The Prince tore through vines like wool, thorn like thread, and when he reached the keep, where a candle flicked once before it died within the only gap along the stone, he halted for the first time since he realised that nothing but forest stood between him and the fort. The guards behind him, loyal as always to the point of madness, stopped too ( Read more... )

Arthur turned for the twentieth time in the space of a minute and finally decided to give up on sleep altogether. The moon was shining too brightly through the lattice of his window and the creak of late-working footsteps made too much noise to ignore. When he shifted to his front the mattress brushed against a particularly uncomfortable spot and ( Read more... )

The next morning...

Arthur was very cranky. He awoke with a stiff neck, arms, back, stiff everything, in fact, and there being the problem; there was a mess in his trousers, which he hadn’t taken off last night, and his bed, though rumpled, neckerchief garnished, was un-slept in. And then he remembered the reason for waking up this morning in ( Read more... )

Merlin sighed. Everything else about that night had been wrong; the con, the lie, circumstance, the role reversal; when was Arthur ever submissive? When would the prince he dreamt about have ever lain still and bound while somebody else took control? It had been wrong entirely, too generous, Merlin had had his cake and eaten it too, and the next ( Read more... )

“The coins are on the table,” said the prince once he found his voice, cracked, low, and weak.

The man above him drew up off Arthur’s body, allowed himself no more than a glance at the blindfolded face which dropped to a taught shoulder, one stare to commit the laziness of those lips to memory, and then he finally stood, feeling as though he’d ( Read more... )

The bed had been prepared; the armour had been stripped and laid onto a table, leaving Arthur in just his linens when Merlin finally got the chance to see his own room.

He didn’t expect much; he was a servant and this was not Camelot, but when he opened the door, the first and definitely the most alarming detail of his quarters for the night hit ( Read more... )

“What possible reason could there be for nearly ripping my arm right off?”

“Hush, Merlin! Somebody might hear you!”

The wizard obeyed, tightening his lips and holding back the scowl which hovered while Arthur’s arm rested firmly on his own.

It had all started when he walked into the prince’s chamber that night, to face a thoughtful smirk which ( Read more... )

When Arthur knocked on the door of the Inn it took all of 3 seconds for scuffling to be heard from inside. The sounds of a large bolt being drawn overpowered the waves of the sea for one moment, and then the door creaked open very slightly.

“Yes... what is it that you want at this time of the night?” A woman snapped, peering around the edge of the ( Read more... )

The horses tread carefully into the quiet around Asidore. It was past midnight and the villagers who lived on the outskirts were sleeping, leaving only cricket-song to disrupt the boys’ thoughts, until they rode further and singing men poured out of a Free House ahead of them.

The chants were similar to those of drunken Camelot after a hard day ( Read more... )

Five feeble and almost silent hours had past and three times had the same tree stood in front of the boys on their horses. Merlin, who had remained silent until the third sighting, out of awareness of the prince’s temper, could not hold back his comment now.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?”

The prince answered with a scowl, jerking his horse to a stop, and ( Read more... )