Arthur lay sprawled on his narrow bed, one arm across his forehead, the other slack over his chest. The candle beside him had guttered low, shadows crawling across the walls like restless thoughts.
The words he had spat came back to him, sour on his tongue: Then be my goblin's brood sow. Cruel. Thoughtless. A curse meant to drive her away.
But she hadn't recoiled. She had obeyed. With tears, yes—but also with that wild, fevered gleam in her eyes.
Arthur turned his face into the pillow, groaning. Somewhere beyond the walls, in the dark of the stable, she was still with the goblin. The thought stabbed him—and twisted. He saw it too vividly: Merlin's flawless body, her desperate devotion, her soft curves yielding to that brutish, grotesque thing rutting without hesitation.
Revulsion surged, but so did heat. His hand drifted downward before he could stop it. He cursed himself, even as his pulse hammered. He pictured her tearful face turned upward, gasping, radiant in her shame. The grotesque and the divine tangled, burned into his mind.
"Pathetic," he hissed through clenched teeth, stroking harder. "She's in a stable with a beast… and I—" his voice broke into a snarl "—I'm hard over it."
The bitterness only drove him further. Release came sharp, muffled, spilling hot across his stomach. He collapsed back, chest heaving, the smell of sweat and seed thick in the air.
Silence pressed in. He wiped his hand absently on the sheets, mouth twisting into a bitter smile.
"Look at me," he whispered to the empty room. "A man who couldn't keep her… who gets off on his own woman being fucked by a beast." A laugh slipped out, low and hollow. "What business is that to run?"
But the images clung. Merlin—beautiful, broken. The goblin—tireless, grotesque. And himself—split between hatred and hunger.
When morning pried through the shutters, Arthur rose with a sour taste on his tongue. His sheets were a wreck. His mind, worse. He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, and sneered at the floor.
"Brilliant. Send her to the goblin, she obeys, and I sit here tugging like a stable boy. What's next—charge admission?"
Yet even as he mocked himself, the grotesque began to reshape. Shame bent into thought, thought into numbers, numbers into schemes.
One goblin. One breeder. One Merlin.
The rules of summoning echoed in his mind: only one direct summon. But lineage… that was different. Offspring weren't bound. Breed once—reap endlessly.
His stomach turned, but excitement sparked beneath. Goblins for labor. Goblins for muscle. A self-sustaining horde. Grain was slow, cattle costly—but goblins multiplied like weeds.
He stood at the window, eyes on the damp fields of Hamlet. This miserable hamlet that had laughed at him. With goblins, with power, he could turn the balance.
And Merlin…
His grip on the sill whitened. She was still in the stable, clinging to her delusion that she was earning her way back to him. That desperate shine in her eyes haunted him, both pitiful and powerful.
"Pathetic girl," he whispered—yet heat tinged the word. "Pathetic… and useful."
The grin that spread across his face was thin, cold.
Shame had been repackaged. Last night's fool was gone. In his place stood Arthur the schemer.
"Let's see," he murmured, amused now, "how far one goblin—and one woman's desperation—can stretch."