Cursed: The New Order of Merlin Book 2

15. Merlin's room

Once on the seventh floor, Merlin waved his hand, and the door to his training room appeared. He'd created it a thousand years ago when he was a student at Hogwarts. His project to translate the Hogwarts wand spells into Old Religion spells required a good practice ground, so he created a room that could morph to the setting he needed.

Over the centuries, Hogwarts students had discovered the room and had given it many names; Room of Requirement, Come and Go Room, Shapeshifting Room were just a few. It bothered him that the Founders were credited with the creation of this room. They couldn't even create stairs that moved up and down.

The room recognized him and took the last shape he had called onto it. Merlin paused for a moment, nostalgia squeezing his heart. It was Gaius' study, complete with the workbenches cluttered with potion ingredients, a library overhead, accessible by stairs, and Gaius' bed behind a screen. The only missing element was Gaius himself—his uncle and the first teacher of sorcery and healing arts. Merlin's little chamber was on the side. He ran up the three steps and pushed open the wooden door. His plank bed—unmade, of course—wardrobe, and a little table still exactly as he had remembered.

Merlin swallowed the nostalgia and sat on his bed, the cushion so thin, he felt the squeaky hard boards beneath. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the memory he wanted to visit.

It happened approximately fourteen hundred years ago and yet it stood more vividly in his mind than today's breakfast. The day when he last spoke with Kilgharrah was etched in his mind as if in stone although he had avoided this memory at all cost. It was time he faced it.

It had been about a century after the passing of King Arthur when Aithusa found Merlin to deliver the news—Kilgharrah was close to his death.

Merlin held onto Aithusa's neck as she glided between clouds as white as her scales, a big block of ice situated somewhere in his stomach. Knowing that death was part of life did not make the loss any easier to accept.

She dived, and he held onto her sleek body, her neck spikes grazing his skin, wind roaring in his ears, flattening his tunic to his torso. He wasn't sure when she landed, but he was still gripping her tightly when she called his attention.

"My lord? We're safely on the ground now."

He awkwardly let go, trying to regain the feeling in his limbs. Being a Dragonlord did not make riding dragons any easier.

"I've told you before - call me Merlin. I am not a lord."

"You are to me, my lord." She closed her pale blue eyes and gently inclined her head.

He shook out his numb limbs and straightened up his neckerchief. He had to get her to drop the title. He was a peasant, a servant, a disposable villager. Just because he'd stopped aging and can command dragons did not change his station, but this argument would have to wait until some other day.

Looking at this magnificent, fierce white dragon now, no one would guess that she was once crippled. Aithusa wasn't raised by her kin, who had perished at the hands of men. Merlin found her egg—the last Great Dragon egg that he knew of, and with Kilgharrah's help, he helped her hatch. He named her Aithusa, which translated to Light of the Sun. Kilgharrah, ecstatic that he was no longer the last dragon on Earth, helped take care of her, but before he could even teach her how to speak, like a rambunctious youth, she had flown away, wanting to hunt on her own, and was captured by humans. When Merlin found her years later, she was weak and reclusive, but he never gave up on her. She had grown so much since hatching, she was as large as Kilgharrah now, and she was about to truly become the last Great Dragon on Earth.