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The night sky stretched impossibly far over the lake of Avalon.
Merlin sat at the edge of the water and watched as the gold of his magic swirled in shimmering waves. The flicker of lightning bugs winked in and out of the glowing butterflies circling the lake. The circular lights he made for his mother so many years ago, back when he hadn’t known to be afraid, floated lazily past the shoreline. He couldn’t see past the haze of tears burning his eyes.
The funerary rites ended hours ago, right as the sun set on the horizon. His mother’s life, snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Her last, stuttering breaths a reminder of all the ways he had failed.
This was all he could do.
He wondered if she could see the display on the edges of Avalon. When he felt another tear slip down his cheek, he was sure he could feel her just on the other side of the veil, reaching for him — always reaching.
Did she understand now?
Magic hummed around him, every tree, every flower, every blade of grass full to the brim with life-giving sparks. He could feel the expanse of Albion under his thighs, the traces of ley lines like veins across the land. He could pick out the druids sanctuaries when he closed his eyes. The world mourned as magic seeped out of him, an explosion of Merlin’s grief.
The gods did not mourn the living.
Merlin, however, had never been a god. And he knew that his mother’s life meant more to him than most people’s. And he should have protected her better, made sure she had the care she deserved. She never really understood him, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she loved him. He remembered the fear flickering in her eyes whenever he breathed life into a butterfly, breaking the laws of magic with childish delight. He could still feel the smack of her palm across his face when he sent Elden flying after he tried to corner her behind the barn. Elden, thankfully, hit his head when he fell and didn’t remember attacking her, but Merlin never forgot the terror on his mother’s face, not from the assault, but from what could happen if someone found out about his magic.
It was never scary, not to him.
He lifted a hand and eyed the golden glow under his skin, wondering if he would some day become more magic than man. It felt like it, now. He could barely feel the hitching of his lungs or the tears he knew wet his cheeks.
All he wanted was his mother, and she was forever out of reach.
Arthur spurred Llamrei on as fast as he dared, a shining blue ball of magic lighting the way. He woke to panic — desperate and clutching, his lungs refusing to take in air. He’d scrambled, half-armored before he realized what he was doing.
The blue light appeared shortly after, and he’d abandoned his armor to throw on soft clothing and grab his sword belt. He took off after the light without pause. He knew, even if he didn’t bother to go down to the physician’s chamber, that Merlin wouldn’t be there. He wasn’t in the castle, wasn’t in the citadel, was barely in the kingdom.
Now, Arthur chased the tether in his chest, the one he denied and abandoned and hacked at for so many years, the only thing that kept him moving on his worst nights. He turned when the light turned and sped up when the tether tangled until he could barely breathe.
Stark terror sent him scrambling into the night without any idea where he was going, but he knew what he would find at the end.
He had to find him.
Arthur threw himself off his horse as soon as he saw the golden glow. He tore through the trees with reckless abandon, recognizing the overwhelming warmth of that magic. It reached for him like the tether did, tying knots around his fingers and sliding home between his ribs. A brush of comfort — aching as it was — ran over the back of his neck.
Stumbling, Arthur barely caught himself when he broke through the tree line.
He froze in awe at the sight of the golden tableau stretched in front of him.
A lake.
It took a second to recognize it, glittering magical constructs blotting out the stars and sweeping away the waves. The night sky looked impossibly dark above them, but the water reflected every glowing dot of magic that filled the space. Butterflies in gold and blue flew in delicate dances. Fire flies buzzed between them. The blue light that brought him here slipped toward the edge of the shore, ready to join its siblings in a rare, beautiful display.
Arthur saw Merlin’s shape before he saw his face. Arthur forced himself to move. They hadn’t talked about the magic much, not since Arthur found out. He hadn’t known what to say to someone who hurt him so deeply, someone who would lie about something so fundamental. And, while he wanted to say he would be gracious about it if he’d found out when he was younger, he thought he’d have probably been worse.
So, he’d kept his distance until the panic forced him out of bed and the magic drew him here.
The crunch of his steps was faintly muffled, and Arthur felt his stomach drop just a little when he got closer and realized Merlin glowed.
Golden tears of light smeared down his face. Instead of his pupils, his entire eyes were shining like beacons in the night. A faint glow appeared to come from under his skin, like he had so much magic inside him that he couldn’t hold it in a human shell anymore.
Arthur felt his heart break in his chest, the few bits left — the largest and most fierce parts that always belonged to Merlin — cracking at the sight. This wasn’t the Merlin he knew and loved. This was a man who lost everything, one who no longer knew how to remain himself. And, if Merlin lost himself, Arthur had no doubt he would follow just as faithfully as he followed Merlin everywhere else.
