Awakening Camelot: A Wizard's Quest (Awakening Camelot Duology Book 1)

by Dan Wingreen

How in the hells can I not kiss him after that?

  And so, he did.

  At first Lee was too surprised to respond, which, to Aidan's mind, was stupid. Saying something like that was basically demanding a kiss. It didn't take him long to get with the program though, and soon he was kissing Aidan back like a conquering hero. Or maybe just like a man who had come face to face with one of his greatest fears and realized the worst possible outcome hadn't happened.

  Either or.

  They kissed for a long time. Or for what seemed like a long time anyway. And if they held each other tighter than they normally would have, or if one of them made a needy, desperate noise in the back of his throat, then neither paid much attention. Aidan honestly hadn't expected to ever be doing this after he learned who Lee really was, and he thought Lee probably felt the same way. So, they kissed, and enjoyed it, and didn't think of anything besides each other until a stray thought popped into Aidan's head.

  I wonder how many of those seven thousand years it took him to get this good at kissing?

  Aidan's eyes snapped open and he pulled himself away from Lee's mouth. Admittedly not one of his best decisions. Lee seemed to agree, looking…sort of mortally offended, actually, but that only lasted until Aidan opened his mouth.

  "Did you just say you were seven thousand years old?"

  Lee blinked, once, very slowly, and then he laughed.

  "Aye.”

  "How is that even possible?" Aidan asked, then frowned slightly as he remembered something else. "And how are you even here anyway? Aren't your bones on display in Britannia somewhere?"

  He glanced at Lee's body, half expecting it to suddenly collapse into a boneless heap of skin now that he’d mentioned it.

  Lee, apparently having sufficiently recovered enough of his usual Leeness, responded with a leer, "I think you know exactly where my bo—"

  "No, not doing that." Aidan shot him a glare and focused really hard on not blushing. "I'm serious. I really think these are questions you should be answering."

  Lee sighed. "If you insist, love. They aren't my bones. They're…Nivian's." And then, before Aidan could ask anything else, he went on. "She stabbed me in the heart and right before I died, I burned her alive and teleported away. It…ain't exactly one of my happier memories."

  Aidan heard the pain he was trying to hide, but his mind could only focus on what was, unarguably, the most important part of those four sentences.

  "You died?"

  "Aye."

  Aidan blinked. He didn't think Lee was lying. "Then…how are you still alive?"

  "That…kinda has to do with your other question." Lee scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I ain't exactly, in the strictest definition of the word, human."

  Aidan stared. It took a few moments for what Lee said to even sink in, and when it did, he found that he was willing to wait for an actual explanation before flying off the handle at him.

  And there we go. Finally, a mature adult reaction.

  "And what, exactly, are you? In the strictest definition?" Aidan crossed his arms and tried not to glare too hard.

  Mostly mature.

  If Lee was surprised Aidan seemed to be taking this a lot better than finding out he was really Merlin, it didn't show. "The proper name for what we are has thirty-three syllables and since you had so much trouble with 'Eallair' and all…" He trailed off, possibly seeing the expression on Aidan's face shift. Aidan had no idea what it shifted to, but whatever it was, it was enough for Lee to drop the teasing and quickly move on. "Um, the closest thing I can think of to what we are would be…'fae', maybe?"

  Aidan cocked his head. "Like a fairy?"

  "No," Lee said quickly, scowling slightly. "More like an elf. One of the pretty fae, not one of the gnome-y ones that live in the ground, or a girl with wings and such." He nodded once. "Somethin’ like that."

  Aidan's eyes automatically flicked to Lee's ears, but no, he'd seen Lee's ears before, and they weren't pointed. Weren't elves supposed to have pointed ears?

  "I don't know if I'd call you pretty," Aidan said thoughtfully.

  "Hey!"

  "More ruggedly handsome, really."

  Lee preened. "I can live with that."

  "And your ears aren't pointed."

  "I said 'like' an elf."

  "Still." Aidan stared at Lee, trying to see him as an elf and failing horribly. "The pointy ears would make it easier."

  Lee sighed, looking put out. "Fine. I'm not an elf."

