“Those are my people! Ari, what’s the date on this?”
Ari swiped the hologram to reveal its posted information. The year was the same as when they’d left, but it was an entire season later. And from the looks of it, Mercer had regained much of its power in their absence. “Gwen, is this the date we sent Jordan back to? We must’ve fucked up the portal. That’s not the night we left!”
Gwen was breathing so hard she’d become shiny and flushed. She started to teeter, and Ari held on to her, turning the watch off in a hurry. Ari pulled Gwen onto a pile of straw, fetched a wet rag, and used it to cool Gwen’s face and neck. Gwen was holding her stomach in a way that sent fear straight through Ari. Was the baby coming? Spurred on by Gwen’s panic?
“We’re okay,” Gwen said, interpreting Ari’s fear. “We still have a month at least.”
Ari pressed her lips to Gwen’s forehead. “You just scared the life out of me.”
“The watch must have updated when the portal was open.” Gwen’s red skin had paled down to a faintish milky color. “We sent Jordan back to the wrong day in the future. A future in which Mercer is back in power.”
“Whatever happened, we’ll fix it. We’ll find Merlin. We’ll… fix it.” Ari kissed her, relieved when Gwen kissed back. We’re together, she ached to say. It’s okay because we’re together… all because Gwen had refused to step into that portal after Jordan. Ari kissed her again, pulling Gwen close to her chest, holding her tight.
“Yikes. You know just about anyone could walk in on you two.”
Ari looked up to find Val. Glorious, perfect, unharmed Val. She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms tight around his trim frame. Gwen pulled Ari off and hugged him, too. “Thank the stars you’re okay,” she said. “We were so worried.”
Val turned in a circle, showing off how alive he was. He’d been in Nin’s cave long enough that his usual buzzed-to-the-scalp hair had grown out into an afro that suited him just as well. “I’m damn fine, but only because this one saved me from certain death by drowning.”
Val stepped out of the way to reveal Merlin. At least, the slim young boy was what Merlin might’ve looked like if he’d grown several years younger overnight. Ari stared at Earth’s most famous mage, now swimming in his own clothes, freckles bright on round cheeks, red hair curling in the humidity as dawn finally broke.
The conference was sadly born in the trench of a peat bog, where Merlin had been sent by the older version of himself to do penance for disappearing during the party. The only saving grace in this smelly business was that they were far enough away from Camelot to talk openly to one another. Not that that was happening at the moment.
“Why do I feel so sore that the old cretin didn’t notice I’d gotten drastically younger overnight?” Merlin glanced up from his shoveling, and Ari looked away. “You’re angry with me?”
“Not angry, Merlin,” she managed. “Just… pissed off.”
“Oh, that’s much better, thank you.”
Ari hid a small smile, hacking at the layers of squishy mess, trying to make sense of all that had gone wrong. She paused after a minute and looked up at where Val was perched on the edge, several feet above their heads, keeping watch.
“No sign of them,” Val said, answering her wordless question. “You sure Gwen got the message to Lam about the meeting?”
“I’m sure.” Ari went back to shoveling. “I’m also sure Lam had quite the night.”
Merlin cleared his throat. “Should we talk about—”
“Not without the others,” Ari barked. “We’ve had enough half-truths wafting about.”
“They’re coming on horseback!” Val announced, leaping to his feet, pacing until his sibling reached him. Ari scrambled out of the bog trench just as Lam leaped off the horse to embrace their brother. And they weren’t alone. While Val and Lam had their reunion, Ari stared at Morgause.
“What are you doing here?” Ari asked.
Lam broke out of a hug with Val to give Morgause a hand down from the horse. Ari had only gotten a glimpse of the enchantress on her trip to Avalon before she face-planted in the lake. Now it felt so much like looking at Morgana that she couldn’t help blinking a few times. They were both slender and slightly curved. They had the same intensity, like a fire that couldn’t be doused. It helped that their coloring was different, Morgause’s long dark hair much warmer than the black hole shade that Morgana had so eloquently rocked. “Morgause is with me. We can trust her. I think it’s about time we get help from someone inside this time period.”