“Merlin.” Arthur reached out to press a hand to his arm, wincing when he felt the chill of the fabric under his palm. The air wasn’t particularly cold yet, but it could be if they stayed out for a long time. And it was obvious Merlin hadn’t moved in ages, his eyes focused, unseeing, on the isle shrouded in mist and magic.
Arthur frowned when he got no response from his friend.
He reached up with his other hand and cupped Merlin’s cheek. The tears burned like sparks against his skin, the pain there and gone so quickly he wasn’t sure he felt it. But Arthur ignored the sting and smoothed his thumb along the mess of Merlin’s cheekbones.
“Merlin, what happened?” Arthur demanded, falling back on the tone he used on his men when they went into fugue states. He hadn’t had many chances to use it on Merlin, but it seemed to work the few times he had.
This time, golden eyes blinked slowly. “It’s done.”
Arthur frowned. He glanced around them on the beach, trying to identify where they were and what Merlin had been doing. A few broken branches rested on the shoreline. Something had been dragged to the edge of the water and pushed in, something like a boat from the deep score marks in the sand. But there wasn’t a sign of a camp or anyone else on the beach.
Then, Arthur’s eyes found a few flower heads that lay discarded on the ground — beautiful, bright, visible in the golden glow of the magic, and utterly out of season.
Dread pulled at his heart.
Crowding closer, Arthur bracketed Merlin with his knees and scanned his face more carefully. The hollow emptiness of Merlin’s expression made his stomach twist with fear, but Arthur met that golden gaze with just as much stubbornness as he met any of Merlin’s moods.
“Tell me. What happened?” The order came out softer than he might have liked, but Merlin minutely leaned into the hand on his cheek, and Arthur could ignore his own weakness.
“Mother…” Merlin murmured, golden eyes flicking behind Arthur, toward the lake. “I wanted her to have a good burial.”
What?
The breath left Arthur’s lung in a wheeze. He knew his fingers curled into a tighter — too tight — grip on Merlin. His vision tunneled just a second as panic and terror blew through him, adrenaline following. His body, so used to fighting in the wake of such debilitating fear, shuddered with the urge to move.
The only move Arthur made was to bite viciously into his own cheek until he could taste copper blood. Then, he forced his fingers to loosen so he didn’t hurt Merlin, who was once again staring blankly at the lake.
“She can be with Father now,” Merlin said. “I want to be with them.”
The sinking stone in Arthur’s stomach finally hit bottom. He coughed out a breath and felt tears welling in his eyes so quickly that they hurt. He shook the image of Hunith — powerful, intelligent, sweet, so much like her son — from his mind and focused on the gift she had left him, the responsibility she had handed him the first time they met.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Arthur asked, pained and aching.
No answer came.
He didn’t need to say it. Arthur had frozen Merlin out in response to his confession. He locked himself behind a case of unfeeling glass, where the hurt couldn’t reach him, because he knew — he knew — how quickly he would forgive Merlin with one look into those eyes. Arthur just wanted to deal with the anger, with the pain, with the memories. He wanted to give himself time to feel them before he caved and welcomed Merlin back into his life, back where he belonged.
Not like this, though.
“I know,” Arthur said slowly, feeling out the words even as he said them. He could feel it, the hum of desperation and burgeoning terror that filled the magic all around them. Merlin felt like a volcano on the edge of eruption, a balance that could tip at any moment. “I know how it is to lose your parents, Merlin.”
In a sick way, they mirrored one another. Arthur never knew his mother, he only had his father. And his father died a couple years ago. Merlin never knew his father, and only had his mother. Now, his mother was gone too. And Arthur could imagine the pain, the ache, the fury. He could even imagine the numbness settling in, smoothing everything away so Merlin could continue to live.
But Arthur knew that, if Merlin let the numbness take over now, he would never come back.
Some ancient knowledge settled in his bones the second he saw him glowing golden from his very skin. If the being inside him came out and took control, if Merlin ceded, Arthur could never have Merlin again. This Merlin, this idiot, this clumsy, stupid, hilarious, lovely, beautiful man, would never exist again. He would be pushed out of his body and merged with something hurt, something wild and feral and terrible.
And Arthur wouldn’t survive it.
