"STOP!" he screamed, wrestling against the guards, but to no avail.
However, Morgause did stop, pulling the bloody knife out with a wet, squelchy noise. A stream of scarlet rushed over Merlin's coat from the hole in his back. Morgause stepped back and regarded the boy, grotesquely convulsing and bleeding out, like she was looking at a work of art.
Arthur breathed a long sigh of relief. But then a moment later he realised why she had stopped, and his anxiety paramounted.
Merlin was lying face down on the stone floor in a pool of his own blood, suddenly silent and very, very still. The dark red around him grew.
He... He couldn't be.
He wasn't.
Morgause wouldn't have...
She needed him! She needed him to make Arthur answer! She hasn't...
Killed him, had she?
But Merlin wasn't moving. Morgause stepped away from him to stop from getting blood on her shoes, pulling a face at the mess.
"He's bled all over the nice stone floor..." She sighed. "Ah well, I suppose it doesn't matter if he's about to die."
Arthur's cry was like that of a wounded animal. It was long, and it was loud, and one of the guess hit him to shut him up. But Arthur wouldn't. He couldn't.
He fell to his knees and wailed like a child.
"NO!" He screamed. "What have you done, you bitch?! You've KILLED HIM!!"
Morgause slapped his across the face and he stumbled backwards.
"Get up, you pathetic excuse for a prince," she hissed.
Arthur struggled to his feet and glared at the witch, tears cutting tracks in his cheeks.
"I warned you not to be insolent," she whispered. "I told you to hold your tongue. I gave you a fair chance to not make this any worse than it has to be. And yet you still defy me."
Arthur spat at her feet.
"I will defy you until my last breath," he growled, striken with grief and anger. "You will never win. You will never be able to kill Merlin's spirit."
"Aren't you forgetting what I told you about the brick box? It keeps the prisoner alive even if they are holding on by the thinnest of threads, like Merlin here." She kicked the body at their feet. Arthur snarled.
Morgause ordered the two guards to take Merlin back to the sustainment box, and the moment they loosened their grip on Arthur he kicked out and tried to get free. Morgause's eyes flashed gold and Arthur froze, his limbs sticking to his sides, his whole body completely still. Not being able to balance himself, he fell backwards and his head cracked against the stone floor, sending him into whoozy, swirling unconsciousness.