Merlin crowed an objection from the bottom of the peat trench, and everyone looked over the edge at him. “She can’t be here!”
“Are you… okay?” Lam asked, squinting at the significantly diminished mage.
“I look worse than I am!” Merlin insisted, while Val gave a sure shake of his head.
“We did something wrong,” Ari said, chewing on her thumbnail. “Gwen will be here soon. We should wait until we’re together.” She climbed back down into the trench and Lam and Val followed. Morgause took over Val’s lookout position, silent but taking in everything.
“So, what happened to Merlin?” Lam asked.
“He’s been holding out on you,” Val said flatly.
“We can’t just talk about this with Yoko up there listening in!” Merlin said.
“Who?” Lam asked, and Merlin waved his hand dismissively. “I’m telling you we can trust her. She knows we’re not from this time. All the enchantresses do. They can feel the portals every time they open and close.”
Merlin was going to keep objecting, Ari could tell, but Val put a hand on his arm that settled him down. “Lam is right.” Merlin opened his mouth and Val gave him a warning look. “Merlin was just about to tell you that every time he uses his magic, he gets younger. He realized it when he arrived but didn’t tell anyone.”
“Merlin.” Ari couldn’t keep the parental scolding out of her voice. “How could you keep that from us?”
“Because you needed help! And you wouldn’t have let me if you knew!”
“Of course we wouldn’t have let you. You’re our family. We’re not letting you sacrifice yourself!” Ari yelled. Merlin’s bright brown eyes filled with tears. Ari turned away, not wanting to make him upset, wrestling with her own disappointment. She held out Gwen’s watch. “I have something to show you. A news bulletin that came through while that portal was open last night.” She showed them the footage, still unable to process the sight of Mercer clearly in control again. “Gwen and I think we accidentally sent Jordan back later than we meant to.”
“That’s… not entirely true,” Val said, wincing. “Nin kept me in her cave because she’s Grade-A obsessed with Merlin, but I picked up some info down there. The way this all works is that human bodies, regular ones,” he qualified, shooting a glance at Merlin, “have to age in the past the same as they do in the future.”
“Which means…?” Lam asked.
“Every day we’re in Camelot is a day that passes in the future. We’ve been gone for months, so months have gone by in our galaxy. We can’t return to the night we left as originally advertised. And Mercer has—clearly—taken advantage of our absence.”
Ari’s vision popped with bright, black spots. She dropped her shovel and held her hands over her pounding headache. They’d only left the future because they needed more time. Time for the baby. To find the chalice. To decide what to do about Mercer. And while they were missing, Mercer had the perfect opportunity to spin the future back into their control. Who knows what firestorm they’d be walking into when they finally made it back.
If they finally made it back.
“Nin is obsessed with me?” Merlin asked through the silence. “That’s a bit hard to swallow. Not that I doubt you, but Nin is the magical, motherly, glowing presence in my life. She saves me. Why would she do that?”
“Oooh, pick me,” Val deadpanned. “She needs you, Merlin.”
“That motherly song an
d dance is an act,” Ari added. “She didn’t seem that way to me.”
“What does she look like?” Lam asked. “I picture horns for some reason.”
Ari cleared her throat. “Uhh… she was… attractive? In a sort of terrifying way?”
“Attractive?” Merlin spluttered.
“She wore a suit, but not a Mercer type of suit. It was cut down to…” She pointed at a scandalously low spot on her sternum.
“Funny,” Val said. “That’s not what I saw. My Nin has this sharp black buzzcut and she wears a lot of uniforms. Though sometimes she’ll throw in a boa or a fascinator. You know, to offset it. The whole thing makes nefarious sense, really. This is her inhuman idea of fun. Playing dress-up to manipulate all of us.”
“It’s bigger than that.” Ari needed to tell them about Arthur’s body. About the deal Nin offered to send them all home. But she wasn’t ready for them to reject the plan. She needed an emergency get-the-hell-out-of-the-Middle-Ages button, and ugly as it was, this was it.
