Hiding

Chapter 1

Arthur heard footsteps approaching his door and hurriedly stuffed the book he was reading under his mattress. He emerged just in time to see his manservant, Merlin, enter the room—without knocking, as usual. He breathed a small sigh of relief when he saw that Merlin was too preoccupied with his dinner to notice what he'd been doing. Quickly, Arthur returned to a relaxed position on the bed and glared at Merlin as if he'd done something wrong. As far as Arthur knew, he hadn't, but that didn't mean he couldn't have done something wrong, anyway.

"Your dinner, sire." Merlin announced as he set the tray on the table.

"Merlin?"

"Yes, sire?" Merlin turned around, trying to figure out what he'd done wrong this time. He had finished all his chores, he wasn't late bringing the prince his dinner, and as far as he could remember, he hadn't mouthed off to anyone important today.

"What have we said about knocking?"

Ah. That. "That I should learn how to do it?"

"Quite right, Merlin. Now, it would be lovely if you could get that through your thick skull."

"Yes, sire."

Arthur studied Merlin tidying up the room while he ate his dinner. He wasn't sure what it was about Merlin today, but he seemed to be hiding something. Not that Arthur wasn't guilty of that, of course. He'd had to learn to hide the most intimate parts of himself at a young age, or face the wrath of his father. Chief among these secrets was the one that Arthur buried the deepest inside him, the one that couldn't come out while his father was still alive if he expected to live—the fact that he had magic. He hadn't been born with it exactly, but he never learned it, either. By the time his magic had manifested in his early teenage years, his father was too far gone in his rage to have any hope of softening him up by showing the king that his own son had magic.

Arthur had been 12 the first time something... odd happened. He'd been at his window, watching the execution of a sorcerer for a crime that was irrelevant to that of sorcery. When the axe came down on the man's neck, he felt an odd sensation flow through his body and a mirror shattered behind him. Arthur simply dismissed it as a random event, perhaps the fault of the sorcerer in the courtyard.

The second time something happened, Arthur had been 13 and hunting in the forest. The knights had spread out, leaving the young prince to carry out his own hunting, despite the fact that he was not yet a knight. He'd walked around with his crossbow, hoping to catch something that would make his father proud when he tripped over what might have been a very deadly cliff, had he not stopped mid-air and floated into a place where he would be able to climb back onto solid ground again. He was reminded of the feeling he'd had when the mirror shattered almost a year previously. Arthur looked around anxiously, in case a passing knight had seen what happened, but no one was there. He didn't have much time to dwell on it, however, as he saw a deer in the distance and went to see if he could take it down.

After a couple more times of that odd feeling—a feeling he could only describe as power running through his veins—accompanied with an inexplicable event, Arthur decided he needed to see Gaius. If Gaius couldn't explain what was happening, then no one could. So he made his way to the physician's chambers and knocked politely on the door.

"One moment!" Gaius called as he went to open the door. "Oh! Your highness, what can I do for you? Do you need a sleeping draft?"

"No, Gaius, I was hoping I could talk to you about something," Arthur peered into the room behind Gaius to see if there was anyone in there.

"Of course, my boy," Gaius ushered Arthur into the room and gestured for him to sit as he took a seat across from Arthur. "What did you need to talk about?"