Chapter Ten

.

.

.

It was Arthur who woke up first. When he disentangled himself from her arms, she emitted a whiny moan, but he gently shushed her, not wanting to wake her, caressing her cheeks. She turned to her side, pouting, but nodded furiously in understanding when he said he had to go in half-sleep, barely aware of her surroundings. Arthur smiled to himself fondly. He watched as her features softened into an expression of angelic serenity. He breathed a soft, gentle kiss on her forehead, careful not to disturb her peace. It only ever lasted so long.

With one last affectionate look at her sleeping form, he exited her chambers.

Morgana slept long that day. His arms had proven a better antidote than any magical concoction to her sleepless nights.

.

.

.

Agravaine and Arthur ate breakfast together. The sun shone through the windows, penetrating the commodious Hall, dancing on its white halls, making of it a heaven with traces of white and red in between.

Agravine was struggling to come up with an appropriate reaction to Arthur's surprisingly jovial mood. Much of it was due to his influence, admittedly, but he hadn't seen the young King so blissfully happy so far during their stay. Perhaps not ever.

"I see you're in a good mood today, Sire," he said finally, treading carefully. He even managed a smile, as though he were happy for Arthur.

"Yes, Agravaine, I am," the King replied. "You don't have to worry about my wife anymore. There is no problem. You can rest assure of the purity of her intentions. I made sure of them myself."

Agravine opened his mouth to reply several times, but managed nothing in the end, looking like a flailing fish washed ashore.

Arthur made sure to observe his reaction. He could easily tell Agravaine wasn't as happy as he pretended. Could his uncle truly have ulterior motives in counseling him? He couldn't imagine that his deceased mother's brother would want to besmirch the memory of his late sister by manipulating her son, his nephew, not only a part of his family but the only thing, so to say, that remained of Ygraine? He was the only legacy that she had left behind: not titles nor riches, just a son, and all that she had taught him about love and life.

Arthur remembered playing with Agravaine as a child, back before Ygraine's death, when his uncle had visited more often. He remembered playing with his cousins, all of whom were, in his opinion (and if his memory served him well), varying degrees of bizarre. But if he were to give credit to Agravaine's story, his children, with the exception of one, have all grown up to be modal citizens and worthy heirs to both the De Bois name and fortune.

Uther had often said that Agravaine was jealous of him, to have a son so strong, so intelligent, so battle-savvy. Complaining about Agravaine, he recalled, were almost the only times his father had ever praised him. On most other occasions, it was nothing but criticism and chastisement for mistakes, real or perceived.

Ygraine had been the good force to his bad, the positive to his negative, the yin to his yang, in their son's upbringing; while Ygraine was of the opinion that Uther was too harsh with him, Uther thought she was too lenient and turning him into a spoiled slob. They could never agree on how to best raise him and prepare him for kingship. Uther had only wanted to raise a great king; Ygraine, a great man in his own right.

Arthur internalized Ygraine's teachings about the importance of fairness and goodness, the original meanings of nobility, as she had called them, notions that had since been bastardized by unworthy men and women. On the other hand, Uther's teachings had an equally strong effect on him, though the two were quite contradictory and hard to balance; according to Uther, a man, especially one whose destiny it was to be King, had to be cold, stoic, and logical. (Even though Uther himself sometimes struggled with living up to this ideal of royalty, he deemed it best to pass it on to his son.)

As a result, Arthur became a confused mess of a child (and then later on an adult), forever balancing between love and kindness and indifference and pure self-interest, taking after his mother but desperately wanting to please his father as well, never finding the aurea mediocritas that the Medieval philosopher Horatius had so often talked about in his works.

Then add Morgana to the equation, and all hell broke loose, especially with Ygraine dead and without the love that had always been the ointment to the wounds inflicted on him by his father.

In his age, he was beginning to think that while Ygraine's teachings had been noble, they were also perhaps outdated and idealistic and unrealizable in a world ruled by greed and lust for power. In a perfect world, as Morgana had said, nobility would be sufficient to be a great king. However, in the world they lived in, things were not quite so easy and simple. They had both been, for the longest time, victims of Ygraine's unwillingness to see the world as it was and not as she was. But he didn't want to besmirch his mother's memory by thinking so lowly of her teachings to him, her last remaining legacy, that, sadly, would not live on in him from this point on. He wanted to remember her as she was, noble in the best sense of the word, pure of heart and strong of mind, braver than the lion on the De Bois crest.

But with each and every day as King, his faith in the inherent goodness of mankind (which Ygraine had often used religious scripts to prove) faded more and more. He wasn't even sure, he thought, casting a sideways glance at Agravaine, if he could trust his own blood anymore. He wasn't sure he trusted Morgana either, all he knew – after last night – that she loved him in return.

"You really love her, don't you, Sire?" Agravaine suddenly asked, with a paternalistic smile on his tanned face.

With his mouth full of bacon, grinning, Arthur nodded. "Yes, I do," he said, looking at him, daring him to question the veracity of her emotions, which he had up to this point often had.

"I'm so glad then," Agravaine said. His dark eyes hid everything he might have felt, much like the night.

"Mhm," Arthur replied noncommittally, far from convinced. He took a gulp of water out of his goblet.

"Pray tell, Sire," Agravaine said. "How did she manage to convince you of her love for you?"

Arthur snorted. "You don't need to know the details of my marriage," he said. "Don't you trust me to make my own choices?"

