The old woman is dead now—her stooped old form slumps, lifeless, beneath the fallen chandelier, mustard-yellow dress fanning out around her in a great golden eddy, like a strange imitation of an ocean wave, her long white hair falling in tangled, scraggly clumps around her wrinkled face. The old woman is dead now, the danger has passed, but Merlin finds his heart is still in his throat and his hands won't stop shaking, even as he looks at the body growing cold on the floor in front of him.

A second later, he thinks, with a terrible shudder, and a half-glance at the knife still embedded in the back of the ornate seat less than three feet away, a second later, and it would have been Prince Arthur, not the old woman, but Prince Arthur—

Not that Merlin particularly cares, one way or another, it has to be admitted, if anything happens to Prince Arthur—the man's an absolute prat, royal or not, but prattishness doesn't matter so much in the sharp silver gleam of a blade, in the cold, gnawing threat of death.

Prince Arthur pushes up off the floor on his palms and Merlin thinks, hazily, distantly, that perhaps he ought to do the same—he has only just scrambled to his feet when the king himself strides over to them, a thousand hard lines etched deep in his stern, proud face.

Merlin reflexively steps back—ringing in his ears, there is the dull thud of a deadly sharp axe, coming down on a sorcerer's bare neck, the crackling and hissing of flames a hundred feet high, the clink of chains, the swish of a sword—

"You saved my boy's life."

Out of all the things Merlin expects King Uther Pendragon to say to him—I sentence you to death for using magic and enchantments, or maybe you are to be burned at the stake at once, sorcerer—well—let's just say this justisn't one of them, and leave it at that.

"A debt must be repaid."

Fear curdles like rancid wine in the pit of Merlin's stomach—he doesn't want anything from the man in front of him, royal rewards and Camelot protocol and accidentally-saving-an-absolute-prat-of-a-prince be damned.

"Uh—well—" Merlin clasps his hands behind his back to stop himself from fidgeting. If he keeps it up much longer, someone might start to suspect—of course, anyone would be nervous talking to King Uther, he knows that, but how nervous is regular-person-nervous and how nervous is I'm-a-secret-sorcerer-and-every-day-for-eighteen-years-I've-wondered-how-painful-it-would-be-to-die-on-a-pyre nervous?

"Don't be so modest," the king says, like modesty has got anything to do with it. "You shall be rewarded."

"N-no, honestly," Merlin stammers, and he tries to step back a little farther without either man noticing, "you don't have to, Your Highness."

"No, absolutely," King Uther persists, immovable and inflexible as granite, "this merits something quite special."

Merlin hesitates for half a moment longer. It's looking like the king won't let him leave the hall until some sort of honor is bestowed on him—and who knows, it might even be something good—so he lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Well."

"You shall be awarded a position in the royal household."

Oh. See, that's quite good, actually, isn't it? So long as he can keep his head down and avoid the king, not to mention his horrible son—

"You shall be a knight."

Wait. What?

The whole hall bursts into applause. Merlin thinks his ears are going to explode. Knight. A knight. Somehow, he can't wrap his head around that one.

"Father!" Prince Arthur shouts, indignantly, from somewhere beside Merlin, but his voice is lost in the cheers of the crowd.

If I thought it would do any good, Merlin thinks, half-hysterically, I might try and protest to King Uther, too.

Even just the thought of the silver mail and scarlet cloak on his own body makes him shudder—the regalia of the men who have hunted people like him for twenty years—his stomach churns—

Merlin locks eyes with Gaius, a thousand miles away down the rows and rows of long black tables—the old man's face is split in a huge, beaming smile as he claps right along with the rest, like even he doesn't realize how glaringly wrong this is, and he knows Merlin better than anyone else in this room right now, even if that's not very well at all—maybe Gaius thinks the promise of glory is enough to tempt him, gods know the men in mail bring home so much of it, but at what cost? The severed heads of sorcerers? The bleeding hearts of witches? The skin of druid children?

Stop being dramatic, Merlin scolds himself, even as a shudder trails up his spine like a trickle of icy water. Stop being dramatic, you've no idea if King Uther is even like that.

But all the stories—

No. Merlin has to—to quit. He can do that. Right? He can quit. The king might get offended, might think he's turning his nose up at what even Merlin can recognize as a truly enormous honor, but an offended king who doesn't like him at all is a thousand times better than the idea of strutting around in armor and killing people who are just like him for no other reason than because they're just like him and—

Prince Arthur wheels around to look at him, nostrils flaring wide in silent fury. "You," he says haughtily, with a disdainful jerk of the chin, "won't last a day out there."

Merlin agrees with him harder than he's ever agreed with anyone in his entire life—he can barely hold a sword the right way up—but he would rather cut out his own tongue and choke on the blood before he'd admit it. "No need to feel threatened, Sire," he says instead, which is, objectively speaking, a very bad idea, because now Prince Arthur looks even more like he wants to kill him than he did two seconds ago, and Merlin really should just get King Uther's attention and quit now, while he still can, but—

Well. Merlin presses his lips together, and stands up a little straighter. Maybe he doesn't have to hunt sorcerers. Maybe, with this newfound position of power, he can use it to protect them. He'll have to be careful if he doesn't want to get caught, but that's nothing to worry about, he's good at sneaking, he is, he's done enough of it with Will over the years to know that much, and besides—

You won't last a day out there.

—he's got a prat of a prince to prove wrong.

Notes: oof listen I know it was against the law back in these times for a guy of Merlin's birth to be a knight. I literally could not give less of a fuck. I'm having fun, fellas. I'm living my best life. And you will not take it away from me.

So I've been picking this idea up and putting it right back down for a long while now - King Uther letting common men be knights is so wildly out-of-character, I was pretty convinced no reader would be able to get past it, and I wasn't one hundred percent sure I could myself - but I kept coming back to this plot anyway, unrealistic and unrestrainedly historically inaccurate as it is. I know this portrayal of Merlin isn't a popular one in the fandom, and to be fair, I can understand why, but to me, Merlin just. Doesn't want to be a knight. At all. Ever. True, he wasn't over the moon about becoming Arthur's servant, either, but honestly, even if you can get past all the moral headaches being a knight of Camelot would bring up for a character like Merlin, he's the kind of guy who just wants to curl up by the fire with his magic book and a nice cup of tea. Merlin wanted a purpose for his magic, yes, but I think I'm correct in saying he would have preferred a much calmer, smaller purpose. Merlin doesn't seem very enthusiastic about adventures or questing, when you get down to the heart of it, and as such, I don't think he'd be very happy as a knight at all.

Anyways. OOF also I'll update Do You Feel Like a Young God soon!