over Merlin’s, warm and strong. After a moment, he pulled his head back, breathless. 

Merlin’s mouth tingled, both from the sensation and the sudden lack of it. 

“Sorry,” Arthur blurted out. He rolled off Merlin quickly and stood up, brushing off his hands. “I—I should get some rest. It’s been a long day.” 

Merlin pushed himself to sit back up. He found the cloak once more, along with his abandoned needle and thread. “Right. I should finish this first.”

“Right.” Arthur nodded. His face was deep red from his neck to his ears. “Well. Goodnight.” 

“Goodnight.” Merlin held the needle in his hand. Suddenly, he forgot how to do even a simple stitch. 

As he found his rhythm with the thread once more, he listened to the creaking floorboards as Arthur readied himself for bed. Perhaps he should have helped, but whether as a servant or as something more, Merlin did not know. 

Chapter Text

The next morning, they rode in silence back to Camelot. Overnight, the rain had turned to snow. Their horses made fresh tracks as they crossed over the land; their breath curled in puffs in the grey air. The cloak Merlin pulled around his shoulders was not warm enough, for he hadn’t expected the weather to take such an awful turn, and when Arthur wasn’t looking Merlin silently cocooned himself in warmth. 

Arthur, on the other hand, had his thick, fit-for-a-prince cloak. His cheeks were flushed and his nose ran as he rode on ahead. He seemed very determined not to look back and not to speak about anything that had transpired between them last night. 

The snowfall was early in the season. It dusted over autumn leaves and drank all the colour of the world until the orange and gold became a wash of white and grey. A robin chittered somewhere in the distance and the tracks of rabbits and foxes dented the fresh blanket. Along the side of the road, ice glazed the puddles leftover from the storm. 

Behind the stone grey cloud, the sun threatened to peak out. Maybe by afternoon, it would, and maybe it would stave off the coming of winter for another fortnight. 

Long before the snow melted, though, they would be back in Camelot. Things always seemed different when they were away—it was as if titles did not matter in the same way. They weren’t a prince and his manservant, they simply became Merlin and Arthur. 

Returning, then, held a weight. Merlin would rather ignore it, but even if he did, the path they were on would take them to the doors of the castle all the same. 

Mostly, Merlin thought of the warmth of Arthur’s lips on his own. The way his blond hair caught the light of candles. His voice—how husky it turned when it dropped low. 

Wanting was something new. What had Merlin ever asked for in life? For his mother to be safe? To be free of his curse? He wanted only what everyone wanted: to live in safety and happiness, to be free to carry out his own will, to imagine a future for himself and the people he loved.

Now, here he was, wanting after a prince. What would his mother say? She’d spent her life scrubbing clothing clean in cold water, mending split seems by the firelight as well as her eyes could manage, and now here her boy was, asking for the whole world? Merlin might as well throw his arms out like a petulant child and scream out to anyone who would listen that he wanted more and more and more. 

Ahead of him, Arthur’s horse whinnied. He shushed him and carried on forward, through the snow-dusted wood. 

Merlin bit his lip. He urged his own horse forward until he closed the distance between himself and Arthur. 

Arthur turned over his shoulder to look at him and Merlin’s heart fluttered as Arthur’s lips turned up in a smile. 

“Some weather, isn’t it?” Merlin cringed at his weak attempt at conversation, but talking about the weather seemed to be the least offensive and least difficult thing to talk about at the moment. 

“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “I think it’ll be a long winter.” 

Merlin nodded along. They would have to prepare for the cold as well as they could. A long winter meant resources could be stretched thin, especially if spring was cold too. Most of the harvest had already been reaped, though, so the kingdom was well prepared. 

But try as Merlin did to think of all the logistics to plan for the winter, he could not bring his mind to carry forth into the future, to imagine what they would need, what they should save, how they might ration. His thoughts were stuck firmly in the previous night—the rickety inn, the warm fire, Arthur’s body grappling with his own. 

Arthur cleared his throat. “Look, Merlin. About last night.” His voice caught in his chest and, suddenly, he looked away, into the trees. 

“You don’t have to say it.” Merlin tightened his grip on the reigns. “We’ll put it behind us. Pretend like it never happened.” As he spoke, his chest tightened. Something fierce and fiery in his heart protested. Wrong, wrong, wrong, it screamed. Denying the spark between the two of them made as much sense as tying a blindfold around his eyes and wandering into a forest. 

But what the heart wanted and the mind needed were two different things, one the sky and one the earth, and as vast as both were, there was no place where they did overlap. A quick touch, a brief meeting of sky and land, mind and heart—a line on the horizon was all that Merlin got. 

Arthur carried on, quiet. “Yes, that’s for the best,” he finally said. He held his chin high. A huff of his breath clouded around his mouth. 

“For the best,” Merlin repeated. He swayed with the motion of the horse. How else could it be? Prince and servant—it would never work, not even in the best of times. Nevermind there was the part of Merlin—his magic, his curse—that he kept firmly behind a locked door. Even if he wanted to, he could never let Arthur cross that threshold. 

Some things, Merlin thought, were meant to stay hidden. Opening that door for Arthur would bring nothing but problems, and he had enough of those for several lifetimes. 

That night, after they made their triumphant return, after Merlin had put both the horses and Arthur to bed, after he’d downed some stew with Giaus and washed in the basin in his room, Merlin found his way outside the citadel to the woods. After three years in Camelot, he’d gotten used to the place well enough: the smell of smoke and people; the constant noises, even in the dead of night; the soft light from candles and the sun on a bright day. 

Despite his familiarity with the castle, he still found he did his best thinking under open skies. It reminded him of being young again, of when the world still held so much mystery and possibility. 

With a wave of his hand, Merlin dried a patch on the ground under the tree and sat there. Through the thinning branches, the stars shone bright. It was a moonless night, and though the clouds had cleared the air was still ice and smelt of snow and rotting leaves. 

Merlin pulled his knees into his chest and shivered. Just last night, he’d been so warm. Now, that cocoon of heat and safety had been yanked away by his own doing. If life was different, if he hadn’t been born with magic woven through his being, or cursed to bend to any will, maybe he could have allowed himself such an indulgent. If he was simply a boy from Ealdor with no great story behind his name, life would be so simple.

Merlin let out his breath. He straightened his back. 

