There were things that young women across Albion were told to be wary of: The selkie men from the sea who shed their seal flesh under moonlight, their bodies white and smooth, their lazy voices curling around young girl's hearts and dragging them under; the satyr creatures who stood within the mushroom circles in the woods, their bodies not quite human or animal and their lust fierce and uncompromising. They could take a maiden's honour and leave her sullied and outcast. Their otherworldly wives were tricky, jealous, and had no compunction against taking infants from their beds and leaving changelings in their wake.

All girls knew this. A sensible girl knew better than to walk alone in the dark hours. A sensible girl knew to keep herself modest, and wreath folk charms around her neck, and to pray to the gods that no being of the Old Magic would take a fancy to her or her babes or anything she held dear. Hunith was a sensible girl.

It didn't help her.

It was not as if anyone had thought to tell her that a creature of the otherworld could look like any mortal man if it wanted to. She had not thought to be careful when the stranger had come to the village, the stranger with his fine hands and his fine smiles and eyes that glimmered strangely under candle light. She had barely become an adult, and she was innocent and she was foolish – and the stranger had been so gallant, with such a clever way with words and hands that did not quite force but were most definitely… insistent. It was easy enough to give in. Easy enough to let herself be pressed down against the fragrant grass that prickled at her neck, to part her inexpert lips and legs and let him take her with his body and those fine words.

When he left her he pressed his palm to her stomach, once, and whispered gently against her ear: "This is a gift from the Old Religion, woman. We will be wanting it back."

When her son was born she loved him fiercely, more than air, more than her own life. She was a diligent protector. Night after night she prayed for him. She hid his strangeness from others and tried not to dream of waking to the sight of his empty bed, of his father's gold gleaming eyes staring at her in the darkness. Every day he grew to more like his father. Every day she wondered, and dreaded to wonder, what her son's true face was, beneath the façade.

In the end she could not keep fearing the inevitable. She sent him away first, to the one place the Old Religion could not touch him. On the day he left she pressed a kiss to his brow and smoothed down his hair, doing her best to tamp back tears.

"You'll be safe in Camelot," she told him. "Try not to get in trouble."

He laughed. "I'll do my best." A pause. "But don't expect miracles from me, okay?"

And yet miracles were everywhere around her son. His whole existence was a miracle; his magic, his gentleness, the bleak ferocity that seemed to overtake him when she turned away. There were many things to be wary of in Albion. But Hunith feared, in her heart of hearts, that her son would always have to be most wary of himself.

She touched her fingers to his cheek and thought, This is my son, and he is human, and his life is his own. No one else's. If his mistakes could be his own, if his triumphs and his failures could be wholly his own and not held in the hands of forces outside of his control then she would be content. She wanted no Old Magic for her boy, no one to make him a puppet upon a string. Just his freedom. Just that.

Too much.

"Ah, Merlin," she sighed. "I can only hope."