Fic: First, the Heart (Chapter One)
Title: First, the Heart
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Characters: Ensemble cast
Word count: 2582 of 5854
Warnings: Past character deaths
Summary: Merlin has been pursued all his life by those who know about his powers. They want to use him, to kill him, to take his magic, anything, everything. When he falls onto the Pendragon hitlist he knows he probably has little time left. But Merlin won't stop fighting. And in time may discover there's more to life than what first meets the eye. Especially in the case of a certain Arthur Pendragon.
A/N: I did warn about slow updates, haha. It took me a while to get this into shape! Hopefully the rest will come quicker!
Prologue
Chapter One : Safety
.1
“Of course I was watching the house,” Gwaine grumbled, stacking bacon on top of banana on top of pancakes and covering the whole thing with maple syrup. Merlin’s stomach rumbled earnestly. “Anyone could have wandered in. Thieves. Criminals. Long lost friends.”
He shot Merlin a rather reproachful look before setting the laden plate down in front of him.
“Sorry,” Merlin said, around a mouthful of pancake. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Gwaine grimaced and then dropped into a seat on the opposite side of the table.
They were in Lancelot and Gwen’s flat, Lance and Gwen both out at work and Percival keeping a look out on the street below from the spare bedroom.
Merlin was wrapped in several blankets and late in the afternoon though it was, he’d only just woken up.
He still felt shaky. Still thought he could hear ringing in his ears at times.
They’d moved to Lance and Gwen’s flat because Gwaine’s place obviously wasn’t safe. Merlin knew they didn’t have long, though.
They’d be tracked down soon and Merlin knew that when that time came, he wasn’t going to put his friends at risk.
“It’s not a problem,” Gwaine said airily, snagging a bit of bacon off the edge of Merlin’s plate. “I just wish … I wish you’d contacted me. Said something. We could have helped.”
Merlin pushed a piece banana across his plate, suddenly not feeling very hungry.
“My life doesn’t work like that, Gwaine. You know that.”
Gwaine made an exasperated sound.
“Yeah, I’ve had to live with it for long enough now, Merls. I get it. You ‘work alone’.”
Merlin’s fork fell with a clatter.
“You think that’s what this is, Gwaine? You think I have any choice?”
He was angry. They were both angry.
Gwaine thumped his own cutlery down.
“Look Merlin, we’ve been trying to help you. There’s things we can do, people we know. We’re willing to put ourselves at risk because you’re our friend. And we don’t want to see you get hurt any more than you want to see us get hurt.”
That was the ultimate issue. They were all trying to do the same thing.
Merlin chewed at his lip and was silent. There was no point trying to fight this.
Gwaine exhaled noisily and took Merlin’s empty plate away from him, heading for the sink.
Merlin’s fingers danced over the edge of his blanket. Not knowing what to say to Gwaine because Gwaine would never understand.
Merlin had magic. That made him different.
His chances of survival were vastly increased in most situations. He had the ability to protect and defend others and he couldn’t do that if they were determined to throw themselves in front of him.
Granted, had it not been for Gwaine and the others’ intervention the previous night, Merlin would be locked up, somewhere far away in a Pendragon experiment lab.
But had it not been for their element of surprise, Gwaine and the others would have been vastly outnumbered.
And he couldn’t lose them.
Silence stretched.
It there was one good thing about his long separation from his friends it was that by all likelihood, the Pendragons didn’t know of their existence, or at least where they lived.
For a short while, they were safe.
Not for long. Never for long.
“How’s your job going?” Merlin asked tentatively.
“Fine.”
Gwaine went about making some tea, putting the kettle onto its stand with much more force than was necessary.
“Still at the warehouse?”
Gwaine grunted in response.
The kettle steadily came to the boil.
As it pinged, Percival burst into the kitchen.
“Men. In the street. Aredian.”
.2
The box of tea was still sat in Arthur’s cupboard, unused.
He wasn’t quite sure if he was keeping it in some form of punishment, or for some other unknown reason.