With arm raised to the heavens, he called down a great, crackling bolt. The tallest tree across the clearing exploded—wood scattered, a boom thundered through the world, and smoke curled upward from where it had once stood. Rabbit and a doe raced away; birds and squirrels scattered. Merlin breathed heavily, as if he’d just sprinted a mile. The leftover magic wove around his fingertips, a net of power threatening to catch him and keep him here. 

Merlin shook both his head and hand and wiped his palm against his jacket. With every passing moment, he was robbing himself of sleep. Before the sun rose in the East, he’d have to be back at Arthur’s side. 

With a sigh, he stood and made his way back to the citadel. 

Merlin had expected everyone, save a few guards, to be asleep. 

He had not expected that, upon opening the door to Gaius’ surgery, he would find Morgana sitting at the table. Her hair was braided simply, but her eyes were wide and dark circles hung under her eyes. She’d dressed simply as well, just thrown a robe over a chemise, likely because she was without Gwen at this late hour. 

“My Lady,” Merlin said and bowed. 

She waved him off and chewed her nail. “Nightmares, again. What else is new?” 

Gaius stood at his workstation, grinding together some sort of remedy. “I wondered where you went, Merlin. I could use some help getting the valerian. It’s on the top shelf.”

Merlin nodded, climbed the ladder, and retrieved the bottle that Gaius spoke of. The whole while, Gaius worked away, and Morgana sat stiff as a board, unmoving. 

“Where were you this time of night?” she asked. 

“The woods,” Merlin replied as he handed the bottle to Gaius, who unstoppered it and added it to the remedy. “I needed to clear my head.”

“There was lightning in the woods. It seemed odd—both close to the city and rare for this time of year.”

Merlin nodded slowly. “Spooked the animals, but I’m fine.” Thankfully, Gaius did not seem to notice, as he was too absorbed in his work. Merlin was thankful for that—the last thing he needed was an earful. 

“Well. I hope so. That would be some fright.” Morgana watched him carefully. Her gaze was cool, her expression blank. Had she always been so difficult to read? 

She was the opposite of Arthur, who wore his heart on his sleeve, but Merlin did not think she’d always been that way. In his early days in Camelot, she’d shown her hand just as easily as Arthur. 

But she was always the more clever of the two, and there was a wall she’d put up that Merlin could not see past. 

“Merlin,” Gaius said, “pass me my glasses.”

Instantly, Merlin turned. He plucked the glasses from the table, marched over, and handed them to Gaius, who took them without so much as a second glance. Deep in his work as he was, Merlin doubted he even realized he’d given him a command. 

Morgana raised a brow. “Are you sure you’re alright Merlin?”

“Perfectly,” Merlin mumbled. Between the day he’d had and the night before, he needed a week’s worth of rest, and he wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of settling for a few hours. “Call for me if you need me,” he said as he stormed off to his room and collapsed into his bed. 

None of the awkwardness between Arthur and Merlin had miraculously faded overnight. Merlin dressed him without speaking and Arthur found many places in his room that seemed to hold his interested gaze—none of them were Merlin’s eyes. 

“You have a meeting with your father first, then training with the knights. I’ll have lunch ready for you when you’re back,” Merlin said as he straightened Arthur’s belt. 

“Right.” Arthur chewed his lip. Outside, it was raining again, and the light patter of the drops against the window echoed through the room. “Merlin. About the other day. I—I think we should talk about it more.”

“You’re going to be late.” Merlin opened the door for Arthur and gestured to the hall. 

Arthur only sighed. “Can we talk more when I’m back? Over lunch?” Finally, he met Merlin’s gaze. His eyes were warm and blue, so blue. The colour reminded Merlin of Ealdor on a summer day, back when he was young and the world did not seem to be such a burden. 

“We’ll talk over lunch,” Merlin promised, “now off you go—and don’t think of pining it on me if you’re late.”

All morning, the prospect of whatever conversation lay ahead sat like a stone in Merlin’s stomach. As Merlin scrubbed the stone floor and polished Arthur’s armour, he imagined all the things that Arthur might want to say. 

What if he sacked him? It would be well within his rights. Why would Arthur want to see his face every morning? 

It was funny how life turned—a few years ago and being ‘rewarded’ with the position of Arthur’s manservant was only second in dread to the thought of the pyre. Now, Merlin couldn’t imagine his life if he wasn’t at Arthur’s side. 

Would he stay in Camelot? The reason he’d come here in the first place was so Gaius might help him find a way to break his curse and they’d made no progress on that front. 

Merlin sighed, ruffled his hair, and set off to the kitchen to collect Arthur’s lunch. He might have many faults, but never let it be said he was a coward. 

“Merlin.”

Merlin stopped in his tracks. 

Morgana stood across the hall. She looked worn from her sleepless night—the dark skin still circled her eyes and her face was hollow, Merlin realized, gaunt in a way that it hadn’t been in the spring. When had she grown so thin? Her hair, too, looked dry and her skin sallow. 

“Follow me,” she said. 

And so Merlin did. Like a puppet, he jerked forward. As Morgana took a step, so did Merlin. A wry smile wormed its way across her face. 

“Morgana, I—”

“Don’t speak.” 

And, with that, Merlin lost his voice. He followed Morgana through the citadel—servants and lords alike all brushed past the two of them, no one any wiser as to what was happening. Even if Merlin could have spoken, what would he have said?

Finally, Morgana led him into an unused room in the west wing. When guests from other kingdoms came, the suite would shine, but now it was full of the ghosts of covered furniture. 

“Stay there and tell me the truth,” Morgana said, almost breathless, “are you compelled to follow orders?”

“Yes.” The words spilled helplessly over Merlin’s lips; he could not hold them back.

“Tell me why.”
“I don’t know,” Merlin admitted. His stomach turned. Whatever was to happen here, he couldn’t imagine this ending well. “I was cursed when I was still a baby.”

“Hm.” Morgana paced around Merlin. There was no part of him that her calculating gaze missed. “And you will follow any order?”

“As long as it’s possible, then yes.” Merlin swallowed the bile climbing in his throat. “But I hate it. It feels, well, wrong. Like my body is not my own. It hurts, Morgana,” he pleaded. 

There was much he had ignored with Morgana—her nightmares, her visions—but at one point in time they had nearly been friends, and he hoped that counted for something.
“I mean no harm, I promise,” Merlin swore and crossed his heart to show he meant it.

“If I told you to jump, you would do it?” Morgana asked. 

“I think we both know I would.”

