Thaumaturgy

Chapter 19

An audible shocked ripple spread aroud the room. Merlin stared, his wide eye stare turning slowy from Alfred, still beming with delight, so Arthur, a stunned shock spread across his face, drained of life-giving blood and left so pale in shoick

"N-no." Stammered Athur, shock coursed through him- his veins icy riverlets chilling his body to the core. He took a gulping breath of air.

"Prove it" came Lanalots voice, strong and clear in Arthurs ear, cutting through his stunned confusion like a knife cutting through a dear hide. Alfred gestred to his daughter, and the princess Rachel pulled up her sleave as she was had been asked. The stark letters were inminstakeable on her skin: Arther Pendragon.

"That cant be right!" Arthur yelled, descreasing his tone when he saw Alfred raise a stirn eyebrow as a challenge.

"I am" Rachel said sofly and let her sleeve cover up her arm again. sha stared at the floor and wouldn't meet anyones eyes. Merlin felt pitty for her, but it was overwhelmed by the tinkering shatter of his own heart.

"My lord I am already soulbonded to Merlin" Arthur was explaining rationally. Alfred frowned at the raven hair man whom glared at him angrilty in return, his fists clenched by him side and he wished he could evaporate the man into dust.

"That brigend?" he asked.

"He's not a briganed. He's a very powerful warlock" Arthur siad as calmly as he could. He could feel Merlin opressing the urge to protest beside him.

"He dresses like a theif" the king of Northumbria quipped.

"I'm his soulmate, look!" Merlin excalimed: he rolled up his sleave and shoving his bear arm towards Alfred.

"Look!" he insisted, head high in rebelion. Arthur interwove their fingers and pulled his boyfriend away from where he was getting up in the monarch's face with his anger. He shot him a brief look of warning, pilling him back to his side.

"I cannot be your daughter's solemate. I am Merlin's" Arthur explained. Alfred gesticulared a hand dismissively, he didn't care.

"You have more than one soulmate." He said, offhand, Merlin's shouts concerning him about as much as a raveshing storm concerns an eternal granite mountain. Rachel stared down at her feet from her throne, hands playing with one another as her father made his proclimations.

"It's not possible! there must be someone else" Arthur protested.

"It's not unheared of. And it makes more sense that my daughter: a daughter of a King, a princess, would be the soulmate of a prince. You could unite the Kingdoms. What can this bandi- I mean, sourcer do?" Alfred spoke with a grand imperiousity that gripped the room. Arthur felt his heart sink through his stomach, while Merlin's was twisted into knots of painful dread.

"She should be my soulmate! I may not be written on her arm but I feel in in my heart!" Gwain stepped forward and kneeled before Rachel holding out his hand, which she took, looking worried but she was too polite to reject him. He kissed her hand and grinning, said:

"Deerheart, I yearn for your turftéd hair

To run your locks through my fingers

Like water in a stream

My love flows uphill towards you."

"GET him out of here!" Alfred screamed at his guards, and two of them came and dragged a dopey grinnig Gwaine away, waving at Rachel as hewent, blowing her a single kiss, and attemping to bow as the the guards held him about his wriggling torso.

"Anyways" Alfred turned back to Arthur and merlin and their crestflalen faces and smimiled beautifically at them "If you spend the morning together, I can arrange for us to discuss why you have cat yourselves upon our mercy." Arthur was torn: to refuse was to be cast out, he could tell, if he wanted Alfred's help he had to play along. The thought of hurting Merlin was incorrigable tho. He looked a this lover with confusion writ large across his face and he saw the second that Merlin realise what it mean. His anmgry jaw was set firmly in a straight line, he nodded at Arthur once.