CHAPTER TWO #2
"This storm that approaches—this awakening—is yours alone to quell, if indeed it can be quelled at all. Your father could not control the dragon, and it appears the same must be said of the son."
The reminder of Uther brought forth memories I'd rather forget—a man who had been respected, feared, yet ultimately brought low by madness and his own ravenous hunger for dominance.
Uther had stood here long before I did now, his hands pressed against this same bark, his voice echoing through these same ruins as he bargained away pieces of his soul.
And just as I sought counsel from Blodeuwyn, so had he.
My father, desperate for supremacy, had lusted for power with a fury that consumed him from within.
The crown had never been enough for Uther—he craved something deeper, something that would make him untouchable, immortal in his authority.
And in his machinations, driven by paranoia and an insatiable thirst for control, he had made a deal with Blodeuwyn that would echo through the Pendragon generations.
He asked for power, strength beyond mortal limitations, the ability to command respect through fear rather than earning it through justice.
So Blodeuwyn gave him the dragon—an ancient, primordial force that ultimately turned him mad, transforming the once-noble king into a tyrant who saw enemies in every shadow and betrayal in every whispered word.
The dragon's fire had burned away his humanity, leaving only ambition and then ash in its wake.
And now I bore that same dragon.
I never did know what Uther bargained with Blodeuwyn—what price she extracted from his desperate soul. That knowledge died with him seven years ago, taking its secrets to a grave that even now seemed too shallow to contain the consequences of his choices.
"If it was not you who loosened the dragon's reins," I continued, "then it must have been Merlin."
"Perhaps and perhaps not."
I swallowed hard, too angry to try to ferret out the truth in Blodeuwyn's words, if there was any truth to be found. Only one fact remained: “I can't fight Merlin with swords.”
"On that point, I would agree."
And perhaps if I could fight Merlin's magic with magic of my own, I could stop him from encouraging the rise of the dragon within me.
The thought crystallized in my mind—sharp, clear, and dangerously fragile.
If Merlin became my prisoner, chained in the depths of Camelot's dungeons, perhaps I could convince him to reinforce the containment spell on the dragon, to reinforce the dragonmark.
He'd done so once before—when I'd first taken the dragon into myself and Blodeuwyn had imprisoned it with the dragonmark.
Merlin had woven a containment spell around the beast to keep its essence from overtaking my own.
And we had all been blood-bound to never speak of the dragon, lest we awaken it. An oath Merlin must have broken.
Regardless, he was the only one who could remedy the situation.
Yes, if Merlin were my prisoner, I could compel him to strengthen the barriers that held the beast at bay, to forge new chains of sorcery that would keep the dragon's influence buried deep within the recesses of my soul where it belonged.
The dragonmark tattooed across my chest and back pulsed with awareness at the thought, as if sensing my intentions.
I could feel the dragon's ancient consciousness stirring, testing the boundaries of its prison with each beat of my heart.
The creature wanted freedom, wanted to burn through my flesh and emerge in all its terrible glory to lay waste to everything I'd built.
I would not allow it.
This was the only option I had—fighting magic with magic.
Every other path led to destruction—either Merlin's victory and the dissolution of everything I'd sacrificed to create, or the dragon's emergence and my transformation into the very monster that had consumed my father's sanity. That path would only end with death.
Yes, this was the only step forward.
Now, if I could just keep the dragon contained for as long as it took to defeat Merlin, to capture him and bend his will to mine, then perhaps there was still hope for Camelot.
Perhaps there was still hope for the man I had once been.
It had taken many years for the dragon to fully infiltrate Uther's mind—over ten, easily.
Thus, I believed I still had some time, though the longer I waited, the more powerful the dragon became.
And seven years were already lost to time.
“Fight magical fire with fire of your own, Arthur Pendragon," Blodeuwyn said through the mouth of the tree.
"But what of the ban on magic?"
"It must remain. Without it, the beast will surely awaken fully."
I frowned. "Then how am I to fight Merlin's magic with magic of my own?"