“And if I told you to walk up to the parapet and leap off, you would do it?”

Merlin’s gaze hardened. His mind rushed back to Ealdor and the river and the thundering water choking out his lungs. “Yes.” 

Morgana stopped pacing. From her pocket, she pulled free a dagger. It was an ornate thing—much fancier than anything Merlin had ever held—with its red hilt covered in twisted gold. Arthur had given it to her for her birthday. 

She held the dagger up for Merlin to see, her thin finger pressing into the sharp point. “And if I told you to take this dagger and plunge it into Arthur’s heart, would you?”

The world fell out from under Merlin’s feet. It was as if he was falling, twisting, unmoored from the world. “Morgana. You can’t.”

She only smiled and turned the hilt toward Merlin. “You are to take this dagger. The next time you see Arthur, you are to plunge it into his heart.”

Merlin’s arm jerked forward and he took the blade. The weight was beautiful in his palm; it balanced unlike anything he’d ever held. 

Without another word, Morgana brushed past Merlin. Her skirt and dark hair swished. “Oh, and Merlin—you can move freely now.” Behind her, the door shut with a click. 

Panic crawled up Merlin’s throat. The blade in his hand burned. Tears blurred the corners of his eyes. 

And, without a second thought, Merlin ran. 

Out the door. Through the halls. Toward the courtyard and past the walls. He pushed past people and ignored the turns of heads. He needed to get away, as far as he could, as fast as possible. 

Morgana, in her arrogance, had been careless—she’d ordered Merlin to stab Arthur the next time he saw him. 

Merlin, bound as his will might be, was not powerless. He could follow the words to the letter and ignore the spirit. 

He wouldn’t kill Arthur. He could get out of it: Merlin would never see Arthur again.

Chapter Text

Part 2: Widening Circles

Time was an odd thing. So often in life, it played out linear: one moment, precious or wretched, after the next, after the next, after the next. 

Then, in an instant, the whole illusion can fall apart. The fragile strands linking together the story of one’s life cut free; all wretched and precious moments twist together in freefall.

Merlin ran. 

He had been running his whole life. He lived in Camelot for an hour and for a hundred years. Ealdor was a lifetime ago and the only thing he ever truly knew. 

Around him, the forest morphed into shadows. The trees bent and the light stretched out; Merlin’s legs and face and lungs burned with effort as he pushed himself forward and forward again. 

He ran without thinking. He did not bother with maps, or with watching the forks in the path, he moved with only one thought blinking in his brain: get away. Whatever he did, he needed to put as much distance as he could between himself and Camelot. Himself and Arthur. 

The rest he could figure out later. As long as Arthur was safe, that was all that mattered for now. 

Eventually, Merlin came to a clearing, where the branches opened up to reveal soft grass and a high stream. 

Merlin coughed and stumbled forward. He collapsed onto his back and splayed out his arms to the sky, which had clouded over as the sun sank. When had he left? Before noon? 

The coppery taste of blood lingered on his lips, though when he wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve the spit came away clear—like most of his problems, it was all in his head. It was well into the late afternoon now. Merlin was miles away from home. Judging by the position of the sun, he’d gone west. 

Vaguely, he remembered coming this way once, back when he’d first started with Arthur. Had they come through this very clearing? Stopped to water the horses?
He wiped his face and pushed the sweat off his brow. A cold wind blew through the clearing and Merlin shivered—the sweat on his back was quickly turning cold now that he wasn’t moving. Merlin coughed again, pushed himself to his feet, and made his way toward the water with his aching legs. 

The stream was cold. In the morning, Merlin wouldn’t be surprised if the world was covered in frost and ice. The last stand of autumn was quickly losing land to winter’s onslaught. Merlin pushed his hands into the icy water anyway and held them there. He worked off the dirt as the tips of his fingers went numb underwater. 

He splashed his face. The cold water shocked his system, pushed away the sweat, and left him gasping. He splashed himself again, and again, until all the warmth drained out of his face. 

Merlin turned his head skyward and screamed. His throat burned; a bird in the trees raced away. With his numb fingertips, he found the earth beneath the fallen leaves and he dug in, anchoring himself there. 

Eventually, when he had no more power in his lungs, the scream fizzled into a sob. Merlin grit his teeth and pushed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. He tried to draw in a deep breath but only succeeded in sucking shallow air into the tops of his lungs and back out again. 

It wasn’t fair—none of it was fair. He’d known this forever. He used to have no concept of a world where he’d grown up in any different circumstances—even imagining a different life was near impossible. How could a person want what they didn’t even know? 

Somehow, with Arthur, a new world had begun to materialize. Merlin could only glimpse it from the outside in, but at least he could now see it: a life where he wasn’t cursed. Where he didn’t have magic. It wouldn’t be a life without its difficulties, but other troubles seemed so much lighter compared to his own burden. 

Now that he had seen it, Merlin wanted it. He wanted to be with Arthur—whatever that meant—without holding back. In all honestly, Merlin hadn’t known it was possible to want anything in life so badly. The things he wanted as a child—to play with Will, to wander freely in the trees, to see the world beyond the edges of Ealdor—all paled against the fire of this want, the fire that would consume the whole forest. 

Merlin rubbed at his face and wiped his nose on his sleeve between shaky breaths. 

In the clearing behind him, something snapped and Merlin jumped. For a moment, he thought, he hoped, he feared that Arthur had followed him. 

But, as he turned, it was not Arthur that his eyes met. 

A dragon sat on the dead leaves in the clearing. It shook its leathery wings out and, in doing so, rattled the bare branches of nearby trees. Under the cloud-filtered sun, the light that titled off its scales reminded Merlin of moss-covered stones in streams: a yellow-green that screamed stay clear. 

Merlin had glimpsed the dragon (he was sure that he had) from far away, but being only a few arms lengths away made his skin dimple into gooseflesh. Never before had Merlin seen an animal so large. The dragon took up the better part of the clearing. He’d thought that the horse and ox were giant animals—for he always felt small next to them—but they were nothing compared to this. How did anything that large have a heart that beat, let alone wings that could carry it?

Magic, Merlin knew. A creature like this could only exist because of magic. It defied his most basic understanding of the world. His heart, still racing from both nerves and running, beat faster still. 

“Peace, young warlock,” the dragon said. 

Merlin tripped on his own feet. His bottom hit the dirt and a spark of pain raced up from his tailbone. “You talk!”