He’d failed. Emrys had gotten the better of him.
His father had not been pleased.
Then again, Uther was never pleased.
He poured himself out a few fingers or whiskey and headed for the lounge.
Folders and documents were scattered about. Reports from his scouts who were on the lookout for Emrys. Dossiers on ways to combat a magical threat. Lists of known sorcerers still at large.
Arthur dumped a pile on the floor and dropped into a seat.
He’d spent a year - a year - tracing down this Emrys fellow, setting the trap, determining that everything would run flawlessly only to have it all backfire on him.
Morgana had laughed.
Not that she’d exactly been successful either which was a small victory for Arthur.
And neither had his father.
Merlin’s face danced around his mind, all sharp cheekbones and ruffled hair, eyes dark with the weight of a lifetime on the run. That brilliant flare of gold.
From what he had been told by his father, Arthur had expected Merlin to be a ruthless killer who wouldn’t hesitate to decimate them all.
However … Merlin had neither harmed Arthur, nor even directly attacked him.
He hadn’t seemed to survive by exerting his supposed great power or taken down Arthur in a deadly duel.
He seemed to rely on ingenuity and sheer dumb luck more.
Those blue eyes sparkled in his mind’s eye. A slapdash grin spreading across Merlin’s face as Arthur succumbed to the sleeping drug’s effects.
He knocked back the whiskey, wincing as it went down.
The afternoon was drawing to a close outside, light rain spraying at the window in the breeze.
In his flat, everything was quiet.
Ignoring the reports form his scouts, he dragged a fresh sheet of paper towards him and digging in his pocket withdrew a fountain pen.
He needed to find Merlin again. Before Morgana or his father did.
He wasn’t sure why he felt this so urgently, and despite his best efforts to assure himself it was out of a desire to prove himself … blue eyes and pale skin drifted through his head again.
He set his jaw and steadily began listing all the places Merlin had inhabited over the past year.
He knew Merlin wouldn’t be foolish enough to return to any of them now, but he had to start somewhere and this was eliminating options.
He realised Merlin could have left town, but didn’t understand why he would now, after dancing under the nose of the Pendragons for so long, Merlin was something of a natural at it, and there were other forces abroad, much more powerful and much more deadly than the Pendragons.
Arthur knew Cenred controlled most of the West with an iron fist. Sorcerers didn’t last long there, no matter who they were. And it was unlikely that Merlin would have made it far North enough to enter Annis’s purview. Still it wouldn’t hurt to slip Annis a message.
He must still be in the city. Arthur could almost sense it, instinctively. This was Merlin’s home, he knew every hole to hide in, he had friends here-
Arthur caught himself, and then a smile began to grow across his face.
For the year he’d been following Merlin, he’d kept mostly to himself. Evidently he had enough sense to see that friends were a weakness.
But right now, Merlin was weak. He’d still be recovering from Uther’s attack. And someone had come to save him. Someone had known where he was and cared about him enough to come to rescue him.
It didn’t take him long to find the deeds to the house, it was child’s play to track down the owner, and after a little bit of digging, Arthur’s smile was victorious.
Gwaine Green. 27. Who just so happened to have gone to the same high school as one Merlin Emrys.
Satisfied, Arthur found out where Green worked and then set his laptop to one side.
Propping his feet up on the coffee table, he closed his eyes, the taste of whiskey still sharp upon his tongue, blue eyes still gleaming in his mind.
.3
There was a bit of a struggle.
Gwaine’s initial reaction was to try and pin Merlin down so he couldn’t go anywhere.
Merlin wriggled out of his grip, aided a little by his magic and ran for the bedroom where his rucksack was.
Percival came out of nowhere and planted himself firmly in the doorway.
Even that brief burst of energy was enough to render Merlin shaky and trembling once again.
Percival guided him into the bedroom and Gwaine pushed him down behind the bed with a warning to ‘stay there, or else.’
Merlin wasn’t been in any fit state to disagree.
“It’ll just be a routine check,” Gwaine said, his gaze flicking between the window and Merlin.
