Chapter Text
Arthur’s knife scrapes against his plate, the only sound in the hall. The table is spread with a fine meal that sits tasteless on his tongue. Roasted vegetables, bread so fresh the crust still crackles, glistening fruits. He has no stomach for any of it. Across from him, Morgana holds her goblet up as though she might drink, though she does not. Instead her hand hovers, frozen in the air, with her pale green eyes open but sightless, staring at some middle distance. The stark bruises under her eyes make it look as though she’s had a bout with one of the fresh new knights, although he knows for a fact she hasn’t so much as tried to sneak down to the training yard for months now. Longer.
She is troubled, as they all are.
The griffin, of course. It is all he can think of as well. It has run rampant over the countryside for too long. The dead pile steeply, and all the while Arthur’s father will hear nothing of it, becoming deaf and dumb the more Gaius insists the only way to slay the creature is through magic.
The ban is enforced ever more harshly as bits and pieces of news make the dangerous journey from Essetir. One rumour at a time, the truth grows clearer. Of a peasant’s revolt, of all things–and more damningly still–one led by a sorcerer. In response, the citadel feels as though it has been put under a spell of its own; merely one of Uther’s making. His temper darkens the very air itself. Oppressive. Stifling. It leaves Arthur pitifully grateful to escape with each and every attempt to track the miserable beast that terrorises the countryside, as unsuccessful as they may be.
Morgana, though, is left behind to endure.
Arthur opens his mouth to ask her if her nightmares still trouble her, but his tongue sticks fast to the roof of his mouth before he can muster the courage. It’s a stupid question anyway, he admits, mood sinking even further. The answer is writ plain across her face. Always pale, she now seems more a ghost than a woman.
“Caerleon has made an invitation,” Uther says into the quiet, “so that we might speak of the dark tidings in Essetir.”
“And what does Caerleon have to concern himself with Cenred’s war?” Arthur asks, unable to mask his bitterness as he should. Too weary by half, especially when he knows to his bones that all Caerleon seeks is warm bodies. Arthur can see it clear as day. Caerleon shall pretend to call upon Camelot in good faith, putting aside old enmity–all so that he may bolster his own forces. Not because this revolt has so much as slipped a toe into Gwynedd, either.
No. There is a chance here, and one that a greedy man could never deny. A chance for rich land, ripe and waiting to be plucked and parcelled into pieces. And what better way to have it than through the effort spent by another kingdom’s knights? How quickly will it slip out of this sorcerer’s grasping hands when a second army comes bearing war, or even a third? Bayard will not be far behind, after all.
A wicked mess, no matter under what crown the territory should fall. It would be a better fate that the peasants have Cenred, Arthur thinks. It is no less than the wretch deserves.
Yet when he considers his father across the distance that separates them, he doubts that Uther feels the same. Only a table length away, but Arthur understands his father less than ever.
“We need our own forces here,” he urges, leaning forwards and pressing his hands flat upon the wood of the table as he rises, irate. Morgana looks up at last, a rare wakefulness upon her. “Our people are frightened and we have lost enough soldiers already. We can hardly afford more! The griffin remains–”
“Your failure to deal with this beast,” Uther cuts him off with a sneer, mouth a stern line, “does not mean we allow further abominations to grow upon our very doorstep.” He stands as well, the light catching on his crown as he holds Arthur’s gaze. Uther’s shoulders are still broad, and his strength as a warrior has only begun to diminish. Every bit a king. For a sorcerer, Arthur imagines, Uther might still lead an army.
Not for a griffin, though, he cannot help but think. A knot of resentment ties ever tighter around his heart.
“Caerleon, though?” Morgana interrupts before tempers can take them too far, not bothering to hide her frowning mouth with her goblet. “A fickle kind of friend.”
Uther does not look away from Arthur for a long moment, eyes dark as flint. He softens for Morgana, as he does of late, the more ill she becomes.
“The scourge that a sorcerer king would bring unto the kingdoms would be untold,” he speaks down to her, as if she were still a child. “It will not come to pass.”
“With any luck,” Morgana says, lowering her eyes.
Luck, Arthur thinks to himself under the low tones of Uther and Morgana speaking, has long abandoned them. He picks up his knife again, though he has no appetite at all. He must eat while he can, and regain his strength.
