CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #4
Lance's arms locked around Uther's chest from behind. Corvin seized his wrists, forcing them down. Between them, my father bucked and twisted, frothing at the mouth like a rabid animal.
He'd stopped eating days ago. Refused water. Refused even broth. The physician had examined him that morning, pulling me aside with a grim shake of his head. Hours, my lord. He'll be fortunate to see dusk.
That was why we were here now, in this gods-forsaken clearing, with wards crawling across stone and my father thrashing between us like a creature already half-corpse.
Uther couldn't die. Not yet.
Not with the dragon still coiled in his ribs.
If he died with that thing still bound to him, the beast would tear free in its final throes. It would consume whatever remained of his flesh, burst forth in flame and fury, and burn Camelot to ash before anyone could stop it. Then it would come for Logres and beyond.
Merlin had explained it to me in cold, clipped words. Blodeuwynn had confirmed it with a single nod.
The dragon had to be removed first.
Transferred.
"Now," Blodeuwynn said, stepping forward with a blade in her hand.
“No,” Uther hissed, understanding dawning in his expression. “No, not from me. You cannot— I am king. I am—”
The ember in his throat flared white-hot, his veins lighting under his skin like molten lines being poured into a mold. Merlin cursed under his breath, words in a tongue no human mother had ever taught.
“Hold him,” I said.
Blodeuwynn’s gaze moved from Uther to me.
“You understand what you ask.” Not a question. A pronouncement.
I met her eyes. “I do.”
“You ask to be cage and key.” Her fingers flexed at her sides, drawing sparks from the sigils at the edge of my vision.
"Yes."
“You ask to carry the hunger that unmade men before your father, that gnawed through priests and warlocks and saints. You ask to bind it to your own blood.”
“Yes.”
“And when it drives you to madness as it did him?” Her chin tilted toward Uther, who had begun to laugh—a choking, broken sound that might once have been regal but now sounded only like something burning. “What then?”
“Then,” I said, “you will know I kept it from waking in anyone else. That is enough.”
Something like pity flickered across her face. Merlin’s jaw clenched beside me.
“Blodeuwynn,” he said quietly. “We have no other choice.”
“There are always other choices,” she answered. “Only cowards pretend there are not. But you are not cowards, are you?”
Her eyes moved over each of us—the mad king, the prince who would be prisoner and prison, the sorcerer, the knights. The forest hushed around us, the whispers of leaves drawing in like held breath.
“Very well,” she said. “Kneel, Arthur Pendragon.”
I went to my knees opposite Uther, on the far side of the blood ring.
The earth was cold and damp under my palms. Up close, the sickness in him was worse.
His skin had the waxy sheen of a candle about to go out.
His pupils were blown wide, swallowing all color.
Only the dragon made him bright—white-gold light moving under his flesh like something swimming just beneath ice.
“Look at me, boy,” Uther gasped, his head snapping toward me with a speed that didn’t belong to his failing body. “Look at what you beg for.”
I forced myself to hold his gaze. “I’m not begging.”
“I tried—” He coughed, dark spittle flecking his beard. “Tried to carry it. For you. For the realm. You think you’re stronger than me? You think—”
His words cut off in a raw howl as Blodeuwynn lifted her hands.
The sigils carved into the stones around us flared, every line blazing with sickly green fire. The circle of blood between us pulsed, then steadied, then rose—not physically, but in the way a drumbeat rises. I could feel it in my bones, in the marrow, in the spaces between thoughts.
Merlin began to chant. The language was old, older than the dragon, older than the Wilds. His voice threaded through the clearing, low at first, then stronger, each word stitching another layer of power into the air.
Blodeuwynn’s voice joined Merlin's, higher and colder, cutting across his like a blade. Where his magic felt like the slow grinding of ancient stones, hers was a clean incision. Together, they wove something that hurt to look at.
Uther arched in Lance and Corvin's grip, every muscle rigid.
Light burst from his throat in a searing column, the flesh burning away and then remaking itself again and again as the dragon fought the summons.
His scream turned inhuman, rising in pitch until it was less sound than pressure, pushing against my eardrums, hammering at my ribs.
“Hold him!” Merlin shouted.
Lance gritted his teeth and locked his arms, muscles standing out along his neck. “For God’s sake, hurry.”
The light in Uther tore free.