“Yeah, but you know Aredian,” Percival replied. “He can sniff out a sorcerer from a mile away.”
“We need a distraction,” Gwaine said, suddenly looking determined.
“Gwaine, no.” Merlin and Percival spoke at the same time.
“Well what else are we going to do?” Gwaine snapped, folding his arms.
Percival looked uncertain.
“We need to put him off the scent,” Merlin said, forcing himself up off the floor.
“I said stay put,” Gwaine warned.
“If I do, he’ll find me,” Merlin replied. He shrugged the blankets off his shoulders and made his way on unsteady feet towards the door, rolling his sleeves up as he went.
He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to do this. And if it worked every sorcerer in Camelot would know he existed.
But he had to stop Aredian.
“Merlin you can’t,” Gwaine said firmly.
“It’s the only way,” Merlin replied, doing his best to stare Gwaine down.
There was a strained pause, then Percival stepped between them.
“What do you need to do?”
.4
Merlin ran away from home when he was sixteen.
Not out of choice. Rather that his mother was dead, Will had been taken in for questioning, and everyone in their neighbourhood knew he had magic.
It would only have been a matter of time before Cenred’s men came knocking. His mother had always warned him about the dangers of Cenred finding out about Merlin’s magic.
Containment. Experiment. In short, nothing good.
But Will hadn’t seen the car coming. There had been nothing else Merlin could have done except walk out into the middle of the busy street, in front of everyone, and stop the car.
It was hardly fair that this was his reward for saving his best friend’s life.
Since then, he’d spent three years in Essetir, keeping himself to the shadows, nicking food out of bins.
For the world at large, Merlin Emrys had ceased to exist.
He’d come to Camelot a few weeks before his 20th birthday after a run in with someone called Kanen that had left him shaken and detesting the effects of the Witch’s Aria for the rest of his life.
Camelot had been daunting, but Merlin could get lost in the winding streets and could find places to hide in the many corners and holes.
Camelot had become home.
He hadn’t left, or at least, he always came back. He’d run to Nemeth after Arthur’s attack, but Morgana had found him there anyway. Gwaine’s place was out in the country, but clearly not far enough away for Uther Pendragon.
Even when he’d lost Will, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave.
Despite its dangers, so much greater now that he was under the purview of the Pendragons, it was home.
.5
Merlin knelt on the floor in the middle of the flat, his palms pressed into the carpet in front of him.
Steadily, he spread his magic out, letting it filter into the surrounding area, swelling and burning brighter as it did so.
“What are you doing?” Gwaine asked from his position at the door, keeping an eyes on the street below.
“Shut up, Gwaine. He needs to concentrate.” Percival had got out a pistol and was waiting at the window.
“I’m throwing Aredian off the scent,” Merlin muttered. “He senses magic so I’m going to send his senses into overload. He won’t know where its coming from, or where it ends.”
“is that wise?” Gwaine asked. “Are you strong enough?”
“It’s the only way,” Merlin replied.
Beads of sweat were running down his forehead and the trembling had worsened.
But it must be working. It had to be.
The magic grew, spreading out further. It filled the apartment, the building, the street.
“It’s working,” Percival murmured. “He’s confused.”
The veins stood out on the back of Merlin’s hands as he dug deeper, spreading his net wider. His vision was beginning to go white.
“He’s heading in the wrong direction,” Gwaine said.
“He’s going.”
Merlin closed his eyes, unable to stop the small whine of pain that escaped him.
“He’s gone!”
He had to hold on though. Had to wait until Aredian was far away. Far, far away.
“Merlin. Merlin you can stop now.”
Gwaine was close by, but his voice was faint. Merlin dug his nails into the carpet. Black and gold stretched across his vision.
“Merlin!”
With a shuddering gasp, he let it go, the magic flying back to him in a wave that made him topple sideways when it hit.
Gwaine steadied him.
Merlin heaved in a few deep breaths, feeling dizzy as his magic settled.
