Merlin stood up, the wind clawing at his ragged cloak, his chest still heaving from the fury he had poured into his words.
"Ohhhh… demi-gods," he spat, tasting the venom in his own mouth. His teeth ached from the force of his clench. "That's why I hate them. That's why I hate you. All of you." His voice rose until it seemed to bite at the sky itself.
Them, and their fucking gods.
He hated them with a pure hatred, the kind that gnaws marrow, the kind that rots into bone and cannot be cut out. It wasn't the hatred of envy. It wasn't even vengeance, not fully.
It was purer, colder, sharper: the hatred of something unnatural that had stolen the natural place of humankind.
A flash of memory cracked behind his eyes—blood, his master's blood, soaking the sand of a ruined battlefield. The demi-god had laughed, a laugh that sounded like storm-chimes breaking. Merlin hadn't even been strong enough to scream then; his voice had cracked. He had only watched.