The dragon moved it—his?—head like a horse in a whinny of laughter. “Should I not?”

“You’re—you’re a dragon. ” Merlin’s head throbbed with pain. Maybe he’d lost his mind somewhere in the forest. 

“Yes, I am.”

Merlin took a breath. “I’ve seen you before. In the sky.”

"That is where I usually am.”

“They say all the dragons are gone.” 

Again, the dragon laughed. “King Uther would say there are no sorcerers in his castle.” 

Merlin bit his lip; he couldn’t argue with that point. He had seen the dragon from afar. He’d watched the creature fluttering through the clouds and swoop over the treetops for his whole life, always glimpsing it from afar. The closest he’d come to believing there might be more to the dragon than the fact that it haunted him like a ghost was when he’d first arrived in Camelot and that raspy voice whispered into his mind that Arthur was his destiny. 

He hadn’t believed those words. He remembered them often, never entirely sure if it was the dragon, a vision, or a touch of madness that put them in his mind that early night in Camelot. 

“Why?” was all that Merlin managed to ask back. No other question would form in his mind, racing as it was. 

The dragon turned his head to the side. Glowing yellow eyes fixed on Merlin. “I’ve been watching you, young warlock, for some time now. You have a great destiny.”

Merlin shook his head. “I don’t.”

“You do. ”

“I don’t!” Merlin spat. Sweat and water from the stream ran down his neck. His hair stuck to his temples. He curled his hands into fists and held his magic down as it bubbled like a forgotten pot on the hearth of his heart. “You’re mistaken.”

“It is not I who has decided this. Fate does not make mistakes.”

“It’s not me. I’m—I’m nobody.”

“Perhaps I am the one who has made the mistake.” The dragon rustled his great wings again before pulling them tight to his body and kneeling low. His head came close to Merlin. “I should have come for you sooner. You have been left in the dark too long, with so many questions.”

Merlin’s nostrils flared. “You can help me? And you’ve—what—just been watching this whole time?” His head warmed; around the edges of his world, his vision melted. 

“I cannot break your curse if that is what you ask of me.” 

“But you know about it.” 

The dragon tilted his head. “Yes.” 

“You know who did it?”

The dragon closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Then tell me!”

"There are answers you must find yourself.”

Merlin swore. He turned away, back to the stream, and let a torrent of wild magic loose on the water. Steam curled up where the energy collided with the surface; stray eddies flew free and splashed against the grass of the clearing. 

“Just leave me alone if you’re not going to tell me anything,” he told the dragon without looking at him. 

“I cannot do that, either. What I can do is guide you, and from the sorry state of you, you will need it.” 

Merlin gave him a dry chuckle and shook his head. “You’ll never understand what it’s like.” No one could. Merlin could learn everything there was to know, and no one else would ever truly understand what it meant to be in his situation, what it was to spike with fear every time anyone opened their moves, to be subject to whims, both thoughtless and cruel, to have no control over the only thing that most people could say was theirs and theirs alone—one’s will. 

“I understand more than you might think.” The dragon turned his head again and the sun played in the rings of his eyes. “Magic is not your only talent. You, Merlin, are the last of the dragonlords.”

“Dragonlords?” 

“An ability passed from father to son throughout the ages. You can speak the Dragon Tongue. You can command all dragons—though, these days, I am the last of my kind.”

Merlin blinked as the words settled over him. “I told you to leave and you didn’t.”

“Were you speaking the Dragon’s Tongue?” The dragon shook his head. “You can command me. I must obey your orders. So I understand more of you than you might believe.”

Wind rustled the trees and Merlin shivered. His shirt dripped with water and sweat. His legs ached, and so did his lungs, but most of all his head felt as if it would crack in two. “Tell me to go home,” Merlin whispered. “I’d like you to do so on your own will, but I’ll order you to order me if I have to. Tell me to go home and disregard Morgana’s orders.” 

His eyes felt very wet, but Merlin was sure that was only the water from his hair rolling down the plains of his face to the corners of his eyes and the side of his nose. 

“I am sorry. I cannot do that.”

“Then—then I’ll order you. I'll figure out Dragon Tounge, then I’ll make you.”

The dragon shook his head slowly and, though it was hard to read any emotions in the shape of his face, Merlin imagined he looked sad. 

“It is not a matter of want. I cannot command you. Only humans can.”

Merlin shook his head. “Then I’ll tell you to take me back. I’ll go to, to whoever I can. The first person I see. I’ll tell them to undo it.”

“So you will return to the castle. Prince Arthur will not die today. I am sure the Lady Morgana will be content to let it all go.”

Merlin frowned. The weight of it sank into him: there was no going back. Morgana, the most powerful woman in Camelot, knew his secret. There was no version of his life where he could go up against the king’s ward and come out successful. 

“Life has not been fair to you,” the dragon surmised.

“It really hasn’t.”

The dragon rustled his wings, spread them wide, and dipped lower to the ground. “The question, then, is how do you intend to get back at it?” 

How indeed. Merlin stared at the beast, his eyes wide, and his lips parted as he realized what the dragon’s gesture meant: he was beckoning him to get on. 

Merlin did. 

Chapter Text

Never before had Merlin been so high. From above, the trees were miniatures. Lakes became ponds; mountains became hills. 

Merlin used to think that the highest turret of Camelot’s castle was as high as a person could climb. Now, sailing through the wisps of the clouds while his numb hands clung to the dragon’s back, he knew how wrong he was. The turret was nothing, not compared to this. 

The dragon banked to the left, and Merlin rolled with the motion. Cold air plastered his hair back. He gripped tighter, even as his fingers tingled. Who would have known the clouds were so cold? With a shiver, Merlin leaned in closer to the dragon’s back; his great body was warm, like the last embers in a long-forgotten hearth. The higher they climbed, the more crisp and frigid the air turned. Merlin’s breath clouded in front of his face and, when the wind hit his face, it hit with both force and ice. 

Merlin supposed he could wave his hand and shield away the cold, but the thought of moving his hand away from the dragon’s back for even a moment sent a bolt of terror straight through him. No—for now, he’d cling. He’d freeze. He’d grit his teeth and try to flutter his eyes open. 

The beat of the dragon’s wings jostled Merlin. The feeling of another body, alive and warn and moving, near his own body flooded Merlin’s brain with a rush of comfort. It was sharp enough to cut through the terror and cold. 

