Wizard's Wish - (Kinda) Yandere SGE x reader

Chapter 138: The Fox and the Snake

(Second and last chapter in first person perspective. But this one will also change pov after a while from Merlin to Y/n. But I promise I'll make it clear when!)

____

Nearly ten years before, Tedros and I had a lesson in Ender's Forest.
I hadn't intended it to be a lesson.
It was supposed to be a goodbye.
Arthur had killed Kay and I'd resolved to leave Camelot altogether, but not without seeing the young prince one last time.

As I'd waited beneath a purple oak, my eyes clouded with tears behind my spectacles and my hand grasped anxiously at my beardless chin. How could I leave the boy? Just when we were getting started? I'd intended to stay with his father and then with the son until a day far into the future when the work was done. But things had changed. Arthur had become secretive and volatile; instead of his mentor, I'd become a nuisance to rebel against. Somewhere inside him, he'd either lost faith in me or more likely, himself. The only cure was to leave and make him face his fate on his own. As for Tedros, I'd keep an eye on him from afar, like a hawk on high, until a day came where he needed me most. I couldn't tell him this, of course, or he'd spend his life searching and waiting for my return, instead of learning to stand on his own two feet. No, the farewell had to be a clean blow, no matter how many tears were shed between us—

"Merlin!" a voice chirruped.
I'd turned to see him scooting between lavender bushes, his gold curls strewn with leaves, his princely vest torn. He was so small then, perpetually flushed and in motion, like a rambunctious fox.
"Merlin, it only took me five tries to get in! I did everything you taught me! I closed my eyes and thought about finding the portal and then I focused on relaxing my brain and let my feet take me and then I opened my eyes and there it was! But then I tried to jump in too fast, so I took deep breaths and that didn't work but then I calmed down and— poof!— the forest opened and that's the first time I did it on my own without you feeling sorry for me and letting me in. Only five times! Aren't you proud of me? Merlin?" He suddenly screwed his eyes on me and cocked head. "You look very very strange without a beard. Can you put it back?"
In that moment, any plan to tell him this was our last lesson evaporated.

He'd just turned nine and having been nine years old myself a week ago, I know firsthand how sensitive on is at that age, how live-wired with energy and ambition, especially Tedros, who used to stand so upright, almost on his tiptoes, as if he couldn't wait to grow taller. He'd lost his mother only weeks before and now I'd lost the strength to admit that I, too, was about to desert him. Instead, I vowed to make our last lesson one he would remember.
"Tell me, future king," I'd said, picking leaves out of his hair. "What would you like me to teach you more than anything else in the world? This is your chance. No limits. Anything you desire."
"How to die and come back to life," the prince said instantly, as if he'd already given it a good thought.
I kneeled in front of him. "Well, that's impossible, unless you're a wizard with a wizard's wish, and even the wish needs to be made before you die—"
"No it isn't," Tedros contended. "The Green Knight who came got his head cut off by Dad and then he put his head right back on his neck. Everyone at the castle is saying it. He did it right there, in front of Dad! Slash! Plunk! Peekaboo!" I want to be able to do that! I want to be strong and never die! I want to be a Green Knight!"
"The Green Knight is dead," I pointed out.
"Fine, then give me your wizard wish and I can make the wish now before I die, because you just said it'll let me die and come back to life."
"I don't have it."
Tedros balled up his fists, his cheeks hot. "You asked what I wanted you to teach me, no rules, and now you're going back on it." He looked like he was about to cry.

Then and in the years to come, Tedros clung to a profound sense of justice. I looked into his quivering blue eyes and saw there'd be no reasoning with him. Of course, there wasn't any way to teach him to die and come back to life— Kay's immortality had been a unique curse— but perhaps if I could give the boy the feeling of death, so he'd no longer see it as an enemy, he might let go of his wish altogether."Come, I said, striding into my forest, the lilac spruces, purple pines, and plum-colored dragon trees bowing their limbs to me, sensing my tendency to reimagine the foliage of Ender's Forest at any moment and hoping to stay in my good graces. I could hear Tedros bopping along behind, singing coded songs about his mother and Lancelot. ("When I'm a headless knight, I'll go hunting other knights! Knight I don't like!"), eagerly scrambling over rocks and logs I conjured into his path. (Merlin, make them harder!"), and spooking every bird and squirrel he could: "Peekaboo! Peekaboo!"