Veins of Albion | The Pendragon Cycle 🗡️
Ao3 📚 Author: starwarsporg99
“Not all visions are born from darkness, Eira.”
“Visions,” she echoed, the word rolling slowly from her tongue as she leaned back into the singing hay behind her. “And so you believe I have seen some vision rather than merely dreamed?” Her brows drew together. “That some dark spirit sought me, yet this Light of yours intervened before it could reach me?”
A quiet snort escaped her. Yes, she had witnessed his strange powers with her own eyes, yet even now the thought of it all felt maddening.
“And this Great Light…” Her gaze reached him again, searching. “Was it your God who saved my poor soul?”
A bitterness touched her voice then.
“I do not even believe in your Great Light.” Her throat worked slightly around the next words. “Why would He wish to save someone like me, Merlin?”
Merlin held her gaze steadily, and for the first time since she had awakened, something in his composure softened with unmistakable sorrow.
“The Great Light does not measure worth as kings do,” he said reverently.
The stable fell still around them save for the distant murmur of wind moving through the frozen fields.
“He does not seek only the righteous…or the unbroken.” His eyes lowered, thoughtful now, as though the words reached further than her alone. “If that were so, then I myself would have been abandoned long ago.”
For a moment, only silence remained between them. Then his eyes lifted back to hers.
“You ask why He would save you.” His voice gentled further. “Perhaps because your life holds greater meaning than you yet understand.”
His answer settled carefully between them—not prophecy, not command, but something nearer to grace. A truth offered rather than forced.
An incredulous laugh escaped Eira. She shook her head like he had spoken the most absurd jest she had ever heard.
“Greater meaning?” she muttered sharply. “You speak in veils and half-truths…that all shall one day be unveiled.” Bitterness crept into her voice as she leaned closer to him. “I am Eira of Avaloth. Daughter of Gladen. A woman who remembers almost nothing of her own life, yet somehow you speak as though I were meant for some greater purpose.”
Her voice tightened suddenly.
“And if your Great Light spared me now from this dark spirit, then where was He when Sebastian had me?” The words broke harsher now, years of buried anguish rising with them. “Where was He while I lived a life I do not even know to be true? Why would He allow that man to lay his hands upon—”
The words faltered violently. She rose too quickly, fury and memory surging together faster than she could contain them. Sebastian’s hands gripping her wrists. His mouth forced against hers. His voice…
You will keep your mouth shut. Learn your place and ask no more questions. I am your savior.
Her breath hitched sharply. She staggered. Merlin rose at once, instinct drawing him toward her before restraint forced him to stop short. He could feel that anguish moving through her like a storm barely held together after years of silence.
And with it came that strange ache within himself again—not pity, never pity, but something deeper. Sorrow, perhaps. Or anger.
To see a spirit such as hers bent beneath the cruelty of a petty king stirred an old fury within him, one he had carried since the first tyrants crowned themselves rulers over men they scarcely deserved to lead. Sebastian had sought to cage what should never have been possessed. To break something meant for life into an ornament for his own power. The thought sickened him.
Eira faltered again. This time Merlin caught her before she could fall. He steadied her carefully, one hand braced at her arm while the other hand remained hovering near her waist, restrained even now despite how easily she could have collapsed against him.
His voice came low and firm—not commanding, but grounding. She turned her face away sharply, ashamed now of the trembling she could no longer conceal. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Merlin exhaled slowly.
“I will not insult you with false comforts,” he said at last. “Nor will I claim to understand why suffering is permitted in this world. I have walked this earth too long to speak such foolishness.”
The stable fell quiet save for the wind whispering through the cracks in the old wood.
His grip tightened only slightly—not possessive, only certain.
“What was done to you was evil.”
There was a startling simplicity in the way he said it. No hesitation. No excuse. No justification dressed as wisdom.
Merlin’s eyes held hers steadily.
“And no king, no matter how crowned or feared, possesses the authority to profane another soul and call it love.”
Something dangerous stirred beneath the calm of his voice then, ancient and restrained.
“Sebastian calls himself your savior because tyrants cannot endure the truth of what they are.”
Quiet stretched briefly between them. Then, more solemnly:
