CHAPTER NINE #2
And still, I'd thought—if only I could control it.
But control slipped through my fingers, season by season, as the dragonmark took its toll, the dragon within me growing stronger whenever magic was near.
That first edict—banning magic among commoners—felt like tearing off a bandage.
Painful. But necessary. The silence it brought to the dragon was almost a comfort.
The nobles praised my resolve. Lance pledged deeper loyalty.
But it was the silence in my head—no more whisperings from the dragon—that made it worthwhile.
Silence that wouldn't last.
Because magic wasn't dead. And soon it rebirthed itself all over the land.
It was at that point that I had to double my efforts, and I outlawed the practice of magic all across Logres.
But every burned witch, every executed hedge mage, forced itself into my conscience.
I told myself it was justice. Protection.
But I knew—each law tightened the noose around something vital. Around unity. Around trust.
The turning point with Merlin came not from hatred, but necessity.
As king, I swore an oath to protect my people.
All of them. Not just the gifted. Not just those who could bend rivers or shape fire.
And the dragon would destroy them all. Not just me.
Not just Camelot. It lusted for the lives of all.
No one—not even Merlin—was above that.
When reports reached me of a child healer in the northern village of Hawthorn Glen, we found that the village elders had exploited the child.
His power, raw and uncontrolled, had already killed several—bodies twisted by healing gone wrong.
Worse, a faction of radical mages had gathered, treating the boy as a symbol of resistance against the crown.
When my knights attempted to take the child into custody, they were met with lethal force. Three good men died—burned and broken—before they could even draw their swords. Surrounded and outnumbered, the commander ordered immediate action to contain the threat.
I never ordered the destruction of Hawthorn Glen, even if I received all the credit.
The truth was that one of the mages attempted a summoning far beyond his ability.
The backlash tore open the fabric of the world, annihilating everything within half a mile, leaving the village a hollowed-out crater.
Merlin’s reaction was swift—and public.
He stormed into my court during an audience with foreign dignitaries, accused me of ordering a massacre, and called me a tyrant before the entire court. He never asked for the truth and he didn't care that the dragon grew stronger with every instance of magic. He never wanted to hear it.
Idealism was always Merlin’s gift—and his curse. He believed magic could govern itself. He believed power could be left unchecked. He was wrong.
Our argument turned to battle.
He shattered the throne room windows with a single incantation, sending courtiers fleeing as arcane energy tore through the hall.
I defended myself—not just my crown, but the lives within these walls—with my own elemental magic, which had grown stronger with the force of the dragon.
Our duel nearly razed Camelot. The kingdom we’d built together threatened to fall by our own hands.
In that moment—surrounded by broken stone, ancient magic surging—I saw it in his eyes: the same fanaticism that had ignited Hawthorn Glen. Power without restraint. Passion without control.
Only the intervention of the King’s Guard prevented catastrophe. Outnumbered, Merlin fled—but not before vowing to return and “free” Logres from my rule. Perhaps he wanted the dragon freed as well? Perhaps he thought he could control it? I didn't know. And I didn't want to find out.
Within weeks, Merlin had seized the unpopulated lands of Annwyn and turned them into a sanctuary for those who refused to accept my limits. He called it freedom. I saw it for what it was: a refusal to face hard truths.
The ban on common magic was never meant to be permanent. It was triage—a way to stop the dragon while we worked to find a better cage. Merlin could have helped. He chose defiance instead.
"My liege, have you considered what I said?"
Mordred’s voice cut clean through the chaos in my mind, slicing through memories like a blade through flesh.
I turned to him sharply. "What you said about what?"
"Taking a wife." He spoke with deliberate weight, each syllable placed like bait in a snare. Then he watched me with the patience of a spider.
"No," I said—too fast. I reached for my goblet with more force than I intended. The wine sloshed, dark as blood against silver.
The idea of marriage felt like yet another burden—one more chain laid across shoulders already bent with crown and kingdom. What was more, there was no way I could marry when the beast within me was threatening to expose itself.
Mordred's suggestion stirred memories I preferred buried.