She was silent for a moment. "Camelot is still warded, is it not?"
The wards still held. They remained my one bastion of safety.
Even with our fractious history, Merlin's enchantments had held strong—his magic woven so intricately around Camelot, the King's Guard, and the Iron Hounds that, to our advantage, the wards still staved off the dragon’s full awakening.
These wards protected the grounds as well as my emissaries, allowing magic to be practiced without feeding or rousing the dragon.
As Merlin had explained it, the spell that fed the wards was not sustained magic.
Instead, it was a one-time working. That meant the wards did not actively draw magic.
The spell protecting the castle and emissaries had been cast once, seven years ago, when I first took the dragon.
It was paid for in full at the moment of creation.
Now, the trigger on the wards was merely mechanical, not energetic.
Merlin had told me to think of the magic as a landmine, not a fire.
If only Merlin could have similarly warded the larger kingdom of Logres with as much precision as he had Camelot... But such was an impossibility, owing to the sheer size of Logres.
"Yes," I answered Blodeuwyn's question. "The wards still hold."
"Then Camelot remains protected." Blodeuwyn was silent for a moment. "The Knights of the Round Table once served you, did they not?"
"Yes."
"Each knight with his own variety of magic."
"Yes." I could not help but feel uneasy with the direction this conversation was headed. Anything to do with magic disquieted me immensely.
"Then reinstate the Knights of the Round Table—reaffirm the station of the original knights you still deem worthy and welcome new ones. Fortify your position as king by fortifying the magic of Camelot. Only then will you be able to face Merlin in victory."
The thought of embracing magic again sent tendrils of dread crawling up my spine, but I could not deny the brutal logic of her counsel.
If I harbored even the faintest hope in hell of defeating Merlin—if I wished to stand against the Archmage of Annwyn without being utterly crushed beneath his ancient power—then I had to bring magic back to Camelot.
That much was clearly, undeniably obvious.
As much as I cringed against them, her words birthed a cold, unwavering resolve within me.
The irony tasted bitter. After years of systematically purging magic from my kingdom, after watching countless practitioners die or flee in terror, I would now need to restore what I had worked so ruthlessly to destroy.
The dragon in my chest stirred restlessly at the thought, its ancient hunger recognizing the promise of power soon to be unleashed once more.
"Very well. I will reinstate the Knights of the Round Table and make them stronger than they ever were before."
-GUIN-
Camelot's Hall of Lineages stretched before me: endless stone tombs crowned with marble effigies of the dead. Cold moonlight spilled through narrow windows, highlighting their ancient inscriptions. The air tasted of the rot of death and forgotten oaths.
At the far end of the chamber, he waited.
Arthur Pendragon stood between two crumbling pillars, his crown glinting silver against his hair. His presence hit me immediately—that terrible magnetism that bent rooms and men to his will. His blue eyes fixed on me, his expression hard.
"Come here."
Not a request. Never a request.
My feet carried me forward though every instinct screamed to turn around and run. The distance between us collapsed with each step I took, tomb after tomb blurring in my peripheral vision until I stood within arm's reach of the king. Heat radiated from him, scorching.
"You owe your king a tithe." His voice dropped lower, intimate. Dangerous. "What will you pay?"
I glanced down at the rags that covered my body. The dirt on my feet. The bareness of my legs. "I have nothing to give."
His hand caught my chin, forcing my face upward so I could see the steel of his gaze. "You have exactly what I require."
His lips captured mine before I could object, and I found myself yielding to him immediately—to the taste of him, the firm grip of his hand against my back.
He tasted like smoke and fire, commanding and fierce, his tongue sliding against mine with dominant force.
My fingers found his shoulders, my mind telling them to push him away, but they gripped him instead, pulling him closer.
"Your body," he murmured against my lips. "You'll pay with your body."
Stone pressed cold against my back as he lifted me onto the nearest tomb. The marble chilled through my thin shift while his hands burned trails up my thighs, parting them as if I belonged to him. Beside me, the carved face of some long-dead king stared unseeing at the vaulted ceiling.