“You ok?” Gwaine asked softly.
Merlin made a quiet noise of assent.
“I’ll make some tea,” Percival said, and Merlin heard the click as he locked his pistol away.
“You really need to stop scaring me like that, Merls,” Gwaine said, the chuckle in his voice sounding hollow.
“Yeah sure,” Merlin replied. “Whenever I can stop saving your sorry behind.”
Gwaine didn’t reply.
.6
It was the middle of the night when he heard the voice.
He shot up in bed, eyes wide as he scanned the dark room.
Gwaine was snoring softly on the other bed, Percival a silent lump on the floor.
“Emrys.”
Nearly jumping out of his skin, Merlin looked around wildly.
“Emrys. My name is Mordred.”
Merlin froze where he was sat as he realised the voice was inside his head.
“We wish to speak with you, Emrys.”
“Who are you?” Merlin tried tentatively.
“A sorcerer, like you. But there are many of us. We wish to meet you, Emrys.”
Merlin grit his teeth, disliking the constant you of his name.
“Why me?”
“We want to help you, Emrys. And in turn, believe that you can help us.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“We know Uther Pendragon is hunting you. We can provide protection. Protection for your friends as well.”
Merlin stilled as he reached for his rucksack beside the bed.
“How do you know about them?” his voice was cutting in his head, but it didn’t hide his momentary twinge of fear.
“We sensed you magic, Emrys. This afternoon. We sought you out. Only one as powerful as you can help our cause.”
Silently, Merlin slid out of bed.
“What cause?”
“The protection of sorcerers. The eradication of Uther Pendragon and all like him. A free world for our kind.”
At the door to the bedroom, Merlin paused and looked back. Gwaine and Percival were still sleeping.
“And you promise me they’ll be safe?” It was the only thing that mattered.
“You have my word.”
Merlin crossed the hall, passed Lance and Gwen’s room and crept through the kitchen.
“Where do I meet you?”
“I’m at the corner,” Mordred replied. “Welcome to the Order of Nimueh, Emrys.”
Chapter Two
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Characters: Ensemble cast
Word count: 2582 of 5854
Warnings: Past character deaths
Summary: Merlin has been pursued all his life by those who know about his powers. They want to use him, to kill him, to take his magic, anything, everything. When he falls onto the Pendragon hitlist he knows he probably has little time left. But Merlin won't stop fighting. And in time may discover there's more to life than what first meets the eye. Especially in the case of a certain Arthur Pendragon.
A/N: I did warn about slow updates, haha. It took me a while to get this into shape! Hopefully the rest will come quicker!
Prologue
Chapter One : Safety
.1
“Of course I was watching the house,” Gwaine grumbled, stacking bacon on top of banana on top of pancakes and covering the whole thing with maple syrup. Merlin’s stomach rumbled earnestly. “Anyone could have wandered in. Thieves. Criminals. Long lost friends.”
He shot Merlin a rather reproachful look before setting the laden plate down in front of him.
“Sorry,” Merlin said, around a mouthful of pancake. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Gwaine grimaced and then dropped into a seat on the opposite side of the table.
They were in Lancelot and Gwen’s flat, Lance and Gwen both out at work and Percival keeping a look out on the street below from the spare bedroom.
Merlin was wrapped in several blankets and late in the afternoon though it was, he’d only just woken up.
He still felt shaky. Still thought he could hear ringing in his ears at times.
They’d moved to Lance and Gwen’s flat because Gwaine’s place obviously wasn’t safe. Merlin knew they didn’t have long, though.
They’d be tracked down soon and Merlin knew that when that time came, he wasn’t going to put his friends at risk.
“It’s not a problem,” Gwaine said airily, snagging a bit of bacon off the edge of Merlin’s plate. “I just wish … I wish you’d contacted me. Said something. We could have helped.”
Merlin pushed a piece banana across his plate, suddenly not feeling very hungry.
“My life doesn’t work like that, Gwaine. You know that.”
Gwaine made an exasperated sound.