“It's awful. And I'm so sorry. But I’m asking you to stay,” Arthur said, leaning forward so he could press his forehead against Merlin’s. His skin was just this side of too hot, but Arthur just pressed harder. He dug his teeth into the soft flesh of his tongue until the next words tore, stringy and jagged, straight from his heart. “I don’t want to be without you. Not for any of this. To say that being without you would mean I would stop breathing would be an exaggeration, but to say that my life would end if you left, that would be true to my heart.”
“You hate me,” the words came out small and sad, a puff of warmth on his lips.
Arthur felt his own tears drip down his cheeks. “I’ve never hated you. I don’t think I could if I wanted to — my heart is yours. It always has been. Even now, it calls to you alone. Can’t you hear it?”
The tether in his chest, the one that dragged him after a boy in a marketplace and after a flower in a deadly land and into the mouths of beasts, would always and forever be tangled up in Merlin.
“One of the traveling traders told me a story once,” Arthur murmured, not letting Merlin answer him yet. He pulled back just enough to meet his gaze, to be sure he was listening, and he swore the gold dimmed. “It was about a string of fate, a red string. She said that her village believes that some people are meant to meet and be in one another’s lives, that they’re connected by the red string of fate.”
“Soulmates,” Merlin murmured.
Arthur smiled, biting down on his own grief. “I felt it the second I met you, remember? I said there was something about you. And I was right. But I need you to stay with me so we can figure it out. All of this, all of the anger and the grief and the sadness, it has to be worth something. And to me, the thing that makes it worth it is you.”
Fingers curled into the soft shirt he’d pulled on as he raced out of the castle. The tight hold would have worried him at any other time, but the golden glow dimmed enough that Arthur was pretty sure Merlin’s skin wasn’t glowing anymore.
The butterflies and the swirl of his magic seemed to slow, the light just enough now to see the lake, the shore, and each other.
“Do you know that everything in this world has magic?” Merlin asked. “Most people can’t feel it. It’s a rare ability, being that connected to nature and to the balance of the world.”
Arthur pulled Merlin in, guiding his head so he could lay it on his shoulder as he slid his other arm around Merlin’s back. He pressed his nose into his hairline and thanked the gods that Merlin let him hold him like this, finally folding in on himself.
“I didn’t. I don’t know a lot about magic,” Arthur admitted, because it was true. And he didn’t want to say something wrong and ruin this either.
“I can feel it all. The world around me is always, always, always alive. I can feel the butterflies and the fireflies and the trees. I can feel the water and the air and the ground beneath our feet. I can feel you, brighter than any star in the night sky,” Merlin said, picking up speed as he spoke. He also gripped Arthur’s shirt tighter like he wanted to drag him closer.
Arthur smoothed his hand down Merlin’s back and knew that this was going to hurt, whatever it was Merlin said next. He could sense the destruction of them both on the horizon and could only hope that they were strong enough to put the pieces back together in the end.
“I can feel Gaius and Gwen and Lancelot and Percival and everyone in the castle and the citadel and the kingdom. I can feel Albion itself when I let my magic free. I could map your lands with my fingers and trace out the rivers without looking. I know the ridges and the valleys just the same as you would know the lines on your own hands,” Merlin said, tone going low. Then, he took a shuttering breath and sobbed: “And I can’t feel Mum anymore. There’s not even one hint of her left.”
Arthur hushed him gently as Merlin broke apart in his arms.
Arthur rocked him through the worst of the sobs and watched as the lights, one-by-one, winked out. The butterflies lost their ethereal glow and wandered away. The fireflies flickered out of existence. The dark sky slowly lightened with the coming dawn, and Arthur made no move to get up or let go. He felt every shuttering breath, every pained noise, every hopeless whine. He soothed every jerk to wakefulness and murmured assurances when Merlin mumbled half asleep accusations at him.
Merlin finally fell asleep as dawn slipped over the lake.
Arthur was brought back to the night his father died; and he spent a full night in quiet contemplation with his corpse. It was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do. He felt alone, unmoored, unloved. He knew no one else would care for him as his father did, even if it wasn’t always the care he'd wanted. There was something lost in the early morning sunlight peeking in the windows, something he would never get back.
Now, though, as a new day dawned, Arthur pressed his lips to the top of Merlin’s head and admitted that he found something just as precious, just as loved, just as fragile when he stepped into the hall and found Merlin waiting for him.
He vowed, on the edge of the lake of Avalon, to do whatever he had to to keep Merlin with him.
When he glanced at the isle again, he swore he saw a woman smiling at him, much closer than she should have been. Hunith waved and a man, burly and familiar, stepped up behind her. He raised a hand too. Golden sparks showered the shore, and Arthur slipped into sleep with his arms wrapped tight around Merlin, knowing they were safe.