With a sudden jolt, the dragon plummeted to the right. The roll was enough to catch Merlin lost in his train of thought—he gasped, lightly, and leaned in even closer to keep his balance. 

The dragon only laughed. His chuckle was warm. Rolling. 

Merlin did not share the sentiment. Laughter was the furthest thing he could imagine right now—after everything with Arthur, he couldn’t muster the will to find anything funny. 

“We’re here, Young Warlock,” the dragon said and, finally, they left the chilly swaths of cloud and dipped toward the land. 

Wherever they were, Merlin had never been there before. That wasn’t saying much, as there were a lot of places that Merlin hadn’t been. But the land here was different—the mountains reached toward the sky, and the sky reached back down. At the peaks, snow covered the land. Bare bits of grey rock jutted out against the white. Lower down, the land was verdant. Lakes, like the finest royal mirror, rested at the low points of the land. 

It seemed impossible a place should look like this. Merlin was used to flat land and thick forests, but here the trees had thinned and gave way to open rolling space. There were no farmers. There were no castles. There was only the natural world, green and wild, and Merlin’s heart swelled with the beat of the dragon’s wings. The sun, setting so early this time of year, glimmered over a distant ridge of mountains. 

With a final swoop around a rock that jutted to the sky like a blade, the dragon came to land in the snow. The air from his wings stirred up a cloud of dusty flakes, and Merlin shivered again, though it was not so cold. 

The dragon bowed, and Merlin dismounted with all the grace he could manage. It was not so unlike dismounting a horse, but there was a significantly greater distance that he had to close between the dragon’s back and the ground. Merlin landed mostly on his feet, but his arm swooped forward and his palm sank into the snow. 

Merlin hissed with the cold. His jacket was thin; his stomach weak. After flying, the ground beneath his feet did not feel so steady. It didn’t help that snow had already begun to find the gap in the sole of his boot—he’d been meaning to swap out his current pair with an old one of Arthur’s before winter proper arrived in Camelot. 

His stomach twisted again at the thought of Camelot, of Arthur. It had been long past when Arthur would have realized Merlin wasn’t coming to talk, and long enough still that by now Arthur must have realized Merlin wasn’t just chatting with the cook. Had he gone to Giaus? Were they looking for him? 

With the clarity of distance, Merlin realized another thing. “Morgana!” 

“What about the lady?”

“I—I left. ” Merlin pleaded. The dragon had to see how this was a problem. “She wants Arthur dead. Who is going to look out for him now?”

The statement did not only apply to Morgana. How many times had Merlin guided an arrow off it’s path? Or dropped a branch on a bandit? Or weakened an enemy's blade? Without Merlin, how was Arthur to survive the night, let alone until Merlin could figure out how to throw off the bonds of his curse?

“Have you warded him?” The dragon cocked his head to the side. His lids fluttered over his golden eyes.

“Well—yes.” Merlin explained what he had done: protection in his armour, extra deterrence around his door, and a particularly clever charm in the wood of his table that would make all poisoned food or drink turn rancid, among other things.

“Perhaps that will be enough for now.”

Merlin bit his lip. He did agree it might be enough for a short while—it would be enough to keep away the most brazen attempts on Arthur’s life—but what about the more clever attempts? The magic that kept Arthur’s door locked for anyone who wished him harm wouldn’t do any good if he went and opened it for Morgana. “It’s not enough.”

“Then, I think, you will have to learn.” 

In between the two of them, the wind whistled. Snow drifted over Merlin’s boots and he pulled his jacket tighter with a shiver. The dragon, the furnace that he was, did not so much as flinch. 

“You are more powerful than you know, young warlock. It’s time you act like it.”

Merlin scoffed. 

“What? You doubt your power?”

“If I was as powerful as you claim I am, I wouldn’t be here!” He threw his hands to his side like a petulant child. “I wouldn’t be running! I’d snap and shatter the bonds of my curse and everything would be right, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been trying to free myself my whole life and nothing has worked.” 

Another wave of anger rose in Merlin’s chest, hot and red. What would it take for others to stop telling him what to do, what he could be, how he should live?

“You have so much to learn, but you are young and there is still time.” The dragon rolled his head and gestured toward an overhand in the mountainside. Underneath was a small gap in the stone—an entrance to a cave that Merlin hadn’t noticed before. “But for now, you’d do well to get out of the cold.”

Merlin frowned, but he wasn’t so stubborn as to lose his toes to frostbite on principle. He trudged through the snow toward the gap, but before he entered, he stopped. “You won’t fit.”

“I’ll stay out here,” the dragon replied. “For tonight. For the first while.” 

Merlin shook his head but clamoured in. His life had been turned upside down. The sun was sinking low, nearly setting, and he didn’t fancy staying on the side of a mountain all night. 

Inside, the cave was cool and damp, but the stone kept away the wind. Near the entrance, it was wide enough that Merlin could comfortably set up camp. It ran far back, further than his eyes could see, and in the darkness, the only noise was a steady drip of water. Merlin didn’t fancy venturing into those depths. 

He turned, looking back to the dragon. He shook the snow off his wings and curled up like a cat against the side of the mountain, which shielded the cave's entrance.  

“Thank you,” Merlin murmured. 

“Hm.” The dragon's eyes were closed and he rested his chin on the ground as if he were asleep.

In the cave, Merlin sat on the ground. The stone was cool. The darkness threatened to swallow him whole. 

Merlin did what he did best—he conjured the light. It was a small thing, just a blue orb, but he let it hang overhead while he took a breath, and then another, but his chest remained tight. Worry and doubt could not be so easily shed: these things weren’t an old jacket he could change with the season. 

He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes and let his head hang. He was exhausted and wide awake; his stomach growled with hunger and twisted into a knot that made him nauseated at the thought of good. He wanted to scream and to collapse into a pile. He wanted to return to Camelot and he wanted to go to the very end of the world so he’d never have to see a face again. 

It was all too much. How much weight was one person expected to shoulder? 

Merlin wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. He’d never expected luxury, but the hard ground of the cave was unyielding without a bed roll. Slowly, he shrugged off his jacket and bunched it up under his head. Silently, he wove magic in a cocoon around his body to give him the warmth of a blanket.

It reminded him of when he was young—he’d discovered this particular trick one long winter in Ealdor. He hadn’t known, then, it was something he shouldn’t do. He just reached out, grasped for the magic in the air, and pulled it around his shoulders like a thick blanket from his dreams. 