There had been a time when I'd entertained such notions. Twice, in fact.
The first engagement had been pure strategy—with a woman whose fertile river valleys would have doubled Camelot's grain production.
She wanted a crown. I wanted her land. Simple.
But the arrangement collapsed when my bride-to-be decided she preferred her autonomy instead.
Then she disappeared, and I never saw her again.
The second engagement had been... different.
Lady Isolde of Corbenic. She'd possessed a mind as sharp as any blade in my armory, one that delighted in dissecting the complexities of statecraft.
And she was easily the most lovely woman in the realm.
When I'd attempted the traditional courtship rituals, she laughed outright at such formalities.
Instead, she'd cornered me in the library after council meetings, her dark eyes blazing with intellectual fire as she challenged my policies on taxation and trade agreements.
Those conversations had stretched deep into countless nights, wine forgotten as we debated the merits of centralized versus regional governance, the ethics of conscription, and the delicate balance between noble privilege and common welfare.
She'd argued with the passion of someone who genuinely cared about the kingdom's future, not merely her place in it.
When she disagreed with my decisions—which happened frequently—she'd present her counterarguments with such compelling logic that I found myself reconsidering positions I'd held for years.
Love? Perhaps not. But the possibility had existed.
Then my father died. With his death, the dragonmark transferred to me, and everything changed.
The beast's hunger made intimacy inconceivable.
How could I take a wife when the creature inside me viewed everyone as either prey or threat?
How could I risk children who might inherit this curse?
I'd ended the betrothal without explanation.
"Sire, it would be prudent—" Mordred began, his tone slipping into that maddening calm he used when pressing something he’d decided was necessary.
"—for you to end this conversation." Steel threaded my voice.
It was the same tone that had silenced nobles and broken generals.
"I have no interest in taking a wife. Not when Merlin’s power spreads.
Not when war is inevitable, and alliances can turn to liabilities overnight.
" Not when I can feel the dragon growing stronger with each bloody day that passes.
The thought made my jaw clench. A wife meant vulnerability. A target. A name my enemies could whisper in threats, or worse—carve into tombstones.
A wife meant something to lose.
"Arthur." Lance’s voice cut through my thoughts as he dropped into the chair beside me, clearly inebriated. "You look like a man attending his own funeral."
"And yet the dead don’t drink," I replied, lifting my untouched goblet.
Lance was the only person bold enough to call me by my given name. And the only person I would ever allow to get away with it. His dark hair was tousled, eyes bright with wine and revelry. Unlike me, he’d embraced the evening’s offerings with ease.
Lance was the last of my knights of the old kingdom—before I'd outlawed magic. The rest had returned home, and Camelot had become as quiet as a graveyard.
The rest all returned home with the exception of one, I reminded myself.
Corvin of Blackhollow.
The one man I'd considered as close to me as Lance—perhaps even closer, if I was honest with myself.
Corvin had been more than my knight; he'd been my conscience, my moral compass in the early days when the crown still felt foreign on my head.
Where Lance was my sword arm, fierce and loyal but never questioning, Corvin had been my voice of reason, the one who dared to challenge my decisions when he believed them to be wrong.
The memory of his departure still felt like a blade between my ribs, twisting whenever I allowed myself to remember the look in his eyes the day he’d sided with Merlin and walked away from Camelot.
Corvin and I had met when we were on the verge of becoming men. He’d become a myth along the borders—the Ghost of Blackhollow, they’d called him. In truth, he was a young ranger who protected villages that had been abandoned by the crown, abandoned by my father.
The legend of the Ghost of Blackhollow had spread throughout the realm.
In fact, he’d topped my father’s list of most hunted fugitives.
But whereas my father sought his death, I desired his allegiance.
Thus, when I was newly risen as the chosen king, I’d sought him out personally.
We’d sparred first, then argued, then laughed, then bled together, fighting off a band of highwaymen.
By dawn, we were brothers.
I convinced him to ride to Camelot—not to bow, but to build. To shape a kingdom that wouldn’t abandon its edges the way Uther had.
