When Merlin, Lancelot, and Arthur arrived back in Camelot, they were welcomed with tears, thanks, and embraces. Morgana had run through the palace and thrown herself into Lancelot's arms, and there was a great deal of kissing and hugging and sobbing. Lancelot held his wife at arm's length and looked at her as if he could never look at her long enough.

"Oh, don't I look the same still?" she asked him. "What has changed that you must look at me like that?"

"You're alive," he said. "That's better than I've been seeing you in my mind since I was kidnapped."

Freya and Merlin spent fifteen whole minutes locked in each other's arms before Ania and Balinor asked crossly whether it was their turn yet. At that, their parents laughed and took them up. Gwen's greeting to Arthur was rather less emotional, however. She hugged him for a short while and then said,

"Your favorite meal's on the table."

At this Arthur sped off after her, and everybody laughed. Then Merlin remembered what he had realized in the forest. He squatted before Ania.

"Did you change truth, sweetheart?"

"Yes, Daddy," said Ania. "I did it for your sake. Don't be cross at me."

"I'm not, my dear," he said. "But now we must keep you so safe that nothing can touch you at all."

"She has found out who she was before, Merlin," said Freya quietly.

"Who was she?"

"I was Anharra," said Ania, looking at her father. "You know who that is."

"And we know that a woman called Nimueh is trying to kill Morgana," said Freya.

Merlin stood bolt upright.

"Nimueh?"

"She watched Uther's men kill me and didn't turn a hair," said Ania.

"But she's dead..."

"No, she isn't," and Freya fished out the drawing of Nimueh. "Are we talking about the same Nimueh?"

"Oh, yes, we are, that's her to the life. I exchanged her life for Gaius's eight years ago."

"Then how is she alive?"

"She must have traded someone else's life to bring back hers-brought a living soul into the dead to return hers to the living."

"She's trying to kill Morgana, Merlin. It was her. And I think she's poisoning Gaius's remedies or inhabiting his mind-possessing him."

"Gaius?"

Freya pointed at the tiny Gaius in the drawing.

"Freya, you do know what happens when someone realizes that another person is possessed?"

"What?"

"That person realizes it too. Where's Gaius?" And Merlin looked around in sudden fear.

"In his room..."

"Come on, Freya, before it's too late!"

And the two ran like the wind up to Gaius's chambers. They threw open the door to silence.

"It is too late," breathed Merlin, looking at Gaius, who was still on his bed, arm dangling to the floor. A tiny flask, which was empty, was grasped tightly in his hand. In Gaius's other hand, which was on his chest, was a note. Freya snatched up this arm and found that it was cold.

"He's dead, Merlin," she said. "And it's all of it my fault. If I'd never tried to find out-if I hadn't found that spell..."

Merlin was looking at the note.

I know now that one of you knows I am possessed. For I know now that I am and I know that I was used to try and kill Morgana and if I am used again, I fear I will not fail. I will not risk her life, and all of yours, for the sake of my own. I leave all of you the hopes that my death will not cause too much grief and that it will thwart that power using me to carry out its will. I remember tying the charm under Morgana's bed as if my hands were working of their own accord, no longer servants to my will. I remember slipping mercury into her food to sicken her. I was by turns not myself and myself. I leave my thanks to the one who discovered this. Thank you. You saved Morgana's life, and possibly all of yours, and you saved my soul. Merlin and Freya, I hope that the both of you will be happy for as long as you both live with each other and your children, and that Merlin's power continues to keep evil at bay from Camelot.

Lancelot and Morgana, I leave hopes for your happiness and my sincerest apologies. I was not myself, Morgana. And yes, I did try to drug your magic back into the slumber it was in when you were a child of two or three. But it was for your sake, Morgana. I have not given that tincture to you since Uther was killed. He would have dragged his own daughter to the pyre himself, with his own hands.

Arthur and Gwen? What can I say? Both of you have become a torch of what reality can be. Guard your children, and guard Camelot. Stay by Merlin. Nothing can harm you.

My little Ania. You, dear one, daughter of dragons, are meant for the highest magic that the world can do...more than your father's, more than your mother's. You are the most powerful sorceress to ever walk the earth. And I leave you this spell, gera mig sem ég var áður... you will understand what it does, in time.

And to Ygraine, Balinor, and Tom and Anne, I leave all the charms I have which they love so dearly.

At the end of this letter I bring the life of Gaius Ambrosius to an end as well.

Freya's eyes filled with tears and she wept into Merlin's chest.

"He's gone, Merlin," she sobbed. "It's all my doing, all of it."

"Freya, he was right," soothed Merlin. "It wasn't your fault. At all."

Oh, DON'T WORRY. Gaius isn't out of the picture. We're certainly going to hear from him again. Maybe we're going to have a rerun of season 1, Episode 13 . . . . . . . . . .or whatever episode it was when Merlin fought Nimueh. . . . .

Gaius's body was burned the next morning. His funeral boat was sent out on the lake of Avalon. There were no dry eyes on that day; even Arthur had cried.

After the funeral, everyone back at the castle had neither the will nor the energy to do anything. The children had not stopped crying since they had woken up in the morning. Ania had looked at the spell that he had given to her. Merlin had tried to find out what it did but nothing had happened.

" Gera mig sem ég var áður." Ania said the words in her head. "Gera mig sem ég var áður."

She began to shake. In terror she dropped the piece of paper that Merlin had copied out the spell on. Her limbs jerked and a pain ripped through her heart. She tried to scream, but she had no voice. She could not stand...fire was rolling through her, she was being stabbed by a hundred hot swords. How wax, flames, boiling oil, were licking her from head to toe. Oh, the pain...anything but that. Let it end! she prayed.

And then she was cold. Colder than ice, colder than hatred, colder than Midwinter's Day.

Then she was lying on the floor. Her body-and there was a great deal more of her than she was used to-was cold on the outside and hot on the inside. Her skin felt metallic, her insides felt as if they were liquid.

Ania got up cautiously and realized that her mind was different...she could close her eyes, and smell, and then see around her with her eyes closed. How very strange.

She caught sight of herself in the glass hanging on the wall opposite her and then she stared in disbelief.

Then something akin to a smile curved her lipless mouth, baring sharp teeth.

She was what she had once been, what she, Anharra, had been born to be.

A dragon.