Now, when Merlin let his tired eyes flutter shut, he tried to reach out for the magic that was always at the edges of his world. He felt the presence, constantly, but he felt it in the way one might look at a burning log: beautiful and warm, but not something to touch. 

But why couldn’t he? Merlin let out a breath. He let his mind reach out, slow, and prodded the magic just beyond the limits of his perception. 

For a while, it was only darkness. Like the back of the cave, he reached out and out into nothingness. 

And then, like the orb above his head, there was a light. 

When Merlin reached for it, he did not find a mote. There was an ocean waiting for him—thundering power, rolling and wild, lay out there in the darkness. 

Merlin gasped and opened his eyes. His breath was quick and high in his chest again, but the dizzying storm of power was gone.

It was only Merlin in the cave, alone with the spiders and dust and his spiralling thoughts.

Chapter Text

Merlin woke and for a moment in the darkness, he thought he’d awoken in the middle of the night with a few hours to doze before he’d have to rouse himself to go wake Arthur. 

As he blinked and rubbed his eyes, the events of yesterday twisted back into his mind. He wanted to believe it was all a horrible nightmare, and the sour taste in his mouth would pass, and that by the time he was walking down the corridor to the kitchen he wouldn’t even remember the events that haunted him—all his horror would only be the curtails of an unpleasant dream. 

But his calves ached and burned with soreness from overuse. The stone under him was stiff. Even with his magic, the cave was cooler than Gaius’ quarters would ever be. This was not a place of life.

Merlin took a breath and pushed himself to sit up. The muscles in his back were knitted together and even stretching his arms overhead took a great deal of effort and a groan. He didn’t like to think of himself as a vain person—what servant had the right to be?—but he longed for a mirror, or even a bowl of water, where he could catch a glimpse of himself and fix his sorry state. His eyes felt puffy and swollen from tears; he was sure his hair was pointed in every direction after the windy flight and night on the cave floor. 

If it were up to him, Merlin wouldn’t move. He’d melt into the stone and become one with the mountain—cold and unfeeling. A mountain, these rocks—they bowed to no will. How beautiful a thought. 

Young Warlock, we have much to do, the dragon’s voice pierced Merlin’s mind and earned a wince. The last time Merlin’s head hurt this much was when a knight had told him to ‘try and keep up’ with the ale they were drinking.

Merlin wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket and stood. In the darkness of the cave, he could barely make out his hands. The only light was a thin crease sneaking in under the stone that covered the entrance. 

The dragon no longer blocked the entrance, Merlin realized dully. At some point in the night, Merlin had become trapped inside. 

Panic rose in his throat and tightened around his chest. “Hello?” He curled his palms and tried to even his breath, but his heart thundered away from him. In his confusion, raw with fresh grief, he’d put his faith in the dragon, in a last and desperate gambit to save himself.

Had his desperation for freedom led him into a new set of chains?

“There’s a stone,” Merlin called out, his voice cracking like a boy on the cusp of becoming a man. 

The dragon’s low, mocking chuckle rumbled outside and the echo sounded in Merlin’s mind. So move it. 

Merlin blinked. Truly, it was the obvious answer. Who else would be around to see it? He’d spent so long holding everything back; when had the instinct dulled away?

He stretched his arm long and brought his ear to his shoulder. Merlin raised his hand. “ Fēon .” 

The boulder rumbled and shifted and groaned as it creaked out of the entranceway. Under Merlin’s feet, the ground shook with the echo of the stone scraping the earth, and damp flecks rained from the cave overhead.

And then: Light.

Brilliant and painful, the world turned white and he raised his hand to shield his eyes from the onslaught. With a final groan, the stone settled to the side of the cave’s mouth.

Merlin stepped out. His breath clouded in the pale sky. 

Overnight, the dreary snow has broken way to bright, brilliant sun. The snow crunched under his boots and on the rock face next to him, water dripped freely and pooled into a pond. The air smelled fresh and of melting snow and damp earth.

Against his skin, the sunlight was warm enough to feel. 

Merlin could laugh. It was a new day, and it was warm, and it was light.

Across the clearing, the dragon flapped his wings, and loose snow fell free. From his nostrils, steam curled into the air, and Merlin couldn’t decide if it was breath or actual smoke.

“It’s midday,” the dragon said, and Merlin came closer.

“Couldn’t exactly judge by the light, could I?”

The dragon made a noise that Merlin would have assumed was a laugh by anyone else, but he couldn’t decide if it truly was a laugh (and even if it was, whether it was a genuine laugh or a cruel one).

Judging by the fact they were currently deep in the North, and the dragon was lounging in the sun, Merlin guessed they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long while. Merlin looked around to confirm they were still alone, and then with a jerk of his head, he cleared the snow off the nearest rock and sat on the dry patch.

There was something good—freeing—about being able to use his magic. Trying to keep it wound so tightly was like trying to hold one’s breath.

“You have much to learn,” the dragon murmured. “Your magic is strong, but lazy. Half-formed.”

Merlin frowned. “Gaius said he’d never seen anyone with gifts like mine.”

“That is true, young warlock. Unique as you are, you are a child, stumbling on weak legs as you learn to walk.”

“Thanks for that.” Merlin pulled his legs into his chest. He turned his chin up to the sky and let his eyes flutter shut.

“It’s true. If you wish to break your curse, you must face reality.”

Merlin’s jaw twitched. “Or you could tell me, since you seem to know so much.”

The dragon shook his head. “There are things I cannot tell you. What’s the point of knowledge gained not by oneself?”

“A lot,” Merlin murmured.

“You want the answers handed to you, but you do not even ask the questions. What is my name, young warlock?”

It had not occurred to Merlin that a dragon would even have one. His silence was answer enough.

“Kilgharrah,” the dragon said. 

Merlin took a breath. “Kilgharrah,” he repeated, letting the shape of the words form in his mouth.

“It is a start.” Kilgharrah flapped his wings and settled into a deeper groove against the rock and snow. “Asking the questions will get you part of the way. But there comes a point when you will have to go out and find the answers.”

“So are we going? You said we had much to do—what is it?”

“This is it.” Kilgharrah curled into himself like a cat.

Merlin sighed. A light breeze whistled over the snow and carded through his hair. Would that same breeze carry on? Would it contour around the mountains, rush through the valleys, and finally knock on the Citadel’s door? Would it card through Arthur’s hair too, gentle as a lover’s touch?