Morgause whistled, causing them to all glance up. “The queen approaches.”
Hoofbeats pounded the ground, coming to a stop above. Ari scurried out of the trench to find that Arthur had put Gwen on a dainty, prancing roan—the fool. “We only have minutes,” Gwen said, putting the spurs to her speech. “I suggested taking a ride with Arthur, and thanks to Lionel’s tireless horsebots I have much more practice in the saddle. He’s way behind.” She glared at Morgause. “What’s she doing here?”
“Alternately spying and making out with Lam,” Val said. “But the enchantresses should be on our side in general. They’re not fans of Nin. Avalon is one of the only places Nin can’t spy in on.”
“Okay, I missed something. Recap,” the queen commanded.
“Nin is sometimes hot but possibly evil as fuck,” Ari said. “We’re torn.”
“What was that first part again?” Gwen asked.
“Also, Merlin might have the power to stop her.” Ari took a deep breath. Now that Gwen was here, she had to say it. “King Arthur’s body is in her weird cave. She’s holding him hostage, making the cycle repeat.” Ari tried not to stare at the child who used to be the most powerful magician in the known universe. “She said the cycle is your… prison.”
All was silent in the peat bog, until Gwen spoke. “I suppose time is also passing in the future, and we can’t go home to the night we left.”
“How did you know?”
“We don’t make mistakes like that. I knew there had to be another explanation. So I thought about all the possibilities and… we sent Jordan back wounded into the middle of a planet-wide siege.” Gwen closed her eyes and took a deep, trembling breath before she could continue. “We go home as soon as possible. Before Mercer can do more harm to my people and destroy Ketch. Where’s the chalice?” Merlin looked at Val. Val looked at Merlin. “I saw Arthur give it to Old Merlin at the party.”
“See, that’s the trick,” Merlin rubbed the back of his neck, peat speckles on his face. “When I was going after it, Nin let me know Val was drowning. So I rushed to save him! Which cost me a little too much magic…” Merlin looked down at his body as if exhibiting evidence. “The old monster has had a chance to hide the chalice by now, which could make it impossible to find.”
“Impossible,” Lam repeated slowly.
“Too bad we don’t know someone who thinks exactly like him,” Val said in a scalding tone. It seemed to rile up Merlin in both a good and bad way at the same moment.
“That’s hardly going to work! I don’t remember where I put things down two days ago, let alone several millennia. Not to mention the hole where my memories are meant to be. To ask me to find something I hid in Camelot… Well, if I didn’t want to keep it in Camelot, I’d probably stash it in my crystal cave, but—”
“Your crystal what?” Ari asked.
“Crystal cave,” Val said. “It’s Merlin’s secret apartment that exists out of space and time. I’ve never seen it,” he added with a clip.
“You look for the chalice there,” Ari told Merlin. “I’ll cover for you with the old jerk.”
Val nodded his approval. “I’m coming with.”
Gwen gave a sharp cry. She held her side. “Nobody freak out. It’s false labor.”
“Not… freaking out,” Ari tried to lie as her heart beat rather pointedly. She decided against telling them about Nin’s deal to send them all home at the cost of her own eternal spirit. It’d already been too much for today. Ari looked up at Morgause who was leafing through Jordan’s MercerNotes on King Arthur. “Should she be reading that, Lam?”
“Oh, she can’t read Mercer.”
“Still.” They all watched her. “Is the book on track?”
“No empty pages this morning,” they said.
“So there is good news,” Ari said. When everyone stared, she shrugged. “What? I needed some good news.”
“Lamarack?” Morgause’s voice slipped like ice across hot metal. She turned the book around to reveal a blank page.
Ari snatched the book. “What did we forget to do now?”
Lam exhaled through their teeth, flipping a few pages either way as if confirming their worst suspicions. “This is when Arthur finds out that Lancelot has stolen Gweneviere’s heart.”
Everyone had an opinion as to how Ari and Gwen should get busted by Arthur. Some were more X-rated than others, but in the end, Ari decided on a scenario she’d been dreaming about for what felt like years.