"I do," Agravaine said immediately, seeming appalled by the mere suggestion of the contrary. "I just… She is so much like her father. And you know what Galois was like."

"She's not her father," Arthur snapped. "Just like I am not mine."

"Thankfully," Agravaine said, then turned the color of beet root when Arthur gave him a dark look. "I-I am here merely to represent Ygraine's ideas, and to have someone whom you can trust at court." He stammered in response.

"I'd trust you more if you weren't so content on ruining my marriage," he said sharply.

"I'm not – I'm just looking out –"

"Well, you don't need to," Arthur said. "I can do a good job of that myself."

Agravaine nodded. "I'm sorry, Sire."

"Apology accepted," Arthur said, but his voice told a different story. "Arrange a meeting with the military for tomorrow."

"What? But Sire, we talked about –"

"I changed my mind," Arthur said. "Or did you not hear your King?"

"I – I'll see it to it instantly – that the military is informed of your changed plans –"

"Tell them nothing," Arthur said. "Of the sort. I merely want to re-negotiate the terms of border protection. I didn't change my mind yet, and will only if we manage to come up with a mutually beneficially compromise." He abruptly set his silvery aside and wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up. "Council is always welcome, Uncle. But it is I who makes the final decision. Have the Seneschal inform the military via post immediately."

Agravaine nodded. "Yes, Sire. Immediately, Sire. As you wish, Sire." He jabbered in one breath. He was dancing to a completely different tune than just a few days ago. Now, that's what I like hearing, Arthur thought.

He then had the servants clear the tables and dismissed them. In solitude, he was able to think freely and clearly. He thought about the influence he had allowed Agravaine to exert over him – though in retrospect his manipulations were clear, back at the time, he didn't recognize them as such. Perhaps 'manipulations' was not the right word, either: whether or not Agravaine had truly only wanted the best for him by advising to be wary of her, remembering the adolescent Morgana who was fortunately barely reminiscent of the woman he had married today, a young girl full of darkness, anger, hatred and pain; who was cold, calculated and stoic, the son Uther had longed for, the kind of child who would have done anything for the throne; or whether his uncle had been merely trying to exert his own will onto who he saw as a malleable man of barely twenty to achieve his own ends, Arthur remained unsure. However, one option, with his mind clear and devoid of emotion, seemed much more likely than the other. Things weren't looking up for Agravaine anymore.

But he knew that the only reason he had allowed Agravaine to have such a strong effect on him because of his own feelings of inadequacy and insecurities. There were a lot of things and people he could have blamed for his demons – and not without reason – but most of those people were already gone or had since faded into oblivion and insignificance. One cannot rectify the errors of the past, especially if the faults do not belong to one's self. All he knew was that if he wanted to create a better future for himself, he had to overcome his demons for his own sake, and alone.

He would never once let himself be led astray by seemingly wise words of his seniors. He would instead rely on his own heart and mind and eyes and ears. And Morgana had convinced him of her devotion to him.

He had seen it in Morgana's eyes, the same inexplicable hunger that had devoured him since his adolescence, a passion that had always been as frustratingly inexplicable as it was frighteningly intense. Since their youth many a year had passed, and though they were still far from perfectly chiseled diamonds that fit together just right, they were no longer the volatile mixture either, just threatening to explode if exposed to the wrong circumstances – instead, they were a casually, slowly simmering potion in the cauldron, stirred by two people who had over the years practiced on other how or how not to love, ready to lavish all they had learned on each other, concocting the perfect recipe for love.

But Morgana's actions exceeded that limit. She had, through action, proven her loyalty to him over and over again. He was painfully aware of the unquenchable desire for recognition and glory that Morgana burned with, for the very same flames had been burning him since he first became aware of his role in life. However, Morgana had sacrificed all her ambitions and seemed perfectly content playing second fiddle to his reign, even if she was accountable for much of its success. She was the perfect Queen Consort on the outside – she had become, for his sake as much as for hers, the epitome of the type of woman she hated. That must have been an immense sacrifice for a girl as ambitious as her.

However, the things that made her such an asset to his reign were the very things that stirred doubt in his heart toward her. She was willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the mere hope of reclaiming her own throne: would she be willing to sacrifice him as well?

At least one thing had become abundantly clear: he was unfit to be King.

That is, unless he changed.

And he could have been mad at Morgana and Uther and Agravaine for treating him as a puppet on a string, but truly, what else had he been? They were right: he hadn't been ready for the throne when he got it.

But it was long time he re-invented himself, to re-shape himself into someone worthy of the Pendragon name, who wouldn't, through his rule, nullify and besmirch everything his parents had stood for.

It was time, he thought, to truly become King.

A/N: Hey! Thanks for all the people who review, and if you hadn't done yet, please do so! Completely open to any type of feedback, really, as long as it's civil.

I am sorry if there were too many passages on the innermost thoughts of Arthur. I just felt it was important to give a little insight into his thoughts other than what Morgana and the other characters perceived, because he's the King after all. I'm trying to go into the more er, royal obligations and obstacles that come with being King, not just the romance, though that will obviously play a huge role in the story as well. Which are you more interested in?

What do you think of Agravaine? Do you think he's well-meaning but misguided, or do you think he's playing Arthur?

And I'm so curious - what do you think my version of Mergana / Armor (clearly not much like the show, eh) and which do you prefer?

Thank you so much in advance for your feedback.

P.S.: I'm using the last few days before exam period to shower you with updates! Yay!