“Yeah, I’ve had to live with it for long enough now, Merls. I get it. You ‘work alone’.”
Merlin’s fork fell with a clatter.
“You think that’s what this is, Gwaine? You think I have any choice?”
He was angry. They were both angry.
Gwaine thumped his own cutlery down.
“Look Merlin, we’ve been trying to help you. There’s things we can do, people we know. We’re willing to put ourselves at risk because you’re our friend. And we don’t want to see you get hurt any more than you want to see us get hurt.”
That was the ultimate issue. They were all trying to do the same thing.
Merlin chewed at his lip and was silent. There was no point trying to fight this.
Gwaine exhaled noisily and took Merlin’s empty plate away from him, heading for the sink.
Merlin’s fingers danced over the edge of his blanket. Not knowing what to say to Gwaine because Gwaine would never understand.
Merlin had magic. That made him different.
His chances of survival were vastly increased in most situations. He had the ability to protect and defend others and he couldn’t do that if they were determined to throw themselves in front of him.
Granted, had it not been for Gwaine and the others’ intervention the previous night, Merlin would be locked up, somewhere far away in a Pendragon experiment lab.
But had it not been for their element of surprise, Gwaine and the others would have been vastly outnumbered.
And he couldn’t lose them.
Silence stretched.
It there was one good thing about his long separation from his friends it was that by all likelihood, the Pendragons didn’t know of their existence, or at least where they lived.
For a short while, they were safe.
Not for long. Never for long.
“How’s your job going?” Merlin asked tentatively.
“Fine.”
Gwaine went about making some tea, putting the kettle onto its stand with much more force than was necessary.
“Still at the warehouse?”
Gwaine grunted in response.
The kettle steadily came to the boil.
As it pinged, Percival burst into the kitchen.
“Men. In the street. Aredian.”
.2
The box of tea was still sat in Arthur’s cupboard, unused.
He wasn’t quite sure if he was keeping it in some form of punishment, or for some other unknown reason.
He’d failed. Emrys had gotten the better of him.
His father had not been pleased.
Then again, Uther was never pleased.
He poured himself out a few fingers or whiskey and headed for the lounge.
Folders and documents were scattered about. Reports from his scouts who were on the lookout for Emrys. Dossiers on ways to combat a magical threat. Lists of known sorcerers still at large.
Arthur dumped a pile on the floor and dropped into a seat.
He’d spent a year - a year - tracing down this Emrys fellow, setting the trap, determining that everything would run flawlessly only to have it all backfire on him.
Morgana had laughed.
Not that she’d exactly been successful either which was a small victory for Arthur.
And neither had his father.
Merlin’s face danced around his mind, all sharp cheekbones and ruffled hair, eyes dark with the weight of a lifetime on the run. That brilliant flare of gold.
From what he had been told by his father, Arthur had expected Merlin to be a ruthless killer who wouldn’t hesitate to decimate them all.
However … Merlin had neither harmed Arthur, nor even directly attacked him.
He hadn’t seemed to survive by exerting his supposed great power or taken down Arthur in a deadly duel.
He seemed to rely on ingenuity and sheer dumb luck more.
Those blue eyes sparkled in his mind’s eye. A slapdash grin spreading across Merlin’s face as Arthur succumbed to the sleeping drug’s effects.
He knocked back the whiskey, wincing as it went down.
The afternoon was drawing to a close outside, light rain spraying at the window in the breeze.
In his flat, everything was quiet.
Ignoring the reports form his scouts, he dragged a fresh sheet of paper towards him and digging in his pocket withdrew a fountain pen.
He needed to find Merlin again. Before Morgana or his father did.
He wasn’t sure why he felt this so urgently, and despite his best efforts to assure himself it was out of a desire to prove himself … blue eyes and pale skin drifted through his head again.
He set his jaw and steadily began listing all the places Merlin had inhabited over the past year.
He knew Merlin wouldn’t be foolish enough to return to any of them now, but he had to start somewhere and this was eliminating options.