They set out again tomorrow.
***
The griffin’s claws dig trenches in the loamy soil of the forest, heavy steps drumming thunderously as it gives chase.
Their horses have bolted in fear, and Arthur can only hope they have enough sense to make it to a village–they would be unmistakable as castle-bred, and so word would go to the citadel of them eventually. Should he and his last few men die out here in this gods-forsaken place and be eaten at least his father would learn what happened.
Arthur’s lungs burn like fire all while his legs pump madly underneath him. He knows not where they are, merely following the cover of the trees, eking out a few more breathless minutes against the griffin–for all the good it does them. Leon is still with him, but they have lost Osric, and that idealistic tag-along Lancelot had been bleeding out under an oak before Arthur led the horrible beast away.
No sword can pierce its flesh–and how they have tried.
Before he’d been struck, Lancelot had driven his blade right against the creature’s hawkish eye. All for nought.
Sweat dripping down his brow, Arthur nearly trips headfirst into the riverbank, courtesy of the river-rocks that scatter slickly under his boots. For a moment it is chaos–the griffin’s shrieking cry echoing round and round the forest and up the sloping hill to bounce off of the aged stone walls of a fortress.
Whose territory is this? It is a distant thought, but is it salvation or imprisonment that they have found? Oldof throws himself to the ground to escape a lash of claws, but it is too late, and he is lost. First, his armour torn to shreds, and then the flesh underneath.
Arthur’s heart lurches painfully in his chest as the knight falls, his open hand reaching uselessly out as if to catch him. The other brings his sword up to bear, but it is Leon who rushes forwards, brave and foolhardy.
“The fortress!” he calls out, urging Arthur to run. “Aid, or sanctuary!”
“For Camelot!” Montague bellows, his very life only buying a breath of time. The water blooms red where he falls, and Arthur is surging forwards, no matter how hopeless it is. He cannot abandon them, this cannot be how it ends!
Another shrill cry sounds, the water jumping and jittering in a dance of reverberations. It’s cold as ice. His hands are locked fast around the hilt of his sword. Leon lands with a splash in the shallows, tangled in his cape like a funeral shroud.
The fury overtakes Arthur with such a power that he’s shocked the beast doesn’t drop dead right here and now from the force of it. Torn asunder and dragged to some distant hell via the vengeance of all those good men who had fallen to it, somewhere it can trouble no one any longer.
And then–miraculously–it does.
A hole rends through its feathered breast with a terrible, frightening ease. Like a spear through wet paper.
One moment it is terrible and tall, looming above the last vestiges of Camelot’s finest knights, and the next it is merely seared feathers and boiling blood. It falls with a crash, and the forest goes quite quiet, as though the whole of the world has stopped in its tracks to pay attention. The splish of the riverbank and the gasping sounds of his own sharp breaths batter his ears. It’s all he can hear. It’s all he can see.
Is…it really dead? Can it be?
His head swims, a potent potion of disbelief, and impossibly, hope. It feels foreign. His fingertips tingle from the snap of magic in the air, and the hair on his arm raises. And yet, for the first time in far too long, Arthur breathes in one easy breath, then another. His eyes sting with unshed tears. Unbearable and sweet.
Hope.
He’d forgotten it.
“It is within the law here,” a voice comes, and Arthur jerks his head up. There, upon the hill. A man–no, a sorcerer. The banners upon the fortress proclaim this land as belonging to a minor lord of Essetir, Arthur can see as much, now that he has the time to look. Shit.
And yet the sorcerer does not so much as raise a hand. He is young, and his thin face is set in a stern way that Arthur might find more frightening if he didn’t recognize it from training green knights day in and day out. He might try and hide it, but he’s as nervous as Arthur as Arthur is of him. Dark hair curls softly over the curve of his ears, which are flushed such a violent red that it’s plain to see even from here. A worn, blue cloak with no insignia sits about his shoulders–which are just as thin as his face. Coltish with youth still.
Whatever sorcerer this is, Arthur thinks, he is not the dangerous would-be king, the blight of Essetir.
