Merlin clutched at him with trembling hands, her nails digging into the fabric of his tunic as if she could anchor him in place. Tears streamed down her face, but her eyes burned with an almost feverish light, desperate and unrelenting.
"No! Arthur, listen to me—it wasn't sex. It wasn't. It can't be." Her voice cracked, but she forced the words through, frantic, breathless. "That's not what it is. You're the only one I could ever do that with. The only one. What I did—it was something else. A duty, a rite, a lie they fed me. But not sex. Never that. Sex is sacred, it belongs only to you. To us."
Arthur's jaw tightened, fury rising in him again. "You dare say that after I saw it with my own eyes? You let them touch you, use you—and now you want to twist the word until it means nothing?"
Merlin shook her head violently, her hair clinging damp to her cheeks. "No! They tricked me. They told me it was right, that it was for the good of the village, for the elders. I thought it was something I had to endure, something outside of me. But it wasn't me, Arthur, it wasn't my heart. My heart belongs only to you. My body—my body was never theirs. It only wakes for you."
Her words spilled faster, tangled, frantic. She rose to her knees, pressing herself against him, clinging with a strength born of obsession. "Please, believe me. I would never betray you. I would rather die than give myself to another man. You're the only one I love, the only one I want. If they touched me, it was because they deceived me. Because they lied. But that isn't sex—it can't be. Sex means love, and love means you."
Arthur's face darkened, but the rage in his eyes warred now with something else—revulsion tangled with the sick pull of her devotion. Her words wrapped around him like chains, sticky, suffocating.
"You can't twist reality just because it hurts," he hissed, though his voice faltered at the intensity of her gaze.
Merlin smiled through her tears, a trembling, desperate smile. "I'm not twisting it. I know what sex is. And I know I've never had it. Because I've never had it with you."
Her arms locked tighter around him, her voice dropping to a whisper, half-sob, half-prayer. "And I never will with anyone else. Even if you hate me, even if you push me away—I'll wait. I'll wait forever. Because you're the only man I'll ever love."
She looked up at him then, her eyes glassy but unwavering, a terrifying mix of innocence and obsession. For her, the truth was unshakable, unbending: what had happened in the shadows of the village was nothing compared to the sanctity she reserved for him.
Arthur's breath caught in his throat, not from pity but from the chilling realization that nothing he said could pry her from this belief.
To Merlin, there had been no betrayal. There had only ever been Arthur.
Merlin's fingers finally slipped from Arthur's tunic when he refused to move, his silence colder than any insult he could have thrown. Her sobs grew harsher, ragged, shaking her entire frame, but still she lingered a moment longer—waiting, begging with her eyes for a word, a gesture, anything that might undo the distance between them.
None came.
Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound emerged. At last, with a strangled cry, she staggered back from him. Her knees scraped against the ground as she tried to rise, hands trembling, clutching at herself like she was trying to hold her heart inside her chest.
"Arthur…" her voice broke on his name, a whisper torn apart by grief. Then she turned and fled, the echo of her sobs fading into the night.
The door slammed behind her when she left the house, but even through the wooden frame, Arthur could hear her cries carried on the wind. They twisted, lingering, like a curse that refused to leave him.
He stood there in the silence she left behind, jaw clenched, his body rigid, the ache in his chest sharper than he would ever admit. His rage hadn't lessened—but neither had the sting of watching her tears fall like that, as if she'd been torn open in front of him.
Outside, Merlin stumbled down the path, blinded by grief, muttering his name over and over as if it could summon him back to her. Every tear that fell only deepened the feverish oath burning in her chest.
If he would not believe her now, then she would make him believe. One day, she would prove it to him. One day, she would make him understand.
Her love for him was unshakable. And it would consume them both.