Merlin brought his forehead to his knees. One day he would knock on the Citadel doors again too; one day he would move free as air. 

They—Merlin and Kilgharrah—stayed in the sun for the better part of the morning. The light and warmth breathed some life back into the hollow of his chest, and with it, the awareness that he was starving. The last time he’d eaten was yesterday morning, still in Camelot.

He was supposed to have lunch with Arthur, and they’d talk about the moment that passed between them. 

Instead, he was sitting on a rock near a talking dragon—one who’d insisted they had much to do, and then proceeded to tell him to sit in the sun. Perhaps his brain was addled, and Merlin had poured his trust into a misstep.

He shifted on the rock again, painfully aware of the hard surface pressing against his tailbone. His stomach tinged and rumbled. 

Kilgharrah opened a glowing eye. “You are not good at remaining still.”

“Sorry.” Merlin’s mind drifted to Camelot’s kitchen’s, where the cooks would be stoking the fires under the chicken for the night’s dinner. “Just hungry.”

Kilgharrah sighed. “We have been sitting here for hours. What have you learned?”

It hadn’t occurred to Merlin he was supposed to be learning anything. Apparently, there were many things that hadn’t been crossing his mind. Perhaps Kilgharrah was right in the fact that he did not even know the questions that he must ask. 

“In a moment, we will find food. But sit for a moment longer. Close your eyes. Listen to the wind.”

Even without the curse’s tug, Merlin obeyed. He let his eyelids flutter shut.

Around him, the world was silent. 

No—that wasn’t true. It was a vast change from the clatter and hum of Camelot, but the world was far from silent. It hadn’t been silent when he was a child, and it wasn’t now.

A bird chittered in the distance. The gusts of winds came and went, and water dripped down from the melting snow, glancing off rock and landing on the hard-packed ice below.

The air was soft. Cool. The sun cutting through was hot, though not as warm as the sun he remembered as a child.

Against his skin, his clothing rubbed rough patches. His jacket was threadbare and let the air hiss through; there was a hole in his boot where a damp spot bloomed. His feet ached, too. Dully. The muscles in his legs were tight, sore, and begging to be stretched out. Uncomfortable scratches lanced his calves and hands—places where he’d pushed through trees and roots in his panic.

Somewhere, above his rumbling stomach, his heart beat a steady rhythm, proving he was alive. Nearby, Kilgharrah’s heart beat too. Even the great, scaly dragon had a heart that thumped, and if Merlin listened carefully, he swore he could hear it.

In fact, when he let the world fade away and focused on Kilgharrah’s heart, Merlin almost swore he could feel it too, like a fish line tugging with movement. Merlin leaned into that line and reached out with his mind and—

The world exploded with golden light. A flare of warmth rose in him, and for a moment he was seeing the clearing from the dragon’s eyes, looking at himself sitting on the rock with his eyes closed. 

Merlin gasped and opened his eyes. A wave of dizziness crashed as he did, and for a moment his vision doubled—he was seeing both things at once. In his haze of confusion, he twisted and tumbled off the side of the rock, striking his elbow and landing face first into crusted snow. 

“You felt it?” Kilgharrah’s warm voice rippled. 

Merlin sat up and rubbed the snow off his face. His heart raced like a rabbit being chased by a fox. “What was that? ”

His thin lips curled into a smile. “That was magic. What else would it be?”

“Magic’s not like that.”

“Is it not? Tell me, then, what is magic?”

“Well, it’s— it’s magic.” Merlin paused. His whole life had been formed, one way or another, by magic. Being bound by it. Hiding it. Loving it. Yet he couldn’t find the words to explain this force that pulsed through his body as naturally as blood and breath.

Merlin pressed his lips together. He pushed himself back to his feet. “What is magic?” he asked Kilgharrah, who smiled again.

“For the first time, you are asking the right questions,” he said. His wings fluttered. “Now— are you ready to go find out?”

Chapter Text

Merlin breathed. The air was cool and crisp and he let it fill his lungs all the way to his shoulders. His flesh chilled where his fingers grasped Kilgharrah’s scales, and it took Merlin’s hand slipping on a particularly sharp term before he mustered the courage to send a pulse of warmth through his body.

It was strange, how wrong his magic felt. It should’ve been the most natural thing in the world, as easy as breathing and blinking, but instead his stomach turned whenever his magic welled up. Even though he knew no one was around to see, he couldn’t shake the fear that had settled into his bones over years and years of keeping it stoppered up.

He closed his eyes as they sailed overland. The wind whistled through his hair, pulling the strands free and wild. 

Merlin, Kilgharrah’s voice flared to life in his mind. A little trust.

At first, the comment didn’t land. Merlin only blinked his eyes open in confusion. 

Kilgharrah banked again and when Merlin tightened his grasp, the meaning snapped into place. 

Merlin let his hands loosen. He tightened his thighs, the way he’d ride a horse.

Kilgharrah’s laugh echoed through Merlin’s skull and the movement of his body shook him where he sat. One day, young warlock. 

Merlin bit his lip. He doubted there would be a day when he could give in entirely. Trust was a delicate thing and Merlin had yet to meet someone who he could safely place his whole self in their hands. 

For now, the cold blast of fresh air, the warm sun on his face, the dewy clouds meeting his skin—all this was enough. 

After a short while, Kilgharrah dipped below the cloud and, once more, the land came into his vision. 

Merlin sucked in a breath. 

The great, rolling white hills broke away to endless grey water. Where patches of sun cut through the cloud, the light hit the surface and turned to gold. There was the change alchemists had been seeking. 

“Is that the sea?” Merlin whispered. He’d heard great stories of it, mostly from Will. Beyond the water, there were other lands, some full of riches, others offering nothing but desolation. Monsters and dragons lurked in the depths. It claimed the lives of good men and thieves without discretion. 

It is the sea, Kilgharrah replied. 

After he came to Camelot, he’d heard more of the sea, but it was casual. Business-like. 

Nothing compared to the great, stunning mass that pulsed before him. 

As Kilgharrah drew closer, Merlin could better make out each wave. White crests formed as the water swelled and ebbed. Gulls called and circled the great shores and Merlin and Kilgharrah wove between them, equals in the realm of the air. 

With a dramatic swoop of his wings, Kilgharrah came to land on the rocky beach. As his great wings beat, sand and snow stirred up in a cloud around him. Flakes caught the sun; the waves crashed with a steady rhythm. 

