Author's notes: This story is finished so this is not a chapter on its own. It's a preview (and I've never written one of those before) of the story I'm working on, the sequel to Trust. The first chapter will be published shortly, keep two eyes up! (Warning: Tardiness is to be expected. The plot is trying to strangle me.)

It's amazing that he's kept alive for this long.

It's almost funny, really, in some bitter kind of way. Destiny has kept tossing him around. Maybe he's still reeling in its grip. Alone, alone, cannot choose which direction to go. A hundred pathways – coming back to a single crossroad.

The pleading command, "Go, boy," is gentle like he understands, and a shadow flees from the fires, with angry voices burning on his back.

"I cannot trust her anymore…I don't know if I can trust anybody anymore." She's is a sorceress, a dangerous beautiful thing and he's sure of only one thing: Trust is hard to place in anybody's hands and he can't place it in hers. It hurts: they're like sister and brother, sister, family… "Father, what do you mean? Father?" It's fate making a revision in its notes. Cold shivers creeping down his back, spine, cold, cold destiny. "… they all tell lies."

Ice in her hands and a knife in his – Did time stop or was it just an illusion? – It's feels like a dream, frighteningly vivid and Arthur scrambles to wake up. Everything is wrong, people shout and the prince stands there blank like a stone statue -"Arthur! Do something damn it! What's wrong with you, supercilious clotpole?" Where is his reaction? Where is it? Where is it?... He wishes he has some kind of mirror to look through, to get a glimpse, just to be sure that Arthur's safe. Anything. A vision. A dream.

-Someone has to die. The king must die, the prince must die, the sorceress and her puppet must die or-

A prince, his knights, a warlock. Who would you choose? Voices carried down a hill: all of them pawns in their own games.

"…Who are you, Merlin? Who are you?" Clear as water, her screams, pained in the nights – Everything's so wrong so wrong so wrong and nobody understands, as the world rages, crumbles madly and glass breaks at his feet but do not flinch.

Lies, all of them, lies.

He really is foolish, going back - his heart singing Arthur Arthur Arthur—but he knows, the lady knows and the knight knows: "You'll be a great king and you know it. One day, you will be ready."

-or Emrys must die (always protecting the stupid prat and Arthur will cry, heartfelt tears he's never known to have, the '"Don't dare die on me you idiot!" but Merlin does anyway'-kind of tears) and maybe, maybe there'll be a happy ending.

Long live the king

[MERLIN will return]