  "You can be an elf if you want," Aidan offered.

  "Well I don't want to if you're gonna be makin' a big deal about ears and such."

  "I promise I won't say anything about your ears being wrong."

  "Too late."

  Aidan's lips twitched. "This is officially the weirdest conversation I've ever had."

  "Tell me about it," Lee grumbled.

  Suddenly, all those "you lot" and "you people" Lee loved to slip into conversations started to make a lot more sense. He wasn't talking about Americans; he was talking about humans.

  Aidan was kind of surprised at how much Lee not being human didn't bother him. He wondered if he would have been this calm about it before he knew he was Merlin. Probably not, since finding that out was what made him realize Lee was Lee no matter what or who he was.

  "Okay," Aidan said after a few moments. "Maybe it doesn't matter, just tell me why you being whatever you are means you can die and still be alive."

  Lee shot him a look that said it should have been obvious. "I'm immortal.” He waggled his hand. “For the most part."

  What kind of answer is that? "Explain."

  Lee looked at him askance. “Promise me you won’t yell?”

  “You realize that’s the least comforting way you could lead into this, right?”

  “I been yelled at a lot, recently, is all I’m sayin’. Been an emotionally tryin’ day it has. Not really sure how much more yellin’ I can handle right now.”

  Lee’s words may have been phrased as a joke, but Aidan could sense the very real sentiment behind them, and he felt like a heel all over again.

  I never even considered how he might be feeling about any of this. Fuck, everything he said in the cave about Arthur, to Arthur, and then waking him up… Aidan swallowed.

  This was probably one of the most nerve-wracking days of Lee’s life, and here Aidan was being selfish and making it all about him.

  Okay. I definitely deserve a little scolding right now, what the fuck...

  Aidan looked Lee in the eyes. “I promise I won’t yell.”

  And maybe Lee saw enough of what Aidan was feeling, or maybe a promise from him meant more to Lee than Aidan thought, because a small bit of tension bled out of his shoulders.

  "All right then.” Lee nodded. “I can't die, or not easily anyway. I get older and I age but when I get to the part where I'd normally die—eighty-five, ninety, somewhere in there—my age starts going backwards and I get younger until I'm how I was when I was about twenty-five or so, then it starts all over again. I heal like a normal human unless the wound is mortal and if I die, like getting stabbed in the heart or hit with a deathbolt or such, I really do die. I just…get better, after a while. Usually a few decades, dependin’ on how much damage was done. The only thing that can really kill me is getting burnt up to nothing or cut up into enough pieces my body can't stitch itself back together, so, it's kinda good that those ain't my bones, really."

  Aidan blinked again, slowly this time. "You age…backwards?"

  Lee crossed his arms defensively. "Ain't like I got to choose what kinda immortality I got," he mumbled.

  Aidan held back a smile. Self-conscious Lee really was cute. "I didn't mean it like that. I just never heard of different kinds of immortality before."

  "It's not like we went around advertisin’ it or anything." Lee stiffly uncrossed his arms and let them hang at his sides, probably in an attempt to look less uncomfortable and defensive.

  It didn't work.
r />   "So, what about your other magic? Is that part of you being a not-elf too?"

  "'Not-elf'?" Lee asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "I could go with fairy?”

  "Not-elf it is.” They shared a small grin. “But aye. It's part of my natural…abilities, I guess you could call 'em."

  "But you said your other magic could kill you, and then you said you can't die…"

  "It can kill me," Lee said. "I'll just come back. Like I said, we don't die permanently."

  "You keep saying 'we'," Aidan said. "Does that mean there are more of you not-elves out there?"

  Lee's lips twitched, slightly. "No," he said. "I'm the only one left."

  "Oh." Suddenly, Aidan felt really bad for prying. He had no idea how he'd feel if he was the last human in a world of people who looked exactly like him, but were still different. He couldn't even imagine it. It didn't seem like a pleasant situation, though. "I'm sorry."

  Now it was Lee's turn to blink. "What're you sorry for?"

  Aidan shrugged awkwardly. "For bringing up bad memories and reminding you of dead people."

  He winced. Yes. That was very sensitive and tactful. Way to go.