“It is,” Arthur can only agree, “And although it was not my intention, we have indeed trespassed. I owe you my thanks.” Feeling suddenly boneless as his adrenaline abandons him, he sheathes his sword and takes the chance to stagger over to Leon. Bright leaves from the autumn trees skim the water and cling to his boots as he trudges forwards. Just a little bit further. He begins to think there is a way home–for the both of them. Kneeling, he takes his glove off with his teeth and presses it Leon’s neck, searching for a pulse. It is weak, but still there, and still real. Not should Cenred learn of their trespass, however. He will not think it innocent, certainly not now of all times. “I am afraid I must ask for your discretion, as well.”
The sorcerer watches him, clutching to his placid horse, who bears their rider with good patience. “I can help your friend,” he offers after a long heartbeat of time passes by, face serious. “If you’ll let me.”
Arthur swallows, throat tight and miserable. His father would kill him. Or Leon. Maybe both. Magic, though, had stopped the griffin where all else failed. Leon would lay down his life for Arthur–had tried, not even a candlemark ago. What kind of prince, what kind of friend would Arthur be to throw away all of Leon’s tomorrows over a feud he understands less and less the older he grows?
The griffin is dead, motionless in the cool water of the river. Leon though, might yet live. And they have lost so, so many already. Empty houses, empty halls.
“Please,” Arthur begs. The light of the sun shines down, dappling through the leaves of the trees, golden and warm. “Save him if you can.”
The sorcerer dismounts his horse, and they consider one another as he closes the distance. Closer, Arthur can see two things. One, that his eyes are as rich a blue as any sapphire, and two, that the flush on his ears makes its way all the way to the back of his neck and to dust the apples of his cheeks. He is young, but not as young as Arthur had thought at first–only thin as a reed.
Arthur has never been one with a natural gift for a clever word, always better with action. So instead of a pretty speech, his hands itch with the urge to reach out, to shake the sorcerer’s hand or offer an embrace–something. Something to do with this tide of energy that has found him with nowhere to go.
“It will pinch,” the sorcerer warns. Leon gives a pitiful yelp, but just like that his leg is sewn shut like so much sackcloth. Through the tear in his trouser leg Arthur can spy the healing–which looks as though it’s a month old already. He had thought he could not be any more relieved than he already was, and yet here he stands, dizzy with it once more. Leon will live–he will keep his life and his leg both.
This sort of magic, Arthur thinks, can hold no evil.
Too restless by half, and likely to do something foolish like sweep the sorcerer up into a spinning lift like they’re in court, dancing, Arthur busies himself checking on Montague and Oldof instead. Although he already knows what he will find. Indeed, the sight of them sobers him. They should not be left here, so far from home.
The sorcerer sighs as he turns away, so faint it only tickles the edge of Arthur’s hearing. This is to be it, then, Arthur thinks, bereft. Unable to even offer proper thanks–although there is no thanks that could ever be enough.
“Bring her back here if you can–she’ll know the way home.”
Arthur stares, swallowing sharply once more. Leon will need the mount, of course. It had never even occurred to him. Another kindness, another thing to be grateful for. Well, Arthur thinks, if one is to hang for a lamb, one might as well hang for a sheep.
“I owe you my thanks many times over already, and now again. I still ask for one more thing, though–my men. I’d like to retrieve their bodies to bring them to rest with their families. Can I rely on your silence?”
“You’ll have no quarrel from me if you come back.” The sorcerer shrugs one bony shoulder, shy. It strikes Arthur as a little funny, that a man who can slay a griffin with a thought should ever be shy.
“And King Cenred, or the lord here?” he asks. Cenred is an ass, but he’s an ass with an army and an easily-bruised ego to go hand in hand with it.
The sorcerer ducks his head, a little smile curling up around the corner of his generous mouth. A sparkle in his eyes. It suits him. “They won’t bother you,” comes the promise.
Together, they set Leon up into the saddle, and the sorcerer offers a well-meant wish for swift passage. This can’t be it, Arthur thinks desperately, at last reaching out to at least shake the other man’s hand–something, anything. Arthur is over-eager, and nearly tugs the man clear off of his feet, catching him before he can crash into the river.
He’s light as a feather.
He’s barely a handbreadth away.
