And those friends would be waiting on the other side of this night. What he needed to do was be the prince his father’s subjects had always wanted. He could do that. For one night at least.

So he followed his father to the banquet hall, and smiled broadly as the king commanded music and dance and wine in his honor, and forced himself to enjoy it.

For his people. For his kingdom. For the future.

At the end of the night, he tumbled drunkenly into bed still wearing his boots and his scabbard.

In his dream, Arthur was running.

Merlin was in trouble, and he wasn’t going to get there fast enough. But he was sure as hell going to try.

Arthur’s chest heaved and his lungs burned as he careened through the London streets, Excalibur sheathed at his side. Somehow, he knew exactly where he was going. And in an instant, he was there, in the churchyard of St. Paul’s, staring down at the block of stone that had once held a surprisingly ordinary sword.

Except now it held something else.

His wizard was trapped inside. Dying.

Arthur drew Excalibur, trying to force the glowing blade through the stone, but it was no use. Merlin continued to scream soundlessly, fists pounding against the stone, as though trapped beneath ice in a frozen lake.

Arthur watched, useless, no hero at all, as Merlin choked and went still. Not still. Dead. The wizard was dead.

The dream shifted, and suddenly, they were in a dark, dusty crypt that Arthur somehow knew was beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral. Merlin’s body lay atop a stone tomb. Arthur knelt before it, overcome by loss. He had failed, where the Lady of the Lake had told him he must succeed. He hadn’t been at the wizard’s side. He was here now, but it was too late.

He placed Excalibur in Merlin’s hands. The sword sat there, a dull, lifeless blade. It hadn’t worked.

Arthur reached over to take back the sword. Before he could, it began to glow . . .

Arthur woke suddenly, feeling as though he had just fallen from a great distance. He gasped in the darkness, unsure where he was, or if the events in his dream had really happened. And then he took in the familiar curtains drawn around his bed and breathed a sigh of relief.

He was in his room, and he’d fallen asleep on top of the covers, fully dressed. His empty scabbard was white-hot against his thigh, as if in warning.

It had been a dream. A nothing. A fiction.

And yet it had felt like so much more.

Emry eagerly climbed the stairs to the wizard’s workshop the next morning, thrilled to be back. She set down the mug of coffee that she’d begged from the kitchens, swallowed a mouthful of brioche, and looked expectantly to Master Ambrosius.