Merlin slid off Kilgharrah’s back and landed on his feet. It was mighty cold here—the wind that raced over the water was pure ice. It knocked into his chest and drew his breath away. 

He coughed and fluttered his eyes open. They were wet, and whether that was from his own tears, the snow, or the sea he could not tell. The roar of the waves crashing drowned his thoughts. The tide lapped against the rocks, leaving a melted slurry of bare rocks between the snow land and the water, which was the same colour as Arthur’s sword. 

Merlin laughed. He stepped forward, unsteady as a newborn deer as he made his way toward the water’s edge. 

“Go on,” Kilgharrah said, out loud this time, “you can touch it.”

Merlin looked back to see Kilgharrah had settled into a comfortable spot further back on the shore. 

Merlin stepped forward. A rock rolled under his thin boot and he nearly tumbled sideways, but he threw his arms wide and found his balance again.

The roar of the sea drummed against his ears. Merlin shivered. The water and sky ran together, an endless circle.

Slowly, Merlin shuffled toward the lip of the water and bent down. His knees cracked and his back and hips protested. A night on the floor, the running, the time riding Kilgharrah—the last few days had not been kind to him. Inside, he still felt fragile. Delicate: a small bird trying to flap his wings. The wind, like a riot rushing off the sea, threatened to pull him apart. 

Merlin bit his lip. He breathed out. He reached his hand toward the seam of the water and skimmed his fingers across the cool shore. 

Water made him nervous. Not baths nor buckets—the wildness of it sent a shiver to his stomach. In his dreams, he often came back to the river. To the water filling his lungs. To the powerless of it all.  That was, perhaps, what scared him the most: everywhere he turned, he had no power. 

Another wave broke, and the water rose around his sleeve. The water was cold as ice and frothy. The smell of salt filled his nose and, near his fingers, pebbles shifted with the current. 

Merlin pursed his lips. The water ran to his boots, soaked them through, and he let out a throaty laugh at the absurdity of it all. Gaius, if he could see him, would be yelling at him about standing in cold water like that. Catch a disease, he would.

The thought of Gaius and his warm surgery made Merlin’s heart ache. The years he’d passed there, he hadn’t thought about what it would look like to leave. He dreamed about how it would be like, one day, to stand there without constant fear. But he had never actually managed to materialize what life beyond Camelot would look like for him, even though he keenly wished it to be free from his shackles.

If he had ever managed to conjure up an image of his life post-curse, post-Camelot, it certainly wouldn’t have looked like this. The world was blanched: winter stripped the sea and sky. His stomach turned and his joints ached. He ran his tongue over his cracked lips. Merlin was never one to expect creature comforts, but he was human, too. A warm fire would be more than enough. 

A wave broke again. Merlin stood and glanced back over his shoulder to see Kilgharrah resting his head with closed eyes.

“Why are we here?”

The dragon did not crack an eye open. Think, Merlin. 

Merlin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He couldn’t see how this—being here, so far away from other people—would help break the curse. 

As a gull swooped in a tight circle, he decided that couldn’t be the point. Kilgarrah had said he couldn’t break it and, so far, Merlin had no reason to believe that wasn’t true. He didn’t trust the dragon entirely (in fact, he suspected there were a great many things Kilgarrah wasn’t sharing), but an outright lie felt different.

Merlin wondered what it would be like to try and command him to lay out everything he knew, but he had promised and he knew the awful barb of compulsion more than anyone. 

Instead, Merlin thought back to the morning and how magic changed and shifted when he reached out to feel instead of trying to pretend it wasn’t there.

He closed his eyes and reached his power out, easily as if it were his hand, and wrapped it around the sea, through the land where he’d run, through the sky where he’d sailed with Kilgharrah. There was no part of this world that magic did not touch. He only needed to learn how to see it, how to know its presence like he knew the sound of his mother’s footsteps.

There were fishes in the depths—their sinuous bodies twisting through rocks and weeds. Birds arced across the sun and, over and inside the land, animals were hunkering down for the winter. 

The whole world felt as if it were at the tips of his fingers. Merlin gasped and his eyes fluttered open. For a moment, the world spun. The vastness of the power of sea and land and sky crashed into the rocks and water before him.

Usually, when he performed a simple trick, some small warmth tingled behind his eyes for a moment before fading to nothing. He was certain that must’ve been when they flashed gold, though he had never put it to the test. 

Now, his eyes burned. A wildfire blazed and did not relent. “Kilgharrah!”

Be at ease, Merlin. 

Merlin ground his palms into his eyes, as if that could somehow extinguish the fire. His breath quickened. 

As suddenly as the burning started, it faded and with it, his awareness of the world faded too. Merlin blinked, grateful for the dull world before him. 

“Hm.”

Merlin jumped—he hadn’t heard Kilgharrah moving to his side. 

His nostrils flared and he gave Merlin a withering look. “You should not be so afraid of your own power. You possess it; it is yours to command.”

Rather deflated, Merlin found he had no reply. 

“We will go to the druids,” Kilgharrah declared. A cold wave crashed against him, but the dragon didn’t flinch. 

“No.” The thought alone of seeing another person made Merlin’s skin grow cold. He couldn’t do it—not until he shattered his curse. There was too much at stake, he was too vulnerable. What if someone else commanded him to march to Camelot and knock down the Citadel?

“They will teach you.” 

“No,” Merlin repeated. He couldn’t.

“Merlin, they are your people—”

“ NO,” Merlin roared, and the noise that came out of his throat was strangled and strange. He understood the word well, but it took a moment for him to realize that it wasn’t his shout alone that sounded strange: he’d issued the command in Dragon Tongue. 

Kilgharrah’s pupils narrowed and his body went rigged, but he dipped his head in a bow all the same. “If that is your order.”

“I—I’m sorry.” Merlin stumbled over his words. He didn’t want to do it, but he couldn’t risk it. “I can’t go to them. I’ll learn what I need from the land.” His face felt hot in spite of the frigid weather and mist like ice.

“Then I am obliged to listen. But you must be ready—you have much to learn.” Kilgharrah’s voice was cold.

Merlin nodded. It was the right choice; he couldn’t see people again, not with Morgana’s words wrapping around Arthur’s neck like a noose.

As he trudged up the beach, toward the snowy land, the sea sang to him to come back, let go, and find his way home.