His eyes are blue, and he saved them. Saved them, and maybe all of Camelot besides.
“I won’t forget what you’ve done for me,” Arthurs swears, each word ringing with the truth of it. As solemn an oath as any he has ever made, as a knight or a prince. A vow he will never forsake.
With great reluctance, he turns to Leon once more, leaving the sorcerer standing alone by the riverside. Arthur does not dare look back, his heart already twisting inside his chest. He strokes a hand down the mane of the horse instead, and turns to offer a wobbly smile of disbelief up towards Leon, who stares back in blatant shock.
He presses a wary touch to his leg, marvelling when it remains healed. He opens his mouth twice, gaping like a fish, before he is able to speak. “Is it over?” he asks in a thready voice.
“I dare say it is,” Arthur agrees, every word dyed with wonderment.
***
Arthur waits for retribution to come from Cenred, but not a single such thing occurs. Not even after Arthur returns for his men's bodies. Not when he drags a somehow alive Lancelot back to Camelot for treatment, nor when he leads the worlds best cared for (and most overfed) horse back to the border. Their trespass has gone unspoken, just as the sorcerer had sworn. Uther, though, is furious.
A sorcerer had done what his knights–his son– could not, and slain the griffin. A sorcerer who still lives on. Apparently Arthur should have cut down his saviour rather than take his hand. There isn’t much regret to find in him, though.
Even in the dungeons.
Arthur pokes at his sure to be purpling cheek with a wince. The bruise will linger–a solid hit.
It had been years since he was properly struck by his father, but this time the only thing that really bothers him is that he couldn’t hit back. The guards are awkward, not quite sure where to look. Their prince sits sprawled out against the damp stones, utterly content. Or consumed by mania–it must be hard to discern from the other side of the bars. He whistles to himself, unbothered by the fat rat that scurries by.
The griffin is dead and Camelot is saved–nothing can trouble him.
“A moment,” Morgana’s voice comes, sweet enough to trick the guards into abandoning their posts without a qualm. He’ll have to speak to them–what if she were here to kill him? It’s not the least plausible thing he’s seen these past days, after all.
“Morgana,” he greets her with a grin. He crosses his arms behind his head, as obnoxious as he can manage. His cheek throbs with his smile, but he’s too pleased to be bothered. “Can I offer you something? Bread crust? They’re quite stale. I could try and catch the rat, but I’m not–”
“Oh, be silent,” she scoffs with an impatient roll of her eyes. “I want to talk to you!” It’s only two sharp steps for her to grab onto the bars of the cell, a frenzied look upon her face. “Is it true? Is it true?” she repeats, not giving him a chance to answer.
“Is what true?” Arthur teases her.
“Enough,” she insists, shaking the bars as though she might rip them off of their hinges in order to get to Arthur and strangle him instead. She is serious, he realises. Deadly serious. “Did a sorcerer really kill the griffin? He helped you? And he just let you go?”
“Ah,” Arthur blushes, lowering his arms. “That’s true, yes. He…Morgana, he healed Leon. Saved his life.” He stands, shuffling towards her, examining the wretched look upon her face. She need not worry, though. “He was good, I promise. You don’t need to be worried about him coming to the citadel, if that’s what this is–”
She spins away from his cell with a swivel, leaving her back to him. Her fine velvet skirts brush against the spread of mouldering straw on the floor. Even through the weighty fabric of her dress he can see her shoulders begin to shake. He hears one hitching breath, poorly stifled.
He dares not reach out, in fear she might leave entirely. “It’s alright,” he tries to soothe, although he does not have a clue what troubles her. It is awkward, and he has no natural gift for comfort. Still, he tries. “It’s alright. I swear it to you.”
“And you just…let him go?” she sniffs, barely more than a whisper.
He cannot bring himself to make a joke. It’s not as though he could have done anything to stop a sorcerer like that anyway, but he doesn’t want to say that either. Arthur wouldn’t have tried to strike the other man down even if it would have made a difference. “He was good,” Arthur eventually settles on saying again, hoping she believes it.
It’s the only reason he has to give.
“Good,” Morgana echoes numbly, hunching over double with something in her voice that he cannot recognize. She remains so, her black hair falling down like a curtain around her as she takes in shallow, gasping draws of the stale dungeon air.