That evening, while the king and his nobles and knights feasted in the great hall, Sir Lancelot entered in gleaming armor. Ari walked straight through the drinking, celebratory masses to the head table where Gwen sat beside Arthur.
“My king, I’d like to dance with your wife.”
“Of course,” Arthur said with such a wide, trusting smile that Ari felt her first true pang. They were going to hurt him. It was the goal.
Gwen graciously got up, and Ari did her best to mimic the patterned and simplified dance styles of the time. They were not alone, dancing with several other partners.
Gwen had a worried little knot between her eyebrows. “I’ve been thinking,” she said under the music. “This isn’t just about making sure the whole stupid love triangle plays out. There are other things we need to make happen. Like the knights of the round table and… I just don’t know when we’re going to be able to leave, do you? We can’t stay, considering the future is growing worse by the hour, and yet if we duck out on Arthur in the middle of the legend, surely it’s going to break the story in some important way.”
“There’s going to be a moment when we can leave.” Ari took Gwen’s hand and placed it on her breastplate, over the spot on the Ouroboros where the dragon bit its own tail. “We just have to be ready when the time comes.”
Gwen almost laughed, but it came out as mostly breath. “It’s just a symbol, Ari.”
“The Lady of the Lake picked out this armor for me. She bragged about it.” Ari slid back the chainmail on her wrist, showing off one of her old scars. Like the Ouroboros, the marks weren’t perfect circles; the spot where the circle joined itself was evident. The beginning and the end all in one. Gwen stared. “My scars match. Still think it’s a coincidence?”
They went back to dancing, their awareness of each other mounting like always, drowning out the other people in the room, and then the room itself.
“So this was your idea?” Gwen murmured as they pressed palms and walked in a circle. Ari finished the turn and swung closer to Gwen, her dress swishing against Lancelot’s armor. Gwen looked down at their proximity with growing suspicion. “We’re to dance until he’s jealous?” Gwen’s eyes moved to Ari’s face.
“I love you.”
Gwen smiled, but then seemed confused. “That’s the first time you’ve ever told me that.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, and I love you.”
Gwen nodded, emotion rushing to her cheeks, pinking her skin and brightening her eyes. “Oh, so you�
�re going to flirt with me in front of everyone? That’s it?”
“Not flirting, Gwen. My idea was to get you to talk about the future.”
“I really can’t think about Mercer right now.”
“Not that future. Our future. How I love you and the baby, and I’m dying to get back to our time so we can make a home for our family.” Ari smiled and a tear left one eye. Gwen traced its path with her gaze. “We don’t have to live on Ketch, if you don’t want to. We could go anywhere. Also, I’ve been thinking we should adopt Merlin. He’ll act like he hates it, but we can take care of him, especially if time keeps… stealing him away.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Gwen whispered.
Ari took in the curve of Gwen’s lovely neck, the way her lips parted with each breath. Ari could see it so clearly: a home for all of them. Visits from her parents. A dog. Oh, they were definitely getting a dog. “I just really want a bed that’s ours. For sleeping all tangled up. For not sleeping,” she said with a lift of the eyebrows. “A place where we aren’t separated. Not by anything or anyone ever again.”
“Gweneviere?”
Arthur stood in the middle of the floor, flanked by guards. Ari didn’t know when they’d stopped dancing, when they’d woven their hands together and pressed their chests as close as they could be—as if they had become an illuminated illustration in an ancient text of Lancelot matched with her Gweneviere.
“Arthur,” Gwen started, but the king merely took her arm and led her away. Gwen looked back at Ari while she was tugged out of the great hall, mouthing a warning.
Ari never saw the face of the knight who knocked her out cold.
Merlin stepped into the crystal cave, Val right behind him. The inky portal closed, leaving them alone together for the first time since they embarked on this ruinous trip.
“So this is your cave of wonders,” Val said, peering around. Merlin had always loved that brash interest. Of course, it used to be pointed at him. Now Val was taking in Merlin’s private sanctuary.
Which was, frankly, a mess.
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