"The castle is sweltering in the midsummer heat, stones breathing damply under the sun's height when even the air lies still."

He only meant to complain; you didn't take serving girls on hunting trips, and the alternative interpretation didn't even occur to him until Merlin said indignantly, "I'm not going to do that!"

"The king sent me to get you," Merlin said, with a tone that implied strongly that he wasn't rolling his eyes where Arthur could see, but just wait until his back was turned. "He said you're to get changed into formal clothes and meet him in the Great Hall, there's a delegation coming from the Summer Court."

"I have called you to give you a warning," the dragon said. "A red moon rises over Camelot this night. The Wild Hunt will ride."

In which various people become various things they weren't before.

Outside the city walls, the tower stood black against the sky.

Fine, so maybe it hadn't been the best idea to attack the giant tentacle monster.

"If you'd been lectured by my father for four hours on your thirteenth birthday about all the many disasters that occur to a realm when you muddy the succession with bastards, you wouldn't have been very quick to dive into bed with the nearest servant girl, either," Arthur muttered.

There is a story that is not told in Ealdor anymore, not for many years now, a story about Beltane Eve.

Morgana turned away from the high, barred window and rubbed her arms, chilled and bare. Arthur was sitting in the dirty straw at the very limit of his chains, which kept him a few inches too far away to touch Merlin's limp body. Outside they were putting up the stake.