“Do you need Gaius,” Arthur asks, coming quickly to the bars–but she is too far away from him to reach. He tries anyway.
“I don’t,” she says, wiping at her cheeks. “Arthur,” she whispers, muffling her cries so that no one else might hear her. She straightens, trying to take back control of herself. Only once she has stopped her tears does she at last turn. “Arthur, I–” she tries again, snapping her mouth shut as she sees him again, taking in his outstretched hand. Something in her snaps. “Arthur,” she says for a third time, beginning to weep in earnest now, all of her faux composure in tatters. Her face scrunches up, bright red, red, red.
Instead of speaking another word she merely lifts her hand into the air between them–not to take his, however. A tiny wisp of flame sparks to life in her palm, no bigger than a candle's flame. Wide, wet eyes stare out at him from her familiar face, watching. Appraising him, and his reaction. They are terrified. Filled with an animal fear.
Magic.
Yet it is not so frightening to him now.
“It doesn’t mean what we were taught,” he says, sure of it. “It doesn’t mean anything you don’t want. You’re safe,” he swears. He keeps his hand out to her, open. The cold bars press into his shoulder–strangely soothing on his bruised cheek from how he has pressed himself against them, as though he might walk right through to stand at her side.
Is this what has haunted her, these past months?
The flame in her palm sputters out, only a thin trail of smoke to ever show that it burned at all.
She takes his hand. Her grip is painfully harsh, like she might shatter to pieces and fly away into the sky if she were not to hold on with all of her might.
“You’re a better man than your father,” she claims, her intent stare set on his bruise.
“Well,” Arthur teases gently, chancing a conspiratorial smile at her through the bars of the cell, “not like that’s hard.” He feels wicked, to give such a thing voice. A secret between them, like filching extra cakes from the kitchen before a feast as they used to do.
A little snort of laughter surprises out of her, twin tears breaking down her cheeks and into the dimples of her grin.
***
Arthur’s punishment is not so simple that it ends once he is free of the dungeons.
He has lost his father’s trust.
And as much as he tells himself it does not matter, it does. When Cenred is dead in the ground and Essetir falls for good, it matters. When their allies call Camelot to war it matters. Mercia has lost vast swathes of their borders, and even the bravest of Bayard’s knights flee at so much of a hint of this mad sorcerer taking to the field. Caerleon’s greed has bitten him for the last time, only the last loyal vestiges of his army joining the final push to retake their territory alongside Bayard and Uther.
Uther, who has sworn to cut the tongue out of any man who calls this imposter a king. It does precious little good when everyone can see the truth of it for themselves.
Cenred has been usurped, and instead of weakening with the effort of war Essetir has grown stronger under the rule of the Sorcerer King–Merlin, he is called. A silly name, Arthur thinks, for arguably the most powerful man in the five kingdoms.
As a consequence of his falling in his father’s esteem, however, it is not Arthur, or even Leon, who attends the parley, but his father’s old friend Cador.
Arthur is left behind, useless.
Lately he feels as though he is less a prince and more of a decoration to take off of a shelf only when you need to show it off. He finds himself sitting and flicking bits of kindling into a fire rather than doing anything of import. His jaw clenches so tightly he swears he hears his teeth groan in protest. At least Leon remains at his side, united in similar frustration.
“What do you think they’re saying?” Leon wonders out loud, looking up the gentle slope of the hill where the meeting goes on. The banners of four kingdoms billow in the same breeze that tugs on Leon’s curly hair. The old banner of Cenred is gone, and in its place is a lush blue and green with a laurel wreath. Virtue, Arthur huffs, amused.
Maybe it’s even true.
He doesn’t know any longer. Magic doesn’t make a man any more or less moral, that he knows to be true–but war is another beast entirely. King Merlin started this fight, but nor can Arthur pretend Cenred wasn’t asking for it. As for Bayard and Caerleon…there is nothing righteous about their greed.
“I wonder what kind of man he is,” he muses back rather than answer, thinking once more of the sorcerer by the river.
Arthur’s thoughts drift to him often.