  To his surprise, instead of crying or looking off into the distance with a mournful expression on his face or something similar, Lee snorted.

  "They ain't dead," he said, then paused thoughtfully. "Leastways I don't think they are. They all just went back home a long time ago. Stepped sideways from the world, like," he added quickly, probably so Aidan couldn't ask if they came from space, or something equally stupid.

  "'Stepped sideways…' What does that even mean?"

  "It means," Lee said, somewhat impatiently, "that we're from a place right next to Earth. Earth-adjacent, maybe. Where I’m from touches the Earth in places, and sometimes things can go back and forth between the two."

  At Aidan's increasingly confused expression, he sighed and tried to explain.

  "Think of the universe like a dinner plate, okay? Now picture a whole stack of dinner plate universes all one of top of the other. That's reality. All reality. Made up of different universes that stack up, like. 'Cept some of the plates got cracks in 'em, we called ‘em Ways, and if you know where the cracks are you can go through them to the next closest universe, but unless you find more cracks there you can't go any farther. You can go back though. You can even fix the cracks and close 'em up if you have enough magic. Does that make any sense?"

  Aidan thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Not really."

  "Good," Lee said with a small smirk. "'Cause it never made bloody sense to me either."

  Aidan chuckled.

  "Anyway, a long time ago when I was still a kid, the way we reckon it at least, every one of us made the choice to go back home and close the Way behind us. Except me. I was the only one that didn't care that you lot were breedin’ and takin' over what were once our places. I didn't care that the dragons were bein' killed off or that humans tried to kill us for our magic or that magic itself was slowly seeping out of the world. I liked it here, and I wanted to stay. Everyone else…they left."

  Despite the way he said it, like it was a minor annoyance he wanted to explain fast and get finished with, Aidan heard the unspoken ending. “They left me.” There was an answering echo in Aidan's heart. No one ever really gets over being abandoned by their family. No matter how much time passes, even thousands of years apparently, sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re more than that lonely kid who got left behind by the people who were supposed to love you the most.

  "I'm sorry," Aidan said again. This time though, he looked into Lee's eyes and held his hand and didn't let go or look away, even when it would have been more comfortable to do so. And because he didn’t, he saw the exact moment Lee decided to give up pretending.

  "Yeah, I…” He cleared his throat and laced his fingers with Aidan’s. “Yeah. It ain't exactly one of those things I like talkin' about.”

  Aidan nodded. He understood, and he also understood how much he must mean to Lee if he was talking about these things with him. Hearing Lee say he loved him was the best thing that had ever happened to Aidan, but actually having him prove it with actions as well as words was somehow even better.

  Aidan squeezed his hand.

  "I…I know how you feel. My parents did the same thing."

  He bit his lip. He could stop there, if he wanted. Lee knew enough about Aidan’s past to get the implied comfort he was offering, and he doubted Lee would push for more than he was willing to give. Which was exactly why Aidan didn’t want to stop there. Aidan might not have had any real experience with relationships, but he knew it wasn’t enough to take what he needed from Lee and never give back. They needed to be equals in ways that went beyond Aidan proving he wasn’t a burden. He needed to be for Lee what Lee was for Aidan.

  "It…sucks, being abandoned like that. But I think it’s okay…not being okay with it. And I think there will always be a part of us, or, well, me, at least, maybe not you, I don’t want to try to tell you how to fell or anything, but, um. I think maybe we, or I, or both of us, um, I mean…” Aidan’s face was burning but he refused to stop until he had this out. “I think it’s normal that we probably both want to fill that hole they left more than most people. And…I'm not saying I can replace your family, or anything, but…I dunno. Maybe we can just, be together and be happy, even though no one else really wanted us and we can, you know, be our own family…?"

  Aidan had just enough time to mentally smack himself for so royally screwing that up before he was being yanked towards Lee and kissed like a hurricane descending on a defenseless wizard quarter. All Aidan could do was hold on and enjoy it. Not that he had much of a problem with that.

  Finally, and way too soon, Lee broke the kiss and rested his forehead against Aidan's.