It didn't leave through his mouth, or his eyes, or any human opening. It ripped out of his chest—no wound, no blood, just a sudden eruption of brilliance that made the world go white. In that blinding moment, I saw it for what it was.
Not a dragon in the way bards sang of them. Not wings and scales and fire made flesh.
It was hunger given shape.
A great serpentine coil of light and shadow, every scale a burning, shifting rune, its body made of heat and memory and endless want. Its head was a suggestion more than a form, eyes like twin suns eclipsed, jaws full of nothing and everything at once.
The dragon slammed against the ward's edge.
There was no impact, no sound—but I felt the collision in my teeth, in my skull, a shockwave that had nothing to do with air or earth. The creature coiled and thrashed, its luminous body stretching as it searched for an exit that didn't exist.
Blodeuwyn's wards held.
The blood circle flared brighter, green light climbing the standing stones until they burned like torches. The dragon threw itself against the barrier again, again, each attempt sending ripples through the charged air. Where it touched the invisible wall, sparks erupted—white and gold and terrible.
But it couldn't escape.
The stones had been placed for this exact purpose, consecrated in ritual. The blood ring bound it further, a second cage within the first. And Blodeuwyn stood at the center of it all, hands raised, fingers moving through gestures that left trails of sickly light.
The dragon screamed—a sound that had nothing to do with throats or lungs, pure fury vibrating through the marrow of the world.
And still, it could not flee.
"Blood called to blood, the binding done, Pendragon claimed when wars were won." Blodeuwyn's voice sharpened, cutting through the dragon's rage like steel.
Merlin joined her, their words weaving together in a rhythmic incantation that pulsed with the same sickly green light crawling across the stones.
"By name, by crown, by ancient right, you serve the throne through endless night."
The dragon writhed, coiling tighter, its luminous form compressing as the words hammered into it.
"Your vessel breaks, your keeper falls, death claims the flesh that bore your thrall. But name remains, the line holds true, new king, new cage—we bind you anew."
The light pulsed brighter with each syllable, the blood circle flaring hot enough that I felt sweat break across my brow.
"Arthur Pendragon, crowned in flame, bearer now of dragon's name. By blood and bone and sovereign claim, the beast obeys—the price, the same."
The dragon's scream pitched higher, a sound like tearing metal, like breaking glass, like the end of something that should never have begun. It turned in the air above Uther’s convulsing body, and I felt its attention like a hand closing around my throat.
My body tried to recoil. I didn’t let it. I leaned forward instead, hands fisting in the dirt. The sigils around us twisted, their light going from green to a fierce white-blue that made my eyes water. Merlin’s voice rose, matching hers, meeting it, binding it.
The dragon struck.
It crossed the distance between us without crossing it at all.
One moment it hung over Uther like a condemning star.
The next, it was in front of me, too close, far too vast. It didn't enter me like a blade or a breath.
It collapsed into me, its immensity folding down, driven by the force of the wards and the weight of the spell.
Lance and Corvin flopped over, slumping against the ground, unconscious.
But I couldn't worry for them—agony exploded in my chest. Not the sharp, clean pain of a wound. This was… expansion. As if my ribs were being forced outward from the inside, as if my heart was being unmade and remade in the dragon’s image.
Every nerve ignited. Fire roared through my veins, turning my blood molten. My spine arched. A cry tore out of me.
Something burned into my skin just below my collarbone, over my heart. A brand: a dragon curled around its own tail with wings that arched from its back. I couldn't see it, but I felt each line seared into me, each stroke a bar of a cage that was suddenly mine.
The dragon thrashed inside that new prison.
It clawed at my insides, at the back of my eyes, furious at being compressed, furious at being bound to flesh again. It raked its talons down the inside of my thoughts, testing for cracks.
Too small, it hissed. Too weak. I will break you.
I refused to give it anything—not fear, not pleading, not protest. It could have all the burning, all the pain.
Slowly, the light in the clearing dimmed.
The sigils on the stones settled back to a dull glow. Blodeuwyn lowered her hands, shoulders trembling with exertion. Merlin swayed where he stood, sweat plastering his hair to his brow, breath coming in ragged pulls.
Uther lay motionless between us. Dead.
Lance and Corvin were also motionless, but their chests were rising. They were alive.
“Is it—” I started.
“Gone,” Blodeuwyn interrupted. “From him, at least.”
I could still feel it. Coiling. Pressing. Watching.