Happy Birthday!!! 🎂🎂🎂 Can I have a Merlin prompt? 🎂🎂🎂
a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5
Merlin manages to avoid the arrival of Nimueh and her kidnapped apprentice and it’s not even suspicious at all because everyone is avoiding them, and Tristan, because of the huge fight they had about the actual legitimate kidnapping of an unwed, barely of age lady from a neighboring kingdom.
“Does it count as kidnapping if they go along willingly?” Elyan asks, standing above Merlin while he polishes his armor and being no help at all despite being the son of a blacksmith.
He shrugs. “How would I know?”
That gets him a snort of laughter and a slap on the back that only has him stumbling a little bit. If nothing else, his time as Arthur’s servant running around doing chores, and usually running after Arthur and Elyan and their newest terrible idea, has made it so he sort of has muscles now. Access to the castle’s kitchens certainly hasn’t hurt either.
He feels sort of guilty about it. Sure, he’s barely earning any wages himself since it’s mostly going to Ealdor’s debt, but they’re out there working hard to irrigate the land and fix up the village and he’s eating well and sleeping in the nicest room he probably ever will, and sure, he’s working, but he also spends a lot of time just hanging out with Arther and Elyan.
“She’s pretty alright actually, for a noble,” he continues. He hasn’t been going to nearly the lengths Merlin has to avoid her. “Especially for one that grew up in Camelot.”
“You grew up in Camelot,” Merlin says.
For a moment Elyan looks a strange cross between forlorn and wistful. “Yeah, but me and my dad and my sister are just commoners. It wasn’t so bad for us, after the queen died and the prince went missing, but the nobles got it the worst. The king had never been the most comprising of men, but he really became something else after all that. I assume that’s why the de Bois left.”
Merlin startles. “The de Bois are from Camelot? They said that this was their grandfather’s castle!”
Elyan blinks at him. “What? Of course they are! And this was his castle, it’s just that familial relations broke down,” sometimes Elyan says things that make it so clear he spends too much time with Arthur, “and so their father’s was in Camelot. Is in Camelot, and still abandoned because no lord is willing to take up there and risk the king’s ire.”
“Why would the king care if someone else lived there?” he asks.
“Well, he took his brothers-in-law fleeing his kingdom a little personally, Merlin,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Wait. Wait – “Their sister was the queen of Camelot!?”
Elyan stares at him for a long moment then reaches out to rap his knuckles on the side of Merlin’s head. “What kind of schooling does that village have over there? I’ll tell Arthur to add it to the list.”
Better schooling wouldn’t be a bad thing, but, “I know her name was Ygraine! Ygraine Pendragon. No one told me her maiden name was du Bois!”
“Well,” Elyan says, looking uncertain, “maybe they just didn’t want it spread around. It’s not like they left under the best of circumstances. But I’m from the city proper, and everyone knows about the queen’s family there.”
“Right,” he says faintly.
How do things just keep getting worse?
He’s serving the king of Camelot’s nephew!