Perhaps too often. He is the swivel-point upon which the fate of the whole of Camelot was changed for the better, after all. The swivel-point for Arthur and Morgana, as well–and he did not even give a name. Does he ever think of Arthur? Or was that merely one more afternoon of many for him? A small kindness, quickly forgotten.
Arthur…hopes he has not been forgotten.
Not when he has thought of the sorcerer every day.
He shoots to his feet as a clamber starts up, the small party of knights returning with Uther at their head. Even out of favour as Arthur is, no one stops him as he marches towards his father. Stony in countenance, as he always is these days. He dismounts his horse, eyes drifting over Arthur as he makes way to his pavilion and his war table, flicking a finger to demand attendance.
“He mocks us,” Uther fumes, wrenching his gloves off of his hands.
“What has he said?” Arthur asks, keeping pace, Leon nipping at his heels.
“He has refused to surrender–” Uther scowls as Arthur scoffs. Of course he refused, Arthur thinks, but knows better than to say. “I have given him until sunrise to make a wiser choice. There are men among his forces who must be being compelled–”
At this, Arthur ducks his head, for fear that his thoughts will be written too blatantly across his face to be ignored. Must they have been compelled? Cenred was a cruel man and a cruel lord. Magic or not, many would rebel under the yoke of a king such as that. One of the camp dogs wags his tail as Uther rants, trailing after them without a care in the word. Arthur is not too proud to deny his jealousy of the shaggy beast. He rubs a hand over furry ears, earning a blissful wuff for his efforts. The heavy crimson flap of Uther’s pavilion is raised for them, stepping in out of the setting sun.
His father throws his gloves down onto the war table with a snarl. “He’s claimed the sun shall not rise.”
“What?” Arthur asks, dumbly.
“You heard me very well,” his father rebuts, waving his manservant over. “Wine,” he demands. It is only after a long drink from his goblet that he speaks once more. “That if we should attack with the sun, the sun will simply not arise. Absurdity.”
“It is preposterous,” Cador agrees, but Arthur knows the older man well enough to see the doubt clouding his words. The worry. It is preposterous, that’s true enough–but the fact remains that he’s considering it. What might come in the morn.
Or not come, Arthur supposes.
“Is that…possible?” he asks, crossing his arms and surveying the wooden pieces on the map that spreads out before him. Essetir’s forces are barely even an eighth of the numbers within the alliance of the other kingdoms. If that, he considers again. Not once has he heard of a demand for fresh levies out of Essetir. No troops recruited out of farmers, or mercenaries raised up. Still, though, they take victory after victory. How powerful must this King Merlin be? A shiver rolls up his spine.
Cador does not have an answer.
Uther drinks deeply, and does not meet Arthur’s eyes again, not for a long while.
***
The sun does not rise.
***
Arthur lets his finger trail carefully up the stem of the flower. It does not wilt, and it follows the path that the sun would take, were there a sun to take it.
He wonders.
It has been almost three days, and the men of Camelot have grown past restless and into frightened, waiting for the endless darkness to pass. For the night to end. No, he thinks, it is not quite night, either. No stars dot the sky, no pale moon. It is black as pitch, only firelight and torches letting them make their way. The beacons of Essetir dance like fireflies in the distance.
And yet, the flower follows the path of a stolen sun.
He takes off his glove, and the petals are warm.
Is it all one strange trick? Or is it even more impressive than it had already seemed? To take from some, and not others, who had done nothing worthy of cold, dark, and death. Like a flower.
The flower is innocent. Red petals, softer than velvet.
On the edge of his hearing he can barely make out the words of his father’s ranting. His lords will not entertain an attack, certain that only death will await them, and tempers are rising ever higher. There will be a bloodbath without any help from the Sorcerer King should things keep on this way. There is little that can be done, though, and even Uther must come to realise it. No army can fight the sky. No army can face a sorcerer like this, Arthur thinks. Perhaps Bayard’s knights have had the right of it all along, to flee.
It says something, though, Arthur thinks, that the flowers still bloom.
He keeps his mouth shut about it. Hope, that now-familiar, precious thing, is something he would deny his father; at least in this. Let him think there is no hope for victory at all. Let him turn away and take their men back home. This need not be their war.
