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Merlin is limp in Arthur’s arms.
Arthur can’t bear to let him go. He’ll stay there, in the clearing where he killed the unicorn, as long as he has to; as long as it takes for Merlin to wake up.
Merlin has to wake up.
(“I would give my life for Prince Arthur,” he’d said, addressing Anhora but staring steadily at Arthur whilst the old man who wouldn’t lift Camelot’s curse observed them in turn, inscrutable.
It hadn’t taken a moment’s thought, even, for Arthur to swallow and drop his sword where he stood. The grain thief who had taunted him into attack glimmered into being behind Merlin, and with a gesture Arthur couldn’t distinguish — a knife stab, but if Arthur thinks about it for more than a flickering second he will defy fate and charge the Old Religion itself — he had Merlin collapsing to the ground.
“Then this is the choice you have to make,” the old man, Anhora, had said to Arthur. “Your manservant or your kingdom.”
“Do you trust me? I will survive. Choose Camelot,” Merlin had choked out, curled into himself, craning his neck to meet Arthur’s petrified gaze. No blood had soaked into the surrounding forest debris. Yet.
“I can’t,” Arthur had called, frantic.
“Do not tarry, Arthur Pendragon,” Anhora warned.
“Merlin,” Arthur had said, voice strangled. “I choose his life. He does not deserve to suffer in my stead.”
And Merlin had stilled with a small sigh.
“Pity.” The thief’s smile was so ugly as he stood beside Arthur’s — fiercely lovely — heart. “How selfish you are.”)
Arthur’s hands and chest are stained with Merlin’s blood, and so are his legs, for he hugged Merlin close and wept into his cold neck, begging the sun and the proud trees and the animals to spare his servant.
He made the right choice, no matter what Anhora said.
He chose the only option he could. He will stay there as long as he has to.
In the dimness of twilight, Merlin stirs.