  "Thank you," he whispered. "I thought everything would change when you found out that I was Merlin, and that I wasn't human."

  There were several trite things Aidan could say, but instead he opted for the truth.

  "I won't say it isn't weird," he said quietly. "And I'm probably going to have a lot of times where I forget, then remember, and panic just a bit. But all I have to do is remind myself that you're not Merlin or an unpronounceable word or a fairy-elf; you're just Lee. My shelter from the storm." He smiled. "And that's the only thing that matters."

  This time, he kissed Lee. It was slow and brief; a period, rather than a comma.

  Lee smiled when it was over, and Aidan's heart stuttered in his chest. It had been way too long since he'd seen a smile that was pure Lee.

  I am completely ridiculous. Aidan grinned what was no doubt another stupid, lovestruck grin. And I don't even care.

  "Now that that's all settled," Lee said, stepping back, "I get to do something I've been wantin' to do ever since I fell in love with you."

  He bowed slightly and held out his hand in gallant invitation. Aidan took it without hesitation.

  Lee looked up and grinned.

  "How would you like to meet King Arthur?"

  Chapter 15

  It was colder in the cavern when they went back in. Late afternoon was quickly giving way to early evening and the chill dampness from the pond followed them into Arthur's tomb. Not that Arthur seemed to notice. While Aidan and Lee had been outside, he'd apparently decided to take off all his armor, which was now lying against the side of the sarcophagus right next to Excalibur, the sword seemingly untouched since Arthur put it down after getting out of the coffin. Aidan thought it strange that Arthur hadn’t kept the sword close—if it had been him waking up after thousands of years to a world where everyone but him could use magic, he would have clung to the nearest weapon like a baby with a blanket—but he didn't have much time to think about it, because the moment they walked into the tomb Arthur rose from where he was crouched over studying the lid of his sarcophagus and turned towards them.

  Underneath his armor Aidan could now see he was wearing animal skin pants, a lo
t like the ones the People had worn, and his shirt, a plain white tunic, was loosely laced in the front. Arthur wasn't as wide as Aidan had first thought, the armor filled him out a bit, but he still cut a powerful figure, compact and muscled in the way Aidan imagined soldiers must have been in the days when they had to rely on their physical strength to fight. He looked slightly more human without his armor. More approachable. The tousled hair and pleasant, expectant expression on his face only added to his humanity.

  Lee led Aidan over to Arthur with a gentle hand placed on his lower back. It was casual and intimate, and Aidan flushed horribly when Arthur looked back and forth between them with an amused glint in his eyes. He stepped around the stone coffin and met them a few feet away from the neatly stacked armor.

  Aidan was suddenly more nervous than he'd ever been in his entire life. Despite the air of approachability that surrounded him, this was still King Arthur. He hadn't really had enough time to appreciate it before, when he was focused on Lee's story and the sheer awe of seeing a man rise from what he still wasn't too sure wasn't actually death. Now, he could hardly think of anything else.

  Lee gave his back a reassuring rub before he straightened and stood tall. He still didn't quite match Arthur for size, but he looked proud and regal in a way Aidan had never seen from him before. Like a lord standing before his king.

  "Arthur Pendragon," he said, his voice more formal than Aidan had thought he was capable of. "I'd like to introduce you to Aidan Collins, my intended."

  Aidan's face burned, both at the formality that seemed ridiculous in the middle of a damp cave, and the way Lee described him. It was old-fashioned in a good way, and much better than saying 'my boyfriend' the way Aidan would have if he was the one doing introductions, but it seemed to imply things they hadn't ever actually talked about. He had a brief flash of Arthur presiding over an ad hoc, royal wedding next to his sarcophagus, and bit the inside of his mouth to keep the no-doubt-hysterical laugh that was bubbling up in his throat from creeping out.

  Arthur nodded once at Lee, equally formal and even more regal without seeming to make any effort at it at all, then turned his head towards Aidan. He felt the full weight of Arthur's attention focused solely on him. It was surprisingly soothing. Even without a crown and in simple, battle-worn clothing, he was every bit a king out of legend and yet still as approachable as any tour guide or WA director Aidan had ever known.