“What is it?” Leon asks, bringing his torch closer as he leans over Arthur’s shoulder for a look.
“Nothing,” Arthur denies, though they both know it for a falsehood. Leon allows it with a hum, stepping back as Arthur rises from where he’s been crouched. “Have they come to a decision yet?”
“No,” Leon says, exhaling. “I’m beginning to wonder if they ever will.”
“You know my father,” Arthur says, biting at the inside of his cheek. “He doesn’t surrender.”
“He yet may,” Leon argues, voice low. He sends a careful look about them, as to not be overheard. “Lest he lose control of his council. My lord, there is talk of abandoning the camp.”
“Well,” Arthur sighs, unsurprised. He is tired. “Who can blame them?”
“Indeed.”
They are silent, looking out over the tidy rows of tents. Their fuel burns low, and there can be no hunting in this. There is little point raising a sword when you cannot even see the end of it.
Uther manages to make the retreat seem like his idea.
Once they have rallied the men, their relief palpable in the air, the march home begins–not a single soul dead. At their backs, a glimmer of gold begins to make itself known over the horizon to the east. The sun. Arthur’s eyes well with unshed tears when he feels the rays warm his face as though he is the petals of the flower. It feels like forgiveness. A weak cheer rolls over the men, that the light has come once more.
Uther does not so much as turn, the stiff line of his back unbent.
***
His father ages.
It seems as though years have passed by with each month, all of his strength sapped. He does not dare attempt to raise another army, even as Bayard loses the last of his land, Mercia tearing itself apart from within as more and more abandon him to cleave to King Merlin. Caerleon has only been dead for a season, but he might as well have never existed at all. Gwynned exists entirely under the mercy of the green and blue laurel.
There is nothing Gaius can do to aid his king.
Uther is listless. Weak. Unable to recover from what he has seen, and now it seems clear that he never shall. Arthur takes on more and more of his duties, until no one is asking for Uther at all. Still a king, but in name alone.
Morgana sits with him, sometimes, saying nothing. Both of them staring out of the window in a strange symmetry, watching the sky. The sun. The moon. The stars. All remain as they have been, from before Arthur ever knew they could be changed at all. A universal constant, until the day they were not.
At least King Merlin does not seem to hold a grudge. One blessing.
“Your father is dead,” Morgana says to Arthur one morning. Her hands are clasped in front of her ribs, not a tremor to be found. “In the night. It was painless.”
He blinks at her from over his pile of scrolls. “Pardon?”
“You are king, Arthur,” she speaks slowly, and clearly. Her eyes are dry, and so are his. He should feel…something, he thinks. It is ugly, to feel nothing.
“Ah,” he murmurs, twirling his quill as he feels the truth of it flood through him. Uther is gone. What is there to say?
“I’ll organise the burial,” Morgana offers brusquely, perhaps sensing he has no mood nor need for sympathy. She takes a seat from him across his desk, picking up a scroll without asking and sticking her nose in it. It’s from Nemeth, he thinks, about trade. A growing concern. Perhaps now he will be able to make an overture to King Merlin, Arthur distantly thinks. Now that his father is dead.
Dead.
“Geoffrey will handle the coronation, of course,” Morgana goes on, setting the scroll back down. Her chin is raised defiantly. She cannot tell if he needs comfort or a challenge, he knows. To be fair, he’s not sure either. “Little will change.”
It is likely to be true.
It is Arthur’s kingdom, and it has been for some time.
“Some change,” he retorts, offering a wan smile when she tilts her head in question. “You won’t have to hide any longer.” Her eyes go wide, and a hand flutters up to play with her necklace. It shines silver as she sits, speechless. “Now don’t go getting above yourself. It’s not personal,” he jests, putting them back on familiar territory. “It’s just good sense.”
She smiles at him, wiping a tear from her cheek. He pretends not to see it, as she would wish. “As you say. Better to make friends with our neighbours. Quite right.”
He pictures it. A Camelot where magic is embraced.
In his mind's eye, he can still see the dappled light of the autumn sun on the riverbank. The gold and the red of the leaves. A shy smile.
The waves had lapped at the river stones, and the all too silent forest had come back to life.
Arthur knows this feeling.
Hope.