He realised Merlin could have left town, but didn’t understand why he would now, after dancing under the nose of the Pendragons for so long, Merlin was something of a natural at it, and there were other forces abroad, much more powerful and much more deadly than the Pendragons.
Arthur knew Cenred controlled most of the West with an iron fist. Sorcerers didn’t last long there, no matter who they were. And it was unlikely that Merlin would have made it far North enough to enter Annis’s purview. Still it wouldn’t hurt to slip Annis a message.
He must still be in the city. Arthur could almost sense it, instinctively. This was Merlin’s home, he knew every hole to hide in, he had friends here-
Arthur caught himself, and then a smile began to grow across his face.
For the year he’d been following Merlin, he’d kept mostly to himself. Evidently he had enough sense to see that friends were a weakness.
But right now, Merlin was weak. He’d still be recovering from Uther’s attack. And someone had come to save him. Someone had known where he was and cared about him enough to come to rescue him.
It didn’t take him long to find the deeds to the house, it was child’s play to track down the owner, and after a little bit of digging, Arthur’s smile was victorious.
Gwaine Green. 27. Who just so happened to have gone to the same high school as one Merlin Emrys.
Satisfied, Arthur found out where Green worked and then set his laptop to one side.
Propping his feet up on the coffee table, he closed his eyes, the taste of whiskey still sharp upon his tongue, blue eyes still gleaming in his mind.
.3
There was a bit of a struggle.
Gwaine’s initial reaction was to try and pin Merlin down so he couldn’t go anywhere.
Merlin wriggled out of his grip, aided a little by his magic and ran for the bedroom where his rucksack was.
Percival came out of nowhere and planted himself firmly in the doorway.
Even that brief burst of energy was enough to render Merlin shaky and trembling once again.
Percival guided him into the bedroom and Gwaine pushed him down behind the bed with a warning to ‘stay there, or else.’
Merlin wasn’t been in any fit state to disagree.
“It’ll just be a routine check,” Gwaine said, his gaze flicking between the window and Merlin.
“Yeah, but you know Aredian,” Percival replied. “He can sniff out a sorcerer from a mile away.”
“We need a distraction,” Gwaine said, suddenly looking determined.
“Gwaine, no.” Merlin and Percival spoke at the same time.
“Well what else are we going to do?” Gwaine snapped, folding his arms.
Percival looked uncertain.
“We need to put him off the scent,” Merlin said, forcing himself up off the floor.
“I said stay put,” Gwaine warned.
“If I do, he’ll find me,” Merlin replied. He shrugged the blankets off his shoulders and made his way on unsteady feet towards the door, rolling his sleeves up as he went.
He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to do this. And if it worked every sorcerer in Camelot would know he existed.
But he had to stop Aredian.
“Merlin you can’t,” Gwaine said firmly.
“It’s the only way,” Merlin replied, doing his best to stare Gwaine down.
There was a strained pause, then Percival stepped between them.
“What do you need to do?”
.4
Merlin ran away from home when he was sixteen.
Not out of choice. Rather that his mother was dead, Will had been taken in for questioning, and everyone in their neighbourhood knew he had magic.
It would only have been a matter of time before Cenred’s men came knocking. His mother had always warned him about the dangers of Cenred finding out about Merlin’s magic.
Containment. Experiment. In short, nothing good.
But Will hadn’t seen the car coming. There had been nothing else Merlin could have done except walk out into the middle of the busy street, in front of everyone, and stop the car.
It was hardly fair that this was his reward for saving his best friend’s life.
Since then, he’d spent three years in Essetir, keeping himself to the shadows, nicking food out of bins.
For the world at large, Merlin Emrys had ceased to exist.
He’d come to Camelot a few weeks before his 20th birthday after a run in with someone called Kanen that had left him shaken and detesting the effects of the Witch’s Aria for the rest of his life.
Camelot had been daunting, but Merlin could get lost in the winding streets and could find places to hide in the many corners and holes.
Camelot had become home.