Corvin was the first to swear the Round Table oath.
He became my shadow on the battlefield, my confidant when politics soured, the one knight who could speak truth to the king without fear, and the one who understood the weight of a crown not by wearing it, but by nearly being crushed beneath the consequences of the previous one.
As close as Corvin and I had become, he was just as close with Merlin.
In truth, he looked to Merlin as a mentor, a compass.
And when the catastrophic break between Merlin and me finally came, it tore Corvin in half.
He pleaded with us both. He fought for reconciliation.
But in the end, he sided with Merlin and betrayed me—his king, his brother.
And there would come a day when I would have his head for it.
"How can you think of death when celebration surrounds you?" Lance asked, pulling my attention back to the present moment.
His gaze lingered—devoted, perceptive. Lance had saved my life once—at Highwater Ridge. Since then, he’d remained my only knight, my most loyal friend, my fiercest blade, and the most dangerous man in any room.
I breathed in deeply. "Celebration feels premature."
He laughed, rich and easy, then gestured across the hall. "What you need is better company than your own thoughts."
A woman approached then, as if on cue. Small, graceful.
Honey-blonde hair spilled over bare shoulders, her gown scandalously cut.
Her breasts were large and round, threatening to break free from her bodice.
She moved with the slow, deliberate confidence of someone used to being watched.
She wasn’t one of the usual courtesans—I would have remembered her.
"This is Elenora," Lance said, grinning. "New to court. Popular already."
"Your Majesty," she curtsied, offering a view of her cleavage—a view that was designed to distract.
Something about her tugged at my memory. I didn’t recognize her, and yet... she seemed somehow familiar. Perhaps I’d bedded her. These days, such memories blurred.
"Sit," Lance commanded, patting his thigh.
She obeyed without hesitation, settling onto his lap like a pleased cat. His hand slid inside her bodice, exposing a perfect breast. He cupped it lazily, eyes on me as if gauging my reaction.
"Beautiful, isn’t she? Soon to be one of my favorites, I imagine."
She was yet another pretty face in a long list of Lance's conquests. With each woman, he thought he'd met the one who would make him whole again. That was the romantic in him. But none ever could. How he imagined a quim could mend what had been broken in him for so long—I couldn’t say.
I nodded, more disturbed than aroused. The woman batted her lashes at Lance, then offered him a quick flash of the flesh between her legs. She wore no undergarments.
There was something performative about her—as though this act wasn’t for Lance at all, but for me. Or maybe I was just growing too cynical to enjoy the company of a beautiful woman.
"Unless you want her to yourself, Arthur?" Lance continued, turning to face me.
I shook my head. "Enjoy her."
"Perhaps His Majesty would join us later?" She plucked a grape and pressed it to Lance’s lips. He took it with exaggerated pleasure.
But her eyes never left mine.
Cold, sharp, too intelligent by half. They didn’t match her simpering smile or soft touches. Her gaze peeled me apart—stripping the king from the man, digging through my armor for something hidden and vulnerable. I'd faced assassins, armies, sorcerers, yet this woman unsettled me just as much.
"No," I answered, almost coldly.
"What troubles you, Arthur?" Lance asked, his fingers idly circling her bare nipple.
I watched as it hardened into a peak. Perhaps I would visit them later—if the mood arrested me.
Or perhaps I would simply listen to him fucking her if I didn't feel like watching.
"The trials go well. The candidates are strong. "
"And yet I still doubt." I stood abruptly, needing distance—from her, from him, from the rot blooming beneath all this polished stone. "I need air."
“Shall I accompany you?” Lance asked, though he made no move to dislodge Elenora from his lap.
“No.” I shook my head. “Enjoy your... entertainment. I won’t be long.”
Her eyes followed me, that smile widening—sly, knowing—as if I’d just confirmed some private suspicion.
I didn’t look back.
Instead, I strode from the hall, the echo of the woman's gaze pressing between my shoulders like a blade’s point. The weight of the crown seemed heavier with each step I took, and I found myself yearning for the only companion the throne could never taint: silence.