He hadn’t left, or at least, he always came back. He’d run to Nemeth after Arthur’s attack, but Morgana had found him there anyway. Gwaine’s place was out in the country, but clearly not far enough away for Uther Pendragon.
Even when he’d lost Will, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave.
Despite its dangers, so much greater now that he was under the purview of the Pendragons, it was home.
.5
Merlin knelt on the floor in the middle of the flat, his palms pressed into the carpet in front of him.
Steadily, he spread his magic out, letting it filter into the surrounding area, swelling and burning brighter as it did so.
“What are you doing?” Gwaine asked from his position at the door, keeping an eyes on the street below.
“Shut up, Gwaine. He needs to concentrate.” Percival had got out a pistol and was waiting at the window.
“I’m throwing Aredian off the scent,” Merlin muttered. “He senses magic so I’m going to send his senses into overload. He won’t know where its coming from, or where it ends.”
“is that wise?” Gwaine asked. “Are you strong enough?”
“It’s the only way,” Merlin replied.
Beads of sweat were running down his forehead and the trembling had worsened.
But it must be working. It had to be.
The magic grew, spreading out further. It filled the apartment, the building, the street.
“It’s working,” Percival murmured. “He’s confused.”
The veins stood out on the back of Merlin’s hands as he dug deeper, spreading his net wider. His vision was beginning to go white.
“He’s heading in the wrong direction,” Gwaine said.
“He’s going.”
Merlin closed his eyes, unable to stop the small whine of pain that escaped him.
“He’s gone!”
He had to hold on though. Had to wait until Aredian was far away. Far, far away.
“Merlin. Merlin you can stop now.”
Gwaine was close by, but his voice was faint. Merlin dug his nails into the carpet. Black and gold stretched across his vision.
“Merlin!”
With a shuddering gasp, he let it go, the magic flying back to him in a wave that made him topple sideways when it hit.
Gwaine steadied him.
Merlin heaved in a few deep breaths, feeling dizzy as his magic settled.
“You ok?” Gwaine asked softly.
Merlin made a quiet noise of assent.
“I’ll make some tea,” Percival said, and Merlin heard the click as he locked his pistol away.
“You really need to stop scaring me like that, Merls,” Gwaine said, the chuckle in his voice sounding hollow.
“Yeah sure,” Merlin replied. “Whenever I can stop saving your sorry behind.”
Gwaine didn’t reply.
.6
It was the middle of the night when he heard the voice.
He shot up in bed, eyes wide as he scanned the dark room.
Gwaine was snoring softly on the other bed, Percival a silent lump on the floor.
“Emrys.”
Nearly jumping out of his skin, Merlin looked around wildly.
“Emrys. My name is Mordred.”
Merlin froze where he was sat as he realised the voice was inside his head.
“We wish to speak with you, Emrys.”
“Who are you?” Merlin tried tentatively.
“A sorcerer, like you. But there are many of us. We wish to meet you, Emrys.”
Merlin grit his teeth, disliking the constant you of his name.
“Why me?”
“We want to help you, Emrys. And in turn, believe that you can help us.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“We know Uther Pendragon is hunting you. We can provide protection. Protection for your friends as well.”
Merlin stilled as he reached for his rucksack beside the bed.
“How do you know about them?” his voice was cutting in his head, but it didn’t hide his momentary twinge of fear.
“We sensed you magic, Emrys. This afternoon. We sought you out. Only one as powerful as you can help our cause.”
Silently, Merlin slid out of bed.
“What cause?”
“The protection of sorcerers. The eradication of Uther Pendragon and all like him. A free world for our kind.”
At the door to the bedroom, Merlin paused and looked back. Gwaine and Percival were still sleeping.
“And you promise me they’ll be safe?” It was the only thing that mattered.
“You have my word.”
Merlin crossed the hall, passed Lance and Gwen’s room and crept through the kitchen.
“Where do I meet you?”
“I’m at the corner,” Mordred replied. “Welcome to the Order of Nimueh, Emrys.”
Chapter Two